"'Do No Harm' Hippocrates"
Sacred Birthing Insight

Diary of a Spiritual Midwife (part 9)

Dec 10

I was led to connect with Pachamama, but instead of heading to the jungle in the East, I was led toward Mindo in the north west. So I thought OK, the clinic must be about the local people there. Then, I went to the Butterfly House, a cool tourist attraction, a beautiful place in a few weeks when construction is done that houses many kinds of butterflies in all stages of development. Very cool to learn about them. Beautiful and awesome in their sensitivity – they responded to my kalimba playing and within minutes, settled down and alighted on the flowers. Anyway, Rosie is the owner and a new friend. She sat with me and filled me in on the ways of Mindo living. Once people hear that I am going to live here, they immediately open up and the welcome is wonderful.

So I found out that the local people will not populate the Birthing Sanctuary. They are given free care at the hospital 15 miles from here. Rosie said they have been so spoiled by so many foundations coming in here to bring their specialty that they are given everything, Catholic education, medical care, Christmas gifts, …… so she said, don’t count on them unless you offer your services free: They don’t need anything other than the clothes on them, so they don’t work. They are not interested in becoming part of any work force – there is no motivation. (Hawaii 50 years ago.) – Until they buy a truck. Then they become drivers so they can make their truck payments. “So I hope I did not pop your bubble.” she said. I told her it just moved me back into my true purpose – A Birthing Sanctuary, not a birthing clinic.

Dec 11

I meet an older woman named Judy, who was an ESL teacher for years and we go to see her home that is a beauty in the back of a very moist ravine. She drew it on a napkin and ta-daa! She said she would give me the plans. I’m thinking, why did this just happen? and I sense that I will be building. She is a trip, and a chocoholic, and she knows where this special brownie place is, so we will be seeing each other again!

I meet the town OB, whose name I can’t remember. This OB is a woman of great heart who is here for a year, offering prenatal care. (Every doctor finishes school as a family practice doc, and then has a mandatory year in a rural place to give back to the country. Then they can specialize in their desired field.) Sara, a beautiful woman in her mid thirties, works next door at the Clinica del Salude, health clinic, and started her year in July. We have not spoken yet as I have to know what’s going on in me first. Our hearts are pulling us together though and we both feel it. What a meeting it will be when it happens. It feels to me like we will be working together.

December 12, 2009

Today the gringos who are all staying in this hostel go on a field trip. It’s pouring rain and we go up to the house that Karen and Gary are building. It’s going to be really beautiful. They are bird watchers and the house is built for that. (Did I say that Mindo is the bird watching capital of the world? With 1900 species!) Without children, their house will be left to Mindo as a bird sanctuary. This house in Hawaii would cost $8-900,000, and he said it should come out to costing $80,000. We then go down the hill to their neighbors who are camping out, as I did when I was their age, while planning and building their house. He makes jewelry and she is a full time doula, the real thing too! (She started 10 years ago but still had another job till 2 years ago.) Every question I ask, she answers with the same words I would say! She works with moms (and dads!) starting at 5 months until the birth. She said the doctors love her and hate her because they know that the women she works with will use no drugs nor have epidurals. And because it is she who is there, the doc knows they can come in at the last minute. She teaches that the drugs are not good for the baby and wake the parents up to this. What a meeting! They are working to move to Mindo instead of staying here for 3 days a week and in Quito for 4. She has an incredible heart and I look forward to knowing them.

Then we went to a bird watching restaurant in Los Bancos, with a spectacular view of a valley with a river at the bottom. Truly there were fifty hummingbirds whirling all around the feeders and ten kinds of Tanengers eating bananas. We topped off this rainy day with a gooey homemade brownie, made with homemade chocolate. Joe showed us every step of chocolate making and served this brownie that was better than anyone’s mom could make! And there were such tastes in this brownie, several different tastes that he said were from the individual beans. Wow, such a different experience of choc ko la te. (We called Judy to join us.)

Dec 13

I didn’t sleep last night after midnight when a neighbor came home making a lot of noise. What am I doing here???? Going out in a car around Mindo, and seeing Los Bancos yesterday makes it really obvious that this is such a third world country. Really nothing but shacks along the road, until you get to two big houses then shacks again. And I’m doing what? Why did I choose this place, I am asked by others continually. My small self, has not, my higher Guidance has. I have not even seen enough of the country to choose this place, except that it’s not Quito, the megamaxiopolis. Yet I keep feeling that this is exactly right. So whenever I get to the mountain of doubts from seeing this “reality” in front of my eyes, I go over all the reasons that I have discovered that make it right. So what are the reasons to go ahead?

Mother Nature is pristine. Major reason.

I understand that building here is so much cheaper, and this allows me to see that a Birth Sanctuary can finally be built exactly as is my vision. Major reason.

Knowing that I can simply build what I want and not have someone from building, permitting, or whatever, say no. Major reason.

Hearing that the land has been prepared for birthing, that it has what is needed. Major reason.

Mindo, (pronounced ‘Meendo’,) is just about to take off and become an alternative haven for the country. It attracts many people from Quito on the weekends and in the summer. Global tourists all the time – which is how we had a gringo field trip. Right now it needs everything. Anyone’s passion is welcomed, (which is how there is a chocolate factory.) There is little infrastructure aside from the roads and there’s an amazing system of busses so cheap transportation is possible all over the country. This too is major. Hopefully more people will stay, bringing their gifts.

It hit me just two days ago that I am to start with raw land. Wow! What a shift, after thinking that I could start with a B&B and have part of it done. That is so huge when I am alone and not with a group, or at least somebody who is as committed as I am to this vision. It’s probably why I am so overwhelmed. So how do i do this????? But as soon as I get it, the next pieces come through

This morning I hear the question, “Why do you think that you are so utterly alone here on the physical plane?” The answer is, so that I can see my level of creation. It’s all my creation, the good and the not so good. So how am I going to do it? Go home? Look in another place, only to end up here in Mindo again if it truly is the place where this is to be? I’ve been shown these two wonderful women, the doula and the OB. That is stunning Support of Nature that should help me to say, “OK! I’m going to build the Birthing Sanctuary right here and right now.” But I see how few services are here, how there is no infrastructure, how the needs are so different than I thought. So what will I place my attention on? The overwhelming reality that IS? Or, what I know can be within a year?

Everybody who speaks English is a support system for me. They are all blown away that I am here to do this and each has offered their help. Susan, Rosie, Karen and Gary, Judy and Renee, the man I met yesterday at the restaurant. Support everywhere I look, and each offering help with building to make it seamless, instead of the karmic experience they each had. The nature support is there for building, towards becoming a resident, toward helping me. I better look for land. I guess I’m building.

