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A stranger to her own body

Her compass was a boundary
Born of insecurity
A rough edge as she feared to dream or awaken
To the mystic inside her that
Forgot how to tell stories
How to dance those words
On the rooftops of wounds
Built so long ago
In the darkest places within her.
Her body was a temple
She no longer visited
A prayer she no longer whispered
A world of rejection and pain
In every crevice hiding between
Flesh and bone
Yearning to feel the one who
Had disowned her remembering
What it was like to come back home.
When will you believe
That all you hold sacred
Is safe
In your earthen vessel
Where lovers and mystics
Angels and storytellers
Magical creatures
The sun
The moon
And the stars
Wait patiently just to hold your hand?

In Greek mythology a psychopomp is a supernatural creature or spirit whose purpose is to guide

a soul who has just died to the afterlife. We die many times in one lifetime, aspects of ego and will, body and mind, ancient ancestors
communing at the threshold of our passage so that they too, can evolve as sentient beings. We embody a myriad of lineages in our flesh and bones, not just the lineages inherent in our soul’s trajectory, but lineages across parallel realities that seek to serve a higher purpose. There is a sense of surrealism with each death, an altering of reality as we embrace a new one, an altering of a lineage as the sacred womb rises to give birth, life, healing and safe passage to those parts of us which need to die, which need to merge with a laden earth encumbered by human disconnect. Or perhaps those parts of us which need to ascend with the angels, a death absorbing grace as the Divine intended to the fullest experience a soul can have.
There is a descent into the underworld where we embrace flesh and bone as much as we do spirit.
There is a descent into darkness where we fall upon our knees and give thanks to the landscape that nourishes our understanding of good and evil.
How fortunate we are to listen to the wilderness that runs through our veins, echoing our names over and over again until the illusion slowly dissipates into oblivion.
To realize that we die so many times during our lifetime. The psychopomp materializing out of an emptiness, appearing in a form of a being we recognize as aspects of oneself.
A hidden landscape versed in the chorus of angels as well as the entreatments of demons. The ruler of this underworld are those wounds we hold close, yearning to ascend, reaching for any hand to help guide our way out of pain.
We become the master of life and death within our own experience. A nuanced pulsation of light and darkness, love and hate, a hunger for light to be fulfilled by pushing through the mire
of a reality created by thousands of years of disconnect from grace. We become the psychopomp that we have prayed for to carry us through this confusion of self and to leave the underworld as we originally left it. With love.
Yes, with love.

I think of all the power we wield.

From our mothers and fathers who gave us life.
From their mothers before them.
From their fathers before them.
From their parents and those generations who lived centuries ago.
In our veins runs the blood of their reactions to that power.
That landscape of fertile ground that defines our identity in this lifetime.
The intimacy created between you and how you choose to live your life.
Destinies fulfilled or destroyed.
Empowering or powerless?
Life or devastation?
The myriad of stories weaved into a relationship with a force
That can control human nature or respect it.
That power of our ancestors breathes life within us.
The use or misuse of it also encapsulates our very existence.
It is time to gently silence their responses in our blood that continue
To create harm and nourish those relationships that ignite good.
Our choices will be running in those veins of future generations
Think about it.
The adaptation of new age philosophies that shame the seeker has been a thorn in my side for many years.
This is especially true when it comes to illness or success.
I still remember a friend of mine who is now eighty four years old after having read my book The Light of God when it originally was published in 2001 saying
“Thank you Laura. I thought every illness I endured was of my own creation.” I could not believe my ears.
Loey (she won’t mind me using her name) is the purest of heart, purest of mind, and probably the most humble human being I have ever met.
We create these legends and narratives of seekers who have cured themselves of every disease they encountered.
We create these demi-gods of healing practitioners who fight off evil.
Yet sometimes we can’t even recognize evil standing before us when it pretends to be of the light because we so crave to be higher in evolution than those around us.
To say that illness means one is out of balance with their soul does not ring true for me and the space that I hold for myself and others.
In my most recent class I was sharing the story of a Boddhisattva I encountered when I was in my early 30’s.
At least I thought so anyway.
I was walking at a fair and this very elderly woman was coming my way. She was hunched over with a cane and her face extremely withered from suffering. I saw all these souls around her influencing her path. As she passed me by I tilted my head downward. made the sign of the cross and said thank you. She has devoted her path, most likely unconsciously, to aid in the suffering of others.
When did we become accustomed to shaming the seeker for not being perfect in mind, body or spirit?
When did spiritual philosophies begin to capitalize on people’s weaknesses?
The spiritual climate out there is the more light one has the better.
I’ve seen this lead to spiritual “snobbery” , exclusion and isolation.
I’ve talked with friends, clients, and colleagues about this for years.
Purification for me is about standing in your imperfection as you are, whole and complete, with every good and every evil prompting you to create relationships with them that serve your highest good, not hurt you or others.
If that imperfection is in the form of illness, weaknesses, failures…and you are embracing it all in the light, then I say Amen.
No shame needed here.
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Body

Your body is a temple.

