Movements in Mediation

Really powerful energy this time of year as we are walked and woven through the last hours of the deep purples of the west.  This time called Dumannios in some Celtic calendars – the Darkest Depths.  My body feels the pull to the high holiday. Solstice is near.

Last week, spurred by a challenging memory, I was taken through ancestral cycles of trauma and invited to heal them.  It was painful and also really, really beautiful. Remembering soaking into sweet blades of summer grass and noticing a watchful raven in a pine tree above opened the portal into this knowing.  Sitting with my great-grandmothers and grandparents and my parents (as their child selves) in some of their more challenging moments - loving them, bearing witness to their aches and sorrows.  Then feeling and seeing light fill them – and then watching and feeling as their light filled forms merged back within my own. 

After performing this healing ceremony 3 generations back, I felt a sense of integration and also a much deeper somatic understanding of how we carry generational trauma.  After this beautiful experience with my blood ancestors was complete, my guides came and celebrated the most beautiful ritual with and on me.  They formed a circle around me and removed my physical heart from my chest – I watched as it expanded until I was within it and then it kept expanding until the universe was within it.  I was transported back in time to a moment as a child sitting on a much loved beach.  I was both this child self and the universal heart.  In this re-membering I could see through the eyes of all the people and plants and molecules that were there.  Absolutely no separation.  I love it when this happens!  Merging with and as the sacred heart, seeing through the eyes of eternity within each of us simultaneously.

Yesterday, I had a really intense practice with a therapist who held space for a past trauma in my life.  When the session was over, I did not feel complete, so I decided to go back in on my own.  So glad that I did! Sitting in a chair in my room I closed my eyes and asked for the next movement.

I was transported to a riverbank that is one of the ceremonial homes of my guides.  These grandmas and aunties stood over me and lanced my heart with daggers and then fed it to land animals.  They then stuffed the cavity of my body with sacred herbs and placed me in the shallows of the river.  Small little silvery fish swimming by began to feed on me, carrying me downstream.  One little fish was eaten by an eagle and I became the sky.  A few were eaten by a bear and I was carried into the forest to become the loamy earth.  Some of the little fish died and I was composted into the murky silt of the riverbed.  A crow flying by ate one of my eyeballs and gave me deeper sight. 

My guides took pine boughs down from the forest trees and created a container for my body.  They filled the pine with clay and earth and fur.  They wove my pelvis out of seaweed and put oysters with pearls in it.  They asked their animal guides to offer their hearts and fashioned me a new heart out of the hearts of my animal kin.  They poured herbal tea into this mix, letting it be soaked up by the earth and moss held together by the pine branches. 

Then these healing aunties and grannies that I have travelled with for so many years now, sat on the floor around this reassembled me, almost creating a canoe with their legs.  Hawk circled overhead.

We were in all landscapes at once (lion and elephant blessing me from the savannahs).  I was re-formed.  The women kiss me.  The white owl woman who I have also known for a very long time placed a cape of white owl feathers and snow and starlight on my shoulders.  Beautiful elk by her side.

They reminded me of the animal guides who are protecting me right now.  I offered deep gratitude.  And then opened my eyes and went about my day.

I am so grateful that these meditations and visions come naturally to me.  I have easy access to the dreamworlds.  I told my sister about this second meditation yesterday (we were xmas shopping) and she said – this was all without any drugs?  Yup.  Just asking for guidance, asking to be shown what I’m ready to see… I remember the first time I was eaten by an animal in a meditation – I didn’t even know it was a thing.  A bear just ate me and I rested in a wonderful emptiness.  Years later studying shamanism I read about symbolic dismemberment and I felt seen.

My system is feeling this close of a cycle, the energy of the west offering release, the movement into the North with the ancient, knowing, stillness. And always for me - heart. Lots and lots of heart.

Right now, my task is to dive more fully into self-love and to really let go of the me that I was, in order to make way for the next iteration of my journey.

I’m listening.  I’m open.