82. The Feminine Sprouts from Darkness

BLOG 82—(present reflections tied to December 2000 journal entries about my healing and novel writing journey)—What are the chances of opening to a page in my journal of 18 years ago, and coming across a passage about Trump?

Well, it seems the chances are good.

In December of 2000, I had copied the following information from a book about Mary Magdalene and the Sacred Feminine: “The Tarot card Trump No. 15 is usually called the Devil, but the obscure picture on this card is obviously a rendering of the male power principle unrestrained, gone berserk, enslaving the human community.”

What a statement to read several decades after the fact and find it so true of our times and our current president! As students, once quiet, speak out against violence—against this patriarchal system that relies on unrestrained greed to grow like a cancer that will kill us all—and many more step up in the name of our sacred waters, earth, and rights, old systems fight to survive and hold on. President Trump, as the Tarot Card No. 15 reveals, is showing us the ugly and dangerous face of the male power principle unrestrained, and now it is up to us to stand for a new dawn.

Years ago, I wrote this in my journal as I healed from pain that was not only in my hip, but in my soul, longing to shed thousands of years of disconnect with the earth and the feminine. I grew up learning to beat up that which was soft, tender, dark, receiving, surrendering…that which was feminine. And I came to see that the pain in my body was the ache caused from all the pushing and dishonoring of life and of this feminine part of myself.

My journey into the feminine at this time, 18 years ago, began with a dream in which Hitler’s people were trying to find me, and I remained hiding under a bed. Hitler represented that masculine principle unrestrained, and in my dream he mirrored my upbringing in a German household, of clear belief systems dominated by right and wrong, weak and strong, black and white. I woke up aware that I was stuck inside this duality that was blind to the possibility of  surrender being strength, and toughness and tightness, weakness.

“Truth cannot be split into two’s, into sides, if you are coming from your heart,” I wrote back then. “We don’t need to hold onto our words, our patterns, our reasoning to be where we are each moment. There is only one heart that belongs to us all. Each moment is its own if from the heart.”

As I began to let go of the d5fe7770d9ee3b282ae7b02105e59ce9masculine energies of my upbringing that no longer served me (or at least not on their own), I began to embrace the feminine, to accept myself in my own power and beauty.

I wrote: “We have focused so much on eliminating the shadow and moving into the light—on fixing our shadows to become so-called enlightened. But there is no fixing. The feminine is the shadow, the darkness. It is the dark place that is needed for the seeds to grow, for the areas of our lives that are polluted, to be digested and transformed into rich soil. The dark is willing to feel, to receive everything, because it knows how to shape shift the elements into seeds of love, which, in union with the masculine, the sun energy, can grow new life. Without the darkness, though, there is no feminine, or the feminine energy becomes polluted because it is not allowed to clean itself. It becomes weak, sick, and dying.”

I realized, as I wrote and grew into myself, that so much of my life had been dominated by white, masculine patriarchal energies out of balance with the feminine. I carried this within me as an inner battle of pain. “If we are always trying to fly, to move forward at all costs, then the feminine does not have the chance to renew itself, to create new seasons for us to walk in,” I wrote. “We are losing the seasons of ourselves. We are burning up by the sun. We keep wanting to fix, enlighten, rather than have a relationship and be in partnership.”

Not only had I and so many of us dishonored the more subtle feminine energies from which all life is created, our culture, for far too long, has looked down upon all that is not “white,” all that is dark, including different races and the2b5bbe75dcf1cc9e254a9c0278458da4 earth herself. “For centuries we have been describing evil as dark and white belonging to angels. All that is above is good, is safe, and all that is below is to be feared, including the earth,” I wrote.

Back in the winter of 2000, as I began to change my perspective about the feminine and myself, a new kind of happiness entered my life. I wrote, “When I went for a walk in the woods, I felt this happiness, this relief and joy because I no longer had to fear the darkness—the place of dreams, of the unknown, of that unmanifest; where experiences happen, and we sense, receive, love, and hold; where we transform into magic; where life is made; where we create; where the earth’s energies live and grow new life.”

Today, as our tireless patriarchal system holds on with full might to what it’s got, I invite you to welcome the dark, feminine energies that can transform this old into new. I invite all of us to stop pushing, stop reaching toward the stars—even if for just a moment—and go inside, into the invisible world of feminine magic to discover that which sits in the shadows aching to emerge.

My Novel, Child of Duende: A Journey of the Spirit, is about returning to this renewing feminine energy and our mother, the earth. It’s available on Amazon at Amazon Page  or at www.michelleadam.net. It can be ordered at a local bookstore as well. Also, watch a brief video on “duende,” “the spirit of the earth”: YouTube Video

 

81. Blessed Water

BLOG 81—(present reflections tied to November 2000 journal entries about my healing and novel writing journey)—The water came on Valentine’s night, in small droplets as it does here in New Mexico’s desert after long periods of drought. But then, bit by bit, these drops became real rain, unabashed, filling the air with long-awaited moisture that seeped down into the thirsty earth.