Dec 21

My, how time warps for the days have flown, yet it’s only been weeks since I came – Dec 4!! But on the inner planes it’s been 3 months since I’ve arrived since night time is as productive as daytime. After a very hard 3 days where the waves of culture shock kept rolling through, everything has been rearranged and I understand / remember where I am being led. I can’t possibly share the journey that I was taken on, because there were so many steps to it. And un-ravelings. But this morning after the noisiest night possible, the dawn breaks and clarity arises to make sense of all the pieces I have been given through time about the Birthing Sanctuary.

The purpose of the Sacred Birthing Sanctuary is
to renew the wisdom of the indigenous cultures of the world.
Remembering and reinstating birth in the ways of Natural Law
protects babies,
their higher states of consciousness, their ability to be present,
& their innate self-love.
These babies know they are born to hold and renew their culture’s ancient ways, the ways in alignment with their Divine blueprint, for this is their culture’s unique footprint on the face of this Earth that holds their purpose, their offering to Great Spirit.

I saw it: The buildings, the school, the birthing temple, the community, the gardens and orchards, the animals, the pristine place in nature with clean waters running by and through it. I saw the first family who came to cook and build. I saw the elders choose and groom the young parents who would carry the baby to ressurect the ways of their people. I saw the parents who came in their indigenous clothes, carrying the pride of their tribal ways. I saw them come with their lovers and their mothers and sisters. I saw us teach them the ways we’ve learned to take back to their people in their land. I saw how it would work.

I saw the people involved as the holder of this Sanctuary, and how it came into being. With my Christmas plans already erased, I am on to the next part of this adventure: finding the players of this incredible Sacred container. This is why we have all worked so hard! Thank you each of you. Thank you and Merry Merry Christmas. May all blessings pour over you all. May the love and light from this work that we are honored to do together, be as a balm poured over you in all the ways that you need. May we each know the importance of the piece that we play so that together Sacred Birthing flourishes to accomplish the task that was set for it.

Diary of a Spiritual Midwife (part 8)

September 25

I see a deer in the inner planes two days ago.  This morning when still dark, I see a flash of very bright white light near my head and then the stag/deer runs across my inner vision.   It’s playful but regal at the same time and I realize somehow that this is a Buddhist symbol.  So what are you telling me? I am to move my campsite to Red Flats.  I take up my campsite, ready to leave this place now, and that afternoon meet a young man at market who told me he was just leaving Red Fir Flats and it was totally empty and beautiful.  I drive up and set up camp there that night.

I knew I needed to reconnect with the trees for D and I had spent one whole summer in 1996 camping up in the midst of these great Red Fir Trees.  This Red Fir species was the tree against which that we took our pictures for our first brochure.

I’m guided to a beautiful place and felt like the land was welcoming me like a long lost friend. I  stopped the car and got out to walk in the directions of some mighty boulders and the incredible energy stopped me in my tracks. Oh, I could not walk into the area it felt so deeply sacred, held for a certain purpose that I could not fathom. (there are so few words in our language for the word ‘sacred’.)  It seemed to be a portal of some kind and I was invited.   The trees spoke in the winds of the changing weather.  It was a special moment of knowing and merging.

I remember the story about one of the Dalai Lama’s helpers who was flying over Mt. Shasta from Seattle to San Francisco in the mid 90’s, looking out at the mountain and noticed something important about the trees.  He rented a car and drove back to Shasta and up to the mountain to find that the Tree Spirits that left Tibet when the Chinese invaded had come here.   All these years nobody knew where they went. Within weeks, a full-on Tibetan ceremony of celebration was preformed.

I am awake most of the night because it is so cold – 7000 ft.  But I keep seeing the Dali Lama and would not believe it was he, but then he would roar with laughter, as only he can do, so I did believe it finally.  He said all sorts of things to me.

1) It’s time to remember Shaminism and I am to journey to remember and pull it into me;

2) I am to be rooted shamanically in Mt Shasta to reconnect places with it where the web of life is weakened. The sun is my fuel.  Precious water is my sustainer.  It will be in out-of-the-way places – “You will always be safe with a force field of love and protection around you. Be at peace. You can do this easily by remembering who you are.  This is your work.”

3) I was shown Shasta Abbey many times through the night and told I would find a teacher there. In the morning, I can barely take down the tent as my fingers are so frozen.  The car thermometer says 36 degrees. No wonder I froze my wadoogies off. I head into town to warm up, and because the internet cafe I was using is no longer usable for certain hours, I go to a new one I have not been to before. There, a woman said to me that I look familiar, so we got to talking and she was just leaving the Shasta Abbey to go home and sell her home and move back permanently to become a nun!   I suddenly remember my evening visions of the Abbey and tell her, and she said that this weekend is the beginners retreat and to call now because they are setting up the rooms! She gets up and leaves for a Dr. appointment. We maybe spent two minutes together. It was that quick.

I started journeying in Fairfield, learning from Michael Harner, with drumming in a certain tempo. I was good at it and it was helpful as guidance. But for me what’s incredible when journeying are the feelings that come with the visions, and as your trust grows and you let go of doubt, visions take on even greater detail.

October, 4

Wow.   3 days of being in a Zen Monastery was a potent teacher.

The energy in the meditation hall was potent and I thank the lineage that created this.   The pace of the schedule was wonderful and although it started at 5 am, it was slower that we go in our daily life and mindfulness is so much easier without hurry.  No hurry in anything.   There were enough hands to make light work. I was surprised at the ceremony and ritual that is such a major part of Zen. I  had no idea there was anything but meditation -with a stick.  But that was a wrong impression, of this monastery at least, as there is such compassion here it made me cry twice as the recipient.

I saw my greed with food, and my ability to bring it into balance.  Their practices took food up a notch, from eating to live to food is medicine, so we don’t eat the same thing every day because our body needs many things, so even eating what you don’t like is good for what your body needs.  It transformed everything about food for me.  And eating silently!  What a blessing it is!  That was huge.  I saw my love, instead of only my self-judgment. I saw that my suffering is not in my outside life, but inside me, for that is what the Buddhist suffering is, and I never knew that! And that the 6 senses combine with “the 3 poisons” – greed, hatred and fear – to create all suffering, and it’s so subtle at times. And, I let go of my attachment to accomplishment – that I didn’t realize I was holding. Meditation was with half opened eyes, the hardest thing about the retreat. That’s so that meditation becomes life, and life becomes a meditation. With closed eyes, meditation is much more distinctly separate from life. And you don’t fall asleep! And, that you don’t go into an altered state. -The jury is out on this one, since I am so used to using this time and its altered state to receive answers to my questions, but without guiding the everyday needs of Sacred Birthing Foundation, I may not need to do this.

