I had my first shaman-led chakra clearing last week! 

As part of my spiritual “continuing education,” I like to try new techniques and tools when the opportunity arises.  Sometimes, I’ve done them before.  Sometimes, it’s something new I’ve heard of and want to see if there’s a benefit to me. 

A few of the more recent ones:

-          Live workshops led by Mike Dooley of Tut.com and by Jerry and Esther Hicks

-          DVDs of live Abraham-Hicks workshops

-          Regular downloads of spiritual-themed audiobooks, including ones specific to quantum physics, the Law of Attraction, monks’ teachings, prayer techniques, and history

-          Regular downloads of new material related to the Teachings of Abraham

-          Chakra clearings

-          Akashic readings

-          Healing circles

-          Live workshops and rituals across a broad spectrum of other brands of spirituality

-          Regular meditation

-          Drumming

For Christians who are unfamiliar with some of these techniques, it seems overwhelming, but it’s really no different from my Southern Baptist days where we participated in all sorts of Bible studies, classes, choir practice, and prayer meetings all designed to bring us closer to our spiritual path.  Even when I was a Christian, I liked to study some of the more obscure spiritual techniques in the Baptist Church and local Methodist, Presbyterian, Nazarene, and Pentacostal churches—so it should be no surprise that I’m always seeking to deepen my knowledge of the Mysteries. 

While in the past, I’ve done different “clearings” for myself—essentially clearing away the metaphysical cobwebs that accumulate—I had never asked a shaman to do one for me.  It’s quite different from when I’ve done it myself, and I’m no slouch in that department either. 

Enter Kelley Harrell, author of Gift of the Dreamtime, and a very wise and gentle shaman who does “distance work,” meaning you don’t have to be sitting 3 feet in front of her for it to work.  I’ve worked with Kelley before, long-distance, and have been very impressed.  When something upsetting arose in my life a while back that seemed to be specific to one chakra, I emailed Kelley to find out if she could do clearings long-distance.  I’ve discovered that most people who can do such work don’t have any technical trouble  assisting from a geographical distance.  The biggest problem is more the inconvenience of having to write everything down and provide the report to the querent instead of simply delivering the information face-to-face.  It takes a bit more time for a shaman to handle that end of the experience, and many choose not to.

I was able to get on Kelley’s calendar about 2 or so weeks later.  She’s good, she’s in demand, and she seems to stay booked up unlike other shamans and spiritual teachers I’ve encountered.  I knew the day she was doing the clearing but that it would be several days before the customized report was emailed to me.   I’m still absorbing what she sent.

With a few developments in my life since my original request, it was interesting to read her report.  After the reading but before the completed report, I had begun to feel a lot better and had had two or three interesting epiphanies—which were very close to some of the things Kelley discussed with my spirit guides in the clearing/healing process.  She did a complete clearing of the chakras, not merely the one that concerned me, and touched on several deep and old truths that I’ve never discussed with anyone.  Beyond the actual healing work, Kelley also relayed messages from my guides and gave me specific techniques for doing my own clearings more effectively. 

I love that Kelley can be so dead-on, and yet so gentle and reassuring at the same time.  There was much from her report that I am able to carry with me on my spiritual journey.  If you’d like to make an appointment with Kelley for a chakra clearing, visit her appointment page at Soul Intent Arts.  I highly recommend her.

But the yoga teacher had another tip that goes beyond stress incontinence for new moms, menopausal women, and bedwetting children.  She recommended making that First Chakra connection during a squat, preferably alone and naked.  She recommended de-stressing ourselves by completely relaxing the bottom of the pelvis, almost to the point of urinating, while in a squatting position by squeezing  in a single Kegel and then letting it relax all the way.  We hold so much of our survival instinct and the stress of it at the base of our spine and in our pelvic floor that it can be tremendously relaxing to let go to that point. 

We don’t have to hold on so tightly to Life, she said, but instead, just let ourselves go.  What better place to relax and let go of stress than in the First Chakra?

Two months ago, I participated in some “spiritual work” with some trusted spiritual leaders who always have an interesting point of view.  I very much enjoy these sessions where I am a student rather than a teacher and where I am challenged to see things in a new way.   I’m a big believer in continued learning, no matter how much of an expert you are or how much you think you know.  There’s always more.

I’ve had terrible arguments in the past with spiritual people who considered themselves experts because of how long they’d been a member of a particular church, circle, or group.  When I challenged them to learn something new–just investigate it to see how it fit with their beliefs–I was quickly slapped down.  They seemed very comfortable in the little niche they’d carved out and not at all interested in any type of spiritual “continuing education.”

It’s because I like to learn that I’ve investigated other religions, attended Voodoo ceremonies, sat through lectures on aliens and other dimensions,  watched for orbs in cemeteries, studied as much as possible for the layman about zero field theory, listened as a didgeridoo was aimed at my second chakra, talked to people who talk to the dead, and oh, so much more.  I never really reject any of it–but I assimilate it in different ways, turning it over in my head and figuring out what it means to me.

During the January session, one of the women was trying to help me work through a relationship question.  I wasn’t sure how I felt about a particular friendship.  I had not shared this with the group, but I was on one hand intrigued by the uniqueness of the person in my life and on the other, well, a little nervous because it was most definitely new territory for me.  The woman helping me talk through the situation began describing to me the relationship as she saw it:  a platypus dawn.

I had not heard even the word platypus in months or years when she said it, though in the two months since, I heard it frequently.  That’s more than just selective filtering–I really am hearing it quite often.

I don’t want to say that the platypus is my new totem animal, though to some degree, that would make sense.  A platypus totem is rather powerful and reflects the need to work with the energy of the truly unique and be able to flow and change direction as need be.  Not a bad meaning at all, especially after working with the wolf totem for so long and then the bear.  It does seem to be a good representative of this particular friendship.

What this woman described to me was a new dawn, a new era in my life.  She described the pink skies of dawn and the platypus coming up out of the water.  She told me that it was the uniqueness that was the key.

