So Below

As I continue to go through profound transformations, I'm finding it easy for my life and emotions to fluctuate wildly between extremes. For instance, I mentioned how the week following my soul retrieval was ecstatic to say the least. Well, the week after that, this previous week, was a hellish ride. I found myself reduced to a shell of myself, shades of an old me I hoped I'd put to rest, anxious, confused, jangled, trapped, scarcity-minded. --Yuck! I felt totally overwhelmed and overstimulated and couldn't process the excess information. Fortunately in Her divine timing and knowing, Goddess had already arranged an exit strategy for me.


At the Ostara ritual that I attended, one of the women mentioned to me she has a cabin on her property and allows friends to come stay if they need a retreat from the world, or just need to get away to the woods for awhile. I jumped at the chance, having felt a need for some deep solitude for a while now, and serendipitously chose this particular weekend -- exactly the weekend I need it!


It's not a totally primitive retreat, which is okay because, even as I write this, I realize I also have a need to be pampered a bit too. The cabin has a DVD player (I fell asleep last night watching Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince) and cable TV, which I don't have at home. Not that I'm really using it to watch. This morning, still feeling the onslaught of uncomfortable, prickly energy buzzing incessantly around my chest and shoulders, I turned the TV to the channel that plays 80s music and I danced, rocking the little cabin on its foundations, raising my own vibrations above these bothersome, invasive waves.


Still my thoughts start to go to places like, "What happened? Didn't the retrieval take? How can I be feeling this way? What's wrong with me?" ...Nothing is wrong with me. Once again I've encountered something that, rather than demeaning me validates me and my experience. I've discovered that in the wide majority of times I'm going through periods like this, I'm not the only one. Apparently a lot of people are going through the same or similar experiences right now, as the mass consciousness continues to rise (Did that 'New Age' mumbo-jumbo really just come out of me?!). Whatever the causes or explanations, there are masses of us going through changes right now. To me this reinforces in me that whatever I'm feeling or thinking, it is for a purpose.


Also, in my favorite book of all time, Finding Your Own North Star by Martha Beck, she introduces the concept of 'emotional shrapnel'. Emotions touch and affect us in so many ways and so many places in our body and our psyche that it can't all come out at once. Years later, like a piece of shrapnel someone may have gotten in a battle, an emotion suddenly is pushed to the surface, in order to be cleared and healed. It is actually a good sign when these things happen. It is a sign you have grown to a point of being strong enough to handle it and heal it.


The tricky part is not to get caught into it, take it as reality, and begin another vicious cycle. Just to be present and allow it, feel it, whatever 'it' is, and release it. It's kind of like an invisible fence. I heard someone talking about how their dog had figured out that if he got a running start, and jumped at the right time, the electric shock of the fence would only last a moment, but then he was on the other side and free. I want to be on the other side of the invisible fence.


To help me get there, this song I wrote many years ago has been popping into my head of late, and I've been trying to use it like a prayer to remind me that everything is alright, and all I really have to do is show up. Everything else is already taken care of...

It's not me who has to do this but the spirit of my soul

All I need is to surrender to the wisdom of the whole

Everything is taken care of and all pieces are in place

And no matter how miraculous there always is a way

So it is, it is so

As above, so below

Letting go of all my limits and releasing all my fears

For my purpose is within me and the path before me clear

Easily and effortless the outcome has been sealed

Stretching out my hand before me I know everything is healed

So it is, it is so

As above, so below