At the working meditation – Seva or service work, I was given to grate the cheese. Well, with my allergy to milk/cheese this was the perfect thing for me to focus on for that long, and I came to see it was connected not to the cow’s milk but to my mother’s milk. And through grating – enough for 60 people, I came to such compassion, seeing a deeper level of mom’s suffering in having baby after baby, when her desire was not to have children but to serve in an intellectual way. Bless you mom for bringing me into the world amidst your other desires that you allowed to be put on hold for another 15 years.

The stupa of the abbotess, the one who brought Zen Budhism to America and started this abbey, was a peaceful place. I went with lots of wonderings, and found that talking with her was louder than having her on a telephone! She was so practical and no nonsense. She said: “Deathing is long term learning – it will come to you as it comes. You will see and learn a great deal over time and share your insights with those who will do the deathing facet at the Sanctuary. Get back into birth. Keep your attention on the consciousness of the baby. The issue of mama’s childbirth pain will come along, but your gift is refining the parents to receive these children with their consciousness intact. What is it that can take each parent another step up in their growth? This is your gift.” Then I read the first few chapters of her biography and it was the same – practical and no-nonsense.

I had to laugh – I’ve had a knowing since age 23, that I would someday live in a community, never did I think it could be a monastery, yet here was community at its finest! And even my thoughts throughout my life of shaving my head fit with the bald monks and nuns here! What a trip! But their costumes are not in my farthest dreams! So, I’m still looking for “my” community. I think its Sacred Birthing’s.

Buddhism seems to be so concerned with suffering and this is a big question to me. I acknowledge that if one has never looked at what is hidden in one’s ‘closet’ then its necessary to stop denying it, take it out and shine our light on it. But my feeling is that if we are not living in a war torn area or one of famine and misery, our karma is one of far less suffering and far more self-forgiveness. Of course we each have our challenges and many are not easy to bear. Yet, if we happen to be in fairly supportive surroundings now, and can be at peace, can be appreciative and grateful, then I feel that we have a responsibility to the Earth and her humanity to radiate that to all others. This seems to be what these Indigo children know to be their truth. This is the higher vibration and certainly feels better so lets stay in this! And we certainly don’t see the Dalai Lama being miserable! He is pure joy.

SO, all this stuff about Buddhism leads me to ask: Why do I seek? To return to our “Face of God”, our original face of purity, that which newborn babies ARE, and show us. And in Sacred Birthing terms, I word it this way: Without conception, pregnancy and birth trauma, when babies are wanted and loved, babies retain their self-love. They remember why they chose to be born on this planet at this time, and, why they choose these parents to help them along their path.

October 5 and onward

All these days, my consciousness is narrowed and inward. D is being tested for stroke. Ultrasound on his carotid artery, C.A.T. Scans and angiograms. Such an experience for one who does not go to doctors. There is BIG energy around here. All his family is alerted and on call, integrating that things could go any way at this point. All are realizing in their own way, the love in their life called D, and what it would be like to be without it. He learns that a clot is deep in the brain. He is on the phone telling all of his adult children each update.

October 9

I am house sitting the beautiful cabin for 10 days, upstairs from D. It’s in the shape of a star and is an ashram to Yogananda. YEA I get to hold still. I don’t know that I am quite cut out for not having a home.

D goes to a new doctor who feels that he had a previous stroke when mountain climbing 2 years ago when he experienced severe altitude sickness. D is so expanded, so in complete gratitude. Last night he said he woke up in the middle of the night asking himself how could it be that he still fits in his bed when he is so huge and expanded! Today he struggles to put words on what is happening inside him: He swings from feeling deep intense sadness, the suffering of the world, to the greatest ecstasy and back again, each taking him to his knees, each bringing tears, and after many swings of the pendulum, somehow is it to be integrating them within himself? What major work he is doing. There is no fear for he has long done his deathing homework. Such as, Steven Levine’s how would your life change if you were only going to live a year? A month? A day? Death has been a friend for many years and a constant source of conversation.

A movie on Tibetan Shamans plays tonight – The fate of the Lhapa – how good is this timing???!!!!! Now I have the word for what I am remembering; a Lhapa. A Lhapa is “one who is in contact with the gods to perform healing.” I don’t know about that but the journeying is the same and I practice daily. Its not about Buddhism, its about shamanism. Yesterday, the Deva of Sage helps me with my focus and jumps into my crown. I make a tea of it to receive its help on all levels. The honeybee led me to Heart Lake when I got lost. The great tree at Castle Lake said to me, “Be gentle with yourself. You are in a major transition.”

Behind me at the movie sits the town midwife who said to another person, “Delivering babies is reliable money for me.” Oh please, may there be higher reasons than that, to be with a newborn baby at its most precious transition.

October 10

He said, “As I delve into my own mortality, I am finding my own immortality. It’s confusing – I start out with my mortality and I don’t know where I am.” The expansion continues whenever he is alone. He said that he was 5-6 when he saw his first Life Magazine showing pictures of suffering children in many countries, and from then to now, never knew how to bring together this dichotomy. “Why is their life not like my life?” It caused separation and craziness throughout his life, trying to understand how so much of the world can be so riddled with such intense suffering, and then in the next instant there is such great liveliness and ecstasy in nature, in people, in life. This quest of uniting these is the reason and the joy of his global travels. Maybe this is why his vibration matches the my exploration of the Buddhist path. He is such a big blazing open heart now, nothing else exists. He is full of love and appreciation and gratitude. Nature is his delight and worries are transformed with humor and lots of talk and they release their charge. His Circle of Willis, a halo of veins and arteries is well developed to give him more circulation. Many people do not even have such a thing, so it is praised quite often! He is so very conscious of every moment. We talk about how amazing it is that I should be here with him. Me! Such a gift.

October 11

We hike to Castle Lake, and on up to Heart lake and up beyond to the Outlook at the very top of the mountain to see Mt Shasta in its alpenglow as the sun goes down. Wow what a view of layers of ranges, and two baby lakes way beneath us. This is his power place when he is on this continent. He may never be able to climb mountains again and this makes him sad. But life is still more precious. He says, “Oh, I will live if I can, but it’s a good day to die!” It is his grandchildren who pull him into living most. Burr, the weather is changing and the Indian summer is over.