That platypus has been the problem.   I really adore men who are “different.”  They don’t have to be openly different, but in their private lives, there tends to be something unusual that no one would ever guess.    Sometimes that “difference” can be very new territory for me, such that I’m not just acknowledging the uniqueness but a part of it.  (I’m being general here, not cryptic.)

So I’ve had my doubts about my platypus relationship with its double-edged sword of uniqueness.  I think the bottom line has been how far is too far when it comes to different ways of thinking.  I’m not so used to being “out-platypus’ed” in a relationship, so this could be interesting indeed.  Especially if what I’ve seen so far is just the dawn of it.

Every year around this time, I do a little life coaching exercise that’s featured in Give Your Life Direction.  The idea is to make a list of things I wish I could say but, for whatever reason, can’t.  Maybe because the other person is dead.  Maybe because it would be too dangerous to confront them.  Maybe because the other person lives far away.  Or maybe because I just don’t feel I can be honest with my emotions, whether they are jealous, angry, or wounded.  My fifth chakra, the throat chakra, has often been rather weak, but I’ve been actively strengthening it.

The first year I tried this exercise, I had a list as long as my arm.  It was only  “supposed” to be ten things, but I kept going, shocked at how much I’d kept bottled up.  A few years later, the list was down to the five to eight range. Last year, I had to dig a little harder and still ended up in the five to eight range, thanks mostly to some secrets I was keeping for someone else. Every year of this exercise, the burden gets a little lighter.

I sat down a few days ago to make my list for the year…and nothing.  Absolutely nothing.

The closest I could come was a conversation I’d like to have with one particular man in my life who has been out of town, but I’ve held off only because it would be nicer to have the conversation  face-to-face, alone.  It’s nothing bad–no anger, no jealousy, no I’m-hurt, no why-did-you-do-this?, no nothing of that sort.  Instead, it’s just a nice talk about something personal and lovely.

Right now, there’s little to nothing that I have bottled up, no emotion I’m swallowing because I’m afraid to say it or fear the ramifications if I do.

I kinda like it this way.

The eyes are the windows of the soul, indeed!  Yes, her eyes really are that color and those are lichens on the ground in this beautiful natural setting.

Photo copyright by Aislinn Bailey, AisPortraits.com, Niceville, Florida

Some cultures believe (or did initially) that a photographer could steal your soul if he took pictures of you.  I’m not sure about “stealing,” but I now believe that it is entirely possible to capture a soul in a photograph—or if not the soul, then certainly the “energy” of the person.  After observing a few experiments with energy work, courtesy of an interview subject I’ll call “Ruby,” I will never look at Facebook or MySpace profile pics in quite the same way.Though I’ve always loved photography and dabbled in it myself when I was younger, I’ve been blessed to have five professional photographers come into my life within the past year, plus my daughter joined their ranks over the summer.  I love looking at their portrait work, and I sometimes feel like a stalker because I can’t stop looking at their beautiful photographs.  They have a special way of capturing the personality of each subject.  Yet, with professional photos, it’s usually more of the personality than the soul that is captured, in much the same way that a statue or oil painting captures the famed of the past.

My latest experiment seemed to reinforce that professional photos are manipulated too much really to show the soul (vs personality) of that person at the moment.  Instead, they seem to show the energy of the photographer because these portraits become partnerships between photographer and subject.  The subject often assumes a posture suggested by the photographer, a tilt of this head this way or that, just the right lighting, and—if all else fails—a few deft minutes on the Adobe PhotoShop CS3 or CS4 to add sparkle to the eye or depth of color to the cheeks.  Not that a professional photographer can’t capture a soul, but whereas personality can be captured by a professional, the soul is usually best seen through candid shots, particularly those god-awful camera phone or webcam pics.  A professional photographer will make every attempt to make a person look good, regardless of the state of the subject’s soul at a given moment, whether joyous or troubled.

These photo experiments began when Ruby, who often works with radionics and psionics, asked if I had a photograph of someone we were participating in a healing circle for.  We didn’t know what was wrong with the guy but he’d been feeling lethargic with no obvious clue as to why.   I grew up seeing pictures in Baptist church bulletins or on the walls of Sunday School rooms where we noted who was sick or in need each week and prayed for them.  The photographs aided the prayers for healing because they allowed the prayer committee to focus better on the person and visualize them as they were when they were in good health.  None of this is scientific, at least not in the classical sense, though it may one day be better explained via zero-field theory.  However, for spiritual people who work regularly with energy—whether Christian, Wiccan, or some other religion—the nuances of the unseen connections between people are enjoyed without prejudice.

What Ruby, who is a “highly sensitive person” to the extreme, did was to pull out a pendulum and let it swing casually over the photograph.  It was a recent photo,  and a full-body view.  The pendulum swung wide and then in small intense circles as she moved her hand over the photograph.  She asked me to write down the results of her own interaction with the energy she felt from the photo.  So as I interviewed her, she interviewed the photo—and I merely watched the pendulum twirl clockwise or straight or counterclockwise in answer to her questions.

The dowsing went on for almost 1.5 hours.  Ruby asked a long assortment of questions that covered everything from the psychological to the sexual to the gastro-intestinal to things I’d never heard of.  I never saw her hand waver once, though if it had been me, I think my fingers would have been cramping within five minutes.  I was fascinated by her process and took copious notes.  She would ask how in-balance certain chakras were and work from there to see how close on a scale of 1-100 the person was to total vitality.  On ones that were out of balance, she’d use a different scale to find the magnitude of particular problems, looking especially at barriers to vitality.

Ruby uncovered a host of minor problems that were a drain to our friend’s health—and by the way, he’d given permission to do any kind of prayer or energy work for him so he’d feel better.  These minor problems were all rather normal except for two that were extremely high:  parasites and heavy metals.  She asked me to pass along the information to our friend, which I did.  He reported later that he’d gone through a detox program for parasites and later heavy metals and that after the heavy metal detox, he’d felt particularly good again.  He’d regained his energy.