That night I stepped outside of my boyfriend’s house to smell the first signs of rain. Actually, we all did, including my boyfriend’s sister who commented on how the earth smelled like sweet fragrance as it absorbed the blessed water. We all smiled, as I imagined so many of us here in New Mexico did to finally have rain after months of unusually warm, dry winter days. Here, when the water comes, it’s like a pregnant woman with her water breaking, and new life announcing itself!

The next day, the gray rain clouds remained with us in this city of Albuquerque, and further north, in Taos, it finally snowed and snowed. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed our gray days, since on the East Coast, where I spent half my childhood, rain was common, and I wanted nothing to do with gray. I didn’t appreciate the water as I do now out here in the desert. I always considered myself a person 907a2a0b13b7f0ebe34c63a159dbace8of fire—I loved the warm days filled with sun and longed for the drier climate I grew up with in Spain.

It took me a long time to really appreciate the water and its essence. It seems I only began to understand its full importance during the fall of 2000, as I continued healing from my hip pain.  I had always willed my way through life, determined to make things happen in a masculine way of living, dominated by fire and force. But, as I worked on healing myself from years of pain and not walking, I felt the need to explore this element, and its place in my life.

One afternoon in 2000, I decided to go on a shamanic journey wit88fbb1d82e00027dcf3a42bfbd5bbddah a friend of mine (a shamanic journey is a process of lucid dreaming, where you go on an inner journey with your imagination and full senses, with intention to find clarity on an issue). I did so to intentionally to connect with the spirit of water, realizing how little I had done so in the past.

In this journey, I traveled to the center of the earth, to the spirit of water residing in a cave. Through this process it seemed I was connecting with my own womb, with the baby that was a part of me, residing within me inside gentle, loving water. As I did so, I experienced a part of myself I had neglected, a fluid, feminine energy that is a universal  part of all of life and the cosmos that flows with no boundary, no limit, no borders.

“When I see a tree, I am a tree. This part of me is in everything I see. It is my universal self mirrored and present in everything,” I wrote in my journal during that autumn of 2000. As I continued on this journey, focusing on the energy of water in my womb, it became a fountain of water, spinning outward, increasingly so as I gave it my attention, so much that my friend and I began to bathe in this water essence that was pure love.

“This entire force of water was magnetic because it flowed outward and was pulled by gravity downward to the roots of the center of the earth,” I wrote in my journal. “Water is everywhere at the same time. It’s like the rays of light that move far, deeply, inside the crevices of life, and is full of surrendered passion.”

As I came out of my journey, and sat with the powerful force of water that I had connected to, I realized how much I had tried to live from a strong fire in my belly, 3dec65763849de2a392ed369c0095d9fabsent of this loving energy of water. I had learned to live like men do, like this extremely masculine culture we live in does. But that day, I saw how it was time to live more from the womb of womanhood—how this soothing, healing, and loving energy is what knows how to connect strongly to all of life, reflecting back ourselves in all we see.

Today, I think about how much we could benefit from this spirit of water, this universal cosmic feminine energy, in our culture of borders, power-hungry leaders that separate us in an effort to dominate, and all the school shootings that kill more and more children and adults. Like here in the desert where the sun dominates the land with is heat, we should call forth more often—in prayer to the feminine—the spirit of water, and her rain and her life-affirming ways to bring healing and remind us of the abundance, love, and ever-flowing connectedness we all carry within us.

My Novel, Child of Duende: A Journey of the Spirit, is about connecting with the wisdom of the earth and universe. It’s available on Amazon at Amazon Page  or at www.michelleadam.net. It can be ordered at a local bookstore as well. Also, watch a brief video on “duende”, “the spirit of the earth”: YouTube Video

 

 

Confessions: A Night of Creative Awakening and a Writing Offering

10/28/2017: I have a confession: yes, I love the night. I really do. (I will return to regular blog shortly) 

Although I adore the sun, I love when his golden light fades into the sunset and modernity’s fierce flame of urgency disappears. Yes, this flame disappears and the feminine darkness invites me into her subtle, soft, creative juices, where I bathe for hours, like a rebel against the insanity of today’s world.

No one is watching when I light a candle of my own inside this dim, but potent night. She reveals to me a restless urge inside, a longing to return to source, and be the creative life-song that comes from within. I sow the seeds that require darkness and the spirits of the night to begin germination inside my belly. I listen to my dreams, to the unraveling

Painting by my ancestor, Frida Kraemer, wife of one of many family artists. I love the sense of freedom of this painting.  

of my consciousness, to places inside, of barbed wire pressing against my heart, my wings. I discover what I must do to untangle this mess we’ve been taught to be, and make way for a new dawn of love, of being the creator of our own destiny.

This morning, I let the sun dance in the sky as I stayed with my dreams, easing my way into daylight. No rush. Nothing to prove as I used to do years ago. I am free. We are free. We can all be free in ways we’ve long forgotten.

