Holding the Vision: The Way Of The North
Ho!
To the winds of the North, to the hummingbird
You who live from the sweetness and nectar of life and must be free or die.
Teach me what it means to live from the sweetness and nectar of life.
To the ancient ones, seers, twice born, the grandmothers and grandfathers.
As I stand on your shoulders to see beyond linear time and space, someday others will stand on my shoulders.
Teach me what it means to be invisible, to master time and to keep secrets even from myself.
Come ancient ones, seers, twice born-
Enter my dreamtime.
Inform my energy body with your energy body warm your hands by campfire and teach me the mystery of this path.
Ho!
This is the invocation to the North of the Inca Medicine Wheel, a path that I have practiced for over 10 years. I have incorporated the discipline of calling in the directions into my daily spiritual practice, and it has become a significant component of my consciousness. The north of the Inca Medicine Wheel is the place where we have the opportunity to make a “quantum leap” – to be organized by spirit. If we have done the work of the south, to release the past and the things that no longer serve us, and we have overcome the fear of death and fear itself in the West of the Medicine Path, then the progression to spirit becomes available to us.
Thus it came as no surprise to me that my Solo Desert Experience was an expression of the North. As I settled into my beautiful, but tiny piece of nature that would be my home for the next 48 hours, a hummingbird appeared and acknowledged each of my 7 walootas (prayer flags) by touching each with its beak. The tiny bird then came to where I was sitting under my shade tarp, looked me in the eyes and flew away.
From that moment, I knew that I was safe, and protected; that I had been welcomed by nature and spirit to the spot I had chosen for my experience. Having met the hummingbird, I was able to surrender myself to the opportunity the next two days afforded me…to make my quantum leap into spirit and to allow spirit and nature to orchestrate whatever teaching was available.
After the Hummingbird came, I was able to live from the sweetness and nectar of life. I relaxed and was able to stay in a meditative state for most of the time I was there – able to sense the beauty of nature all around me…
Rethinking Personal Struggle
Intense personal struggle is part of the life of every single person on the planet, no matter how much money, how seemingly fulfilled, powerful or successful they appear to be.
Relationship issues, financial problems and yes, even the death of a loved one are all part of our universal human experience – but they are not without purpose. The challenges of human existence are the means by which each of us explores and ultimately addresses our personal growth. Personal struggle is an invitation to our own awareness.
This is a hard concept to really get but a very important one. The more conscious awareness we can bring to our lives, the more clarity we then have about the purpose our struggles play in our growth as human beings.
Most people feel victimized by their struggles and try to find someone or something to blame. Feeling victimized and blaming the outside world activates our “stories” (the ones we tell ourselves about ourselves) and causes us to see others as our rescuers or our persecutors. This triangle of disempowerment is the dance that is played out over and over by each of us. What we must do is reframe the way we think about our troubles. Yes, it is easier said than done – but it can be done.
The reframe for feeling victimized is to take responsibility for your situation, and at the same time recognize that you are not your struggle. You are infinite awareness having the experience of a human struggle.
Although there may be people and situations in your life playing the role of villain, only you can change your consciousness- and thus change your energy such that you no longer attract the situation or type of person that is causing you to feel pain. This is the ultimate act of taking responsibility – and the one most resisted.
If we continue to hold the energy of fear and doubt, we continue to call the same energy, in the form of different people and situations, to ourselves over and over again. We have all seen this happen. Have you ever had a friend who repeatedly attracts the same kinds of “destructive” relationships into his or her life?
When we say that we can’t trust anyone, we are in this loop and we are attracting people and life circumstances that embody our fears. Think of it like this: We are the producers and directors of the “movies” of our lives and we “cast” people who play the roles we need to teach us and to help us see the mirror of ourselves.
This is very important. Your struggles and sorrows are not punishment. They are your teachers; a series of invitations to look at the way you hold yourself in the world and to explore your own consciousness. When I see a client with a lot of problems, I don’t see an unfortunate victim; I see a brave soul that has asked for a lifetime of intense lessons and who has the potential for an amazing awakening…
How To Create A Successful Marriage
I have been licensed as a Marriage and Family Therapist in California since 1987. For 24 years I have seen clients in private practice with a variety of presenting problems, ranging from substance abuse and addiction to depression and work-related issues. However, I specialize in working with couples and partners on their marriages and relationships.
I consider my approach to be fairly atypical. For the past 12 years, I have incorporated a number of alternative modalities into my work, including Reiki (energy healing) and shamanism when these approaches are useful for clients. My greatest skill is my ability to meet my clients “where they are,” without judgment, and my work with alternative approaches has taught me that one of the most important roles I play in my client’s lives is as “teacher,” helping them to find their own answers and assisting them in finding their own truth and place of wholeness. For many clients this can be both an extraordinary and painful experience…but well worth the effort.
I have been married to the same woman for 26 years and my own successful relationship has also been a tremendous teacher for me in terms of my work with couples.
Without a doubt, one of the common problems in any relationship is poor communication skills and/or a complete lack of communication. Such problems arise for a variety of different reasons including each partner’s background and the “baggage” they bring to the relationship from their own family of origin. It is very common for couples to try to re-create their parents’ relationship – regardless of how dysfunctional that relationship may have been. Of course, this is not a conscious intent, but it manifests when a person has not dealt with issues from his/her family of origin – and these issues become more pronounced when the couple faces (inevitable) adversity.