That was my first experience with this sort of thing.

The next time, Ruby noticed a photo in my home of another old friend of mine.  It was an old photo, taken at a time when he was still married to his first wife, and he appeared quite happy and all-smiles in this great candid shot at the beach.   There was always something about the photo that bothered me, but I could never put my finger on it.  She commented on some things going on in his life at the time the photo was taken, things she couldn’t have known, but the photo felt that way in spite of the smiles.

According to Ruby, the energy of the person (not to be confused with personality) is something that she can feel in a picture.  Couldn’t I feel it, too, to some degree? she wanted to know.

The short answer was yes.   I could look at the picture with all the smiles and fun and there was just something…off…about it.  There was a sadness there, a sense of loss.  Always had been.  There were problems in his marriage at the time.  But I’d never really thought about it.  When I relaxed and let my mind wander, I could almost sense his energy in the photograph.  There was a certain sadness in the eyes, in spite of the smile.  I think anyone who looked closely enough would have spotted it.

“Do you have other photos of him?”  Ruby asked.  When I told her I didn’t have any recent ones, she suggested we search for his image on Google.

We found  it.  I tested  her belief that I, too, could feel his soul in this picture.  He was smirking in this one but there was a heaviness around it.  He was smiling but his eyes weren’t.  I didn’t know what had happened to him, but one look and I could tell he was in trouble—even if it hadn’t been a mug shot.

We found another photo of him online. Not a professional photographer’s work, but a decent photo. He looked nice, dressed up, professional.  But there was a deep feeling of darkness and oppression in this photograph.  He still looked much the same as when he’d been a close friend, but looking at his picture, I didn’t even recognize him.  I felt no connection at all.  It was as if I were looking at a stranger.

Ruby suggested I check out other photos to see if I could discern the state of the soul of someone I hadn’t seen in a long time and didn’t have a current history on.  In a way, it was fun because I got the hang of it quickly, yet it was too often very sad and I stopped after two or three tries.

I looked up several friends from the past and, regardless of the smiles, either their traumas or their hardness showed through the eyes.  Even if they were the picture of health, the feeling of oppression was still there.  These were clearest in quickly snapped camera phone photos and especially in webcams pics.  Some of these people had changed so much that I felt no connection of friendship to them at all anymore.  They looked much as I remembered but they felt like strangers.  I decided not to reach out to re-acquaint myself.  As an empath, I just felt too sad whenever I looked at their images.

There was one, though, that struck me differently.  I had not seen the woman in years, but she looked 10 years younger than the last time.  Back then, she’d been married to an alcoholic who abused her regularly.  In her new Facebook picture, she was laughing in the rain, drenched by a nearby car’s pounding through a puddle, but literally dancing.  Even if the photo had been of only her face, her smile was magnificent.  It went all the way up into her eyes and lit up the screen.  Absolute joy radiated from the photo.  When I reached out to her, I found out she’d left her husband, gone through counseling, started a new life, and was enjoying every minute of what  the world has to offer.

Some photos capture the appearance.  Others, the personality.  The ones that capture the soul, though, can tell a sensitive person exactly how you’re doing and how life’s treating you.

Hold the bashing.  This is not a pro-abortion article or an anti-abortion article.   If you think it is, you’ve missed my point because you’re looking to bolster an opinion you’ve already made.  This is something altogether different that almost no one talks about.

First, a little of my own history:

I have two beautiful, intelligent, compassionate daughters who are everything I could ever wish for. The older daughter was almost miscarried at 10 weeks, and the younger one sent me thrice to  emergency Labor and Delivery  over the three months before she was born.  I’ve gotten pregnant more than once while on birth control pills, which my newest gynecologist believes is because I tend to ovulate unusually early.  I have also miscarried several times–two pregnancies I felt ambivalent about and one I really wanted–but something rather unusual happened with the last two that made me rethink everything I used to believe about abortions, miscarriages, and incarnation.

What I believe and why:

Over the decades, I’ve come up with my own beliefs about life, death, autonomy, trauma, and spirituality. That’s the benefit of reaching middle-age–you’ve got enough data to slot and see what shakes out if you care to look.  My conclusions don’t fit cleanly into popular belief systems but then, I’m not a fan of just accepting what I’m told is true.  I have to experiment and experience life for myself and draw my own conclusions.  I fully admit that my brain seems to be wired a little differently and that I see things differently, but then, I’m finding more and more people have similar beliefs but are too afraid to discuss them for fear of being ridiculed or ostracized. I guess I’m used to it.

Most of the anti-abortion debates (or pro-life or whatever-rhetoric-will-best-evoke-the-required-necessary-response) center around when life begins and who has control over that life.  My personal belief, based on many things I’ve experienced and observed, is that yes, life begins at conception.  However, en-souled life begins sometime after that.  I don’t know when.  I think it’s different for each child.  (Why shouldn’t it be?) From my own full-term pregnancies, I definitely felt that both babies were en-souled–the souls integrated with their bodies, in other words–definitely by seven months.  Some people believe that occurs at the point of quickening, which made a lot more sense when we were less technologically advanced and didn’t have the advantages of ultrasound technology to detect a living fetus.  I wasn’t able, in my own experience, to sense the soul fully integrated when I first felt my babies move.  Who knows–maybe souls wait until the body is physically viable before committing.   I can’t say definitively–I had no idea in 1989 and 1992 what to look for.  To be honest, I was not as aware of the non-physical aspects of life, especially what’s on the other side of death or birth, when I was pregnant with Shannon and Aislinn.  That was before I began to meditate or explore shamanic journeys or look beyond the physical world.  I don’t know when exactly that Shannon and Aislinn’s souls integrated into their bodies but I do believe, based on what happened with two miscarriages, that it wasn’t within the first couple of months.  That doesn’t mean that they weren’t…around.  I’ll explain that later.