Oct 14

My great work is to recover my feelings. Their disappearance was a result of turning them off so that I don’t feel my own ancient cruelty. From my Dark Night of the Soul 11 years ago, I am called throughout these years to find deeper layers of me. I have such a journey this morning in meditation with honey bee, hawk, elephant and cobra assisting. I keep asking to feel, but do I really want to feel what’s coming? I don’t know the result of all this, but if D passes, it will certainly be a great loss to my heart. My purpose in being here is to be with him to let him go, as his children could not. He laughs when he realizes that they too will go through uniting love and ecstasy with the sadness of loss. He laughs and hoots as he thinks of giving each of his children a vision quest for themselves as they take his ashes to the different parts of the world that he loves most: the source of the Ganges, the top of Mt Shasta, a town at 15,400 feet in Ecuador’s highest mountain….. Always making life fun! So much laughter. That’s all we do as these days pass.

October 14

In another journey, I see that family life is the piece that makes life fertile and rich. I see that the Sacred Birthing Community is for families for three YEARS, not for three months! From before conception through pregnancy and through the first two years. No wonder the Birthing Sanctuary did not manifest yet! I had it in too little of a box! We need a huge piece of land for a 5th Dimensional community for families whose priority is to raise kind and loving children. And I hear, “open to being in another country.” Bryce leaves for Ecuador today. Hmmmmmm.

October 15 – onward

Visions of a place in South or Central America keep coming across my screen. A few months ago I have visions of a birthing clinic in India in all its details, and the most remarkable part of it was the juice it inspired in me! So much excitement! I have always wanted to do something like be a Peace Corp midwife and thought I missed out this time around. But here are pictures of a birth clinic happening in my head and the same excitement in my bones!

October 20

Just as D is finding stability through this experience and I find my thoughts suddenly can go elsewhere, I am introduced to energetic healing. Someone is on the massage table and states his intention, or not. 8 others surround him, offering the piece we are given and like a dance, change our positions and offerings as if in a grand orchestration. It is even more fascinating to me to give this, than to receive my own session. I am amazed what I am being told to do to assist other people’s bodies and release. Incredible! Im seeing that I have more hands than 2. These hands go to various places on the body in front of me. Sometimes they are not slow and they have no predetermined way to do anything. They usually shake up what is happening so that it can be cleared. I call them my olive oil hands because that’s what they looked like when they first came. I actually saw them in my dream for the first time when I was a brand new mom and they saved my toddler Alec, from falling off the sliding board. And here they are again!

October 22

I am staying at Stewart Mineral Springs in a tiny cabin. With nothing to do since the springs are closed on Tuesday and Wednesday, I sink into the level where my connection is interrupted – in meditation, in guidance, in thought, in my body kinesiology. I keep coming up with, “more entities”. This has been endless ever since the Dark Night of the Soul. “As the god of my life, I intend energetic integrity.” I rail at Source that life on earth is so difficult as it is, much less with entities creating more havoc in all humanity. How is humanity able to step up with such a constant barrage of sabotage??? How can we be expected to move into a higher vibration with this level of interference? I don’t see how it’s possible. I decree that something must be done with this! PLEASE attend to this, hierarchy of Angels! After 2 days, I feel immensely better. Thanks to Archangel Michael who is constantly working with me. But the next day I experience the same thing again. What is going on!!? I discover that there are opened channels in me that allow in a whole new batch of entities, once others have been cleared. Thank you for showing me this! PLEASE close all these channels in all dimensions of consciousness, and keep them closed for all time and in all space.

Who is Arch Angel Michael? I am sorry to have held you in a tiny box too! The only part I knew about you and made use of, was that you stood for TRUTH, and to ask you for clearing from entities and energies that do not belong in me. And so I journey and have an experience of him as a Enormous being of etheric flames where nothing but light and love can stand in this dynamic and loving flame of purification. So as we call in this help, in comes waves that move through us, all resistance, all density, all “less than” our highest can not stand this vibration. I think this is why Archangel Michael is displayed with the symbol of the sword. What a feeling you are. And in these 3 days of doing nothing else, with the help of Telos, the Ascended Masters of Mt Shasta, I have new experience of myself as I get to a clear space within my energetic body. But there is still more to go.

October 28

D is given a clear bill of health. The clot is still there, but the doc said that he is in such good health that if it were he, he would continue with a full life. D is thrilled for this means he does not have to stick around for more tests. He has his freedom! He goes to visit his kids for his grandson’s 2 year old birthday, where all members of the family are converging from all over the country! And I am happy to house sit in his cabin for 3+ weeks. As he leaves, I have a place to do some research.

October 30

I keep tuning into Bryce to see how he is and feel he is not thrilled with Ecuador until the last day of his trip. And that’s what he said. But the last day made his trip worth it, for as a botanist, he wants to see species he has not seen before. He finally gets to the jungle part and is in heaven. The weather is much like Kauai, even though the country is on the equator.

I am still feeling South America – maybe for a Community and a birth clinic. I have a realization that those born in South and Central America are in their hearts: they retained their self-love at the time of birth. It’s obvious within their families. It’s places that have been so influenced by American birthing that have been traumatized and have lost it. So, I wonder, what is it that Sacred Birthing can do for the place that needs it most – America? We can train midwives and doulas and send them back to their homes so that they become the seeds of gentle birthing at the grass roots level. That’s what we are to do. And a birth clinic for indigenous people will be our offering. Wow, it looks like the pieces are coming together and building quite a picture. I wondered why the SB Birthshops 1, 2, and 3 were going through such transmutation when I first got to Mt Shasta! Now the puzzle is becoming a picture. It’s all part of a 6 week training for those who are midwives, midwife’s apprentices and doulas.

I start looking for Spanish classes online, and feel that immersion, living with a family is the way for me. But languages have been tough my whole life, another sign of a limbic brain that has had birth trauma. So what to do? I ask for the part of me that has lived in the Andes in other lifetimes to come back to me and help me with the language, the people, the customs and ways. I start having Spanish words on my lips or as I awaken, or sometimes even in my dreams. Hooray! I know I will be visiting birth clinics in all the countries on my way south so that I understand and learn from each. And practice Spanish.

Nov 2

I called my sister who had a birthday yesterday and although she is not one to answer any emails to the family, she answered me!  I asked her what she did on her birthday yesterday and she said she spent it with Lynne Twist, from the Pachamama Foundacion that works in Ecuador.   She said “you know of her don’t you?”  Well no, I didn’t but here was Ecuador again.  Interesting.  And my sister Nancy and Lynne are in Fairfield Iowa!  Coincidences are piling on top of each other.  So I asked her if she would introduce me.

