Yes Virginia

The past couple months have been pretty crazy for me -- intense, head-spinning, world toppling, death-defyingly crazy.  There were three events right on top of each other, which I will talk about separately, that really shook me up and left me feeling on the verge of the anxiety and panic attacks that I hadn't experienced for years.  When the heaviness of depression teamed up with the hyper-vigilance of anxiety and I found myself living in an uneasy fog, I knew I had to get some answers.  All I knew was that something had to change, but what it was, or what my next step needed to be, I didn't know.

So I turned to a good friend with whom I regularly exchange readings to shed some light on what was going on and what I needed to do.  Despite the combination of Tarot cards and my friend's mad astrology skills, clarity was in short supply, and though I left with more hope than I arrived with, the unknown task before me seemed daunting at its best and insurmountable at its worst.  I had doubts as to whether I would even survive this.

Still, the challenge was less undefined than before and we were able to determine that it sprouted from some deep soul trauma (all the cards coming up being Major Arcana) that resulted from some crisis of faith.  It had something to do with physical reality and being present in my body -- Balancing both the physical and spiritual realms.  I'm really good at avoiding being in my body, but as the oracles where telling us, I didn't totally trust the spirit side either.  A crisis of faith -- a crisis of reality.  It so resonated with my feelings of being caught in both worlds but not totally belonging to either one.  The phrase that came up over and over again was 'Hearth and Home.'  I don't know where my home is and thus do not feel safe anywhere -- hence the hyper-vigilance and the resulting exhausted depression.

I read a story somewhere about a guy who got on a bus and he was carrying this obviously very heavy backpack.  He took a place standing in the aisle as the bus continued on its route, the pack still slung over his shoulder.  Finally, a few stops later, a woman looks up at him and says, "You know, the bus is strong enough to carry both you and your backpack." And the man realized he didn't have to keep carrying the pack but could put it on the floor.

That's kind of the way I've been feeling -- like it's not been safe for me to put my full weight down anywhere.  I don't dare until I have someplace that's home.

Okay.  Baby step, baby step.  My body is my home here, and I'd already begun to be more consciously present and grounded.  I can do that. Step One, done.  Step Two -- Stay optimistic. In just the past week or so I'd rediscovered what a difference it makes to have my third eye open.  When I get caught in the hamster wheel of thoughts and its resulting tunnel vision, just opening my third eye chakra totally expands the context and perspective of whatever I'm going through.  It's like a "Second star to the right and straight on til morning" type feeling.

So I had those things going for me, and just had to bide my time -- "get comfortable with being uncomfortable," as my reading had told me -- until the answers came of their own accord.  Fortunately I didn't have to wait long.

I was going about my own business this morning at work, mulling over everything from the reading the night before, and thinking about the whole crisis-of-faith thing.  "Maybe I was martyred in a past life? Maybe I had put my undying faith and loyalty into someone or something only to find out they or it was false?" Suddenly, without warning, a memory flashed through my mind.  "Oh my gods! SANTA!!!"

I don't remember exactly how old I was but it was my pre-teens when I found out Santa wasn't real.  It may sound silly but this rocked me to my very foundations. I had had an unwavering, unquestioning, 100% pure belief in Santa's existence, and that reality -- the one where magick was real in the world -- was pulled out from under me.  In a split second I no longer lived in a world I recognized.  I didn't know what I could trust.  Not only did the magickal world get taken away, but it made the physical world less real, and less reliable.  I was lost.  I no longer had a home.

That all might sound a bit melodramatic, but think of it from the mind of a prepubescent, day-dreamer of a boy.  And silly or not, the full impact of this realization sent this fully grown man reeling to the bathroom and had him sitting on the floor sobbing his eyes out.  Tears of grieving a world torn away from me... My innocence ripped away from me.  This was huge!

So I sat there on the floor, my breath still catching in small gasps, when something shifted.  I felt as though some invisible barrier or wall had softly given way and allowed me to sink deeper into place than I ever remember, like tumblers in a combination lock aligning. There was a calmness and a rightness, and I felt like I'd just had a Soul Retrieval -- like some errant part of my soul had finally found it's way home.

I had closed my teary eyes, and suddenly the darkness behind my eyelids turned the color red.  Then I heard the laughter -- "HO-HO-HO!" And there before me stood Father Christmas himself, like he'd just stepped out of a children's book.  

I may have shed a few more tears at this point, from the joy and just the pure relief bubbling up from my heart.  And I'm pretty sure I was grinning as I sighed, "You are real."

He threw his head back and shook with a belly laugh. "Hohohohoho! Of course I am!" Then he paused, and with a sly twinkle in one eye, and a wink with the other, he leaned closer to me. "Are you?"