In working through these issues emotionally, I shall always be boundlessly grateful to shaman Kristin Madden who shared her own metaphysical experiences during pregnancy in her book Pagan Parenting and to shaman S. Kelley Harrell.  I was fortunate enough to have Kelley share her profound insights into what I consider being a portal to allow these souls to enter this world.  I was constantly amazed at how aware Kelley was of all the nuances of pregnancy and childbirth as she experienced them herself, and I wished that I could have been that aware during my full-term pregnancies.  Maybe it’s because she became a mother later in life than I did, but I tend to think it’s because she’s one of those highly sensitive people who understand the spirit realm in ways that most people never know exists.  The unusual things I experienced with my last two miscarriages, after I’d become much more aware myself, seem to be fairly common among other shamans I’ve spoken with, but other than a strange tale my mother always told me, I’ve rarely heard anyone who doesn’t have a specific gift for such things talk about it.

The spooky stuff:

I grew up hearing my mom tell the story of how,  before I was born, she saw me in the processing plant where she was working at the conveyor belt.  She saw the little girl coming toward her and was upset that a child was in such a dangerous place alone.  Except that as the child neared, the little girl disappeared.  She wasn’t in the physical realm.  That child was me, and I do recall being about that age when I visited my grandmother at the processing plant with my mom.

My dis-incarnate children, at least for the last two miscarriages, did not come to me as children.  Not at all.  They came as adults. The first time, I was not as developed spiritually and the effects weren’t as pronounced, but holy crap, this last time was…breath-taking!

I have had this happen to me only twice in my life since I became spiritually aware, and both times, I was newly pregnant and didn’t know yet.   Both times, until I figured it out, it scared the daylights out of me.  This has otherwise not been a normal occurrence for me.  I’ve had a lot of strange things happen in my life–things that qualify as “high woo-woo”–even early in my life when I was a devout Christian.  The miscarriage experiences have an entirely different texture from anything else I’ve experienced or observed.

The first time, it was a man of about 25.  No more.   He was tall, wiry, with brown hair to his shoulders and much like mine.  Other than that, he looked like his father.  I refer to  him as “Dagan” because I felt he should have a name.  The first time I saw him, he was in the periphery of my vision but not there when I turned.  He was close, as though I could reach out and touch him.  Here’s where I feel I’m writing science fiction:  he was somewhat…transparent.  If you’ve seen movies where people fade slowly from reality until you can see through them or if you’ve played with PhotoShop and reduced the color on a background to, say, 20% instead of a nice solid 100%, you have an idea of how he appeared.  For a while, he was right in front of me in this way, solemn and wearing long, dark clothes, like a robe.  His presence made me anxious and he backed away for a while, keeping his distance, but appearing in my dreams and meditations where I felt I had a little more serenity.  He talked to me sometimes in those meditations but mostly, he just watched.  At the time, I hadn’t even completed my cycle or taken a pregnancy test.  Within another few weeks, I was having tell-tale signs, and Dagan continued to hang around, always close by, even when I didn’t see the thin shade of him there.

Zena, which is what I call the woman who appeared the second time this happened, gave me a much more intense experience, but I was also more  able by then to assimilate news of anything that was paranormal in nature. She came out of the blue like a bolt of lightning. I must have been two or three days pregnant at most as I now know I’d had some implantation symptoms just as I’d had with Dagan.  Those were the only two pregnancies where I noted implantation symptoms, but then, maybe I just wasn’t paying attention before.  I called her Zena because she was very tall and somewhat fierce.  She looked much like Aislinn, except taller, very willowy, and with long hair the color of dark chocolate.  She was beautiful and appeared to be about 25.  The first time I encountered her, she was standing directly in front of me, inches away, and was as transparent as a reflection.  I had a weird feeling in my solar plexus chakra that night and had to be held to calm down enough to sleep. I didn’t, for several days, know who the woman was but was starting to suspect I knew.  She was right there in the ether in front of me.  I knew who and what she was, but I didn’t dare voice what I felt.   Her ghostly appearance and the way she was always soooooo close to me was the first of the pregnancy signs.  The others showed up a week or so later.

Negotiating the Miscarriage:

I’ve recently been introduced to several shamans (not the ones already mentioned) who talk about the deep trauma of women who chose to terminate their pregnancies for various reasons and live with deep guilt.  They help these women find peace with their decisions, but they’ve also discovered what I call the “energetic abortion” or the “negotiated miscarriage.”  They urge women who are facing untimely or unwanted pregnancies–not always the same thing–to go into a meditation and talk to the soul who wants to come through as a new baby.  By becoming pregnant, they’ve opened a doorway into our world and those souls are standing at the door and waiting for the vehicle we call our physical bodies to be ready to carry them into life.  Rather than go through the trauma of a unilateral decision and an abortion clinic, the woman talks to the unborn soul and they work out what’s best for both. The report I got back was that in most of these cases where the woman is able to communicate with the waiting soul, they experience a miscarriage, which is also known as a “spontaneous abortion,”–not to be confused with a medical or surgical abortion.  This method of soul-level negotiation, according to one source, allows women to find peace more easily with a untimely pregnancy that ended without outside interference.  I know my background in contract negotiation is showing through when I say this, but it was something agreed-to by both parties.

That’s not exactly what happened to me.

Sometimes it’s the unborn soul who re-negotiates.  And that’s when it’s terribly hard on a woman who miscarries with no insight into why, especially if she can think of a billion reasons to blame herself.  It’s hard enough when you do have insight.  I have no idea why I miscarried earlier in my life, except that Shannon wouldn’t be here now, at least not in her current form, if that baby had come to term.   It might have been Shannon’s soul in another body but it wouldn’t have been the same because I was pregnant again only four months later, to my surprise.  My circumstances had changed somewhat over those four months, and the timing and marriage were suddenly much better.

