Caterpillar Soup

Things have been different lately. Really different.  So much so that even at Faerieworlds a couple weeks ago, the one place and time of year I feel I can be my most uninhibited true self, a friend mentioned I didn't seem like myself.  Crap! I didn't know it was that obvious...

Something has been building since at least my last birthday in October -- "at least" because it has actually been hanging around for longer than I care to remember. But October was the first time it showed its face in a unified, organized feeling-- a feeling still difficult to describe.  It's sort of a dark heaviness that threatens to burst forth from my, seemingly permanently, restricted diaphragm. It actually started with a dream that has expanded into only what I can call visions (and vague remembrances of similar visions from childhood).  The main component of all these things, that have since blended together, is seeing the earth as smaller (like from a distance?), seeing a snow covered continent -- or just a 'finger' of land -- with an accompanying fear of either falling off of or of missing the earth.  Then I find myself trudging through the snow, in the cold darkness, alone and feeling like I'm either in the wrong place and not suppose to be there, or at the very least am not happy about my presence there.  It is hard to describe or to express the tendrils of emotions all wrapped together in this and how uncomfortable, confusing, and frightening it has been.  I had kind of managed to move beyond the vision part of these feelings until recently when I started watching a TV show about ancient aliens, and the multitude of images of the earth from space drew those right back in front of my face. 

I don't think I had really, at least consciously, been suppressing these things but was more the case that I didn't know what to do with them or how to deal with them.  They simply didn't have a context.  For the most part, even up to this past month, they had abated to just the very edge of my conscious recognition -- still there, but just annoying in their presence rather than interfering with my life.

So what changed?  Well, in the past month I have taken two separate shamanic classes which have both expanded and influenced me in significant ways, not the least of which was receiving a Power Animal Retrieval in the first one -- namely Snake. Snake is BIG medicine, being all about transformation, shedding old skins to be reborn, and the fiery alchemy of changing venom (poison) into healing.  Huge!  But I intend on writing an entire entry on this asp-ect (hee-hee!) since its scope is too large on it's own to be done justice here. 

Along with these two classes that I've already attended, I am also signed up for a 5-day training in Soul Retrieval in August.  Soul Retrieval is a shamanic method of 'retrieving' parts of a person that have been separated from that person, usually in instances of trauma.  It is very powerful to have these parts of your soul reunited and reintegrated. Not only will I be learning how to do this for others, but as part of the training I will be receiving one as well.  Now, as I discovered first hand before my Reiki attunements, as soon as you sign up for something like this, as soon as you solidify that commitment, you have already begun the transformative process of whatever that program, event, or class entails.  In most instances, according to personal experience, this involves a clearing, whether emotional or physical or both, to make room for the new stuff to take hold and grow -- which usually means you get sick before you get well.

In this case it hasn't been physical sickness, but a lot of emotional shrapnel from the past, things I'd thought were dealt with and done, rising back up to be faced and cleared again, which, though ultimately in the long run serve my highest good, in the short run have a tendency toward undermining my confidence and making me feel weaker, less grounded, and vulnerable.  Emotionally ill. 

The hardest part about this process is that the best way to deal with it and help it along, is to let go -- deeper and deeper levels of surrender. The harder I fight it (and believe me I've tried!) the rougher the terrain gets.  The more I try to pretend nothing is happening, and try to be my cheerful, optimistic, gleeful self, the harder it becomes, exponentially, to maintain that facade.  Case in point -- my friend's comments at Faerieworlds.

And it is amazing, once I start to accept my state, to be present with my feelings and not try to over-ride them in order to show the world that I'm okay and 'normal,' the easier it is to be with and accept these changes.  I've been accepting that my energy levels are going to be lower than usual, my emotions are going to be all over the charts, and that I'm gong to crave more solitude and at the same time experience increased loneliness.  It has been easier, but it has not been easy! 

I have been debating whether I need to get a soul retrieval (or other shamanic healings) to ease this transition. but I journeyed on it last night, and both my Upper World teacher and my Lower World guide told me over and over (because I kept asking them over and over) that I was "right on schedule" and didn't need to do anything else.  In fact, if I got a soul retrieval, it would interfere with the timing of my path.  I asked if I really should be taking the training in August and Nathaniel, my reindeer, said, "Of course! That's why you're in this position with all this happening right now." I had to laugh too, because after the journey when I was writing this part in my notebook, I heard Nathaniel's voice say, "Duh!"

And as I closed my notebook I heard Fred's voice say, "Just be willing to be present."

I kept remembering the conversation I had with a friend, who has been a spiritual mentor to me for nigh on 20 years, right after Faerieworlds as I tried to get a handle on all of this.  She was not surprised by anything I told her.  In fact she almost seemed like she expected it, with all the shamanic work I do, etc, you have to keep shedding the layers, keep being born a new, keep letting go of everything!

I had had another dream recently of being in a great library which was made of glass. I went outside the front doors and when I looked down the street I saw the tops of the trees just swaying back and forth violently.  I dashed back inside and dove behind a shelf to avoid the flying glass resulting from the cyclone blowing right through the library.  Everything I thought I knew, that I had organized and stored and built upon, was wiped out and blown away.  Nothing I thought I knew means anything. Square one. New game. Letting go of everything.

My friend said one thing that has stuck with me.  We talked about the transformation of caterpillar to butterfly, and how the caterpillar totally breaks down before the butterfly can take form.  As I've found out recently, the carterpillar actually has antibodies that fight off the butterfly transformation, as if it were a disease. But at some point, when the caterpillars disappears into the pupa to make its change, the antibodies die off and the caterpillar literally dies as the butterfly aspects take over. The thing my friend told me is, "You're in the pupa. You know what's in the pupa?  Caterpillar soup!" 

 That's what I am right now, and the process can't be rushed because it takes time for the butterfly to form -- and I want my wings to be fully-formed, strong, and glorious!