TOTEMS & RECLAIMING THE LOST CHILD

I am still in Portales, New Mexico, soaking up the hospitality of my friends, Penny and Carol. I am very much at home here because their home is imbued with loving energy. They brought me here for the Holidays on the first Christmas after my divorce when I was feeling unloved and unlovable. And they have participated in my subsequent healing.

I have spent every Christmas since then in their welcoming embrace. And it is interesting to be here now without the need for healing. Today I feel like a whole person and while I enjoy their food, and their hospitality, and their Wi-Fi; this time it feels like I contribute as much as I take.

They have also seen my transformation, in snapshots, once or twice a year, and it is humbling to see myself through their eyes. Today I am thinner (if not thin), tanned and sporting longer hair and a measure of self-assurance. My gifts of insight, and Shamanism, and breath-work have been heartily received and appreciated.

Let me say a word about the length of my hair. It feels good and it came to me when I embarked upon my summer of joy that I should “let my free flag fly”. I am connecting myself back in time, to the 1970’s, when I was in my twenties. My hair was long and the world was open to me; anything was possible. It was only after that point in time that I came to limit myself and shut down and shut out many of my own personal gifts.

Just lately, I am hearing from others that there is a point in each of our lives when we have have felt free, and powerful, and unlimited. A friend talked to me about remembering the time before she entered junior-high and how it felt to be completely secure and fearless, before learning about the roles she would be required to play; before the world imposed its ideas about separation from each other and the whole of creation.

Since time is merely a man-made construction, that other personae is still alive somewhere living life to its fullest, full of joy and freedom and creative energy. If we each have this suppressed part, I think today you and I can reclaim that lost piece and use it to give us new life.

So, just a short while ago I was going through some boxes when I chanced upon a photo of myself when I graduated from Indiana University.  It was 1976 and I wore the assurance and hopefulness of youth.  I am carrying that photo with me on this journey and it has (to me) an uncanny resemblance to the Osho card that keeps coming up for me entitled: The Rebel. 

The photo and the card are my traveling companions; we commune with each other and I am reminded of the things I have lost and now re-found.  These two items are totems, sacred objects that witness my progress along with some other objects:

There’s the beautiful piece of raw turquoise from my friend and teacher, Karl; a chunk of white quartz given me three decades ago by my friend, Cheryl; the potted grapevine from my house in Healdsburg; a rock from Dean and Kelly’s “sanctuary”; the tie-dyed sarong from this summer’s mini-Q; the abalone shell from my teacher, Lloyd; the pipe, blessed in the lodge of Dawson No Horse; a stalk of living bamboo and the beautiful painting of "awakening", both gifted me by Meredith.

Sitting in the Airstream, I am surrounded by totems and gifts of the heart. I am truly blessed, and living in grace; preparing to launch myself into the expectant arms of another new moon; another re-imagining.