With Dagan, he showed up at a time when everything in my life was falling apart.  My husband and I were fighting all the time and I was contemplating leaving.  In fact, I never even told him I thought I was pregnant. I started to, but before I could get the words out, it was assumed to be another argument and I got cut off.  I felt too wounded then to say anything and just kept it to myself.  Then one night a month later,  tensions were high and I was so miserable.  I fell asleep and Dagan came to me in a dream.  He told me he was going to leave, that the time wasn’t right.  I agreed that the time wasn’t right but I didn’t want him to go.

“If I stay,” he told me, “you will never leave him.  You will stay here, where you’re unhappy, for me.”

I woke up bleeding.

He did, however, tell me that there would be other opportunities for me to mother him and that he might come through then.  I know I did feel his presence a few times after I got into a new relationship that failed, but eventually I let Dagan go.  I knew that soul was ready to come through and had waited for the opportunity, but without a relationship in place, the opportunity never solidified.  I do think that by now, he is in the world with some other woman as his mother, but it’s not me and never will be.  It was his choice, and we re-negotiated that sacred contract between us.

With Zena, it was different.  I was worried about how a pregnancy would affect my health at the time, but she was very much wanted and I would have welcomed her into the world, even if that meant raising her alone.  I went into a meditation to try to meet with her.  She already had a strong physical effect on me, especially in my third chakra.  I was under a lot of stress at that point, and my normally low blood pressure shot way up.  I told her in that journey to meet her, soul to soul, that I would welcome her regardless of the physical hardship but I was willing to let her go if it was for the best, if something in particular happened that would have a disturbing outcome for her.  We were both waiting to see if that would happen.  For much of the time, she was not very communicative.  She was watchful.  The last time I saw her in a meditation, the decision had been made. She was not coming through for me–her sacred contract was with her father.  It was more important for her to come through as his child for him than to come through for me.  If the pregnancy continued, she would be with me but not with him. This was about what she needed, about what he needed.  And I had to give that some room.

After the meditation, she was no longer standing in front of me.  She was no longer anywhere around me.  The next morning several of my pregnancy symptoms had abated. More the next day.  By then, I found out what we’d feared had happened, and she was gone for good.  For me, at least.  Not for him.

If I knew now….

If I were doing this all over again, say having a baby with some exciting new man in my life, I think I would definitely be more aware than ever before.  I’d also meet that waiting soul in meditation and welcome him or her and make sure there were no surprises.  I’ve made peace now with my children who never were my children.  These last two were negotiated miscarriages where we both had a say, or at least some input, into the decision to go.

The seven Chakra Energy Centers embody the life force of the human body from root to third eye to crown. Each correlates to specific energy centers vertically along the spinal column as well as a specific meaning and color.

Several years ago, I was dating a young physician who was open-minded enough to attend some of my spiritual gatherings in my home. At one of these gatherings, an energy healer in my group demonstrated her healing techniques on him as well as on another attendee whom he could observe. Even with 11 years of schooling and a burgeoning medical practice, he’d never been introduced to the system of energy centers, except in passing as some kind of New Age concept.

That night, he saw first hand how each energy vortex could be opened and closed and the effects of the life force of each. We were able to feel open heart centers that extended like a palpable force field all the way to the ceiling and beyond. We could feel open root vortex and third eye as high as six feet above the person on the massage table that we were using for our “experiments” in energy work. It was as definitive as a physical ball of goo–this “aura” would bounce a little under our outstretched palms as we found the top of this field of life force energy.

My friendly physician left that night bubbling about how he planned to go back and tell all his doctor friends what he’d experienced and how he suspected they might ridicule him but he could explain the correlation between anatomical energy centers of the body with the oh-so-New-Age-y chakra system. We were thrilled with his scientific explanation.

Here are the correlations we explained to him:

These vortices of life energy can be overstimulated or understimulated, or closed. In these cases, there will be sickness or some kind of blockage of that energy.

If the chakras are open and balanced, then the person is generally happy and healthy.

There are seven main energy centers but you may have more, smaller ones throughout your body, such as in your hands.

The base or root chakra:

Located at the base of the spine, at the coccyx or tailbone

Represents the physical, survival

Color correspondence: red

Gemstones: ruby, red jasper, jet, obsidian, smokey quartz, bloodstone, garnet, black tourmaline

Physically effects: base of spine, bones, feet, kidneys, knees, legs

Manifestations (some) of imbalance: weight gain, physical instability, knee problems, back problems, arthritis

The sacral chakra:

Located at about 2 inches below the navel; the womb area for women

Represents sexuality and reproductive issues

Color correspondence: orange

Gemstones: carnelian, orange calcite, coral, amber, citrine

Physically effects: reproductive organs, spleen, lower intestines, bladder

Manifestations (some) of imbalance: infertility, urinary tract infections, sexually transmitted diseases/infections, anger, jealousy, incontinence, allergies, cervical cancer

The solar plexus chakra:

Located at the solar plexus/navel area, about 4 fingers’ width above the navel

Represents control, the “gut feeling” or “gut response” or the feeling of being “kicked in the gut”

Color correspondence: yellow

Gemstones: citrine, amber, yellow calcite

Physically effects: nerves and muscles, stomach, gall bladder, liver

Manifestations (some) of imbalance: digestive issues, “nervous” stomach, stomach ulcers, diabetes, fear, insecurity or distrust of intuition

The heart chakra:

Located in the heart/chest area

Represents emotions, particularly love, anger, jealousy, hatred;

Color Correspondence: green

Gemstones: jade, chryoprase, green adventurine, green or pink tourmaline, seraphinite (my favorite), kunzite (also a favorite), green peridot

Physically effects: heart, blood issues, arms, hands, chest

Manifestations (some) of imbalance: heart-related issues, stress, tightness in chest over emotional issues, circulatory problems, high blood pressure

The throat chakra:

Located in the throat and neck area, normally considered at the base of the throat

Represents ability to speak out, communication

Color Correspondence: blue

Gemstones: kyanite, aquamarine, blue lace agate, sodalite, lapis, celestite (my favorite), larimar (dolphin stone–another favorite), blue topaz

Physically effects: neck, throat, ears, thyroid, esophagus

Manifestations (some) of imbalance: thyroid, cancer of the esophagus, throat problems, ear infections, breathing problems, sore neck

The third eye or brow chakra:

Located in the brow area, between the eyes but in the middle of the forehead

Represents intuition and vision

Color Correspondence: indigo

Gemstones: lapis, sapphire, sodalite, azurite

Physically effects: eyes, nose, brow

Manifestations (some) of imbalance: blindness/vision problems, sometimes depression, lack of focus (ADHD), headaches

The crown chakra:

Located at the top of the head (remember Ballerina Barbie with the little blossom crown on her head that made her dance?)