Writing has been a path toward this freedom for me, a place of deep meditation with my soul’s longing. I imagine it has also been from my dear author friend and children’s book writer, Burt Kempner, who will be traveling from Florida to here, New Mexico, to offer with me a Shamanic Writing Workshop on Saturday, November 4th, from 2-4:45p.m. at Tortuga Gallery. This is a unique chanceWriting Class with Burt.jpg (1) for Burt and I to work together and offer this journey of the soul and a taste of that freedom I speak of.

If you are in Albuquerque, New Mexico, next Saturday, November 4th, please join us. This may be a one-time offering with Burt, who comes with such an immense heart of the imagination and award-winning talent as a children’s book author and television producer (he has produced shows on PBS, Discovery, History Channel, and CNBC). I also bring with me my own experience leading healing circles and classes, and Flamenco performances with my novel, Child of Duende: A Journey of the Spirit, here in New Mexico and in Washington State, California, and Argentina.

In this almost-three-hour workshop, Burt and I will take you on a journey to awaken your soul’s voice through writing, and help you discover, explore, and write the voices and matrix of ourselves and all of life–the animals, wind, water–that coexist with us on this earth. Our intention is to invite you to experience writing as a process of connecting to the life within and all around us in a shared, rich manner.

My heart is tender, my wings soft, in my offer to join us, Burt Kempner and I, next Saturday. I am honored to share this place of surrender, of the feminine creative force that awakens within us in the night, in the dark, in the stillness that carries our longing for another way. I feel we have all been so busy, running around, doing “life” in this modern, insane way, and I so I look forward to time inward, together, exploring who we really are.

Upcoming Shamanic Writing Workshop information: at 2-4:45 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 4, 2017, at Tortuga Gallery, 901 Edith Blvd., SE, Albuquerque, NM 87012 (Park on Pacific Ave.). No writing experience needed. $30.00. RSVP at writeaway@hotmail.com or 505 923 0649 or at Facebook event page ( Facebook Shamanic Writing Event Page )

Also, for more information on My Novel, Child of Duende: A Journey of the Spirit, see my Amazon Page  or  www.michelleadam.net. It can be ordered at a local bookstore as well. Also, watch a brief video on “duende”, “the spirit of the earth”: YouTube Video

 

 

44. Giving Thanks to Divine Unity

BLOG 44: November 24, 1989—It was Thanksgiving, but 18 years ago, at my parent’s house in New Jersey. My days and nights were filled with dreams, wide-open dreams and experiences that revealed the magical possibility of our humanity inside a deep purging.   

My body—in its pain and opening—had become a vessel through which ancients truths could emerge and awaken. I was in bed, unable to fall asleep on Thanksgiving night because my body was speaking to me. I could feel intensely that my reality was a memory of shapes that move, shift, and change like reality shifts into dreams and dreams into everyday reality. I had never experienced this before…that all was malleable, that everything was fluid, that the physical and emotional were all the same…that we are a kind of liquid of sorts, and that if we could see that, we could experience the potential of magic.

During those days, I had also been reading a book by Lynn Andrews, and it prompted me to dream about and reflect on a character in her booked named Agnus, who carried a “marriage basket.” In my dreams, she represented the Virgin Mary, and the marriage basket was the “Holy Grail”, the child within her that is the “Unity of All Things.” Mary gave birth to Jesus, but more symbolically, as all women do, she gave birth to the feminine and masculine within herself. In doing so she created a child that was in the image of God, and she, in essence, through giving birth, became, the unity of all things.

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Those days 18 years ago offered some deep reflections that, in this simple blog, may be hard to fully express. But what I saw then, and I see now, as we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving—a holiday first shared between native Americans and North European settlers who gave thanks to the native people for showing them how to grow and harvest corn and other crops to survive in new lands—is that we are so much more than the extreme masculine energy of competition and winning, and the extreme feminine energies of pity and plight, and that it is time for us to give birth to the magic child within us, the unity of all things.

In the past months, so many of us have felt the fear, pain, and horror, of change as the extreme masculine has reared its ugly face during the elections and at Standing Rock (where thousands of native people and supporters are fighting to protect the waters, as they are brutally attacked and their graves and that which they hold scared are desecrated). We have also seen people speaking up with more courage and heart than ever before to protect each other and the earth.

And now, as we all come together with loved ones during Thanksgiving, and we give thanks for that which has blessed us, it may also be a time to plant a seed for the spring—a seed that gives birth the unity of all things. Maybe this time of upheaval is a chance for us to look at the separation we have been living—the extreme masculine and feminine energies we have been carrying—and to give birth to the divine unity that we all are. Maybe we are being pushed to see who we truly are: fluid, divine beings with malleable colors and shapes that we can creatively rearrange to create a beautiful painting and landscape we can all celebrate.     

*My recently-published novel, Child of Duende: A Journey of the Spirit, is a story of coming home to this divine unity. Check it out on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Child-Duende-Journey-Michelle-Adam/dp/099724710X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1474233011&sr=8-1&keywords=child+of+duende  or at www.michelleadam.net