Of all the gods who laid down their swords in service of your soul.
Your cells, your tissues, your blood and your bones.
Your sweat and your tears.
Your sufferings and your joys.
A vast landscape of light and darkness
Entering both heaven and the abyss
In search of the one home where many have lived
Inside of you.
This temple has served in all its years it was meant to
be earthed as a body which has more to teach you.
Its edges roughed by incarnations, living and dying.
Its words scattered through your breath
Of stories told and untold.
Prophecies seen and unseen.
Waiting to be honored
A body which many of us would rather forget.
There is this liminal space between bodies, the ones we incarnate into over and over again.
The threshold where we may not get to choose gender or culture, limbs or features, or perhaps even the narrative that will earth our bodies into that experience.
The fragrance and color of our hair, the width of our bellies, the flexibility of our aging joints, the health of our tissues and organs.
The smile we may or may not have upon reflecting in a mirror.
The narrative that will pursue us until we evolve into acceptance of each and every cell that has chosen to partner with our spirits.
In that liminal space, you don’t expect illness or injury, harm or pain.
We hope to be protected, embraced in a soothing portal of infinity where we reside with a holiness incapable of suffering when we reenter the earth realm.
These bodies.
Whether we choose them or not, they exist to carry us through this realm.
Each cell yearning for a gentle humanity where every body is respected and honored.
Each cell receiving even the slightest touch from another as grace moving fluidly between the heavens.
These bodies become our home as long as God wills it.
A form bestowed upon us to cherish for all time.
Treat them with the respect as the Divine would have it.

There comes a time of liberation

When you are not bound by the constraints of identity
Of self based perceptions of being
Of others perceptions of living
Of shame based thoughts and behaviors
That tread slowly like footprints in your heart
From long held sins of generations past.
You are not your mother
You are not your father
You are not those who came before them
Yet you are of their blood, sweat and tears
You are of their triumphs and failures
This does not make you who you are
Your choices do.
Liberation is not for the faint of heart
It is for those with valor
Who see themselves as worthy children of God.
Dehumanization.
So much suffering goes unnoticed or is marginalized. I watch as violence rises within humanity whose moral compass has been challenged by wounds past and present. Bearing witness to our own challenges, not to mention those around us, has become all about survival of the fittest.
Who do we reward the emotionally and spiritually strong and berate those we see as weak?
Why is there a need for separation?
A wound can leave a sense of depersonalization that all of us struggle with.
Who are we without our wounds?
How do we identify with the world around us?
We tend to isolate in times of weakness but present ourselves when we feel brave.
I see so much separation with our individual and shared suffering. It has an element of dehumanizing us because somewhere in that separation, our unworthiness motivates us to continue to separate even further from ourselves, from each other. Bearing witness for many carries shame, as though a wound becomes a trademark for our life story and survival is a means by which we attach our deepest insecurities to life itself instead of receiving life as a gift.
It takes a lot of inner work to truly see life as a gift and not a race to thrive and rise above suffering.
This competition we have created so that we may live evokes such an emotional and spiritual death, the dehumanization of humanity.
The us vs. them mentality will not help us rise above, but will only compel us to fold inward.
I respect your suffering.
I respect my suffering.
May a beautiful friendship grow from that space.
Inseparable
You walk the earth
Grounded into a body
You are unfamiliar with
Throughout time
Hoping for some semblance
Of understanding how your soul
Could embark on such a journey
Through daunting trials
In a vessel which is compelled
To endure heaven and hell
In its entirety
Waiting with anticipation until
Your return home.
Be gentle wayward soul
Respect the vessel that
Was bestowed upon you this lifetime
Treat it with kindness
And befriend all that it has to offer you
While you are here.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness cannot be substantiated by man’s intolerance of his fellow human being. Whether it be molded by ignorance, greed, irreverence or an innate darkness which has not yet been disciplined by the light, those truths which we hold to be intrinsically evident are only as such because we are given the simple but profound privilege of life itself. A life which we take for granted is not a life at all. It is a prison in which we are held by beliefs which further the illusion that the darkness and that which fuels it is the key to humanity’s survival. One cannot survive on darkness alone, especially a darkness which does not yield to the light in which all truths carry equal weight for all humanity.