Represents spirituality and connection to Deity

Color Correspondence: purple/violet; sometimes seen as white

Gemstones: quartz, selenite, amethyst, alexandrite (very pricey)

Physically effects: brain

Manifestations (some) of imbalance: mental confusion, sometimes depression, lack of motivation, mental illness, personality disorders, migraines, stroke

Not long ago but long enough ago, in a serene little home I call my own, I fell head over heels in love with someone I never expected to think twice about.  I knew from that first moment that our time together was short—he was moving away soon, and soon after that to the other side of the planet  to a life-or-death situation, and he’d had troubling premonitions that he would die in that foreign desert.  He was an amazing man, very spiritual and with a strong sense of service to his country and sacrifice for those he loved.  Sitting in my car in front of the Armament Museum, still tasting of a Starbucks chocolate drink we’d shared across town, he kissed me for the first time…and broke my heart.

But that’s not the worst of it.  The worst of it was the unintended drama he brought into my life that led to a touch-and-go situation with my health and repeated harassment from a romantic rival I hadn’t known about for the first month.  It took more than a year, but I was finally able to stop feeding my energy to a woman I now define as a Vampire Archetype personality.  Though I’d certainly felt the drain of energy, I hadn’t realized that I was allowing it to happen and how detrimental it was to me until I discovered the works of Caroline Myss.  It’s damned near impossible to move on from a relationship when you’re being harassed about it daily—and just as impossible to heal physically in the present when you’re giving your energy to a wound in the past.

Several months before this breakthrough, my very psychic pal (whom I jokingly call Obiwan) told me that on a specific date, I’d read a book that would be of tremendous help to me in healing a medical problem that originated during my relationship with this man.  She also told me that it would be a rather old book related to spirituality.    I shrugged off her forecast.  There’s plenty of brand new material on spirituality, much of it on my To-Be-Read pile, so I didn’t see myself backtracking to older works.  I forgot all about it until two days after I’d finished the book.  Technically, Obiwan wasn’t 100% correct:  I didn’t “read” anything and it wasn’t a “book”—it was a  9-hour audio download of a speech that had been out for 10 years, Caroline Myss’ Energy Anatomy.  I quickly followed that one up with a 12-hour audio download of another speech, The Language of Archetypes by Caroline Myss.

Caroline Myss is not someone I would be friends with in daily life.  Her personality is far too caustic and arrogant to suit me; however, there are definitely some life-changing nuggets in her material.  I generally don’t care for the work of someone I find personally unlikable, so this is high praise indeed.  Here’s how I came to apply Caroline Myss’ insights to my life, heal an old wound, and unhook a…vampire…of sorts.

When the soldier first began pursuing me, I put him off for  several weeks before agreeing to a first date—and then wondered why I’d waited so long.  I’d thought he was too young for me but he won my heart in a matter of hours.  I still remember our first phone conversation, me walking barefoot in the front yard and looking up at summer stars, a cell phone glued to my ear before he lost the signal yet again.  One of the first things he told me that night was about his high school fiancee’ and how she gave up their baby for adoption without him knowing until years later.  He wanted so badly to be a daddy.  He seemed deeply hurt that he could not be in his child’s life, and I was moved by enough things he said that I agreed to meet him.  In a way, that revelation set the stage for what was to come and how we both reacted.

Several dates later, by the time we were inseparable, he sat on my bedroom floor and confessed he’d had a more recent ex-fiancee’ who’d ditched him before he had an interest in me, and that he was concerned about her threats to harm herself because he still cared about her. That I could understand; if you can love a person enough to plan to marry them, you don’t just stop caring overnight.  We prayed together for her in my backyard at 3 AM, that in the faraway place she lived that she would stay healthy and safe.

I was in great health at this time.  Feeling wonderful, both physically and emotionally.  All my chakras, the main theme of Myss’ speech about energy anatomy, seemed to be wide open and active.

During this time, life in my house was peaceful, fun, serene, and happy—for everyone, including him, including my daughter, and especially me.  We were together every moment we weren’t at work—even grocery shopping was fun with him trying to carry all my groceries inside at once and making me laugh with his boyish antics or warning me that I need never take out the trash as long as he was around.  Yeah,  my serene and happy household became deliriously blissful while he was with us for the next month or so.

Even when he called to tell me his ex-fiancee’ had called to say she was four-months pregnant and wanted to get back together but that he wanted to be with me.

That’s when the drama set in, even before she knew about me.  My neighbors expressed concern over his profanity-laden phone calls in the hammock with him yelling “I don’t want to marry you anymore!” while swearing to take care of his child.  My friends at our social gatherings worried over him when he spent hours on the phone, not knowing he was within earshot, begging her not to hurt herself while she hung up on him again and again.  My daughter and I cringed when she would berate him so loudly that we could hear her on his phone two rooms away. I talked with him about legal custody and his parents’ advice on lawyers to make sure he could be part of his son’s life.  I held him on nights when he sobbed that she would take his baby away from him if he didn’t go back to her. He was a very gentle man who was in over his head—and pulling me down with him.