November 4

Although I have always yearned to, Hands-on-healing has not been a gift of mine so far this lifetime, and to be stepping into this is still mind blowing to me. The feedback is so validating and I feel like this is what I have been waiting for all my life. So fulfilling. Every Thursday. Wow what a gift! And in the journey of the day, I look at my hands and see that my hands have turned to quarts crystal! My hands are clear! Oh my goodness, this is what I have been inwardly told for years, that we need to have clear hands, we who touch babies. And inner work is what clears our hands.

For those who have done mucho inner work, “forever”, I feel there is a new way of doing it. Stay in a high vibration and as life presents things that bubble into your awareness, attend to them by feeling them, the most important part, and return as soon as possible to your high vibration. I don’t think we need to slog thru anything anymore.

November 5

25 year old Garrett from Fairfield shows up in the pouring rain right as I am going to bed. Hitching a ride, the driver went 100 miles out of his way to bring him to Mt Shasta for he is so fascinating to talk to. His travels are extensive and his soul design is to “find all the animals I love.” His stories tell of living in the desert with the rattle snakes, and traveling to find and share the beady eyed stare of a Polar bear, the intensity of the energy of a Jaguar, tracking a Grisly, meditating next to a baby Moose, whose mother was nearby and just kept on munching. Even rolling up a huge Anaconda into a ball to get it off the road so it would be safe. He is fearless, and he goes into the jungles in Peru, Columbia, Australia and Africa where there are still undiscovered tribes, to take part in their tribal living. Without supplies, without language, sharing their food and eating everything that is offered! seeing how different the children are without TV – they are absolutely present. His stories are awesome. And so many incredible pieces are being offered to me to support my journeying forward. I suggest James Twyman and the Indigo kids for he is surely one of them and they would surely love him! Looks like a young Crocodile Dundee, doesn’t he?

November 6

Drumming journey, (with a drummer and a drum, for the first time since I started):

I am in the jungle looking out, I am a big cat, bird, snake, I am the animals looking at me, and I am in the center of a clearing looking at them look at me. …. I turn around and there is a huge pyramid and an inverted pyramid on its bottom into the earth. Beneath, a huge crystal sends a shaft of light up the apexes into the sky and it comes down the steps of the pyramid as a huge snake and goes into the jungle, into a hut and shape-shifts into the sick person on the bed, who is me too. The sick one dies and the spirit of me comes out of the sick person and stands above and behind the healer standing by the bed, overseeing his healing. … I’m suddenly in a village down, way down a hill. I am looking as the hair-style of women, twisted hair with material twisted in it, and am aware of being received in this circle of women. The one on my left gives me a chicken and the feeling is so good. They are my sisters. … I am immediately up the hill in a city and am in offices. I am being received in the bureaucratic area by friendly men who ask “what do you need? and how we can help? and let me give you this…..”. All the worry of “how are we going to do what we know we need to do” drains out of me and my body lets go of this stored worry. ….. I am back down in the village and hear, “This is your home.”

November 7

Meditating with Grace: Ego and mind not appreciated anymore and Grace said that the mind is an awesome tool that is getting a bad rap these days. I’m asking about my pulsing head, and BS that may keep me from unifying the modes of healing, like surgery, into my realm of possibility, interesting after D showed me how good it could be.

“We are with you as you ARE able to resolve this. You have worked hard eliminating what does not belong, and now it s time to instill what could have belonged there to begin with. Micah’s suggestion was a good one and you have already instilled within your brain that you are blessed and wanted. YOU are a blessed being, as is anyone who has the opportunity to serve in the way she chooses. You will not be delayed in Ecuador, as ALL of your healing teams are with you in this. We can help.”

Here is Abbie, who channels Grace and the magnetized the healing team to this group. A Beautiful lady, at a medicine wheel of Natosa’s, also a healing team member, north of Mt Shasta in the desert.

Tonight is the night that all the lovers of Mt Shasta party in support of the mountain, donating at a fun harvest dinner to preserve this glorious mountain and its pristine water supply from big conglomerates who wish to use it for their own gain. Its water comes from snow melt and drips through the rock of the mountain for hundreds of years, finally coming out at the base of a hill to become the headwaters of the Sacramento River, the sacrament, and water truly is. All go there to fill up their gallon jugs. It’s taste is spectacular. And even the city water is tested every week and found to be perfect. Nothing is put in the city water. How amazing is that! This water meanders through the fields and neighborhoods. That’s what I intend for the Community. Clean Pure Waters. Bless you waters of the world.

Headwaters of the Sacramento River, and playing bowls in gratitude for the gifts of water. This was my gift to run into this as I came to say good by to the waters.

Here is a special rock to you especially Noah! But it is way to0 big to pick up or bring you!

November 8,

I go up to the Red Fir Trees to drop off Garrett, who is going to camp as a vision quest, at 7000 ft, (when its 28 degrees at 4000 ft!) He said to me, “Why can’t we hitchhike on a starship? I want to go to Australia!” Why didn’t I think of that?

I drop him off and find myself drinking in the sun. It’s a practice I’ve been doing for about 2 years, and just heard in the healing group that it unites the Pineal and Pituitary glands, and when that happens we are able to tune to higher frequencies. So simple, it goes like this:

Sit in the early morning sun. Over and over again, pull the sun into your 3rd eye and into your whole brain. (Stay focused and continue doing this for 5 minutes without letting yourself get side tracked into the wonderful ideas that will come to you.) Be in a place of gratitude to the Sun, the giver of life, and to Mother Earth, the giver of the stage for life. If you see that the sun beams go to the side, simply ask to be aligned with the Sun and you will see it shift straight to your forehead.

Then do the same thing for another 5 minutes with the addition of bringing it down your spine and into the hollow Earth. As it gets there, see the hollow Earth fills with the radiance of the Sun. PHEW! Again, be in a place of gratitude to the Sun, and to Mother Earth.

After 10 minutes, relax and allow your self to space out and receive the Sun’s gifts of inspiration, all the good ideas inspired by the sun. What I’ve discovered is that each morning I see what is suggested and important for my day. ENJOY!

Nov 9

The name of the Community/ Sanctuary that keeps coming is: Farm Where Kindness Grows.

Nov 14

I am introduced to Nancy D. who invites me to ride from Mt Shasta and sit at their table at a luncheon for Panchamama next week.  Wow.  All roads are leading to Ecuador.  And mighty fast too!

