The Pattern That Connects

"Premonitions imply that in order to save ourselves, we must help others, because we are others. Premonitions suggest a revision of the golden rule, from 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you' to 'Be kind to others because in some sense they are you.' The challenges that confront us—climate change, drought, falling crop yields, water shortages, and population explosions—go beyond discovering clever ways to engineer ourselves out of them, as important as technical measures are. Our survival is overwhelmingly a matter of learning to fit into the pattern that connects, to which the great lessons of premonitions are a guide." -- Larry Dossey

I took this excerpt from the excellent article Dossey wrote on premonition for the Summer '09 edition of Shift magazine. I am a big believer in psi, and I wrote a paper about its links to consciousness last winter. Development of our psi capacities (and we all have them to one degree or another) is crucial because these capabilities give us an immediate sense of our deep interconnection, as Dossey points out.

If we finally grasped our interconnectedness, it would greatly impact how we live. I can say from first-hand experience that exploring my intuition and psychic abilities has transformed my life and given me a deeper awareness of the mysteries of the universe. I hope that more people will tread this path in the future. It would benefit us all.

Facing Fear

I've had a lot of time to think these last nine days and it is amazing what you can learn about yourself when you step back from the world for a bit.

I learned I'm not as introverted as I thought. I'm a bit stir crazy and I miss being around people. I'm tired of my house and I want to see the world again. Hopefully I'll be up for a drive to a park later today.

I learned that I need to have more fun. I fear I've become bland from too much school and work and I need to play. For me that looks like reading fiction, for one. Over the course of the last week I finished five books, all but one fiction, and the non-fiction was a Bill Bryson travel memoir, which comes close to fiction with his exaggeration and hyperbole.

Fun also includes watching movies. I am in love with cinema and part of me dreams of working on some kind of movie some day. Maybe helping create a documentary. Or writing a screenplay that becomes an animated film created by Lance. That would be cool.

I need more time to frolic in nature, to break out my camera and tinker with my loaned Lensbaby, to mess around with my paints and charcoal. If you've been reading my blog for a while, or if you remember Feisty Scribe, you've heard this refrain before. I think, however, that the surgery finally got me through my block about this.

But the biggest thing I learned this week relates to Fear. That nasty little monster, pussy-eyed and warty, sneaks up on me regularly and laughs maniacally in my ear. He whispers the most vile things to me, making my heart pound. I saw him quite a lot this week.

However, here's what I figured out, and it seems so damn simple when I write it: Fear is worse than the thing I'm afraid of. Fear is worse! Fear, with his foul breath, his razor-sharp tail, his disgusting crusty claws. He is worse than anything else. Worse than the doctor. Worse than surgery. Worse than pain. Worse than spiders and bankruptcy and failure and all those other things that plague my thoughts.

Fear was with me in pre-op. I was so nervous my body turned to ice and the nurse had to warm up my arm so she could give me the IV. My heart raced along like it was trying to win the Kentucky Derby. I gulped the air and tried to slow everything down so I could relax. When they finally wheeled me into the operating room, though, I knew there was no turning back. I had to face this surgery. (Of course, it did help that the anesthesia took over soon after.)

When I woke up dazed and dizzy in the recovery room, I wanted to shout with joy. I'd made it! I'd faced one of my biggest fears and I lived through it. Wow.

This is going to be my new mantra: Fear is worse and there is nothing I can't handle. Nothing. I can make it through whatever this life throws at me. And even better, I can come out the other side feeling stronger than before.

Twenty-twenty-twenty-four hours to go...I'm gonna be sedated

Tomorrow's the big day. I arrive at noon and go into surgery around 1:15 p.m.

I feel ready. I have spent the last four days resting, relaxing, reading, and keeping stress at bay. I had a fabulous reading on my surgery at Intuitive Way on Friday, and was told that everything will go well. I know this in my heart. I'm going to waltz in there with my pink and purple plush uterus and ovaries from I Heart Guts and face this with bravery and strength.

I have felt overwhelmed by the love, support, kind words, and offers of help I've received from the people around me, and that alone is enough to get me through this experience.

I plan to be offline for the next two weeks while I recover. But I'll be sure to let you know how it all went when I return.

Deep Listening

The weeks leading up to my surgery have coincided with a class I'm taking called Body Consciousness, Body Wisdom. It is an appropriate class, to say the least. I had a lot of resistance coming into the class at the beginning of the quarter, though. I avoided taking it last year because it did not sound like something I wanted to experience. Getting in touch with my body? No thanks.

As it happens, this class was just what I needed in many ways. The irony of the situation does not escape me -- I needed to be in a class about body consciousness during one of the most difficult body experiences of my life so I could gain tools for dealing with the situation.

One wonderful tool I have learned is listening to body parts. This happens in a few ways and they can work together. First, you can work with how the part feels in relation to the other parts of your body. During this exercise, I chose to listen to my left ovary and the cyst around it. I laid on my back and felt into the space the ovary and cyst occupy. I moved this way and that, sensing how the ovary and cyst felt differently when I moved. I discovered the ovary and cyst became aggravated when I laid on my left side. To me, this meant that they did not want to be covered up, they did not want to be under pressure, and they did not want to be pushed down. As soon as I rolled onto my back, they felt much better.

Of course, the messages the ovary and cyst sent were not trivial. I know now that my ovaries are precious. They are part of the physical and energetic center of my creativity and sexuality. Listening to them will mean a great shift in my life. Pushing them down, covering them up, and putting them under pressure to perform can no longer work.

Another exercise I found rewarding in the Body Consciousness class was creating a movement in response to listening to a body part. In this exercise I chose my throat, which represents my ability to speak my truth. First, we created a physical movement that represented how the part feels in present time. Then, we asked the part what it wanted to say, or how we could bring about change. For me, the movement included both strength and fluidity. The message? I can be strong in speaking my truth, but also gentle. Practicing this will be a challenge, but now I have a movement I can physically reproduce to remind myself that this is how my voice wants to express itself.

I recommend doing either of these exercises whenever you are curious about the messages your body is sending you. Find a quiet place, relax, center yourself, and then ask a body part to speak. If you are doing the first exercise, move in different ways to see how the body part feels in different positions. You may find one position is more comfortable than another. Get curious about this and ask the body part what it is telling you. Or, don't do any movements at all. Just listen to what the body part has to say. Either way can be powerful.

Of course, there is one caveat: these exercises can go deep quickly. Sometimes it is necessary to speak with a professional about what comes up, because the things our bodies want to tell us are sometimes shocking and difficult to hear. But this dialogue is always rewarding in the end.