I had begun having some second chakra medical problems at that point, related specifically to our relationship.  I didn’t know why then and my doctor repeatedly misdiagnosed the situation, but Caroline Myss’ speech on energy anatomy later made the connection for me.  This was an emotional wounding that meant someone else had to make a choice and I was one of the two choices.  According to Myss, emotional wounds that are left unhealed become physical wounds.  I got my first correct diagnosis the day the ex-or-maybe-not-ex-anymore-fiancee’ found out the extent of our relationship by snooping through his email accounts, voice mail, social networks, IM logs, and ultimately through my personal online journal that he’d unintentionally led her to because, as he believed, he had nothing to hide.  That was the day the harassment started, enough so that my family and friends were worried for my physical safety.

You know, I don’t think I could ever be with a man who, in a choice between his child and me, would choose me over his child. Ironic as it may be.  And especially one who wanted his little boy so badly.   I stepped aside. Though I wasn’t happy with the way he handled the situation, I didn’t fight to keep this man because that would only have made it harder for him.  I already knew he was leaving town in another few weeks and leaving the country soon after, so I would be deprived of his company anyway.  We made promises to each other when he left town, and among those was that the drama with her would stop and that she would stop harassing my family and me.

She didn’t. The drama actually got more absurd.  And to this day, he has not kept his promise to keep her focus from me, even though he went back to her  and became a daddy.

My second chakra wound only got worse, with more problems, more incorrect diagnoses, more medical tests, more invasive procedures.  Myss talks a lot about how putting so much attention on past wounds or focusing on old hurts—I’m paraphrasing—steals your energy and that that is energy that goes to keep you healthy and heal you.  If your energy is distributed to another person or an old situation, then it’s not there to heal you in the present.   This was an incredibly useful observation for me to make, many months harassment later.

I could explain the empathic connection that developed between her and me even before he left town, but unless you’re very open-minded, you won’t understand.   It’s almost supernatural how many times I would hearing her screaming at me, and at that very instant, she was tracking me online or trying to get into my personal logs.  But unless you understand quantum entanglements and empaths, I’ve lost you.  So let’s look at the more mundane reason for this energy drain on me and forget the less tangible black-magicky kind of stuff.

Unlike most drama queens I’ve observed, she could not simply smirk that she’d “won” and prance away, never to think of me again.  I say “most” because in the five years I’ve been divorced, I’ve dated several men who were still attached in some way to an ex, who  learned the guy was moving on and swooped in to do something to scare me off.  Like setting up the guy to be arrested for trespassing when picking up his kids because of a phony emergency or having his kids interfere with a date by dumping them unannounced at his front door on the mom’s night with the kids.  That kind of thing.  Then once I was no longer a “threat,” off she went, never to bother me again.

That didn’t happen in this case.  She got my contact information through his email accounts and used it to email me, which is easy enough to block, but more disturbingly, to call and text me.  She would send text after text, ranging from threats to guilt trips to pleas to reasons to hate him.  She would call 40-plus times in an hour and hang up when I refused to answer.  My daughter would go to bed with headphones on to keep from hearing the ringing, well past midnight, or I’d have to turn off my ringer and never know if my elderly mom was trying to reach me.  She would have him call but with her conferenced-in so that she could listen to our conversations without me knowing but, of course, he always told me when she’d be on the line.  My home phone would ring until I answered it and hang up—always an unknown number.  She tried to pretend she was him, IMing me when I knew his computer was broken.  She dug around on the Internet to find out everything she could and tried to friend me on social sites to get into private information.  She found articles written that mentioned an Army officer who was planning to visit me for the weekend and immediately assumed, without looking at the six-month-old publication date, that it was him.  She found one-sentence posts to a friend that said  [the cross-dressing defense attorney who pursued me for over a year] was after me again and assumed it was him.  She found references to a difficult decision I had to make and assumed it was about him, even though the public and private discussions centered around whether I wanted to make a business deal with a writer whose work I adored.  She found messages to my daughter in Orlando to meet my other daughter and me in Gainesville and assumed I was on another trip with him.  She found a mention of a new guy that my friends knew I’d had a date with  and assumed (somehow) that it meant I had seen her baby.  She found private online forums I was a member of, such as discussions of sexuality and psychology, and joined them.  I was on a miscarriage self-help forum and deleted my posts there before she could read them.  As my medical problems worsened, I desperately wanted to ask an online forum for advice but dared not since she’d found others I was on.  She posted demands for an apology to my personal family blog when I wrote about a certain relative–who used to beat her babies–because she assumed everything I wrote was about her or about him.  (In the case of this article, she would finally be correct.)  She brought in other people to read what I’d supposedly written about her  or review my personal photographs with her.   And on and on it went, ad nauseum.

This was, for the most part, a regular and grueling part of life up until I listened to Caroline Myss’  The Language of Archetypes, which showed me a perspective I had not seen before and gave me a way to deal with it.  All during these months and months of harassment, I was dealing with my medical situation but I didn’t see improvement until she vanished for  a while.  Out of the blue, after her being all over my websites in the middle of the night for week after week, she disappeared.  The anonymous calls stopped, the cyberstalking stopped, the emails and anonymous posts to my family blog stopped, the attempts to friend me on various social networks stopped.  All overnight.   For almost four blessed months.

I honestly wondered if she was dead.  Or in a coma.  Or in jail.  Or had just sworn off computers and phones. In any case, I had four whole months of peace and quiet from her.  What a pleasure to go about my business without feeling her demanding my attention or flinging drama at me!  No threats, no demands for apologies, no following me everywhere I went online.  She’d stopped.  It didn’t last but while it did, it was wonderful not to have her focusing all that hate in my direction instead of working on her relationship with the father of her child and taking responsibility for her own unhappiness.    Energetically, the focus was off me and I wasn’t always drained.

In fact, my medical problem stabilized and—I’ll know soon for certain—may have healed completely.  I was able to reclaim the distribution of my energy from her and from her constant reminders of the emotional wound of a choice I still believe was the right one for him.  That reclaimed energy has helped me to feel better and healthier than I have since I first heard her name.    But here’s where the speech on archetypes comes in.