Nov 19

I am in a huge warehouse in San Francisco that has been transformed into a space for a benefactors luncheon.  I sit at the table, as one of thousands, and as the pictures and videos of Ecuador come on the hugh screen on the stage, with the sounds of the jungle, tears start rolling down my cheeks, and there the slippery kind that don’t stop.  They keep coming and I don’t even care.  Something so deep is happening and I can’t put it into words.  I just keep crying.  With every speaker, they come again.  I know my body and know this is important.  This is so very dear to me but I don’t know what piece.  So I just stop my mind and take it in.

At the end I go up and meet 4 people.  The first two think I am nuts and up come all my doubts.  It really sets me back for about 10 minutes and I have to regroup and realize that it does not matter what anyone else thinks, this is what I am being called to do.  Finally I meet Lynne and am received with a hug when I tell her that I have dreamed this contact with the people of Ecuador.  That the dream of a Birthing Sanctuary is finally located because the “pods” I saw in 1998 vision look just like the pictures of what Pachamama has built in the jungle.  This is where it belongs!  Oh my goodness!  I also meet Belen, who speaks english, who knows I am serious because I am already coming.

Diary of a Spiritual Midwife (part 7)

September 27, 2009

It’s really a chance to pray, making a medicine wheel.   I ask what the intention is for this wheel and find that it is to raise the vibration of the camping area so that this area becomes a camp for those who seek to be more conscious, and each summer there are many attracted with a higher purpose of conscious refinement. I call out to the Directions for the size and form this wheel is to hold.   I call out to each stone, “Who is to be placed next?”  I ask where each needs to go to support this intension.  It is a process that is not about speed.   After 5 hours I am only 1/3 done and am whooped.   These stones are heavy.  Eight of them are much too heavy for me.   Tomorrow I’ll complete it.   I take a swim at placenta rock in this 90 degree heat.   What a good name for this boulder!

The Medicine Wheel is to raise the vibration of the campground.

September 28, 2009

Five more hours and lots more prayer takes me through the many layers of intension for this wheel.  Forgiveness of self for all humanity is the majority prayer as the outer circle and the inner circle is formed.  I finish not today but in the third day’s morning sun.  12 hours of deep prayer for humanity’s awakening created this rock formation that will silently sit in the riverbed till the next snowmelt.

On the fourth day, the camp area erupts.   Young people screaming to each other, not talking, not yelling in fun, but screaming their conversations.   I don’t understand.  They are throwing rocks, big rocks, down at the dam, smashing them down on others.  I haven’t seen this kind of behavior before.  Then a woman walked past me and said she had heard them screaming about “meth” and we both understood.   Later talking to David, he told me that a psychologist said that meth is something that supports the ego to be unleashed.  That’s just what was happening in the behavior that I saw.   It was scary to see the ego take over.

The next morning, two days after the medicine wheel was finished, I realize that I feel finished here after the wheel was done.  I look below on my morning walk to my meditation tree in the sun and see that the three stone dams that so nicely held the deep waters for the swimming hole have been destroyed.   All the rocks are strewn all over.    I hear, “When the vibration rises, chaos results in order for the change to occur.”   I think back on several situations and think of the truth in this.

September 29, 2009

The stunning house I was to rent high up the mountain was reclaimed by its owner.   I am sad that I will not be living at this place that birthed my book, Sacred Birthing, Birthing A New Humanity.  I realize that I must be heading the wrong direction.  Ok, where DO you want me?  Why am I here???  Show me so that I get it!

Diary of a Spiritual Midwife (part 6)

September 22, 2009

(Happy birthday dad.)

I am being taught to journey through time, space and dimensions.   What good tools I have developed to be ready for this – past life therapy, birth therapy and midwifery.  Ultimately, I am to journey for souls in birth, the birth itself, and death.  I am to go into the future/past to see information and bring back what is to be.  I am to un-wrinkle the karma in mom, or release the reason for pain…   How?

“I am your guide.  There are many degrees of openness and journeying takes different acuities.  I am the Spirit of the Journey that offers this service for your love.   I am more active in the dark.   Use me when you have questions.  Use me when you want depth.  Use me as your best friend for life.   Your love has opened you to me as your helper.”

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September 25. 2009

Dream:

We are reconstructing Telos (the 5th Dimensional city inside Mt Shasta) in our studio.   It is beautiful, perfect and meaningful in every degree, color, alignment.  It’s made of crystals and stones in perfect geometries.  Temples are in exact placement to support love in families and all individuals.   Nature grows in the exact places and ways to support human development.   There is so much excitement in this discovery.   Terri N is working on with us too.  One is invited into this project when it is time.  The city is like the body in design.  Perfection.  Divine.   One roof most intrigues me.  It is made of Crisophase, beautiful, translucent, green.  Inner authority is the most noticeable ingredient of each person in the project.   By working on the “model,” it changes our bodies.  Such precision, such delicious sweetness, such relevancy.  It all matters.  It’s all beautiful.   It’s all a temple.  It’s all sacred.   It all reflects love.   It’s rounded and made of materials we don’t know how to build with: gemstones and minerals.  They are not encased, the whole building is made from them.  There is no structure used to build it into form.  It is built of consciousness.   There are waterways the moment you need refreshment, thirst, or a change of pace.   There is a red ribbon across the front. It is cut and I walk in. I’m in kindergarten again and it feels good.

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September 25, 2009

Seven pregnant mamas, two papas, and five apprentices came to an informal talk I was invited to speak at.  What a blast!   There were all kinds of births, and all were open to taking one more step to be more gentle for their baby.  It was a lovely evening in Mt Shasta at the Flying Lotus next to Berryvale.

The river near my campsite

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September 26, 2009

I met a woman who has held a vision, since 1988, of an incredible Healing Sanctuary given to her by St Germain!  (Check it out at: http://shastavortex.com/retreat.)   She has been here working on it since then making inroads in the zoning committee.  Everything that I felt was stumping me.  She gave me the homework to create EXACTLY what I want in a Birthing Sanctuary without any constricture (is that a word) except to stay under $25 million.  What a delicious assignment.  Do it exactly as you would like it to be!  It is getting clearer and more profound.

I have been camping two+ weeks at the river,and until now, it has been silent except for the wind through the Pines and the pure water’s gurgles.  Lots of reflection, loads of letting go.  The Earth is such a spectacular healer.   Thank you Nature.  Thank you Mother Earth.  Today I’m asked to make a medicine wheel in the dry riverbed where there are millions of rock-beings just sitting in the sun . In spring, this is all under water with the snowmelt, but now there is nothing but rocks of all sizes between the two rounded riverlets of icy cold water.   I am camping on the cliff overlooking this vesica pieces of flowing water.