When couples meet and go through the courtship, they are usually motivated by surface attractions, sexual desire and a typically unrealistic image of the beloved. Of course, this unrealistic image is very difficult to maintain over time – one because we all grow older and two, because marriage is not only a sexual union, it is also a financial partnership, a child-rearing partnership, a career partnership, etc. Partners’ lack of agreement on these fundamentals will inevitably lead to issues in the relationship later on, when sexual desire and romance tend to wane. I should note that happy, healthy sexual relations in long-term relationships are also critically dependent upon healthy communication and the trust that develops as a result.
To create a happy long-term relationship, it is extremely important for the couple in therapy to once again get to know each other – a marriage “reality check” if you will. Within this process the therapist’s role is to create a safe space in which honest communication can take place about each individual’s hopes, dreams, values and motivations, individually and as part of the couple. Through this process, it is also the therapist’s job to help each partner work through the very different ways men and women communicate…
Attachment Theory In Couples Counseling; Be Afraid, Very Afraid
Recently, one of my clients who is coincidentally also studying to be a therapist, reported the emphasis her college was placing on something called “Attachment Theory” as a methodology in couples counseling. I was concerned and a bit bemused. I am familiar of course, with Attachment Theory, and based on my experience after 30 years in practice have basically relegated it to the same category as Freud’s “penis-envy.”
However, the fact that Attachment Theory is gaining a renewed sense of vigor and is ardently being taught at such institutions as the Geffen School of Medicine is not surprising in these times.
In brief, Attachment Theory as applied to couple relationships is based on the notion that the therapist’s role is to help the couple form a thought-based attachment to his/her partner to create an “us versus them”(read fear-based) mentality – in essence creating couple cohesion by solidifyingthe couple as an entity separate andagainst the rest of the world. You may recognize this methodology in certain political or religious organizations that seek to create similar types of separations in order to enable members to justify violent or surreptitious acts.
The teaching of thought (brain)-based therapeutic methods in the mainstream medical training schools isconsistent with many other programs whose purpose it is to keep us locked into our “computer or reptilian brains” so that we cannot access our higher consciousness and discover for ourselves that we are all infinite awareness having a human experience. What was it that the Buddha said? “Attachment is the source of all human suffering.”
Are therapists actually being taught that creating an infantile attachment to your partner is the way to relationship bliss? I am afraid so. But I think I’m going to stick with the Buddha on this one….
“Almost Cut My Hair”
David Crosby wrote this song in the late 1960s and it has been reverberating through my head ever since, almost as my personal anthem. I have only recently understood why it made such an impact on me (besides the fact that it is an incredible song).
In particular, it is this line in the song that I find so meaningful:
“But I ‘m not giving in an inch to fear
Cause I promised myself this year
I feel like I owe to someone”
The someone I had in mind was me, and I realize that not “giving in to fear” was important to me from a really early age.
My earliest memories growing up in rural North Carolina were feelings of terror when I was outside playing and an airplane of any sort would fly over. The worst were the jets that would break the sound barrier and the sonic boom would leave me petrified. I was also bombarded with the fear of nuclear war, having been a young teenager during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
There were many TV shows and other warnings about our impending doom, not the least of which was an itinerant preacher who made a special visit to the Baptist church I was forced to attend. He would continually inform the congregation that Jesus would be coming soon since the world was soon to be consumed in a nuclear holocaust. I will never forget him. His name was Jeter Porch, (he looked like Ichabod Crane and I found out later that he had committed suicide). I always wondered if he became depressed after his prophecy failed to materialize.
My father died of alcoholism when I was 10 years old and I was left to figure a lot of things out on my own. Being afraid of almost everything had become a prevalent reality for me. My mother, who loved me, gave in a lot more than an inch to fear – making no attempt to help me make sense of the crazy world around me.
I played football in high school and my mother went to every game; but I realized she was only there to somehow mitigate her concern that I might be injured. The fear continued…
Heart Connection As Healer
As a therapist I see people everyday that have fallen prey to the system. Firstly, what do I mean by the system? The system is a web of people who are doing the work of those in control by keeping as many of us as possible immersed in fear and ignorance.
I will give you an example of a system which I run across all too often. A client comes to me for therapy as a result of a divorce and child custody issues. I am typically hired to work with one of the partners for an issue like depression, anxiety, substance abuse or anger management. The client is often dealing with issues like this after having been accused of malfeasance by the other partner. The legal counsel has leveled the complaint and ordered psychological assessments for both spouses and all of the children. Amazingly the assessments almost always show exactly what the attorney is alleging. When I ask a few questions, it is easy to determine that the psychologist has a cozy relationship with the attorney. The cost of the assessments can run $7,000 or $8,000 each. This is in addition to the attorney fees which are upwards of $25,000. Realize that neither party nor the children have received any therapy at this juncture. Everyone is angry and afraid and the buzzards have circled down to feast on the carcass of the marriage. This system is perpetuated by the courts because they are part of it and are handsomely compensated for it.
From an energetic perspective, the anger and fear created by the attorneys keep the clients locked into the reptilian brain which is characterized by the fight or flight syndrome. When people are afraid, they are easily manipulated. They lose their ability to think clearly and are willing to spend their last dollars to save the children from the evil clutches of the person they were madly in love a few years ago. This scenario is repeated in so many situations including illnesses, job loss and loss of loved ones through death.
As a therapist and a healer, I see the solution as being able to connect with our hearts and to our higher selves. We can learn to see ourselves and each other as one and not get pulled into the “blame game”. We can develop a meditation practice and learn to breathe to avoid slipping into fight or flight mode. I teach clients to take responsibility for their situations without blaming themselves. Every situation is an opportunity to expand our awareness to a new level of forgiveness for ourselves and other. I don’t advocate fighting the system; I encourage people not to fall into it. We can stay out of the system energetically even as we are in it by having a spiritual practice as outlined above.