The archetypes themselves are quite interesting, and I quickly identified a few that applied to me.  Writer, of course, being probably the first and foremost because it’s how I communicate best, how I work through my own issues the best, how I teach best.  I can’t not write.

Late in the 12 hours of audio, Myss talks about some of the more unusual archetypes, including the Vampire Archetype.  This is not the darkly elegant or erotic vampire of an Anne Rice novel but  something I’ve trouble with from time to time, because my nature is to feel responsibility or compassion for others to a point where they demand too much of my energy if I don’t draw strong boundaries.  Myss explains it this way:

There is such a thing as the Vampire archetype, meaning that there
are people who thrive on the psychic energy of others. People, for
instance, who complain a great deal or who are severely emotionally
needy can leave one feeling as if they had been up for a solid 36
hours. They tend to want the other person to make their life decisions
and to work out their problems.  (more at http://www.myss.com/features/askcaroline/detail.asp?id=59)

Yes!  I can identify!  “A solid 36 hours.”  OMG, yes!  In more situations that just this one, too.

Not only did Caroline Myss call this archetype to my attention, but she gave me a way to deal which now makes Myss an invaluable teacher in my opinion.  I’ve been letting this person feed off my energy since she first realized how bonded her child’s father was to me and that while he felt he had “nothing to hide,” he was terrified of her power over him. I never really slapped back, didn’t go after that restraining order,  or set a distance between us because I was compassionate toward her situation and her child.   I’d been giving her my own power instead of taking care of myself.

How do you deal with a Vampire Archetype?  According to Myss’ speech, you stop feeding it.  You unhook it, detach from it, cut it off from your veins.   I canceled home phone, blocked various emails, blocked my cell and text numbers, made my social networks all completely private—even at the expense of no longer being able to talk regularly with certain elderly family members who don’t understand passworded networks.  I rearranged my blogs and articles and even stopped writing new material for a while so she’d lose interest.  I brought myself to a point of distance, of detachment, where I no longer have any concern whatsoever for what happens to this person or what her situation is. I know that sounds cold but I didn’t defend myself early on, not because I felt guilt or responsibility, but because I’m empathic and kindhearted.  Something I cannot afford with some people.  So I drove a stake through my compassion.  For her, but for him as well.   I’m no longer worried that things will be worse for him if my articles, the vast majority of which have nothing to do with him, are mistaken as love poetry about him or something equally ludicrous and send her into yet another frenzy.  If so, then that’s his issue to deal with and he can consider it a delayed reaction to matters he should have taken care of when he was still here with me instead of 6,000 miles away.

I’m looking forward to that next doctor’s appointment and to test results that show I’ve completely healed.  My energy is mine once again.

Far too often, spiritual people give their power away.  I had not considered the depth of this habit until Obiwan sent me an article a few days ago about how people give away their power to psychics specifically and others in general.  It almost seemed strange coming from the person who is my personal coach, helping to keep me motivated and on course so that I can accomplish what I want, but because it’s a guiding relationship rather than a power-exchange, I shouldn’t be surprised at all.

Giving away your power is common throughout our culture, regardless of the individual’s spirituality.  That’s easy enough to see when I look at female friends who give up their dreams to please a husband or boyfriend or father.  And yes, I’ve been there, too, narrowing a wide range of choices to just one person’s–and that person not being me.  

But giving away power really IS more pervasive for spiritual people.  There’s another whole layer of people to give away power to, besides the usual friends, family, co-workers, and bosses in a non-spiritual person’s life.  

Spiritual people often turn their decisions over to their pastors, high priestesses, ministers, elders, and other spiritual leaders, including friends and family who are more “advanced” on a spiritual path.  They consult spiritual coaches, psychics, and teachers.  They come to rely on information from elsewhere rather than from within.

I’ve been in those situations myself.  It took some hard knocks, but I learned to trust my own intuition and instincts.  That doesn’t mean I stopped seeking guidance from others–not at all.  I often hear things that I wouldn’t have encountered without a little help, but (Key #1) I know now how to ask myself if that guidance feels right instead of just taking it.  

I can recall various teachers, coaches, and friends who, in their capacity as spiritual leaders, gave me well-meaning advice that just didn’t feel right in the gut.  I’ve had them tell me that my balking was just that I didn’t want to hear the truth and that I’d better check my ego because they were right about what they saw as the truth.  But for me, it didn’t feel like truth, and though it took a while to validate on my own, it wasn’t the truth.  What they advised was based on their own filters.  Sometimes I gave away my power by trying to live by their advice, and sometimes I rejected it flatly and took back my power and made my own way without them, in the end learning so much more than I ever would have if I’d followed their course. 

I’ve had psychic friends (I have MANY) tell me things that were so off-base that I couldn’t stop laughing, others tell me things I knew in my heart to be true, and still others tell me what they foresaw and I made damned sure it didn’t happen that way by taking action when I wanted to rather than according to their plan.  

I’ve discovered that an advisor relationship based on guidance rather than power will provide an advisor who knows and encourages you to change what you don’t want and take action when you feel you need to (Key #2).  My own coach does that–so did Yoda, but some previous advisors have not and I let them keep me in turmoil–and though Obiwan helps me figure out what and how to get things done each month and continue to grow spiritually all the while,  she does not insist that I do things the way she thinks I should or act disappointed or angry if I don’t.  She always encourages me to change the things I don’t like and create a better future for myself, and I leave our sessions feeling empowered about my future (Key #3).

I’ve had spiritual people I’ve sought guidance from tell me what I didn’t want to hear, yes, but I’ve felt the truth of it in my third chakra and knew it was time to admit what I already knew.  Spiritual guidance should be either an epiphany or a confirmation, but it should feel like, yes, that’s true somewhere deep inside.  And regardless of advice that is true guidance to me, even if the epiphanies are about awful things, I still walk away feeling that the future is brighter than yesterday.