Diary of a Spiritual Midwife (part 5)

September 14, 2009

The lake is awesome, but you can only camp in a campground with others and I am looking for some silence.  I go down to the river 2000 feet below and find a place that suits.

Lake Crystal… smooth as glass

Last night, I went into the mountain as if going into a huge mansion. In each beautiful room was someone else incredible to meet.   I was taken again to the ‘nursery’ of souls who would be incarnating consciously on Earth.  There were hexagonal honey-bee like cells.  An energetic glowing oval was in each cell.  Each oval’s light would fade and as soon as it did, a great radiant being would come and direct her conscious love to that baby-being-to-be and once again it would glow radiantly.  Then, she would move on to the next.   At about 2 months incubation time, when the soul’s light no longer faded, it was ready to be implanted in a mother who would then conceive in another 2 months.   I was told that at any time in this 4 month period… if a mother to be did not want to be pregnant… she would only need to clearly state this with her partner.   Then, I stood with Lord Lento behind me and sent love to baby after baby.  I understood and felt the vibrational precision of the quality of this love being sent to these energetic babies.  What a big gift and incredible feeling!   A most incredible experience and deep honor.

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September 18, 2009

Morning meditation:

Of course birth is orgasmic!   When the heart opens, the yoni opens.  The throat’s opening is our work during pregnancy and the crown is opened by Divine Mother (whatever name you are most comfortable with,) at the time of birth.   The first chakra only opens when it is safe, so our moms must be safe if birth is to happen.  The third chakra is pacified by oxytocin.   However, if there is not clarity between mother and her mother’s lineage, this chakra is in a holding pattern: Is it flowing?  Is it closed?  Does it clench down?   When all is aligned and in sync, birth is as open as a woman ever is!  It only happens when a woman feels safe. And then… of course birth is orgasmic!

I go up to hike in Shasta’s Panther Meadows and I speak to a woman who is just leaving.  On discovering I am a midwife she says, “I had an orgasm with my second birth!”  But her next statement was, “Birth is brutal!”  She kept repeating the comment, so I asked her about it.  I thought it interesting to put these two statements, orgasmic and brutal, together.

She began her story, “On the first birth, the baby was coming and they held me down to give me ether.  I didn’t want ether. I didn’t need ether.  It took four interns to hold me down so they could give me ether!   I woke up hours later and had missed the whole birth.  To this day, that baby is an angry man.”   Her “baby” is now 60, and she is 84.

She goes on, “For the third baby, the doctor was not there yet.  The nurse at the top of the gurney said to the other nurse, ‘just hold her legs together till the doctor gets here.’   I yelled at them, ‘If you so much as touch my legs, I will kick you!'”  I could tell she felt pleased that she protected her baby, but she also didn’t have the uninterrupted spiritual space to really be with that birth. S he had had to be her own advocate/guardian.  She had to be on the defense, and it took her out of being with her own experience.

It was the second baby that she gave birth to in the hall of the maternity ward without the staff knowing it, and this baby was born in the midst of bliss.  She had heard on TV that there was such a thing as ‘orgasmic birth’ and she knew full well that she had had one.   I was sorry to hear that although she had 3 very different experiences in birth, the one with most charge was the one that was ‘brutal’.   What a sad state to be in… to never have her ‘sad birth’ integrated… even after 60 years!   How many others are in this predicament?

Diary of a Spiritual Midwife (part 4)

My spirit loving, traveling gypsy of light, friend Celeste

September 12, 2009

Camping at Castle Lake.  I meet up with Celeste, a gypsy for years, roving to various places in the country and out with many other single older women who move by the call of spirit.   She answers some of the questions I have been sitting with regarding food and vibration- living on Light or becoming “White Fire,” as she calls it.   This is how she does her inner work:   she stops eating and lives on light, without even water.  Then, as she takes in food or water again, she feels that it introduces the duality of the world and so she sees whatever comes up as her work at this level of vibration… that’s her inner work.  I am especially interested in the idea that introducing water brings duality. She also said that if she is not drinking, she is warm.  It is water that seems to put out her “fire.”  Where are you now Celeste?

She hands me a fabulous book on birth trauma and the Reptilian brain!  (Don’t you love how life is orchestrated?) Feelings Matter, Keys To The Unexplored Self, by Ceanne DeRohan 2007.   This is the basis for all we do in Sacred Birthing and why we do it.  The text is redundant, but she is making a string of points to understand the workings of the newborn brain and how important it is to fulfill the needs of a newborn in those first hours.   A must read for all of us.  We should carry it in the Birth Store.

Birth trauma is the imprinted road map to healing for this life, and it is what we must unwind before death.  We connect to Divine Mind and discover Self Love when all is healed or; in the absence of trauma, we are Divine Mind and Self Love. What do we choose for our babies? What do we choose for our next lifetime?

Lake Crystal

Our ignorance of newborn trauma has created 3 generations ruled by their reptilian brains – competitive, aggressive and manipulative.   It makes me want to cry.  What can I do?   For ourselves, we ask for Limbic renewal – a baseline of calm.   For our babies, we explain and remind the parents about the importance of the fulfillment of all needs, and protect the space for parents to fulfill them.

There is an amazing part on Circumcision and how it debases the original harm at birth.  It is crucial to men, far more than I even realized.   Without circumcision, ease and trust is found in all relationships or; with it circumcision comes feelings of betrayal, suspicion, defensiveness or outright hostility/violence.   Our babies’ birthright of trust is ruined.  Circumcision is not about what our baby’s penis looks like.   It’s about protecting our baby boys and allowing and supporting the trust and kindness inherently in men.  How can we have sacred sexuality and sacred conception when we circumcise our baby boys?  Women, that means us!  We are the ones to protect.   Don’t back down.  Make sure your partner understands this emotional result.   Help him reclaim who he rightfully is by re-experiencing his circumcision.  Who can lead this for the good of all men?   Jason?  Nick?

The closer circumcision is done to the time of birth, the deeper the imprint.  The book illustrates that man has three ways of taking this trauma into the baby body: expressing it through sadness and withdrawal, through fear and defensiveness or through anger and lashing out.   These three things are a good illustration of the state of men in America.

Diary of a Spiritual Midwife (part 3)

September 4, 2009

At 2pm I went to have an appointment with Nicky. I was to journey (in the shamanic sense) to receive how I would use the ankh, and she was to scribe for the session. Thoth had been with me all morning; and as we sat in the gazebo of her luscious garden, Cobra came in as well. Cobra me the same pathway of energies that I had witnessed in the days before and much more. I was blown away to hear what I had seen, to learn more in depth, and recieve acknowledgement that what was coming through me was spot on. Oh why do we need acknowledgement so?

September 6, 2009

David, my birth partner who conceived Sacred Birthing with me and took it on the road as Sacred Birthing Seminars, calls me in Eugene and said he may not be going to climb the sacred Shiva mountain in Nepal because of intense headaches that he has to stop denying. Something is going on. He didn’t know what, and I may not be able to stay at his house for the 2 ½ months while he was gone. I want to camp and lie on the earth to let go, but other than a renewal, am not sure why else I am going to Mt Shasta. Suddenly the questions come, “Is he on this deathing path? Is he to be included too?” It’s difficult to think that this man, such a dear beloved of mine, is to transition. I have lots of work to do to be able to come to grips with this one. There’s lots of love and lots of history here. Can I be present? Is this really what is calling me here?

A Snowless Mt. Shasta

September 11, 2009

From Eugene to Mt Shasta. Its amazing to just drive distances after living on an island for 11 years. The mountain is as it has never been – without snow on it. Even in summer there is still snow, but not this and last year. What a shock. Global warming. I t does not seem right at all. It is not right at all, but that’s what is.

I drive up to my favorite place, Castle Lake, and camp for the first night right on the earth with the Milky Way stretched out, reflecting over the water. Wow.

David had a very infected tooth pulled out and we are hoping the infection has caused the headaches and that all will subside. He said that death has been dancing in the trees outside, not menacing, just there.

Diary of a Spiritual Midwife (part 2)

Ani & Steve at Ani’s birthday party

My dearest friend, Ani, picked me up from the train station in Eugene. She took me to sit with a friend whose father was dying. Oh my goodness. I went right in to introduce myself and let him hear my voice. Looking at him, I saw colors I didn’t expect in unusual places: lots of dark yellow around the heart with a tiny pink core of lace around the edges of the heart, blue in his gut and red-brown in his head area. “Was he an angry man?” I asked. Yes. I asked to release his worldly burden from his shoulders and as those were released, life’s experiences were drawn into his heart and his heart let go of the sorrow-full yellow and the pink glowed brighter and puffier. There was a black writhing energy showing itself coming out of the gut. I teased it out and offered it as energy to the Earth Mother. As his daughter came in the room, a light shot out of her 3rd chakra to his 3rd chakra and I understood that her energy was holding him here and pulling on him. No wonder she was exhausted. This happened every time she came in and it seemed to me that it was causing him to stay embodied longer than needed. She constantly called to him to acknowledge that she was there by squeezing her hand, which he did, and then to indicate if he was in pain by another squeeze… Which he never did. I suggested she sit with him 2 full hours and tell him everything she could think of. She let out the love when she was with him; but she was also full the anger and pain of growing up with him. She let that out with us.

The next morning, much had shifted. He was peacefully in his deathing process. There was no more squeezing. His colors were swirling. An energy came into his crown and went to his throat and swirled like a whirlpool there. From the throat, the energy moved and then made a figure eight in his 2nd chakra. When it left there, it went to his kidneys moving in circles around each one. Then everything stopped. I felt that was all for now. The daughter was so full of her own pain that she saw pain on the same face that I saw total peace. She was insistent that morphine and tranquilizers be given to him each night. So, who was it for?

That night Ani and I went to Nicky Scully’s once a month open house. Nicky leads trips to Egypt and writes books on it too. Who better to ask about the ankh? As I pick it up, I hear, “Ask her to activate it.” So she does, then rubs a beautiful oil into it. I receive it back and she suggests we have a journey on Friday.

We go back to the friend and her dying father. We find him at that place in the deathing journey where you feel that it might be forever, yet you know it can’t be. I spoke to the daughter about how death creates our birth and how allowing him to die a conscious death without drugs would offer him a birth without drugs; but she was defensive and said that she was going to do what the hospice team said, drug him. Her daddy left his body Thursday evening at 7pm. What he showed me two days before would help many others. What she showed me was the answer to a question I had long held.

I understood C-sections better now. I felt this was a C-section death. Just like so many C-section births: this was a death that did not consider the “baby,” but more the caregiver’s needs. He did not need her pulling him back to comfort herself. He could have gone quite consciously had the caregiver not been in such fear, he did not need to wait for her schedule. Nor did he need the morphine. On one hand she was exhausted from the three weeks of constant care, but she did not attend to her own inner work, that would have freed him in a more conscious death, and therefore a clear and conscious birth. Oh, that we do our own work. Help us truly see who the one before us and not our own pain.

Diary of a Spiritual Midwife (part 1)

It all started the 3rd week in August when I was at Tara Camp. Bonnie asked me what the vision of Sacred Birthing was. I described seeing a community of little round houses or pods where someone was waiting to be born or to die in each. She asked, “So you work in death too?” “No.” I said, “That has not opened up yet…” Well, that night came the download. I was to help people make a conscious choice to pass without the body needing to be decrepit, turning off the organs in a certain progression. I was shown there were many, many people who were in continual excruciating pain yet they could not let go and die. I could help that process happen so that the aura of a city would not hold such pain. This was necessary before Master Souls would be born here.

The morning before I left Kauai, I sat on the beach with old friends, Peggy and Joe. Peggy channels Sananda/Magdelen and Joe channels dirty jokes. This morning she was feeling a presence as we sat down on the beach. In came Thoth, who let her know that the ankh she was given more than five years ago was to be passed on to me. The ankh had been sitting in her glass living room table. It was carved from wood by a man under the guidance of Sai Ma, who told the man it was not his personal offering but was to go to Peggy on Kauai when it was completed. The ankh did not mean much to Peggy, other than as an Egyptian symbol of life, so she knew she would be it’s keeper until for it’s rightful owner appeared. The ankh did not mean much to me either; however, I knew something was cooking when I learned that the man who carved it was the same man who gave me herpes 11 years ago. I knew then, “This is my ankh and it is important,” for I had been consciously working to dis-create the dis-ease for the last year and a half.

Two hours before getting to the airport, a neighbor’s husband who had Parkinson’s Disease died. I walked in on her when still in her altered state and she told me about his death and how they had practiced for it the last 2 years so that he could leave his body through his crown. Hearing her story made it very real that my work had begun. I rendezvoused with Peggy and Joe to receive the ankh, and got on the red-eye to Seattle follwed by a train to Eugene to sleep it off.