Intuitive Body and Being

Farting sounds and proving yourself.

2012-02-20T23:35:00.001-05:00

The saboteur of curiosity is proving ourselves. When we try to prove it we take ourselves so darn seriously that we don't have fun with what we do.

Here's an example of how proving it can get in our way. Meet Brett, a store manager. He's used to being in charge. Can you hear his keys jangling?

He's in his first healing class where the students learn how to: be senior to their healing guide, communicate with the guide and offer aura healings.

"Let's begin," I say.

Before Brett gets out of his chair I notice he goes into auto pilot. He pops out of his body and revs up his 3rd chakra, the place of personal power. He already knows exactly what is going to happen for himself and the healee. He thinks he has to manage the process. As Brett approaches his classmate, he asks him to move his chair twice before he arrives at his side. During the healing, Brett tells the healee everything he thinks he needs to change. And I don't notice Brett's healing guide actually doing anything!

This is when I say to my students, "OK, time to make fart sounds. And the one with the best fart sound is the most awesome healer in the room." Laughter flits across the room like a balloon just popped. Potty humor really takes the air out of these serious moments. I have a 3 year old, he's taught me a lot.

Oh, the responsibility! To be the perfect healer, store manager, partner! The part of him who takes charge of everyone at the store, takes over his learning space and there is no room left to explore what he is doing.

The best healings can come from first time healers because they allow, with a capitol A. They allow the healing to happen. They don't think about it. They don't know what to expect and that is OK. When I was a student, teachers would jokingly fight over who could receive first from the newest students!

But Brett is not allowing himself to not know. Or to be a beginner. He just has to do the healing and he has to do it right. I don't think he pauses for a breath until he sits down at the end. And then he telepathically gloats that his healing is the best.

Well how-dy. The first day of healing class is always amusing.

It isn't my place to tell him he's gotten in his own way the whole time. (In fact he's gotten in the way of the healee and the healing guide too, but everyone is learning.)

I ask, "Did anyone notice they were trying really hard? Did you feel you had to do a good job?" It is up to him to notice whether these questions pertain to him. On the first day of class, all he can say is, "No, that was easy."

See, he is the one doing all the work. And this is the way he likes it. This is how he makes sure he receives validation and attention. These are his pictures- energized pictures, solidified beliefs held in his space- and this is what he is learning about.

Over the next three months Brett thinks he is learning about becoming a great healer, until he notices he is really learning how to take the charge off of having to be perfect. Over time he begins to know how to validate himself. He learns he doesn't have to be perfect in another's eyes in order to receive a spirit to spirit hello or love.

Healing is about listening and responding. And the first person we can to listen to is ourselves. We don't have to override our self in order to be perfect. We don't have to become what we think another person needs.

When this happens, we step on our own toes. The instant we feel tugged into becoming super-over-achiever, deflate that high-fa-lutan thought by making a fart sound. Or at least imagine a really loud fart sound. You won't be able to take yourself so seriously. And you can start over while allowing yourself to be a part of the process.

I'm really curious!

2012-02-04T16:22:00.004-05:00

Are we willing to admit to our self that we do not know something? It's an awkward feeling, not knowing.

When we learn to do a psychic reading and we find ourselves solo with our first readee, we leave one state of mind, "Uh, I Don't Know... why Are you asking me?" and step into, "Yeah, I have no clue but I'm really curious to see what's going on, once I close my eyes."

Let me close my eyes and see.

It is no small feat, though simple, to see and listen. My students have been reminding me for 13 years, "It's sooo subtle but sooo powerful." Taking this adventure into The Land of I Don't Know is what allows us to see and then know what is going on. But it's an odd sensation at first.

In order to see, the first thing we have to do is cultivate curiosity. One of my friends would say this whenever she was in a jam, "I'm REALLY curious?!" And I love to imagine my psychic Nancy Drew Hat.

Curiosity is a psychic's best friend. (Otherwise we end up doing the shopping list in our heads and gather no pertinent information for our self nor our readee.) Once we have a hold of curiosity this is what happens:

1. We intend to see.
2. We see.
3. We talk about what we see.
4. We know what the heck we are seeing.

There can be a lot of waiting involved.

We close our eyes, we focus our attention on the question at hand and we wait. We wait for pictures, moving images, flashes of insight. We sit in stillness with what we see. We are waiting for the depth of what we are looking at to unfold like a flower opening in the morning. This allows us to make sense of it. Then the reading takes off. It gets easier. The pipe line to our own visionary experience expands. We ride these series of pictures like a wave, white knuckled, but then, we start to have fun.

Sometimes the only way to know is to talk about what we are seeing. The action of speaking puts us on top of the wave. We don't know where the vision is going to take us, but we enjoy the ride.

This is true for our life as well. Speak your truth and see where your wave takes you.

Trusting what you see

2011-10-19T23:16:00.004-04:00

I've been trying to get out West since February to visit my mom. Each time I entered the planning stage it didn't feel right.

Single mothering, 1st time teaching the clairvoyant program, biz owner... there wasn't much room to travel. Though I doubted myself and had to handle the feeling of not getting it together in time, I knew without knowing why, I was supposed to stay on Cape. I stayed put and she came here. ( I'll omit the plethora of mother guilt sent my way in these moments.)

Come October, I sat in front of my calendar and my intuition said, "There's room now." And there it was; an open date after student graduation ceremonies, the beginning of a new program which incoporated skype, and financial breathing room. All my cards had lined up. We could travel!

So when my mom said, "No, I may have jury duty," I was perplexed.

My focus for this year has been to listen to my internal timing. And I felt I was doing it in regards to this trip. It felt right for me, which in the moment meant it was right for everyone involved too.

I had spent the year learning to manage my growth along side my son's and my business's. I was clearly part of a larger whole and adjusting to how self/ family/ business delicately danced alongside each other as one unit. I was attending to what each of us needed in order to sprout new roots and leaves. I knew that what each of us needed would benefit the whole. I thought this right timing would extend to include my mom.

So why wasn't this working? When my mom said, "I can't. I have jury duty," it didn't make sense. My son had been talking about us flying on a plane to visit Grandma for a month and his psychic future tellings hadn't changed a bit, in fact they had sped up. He was mentioning our trip every couple of days. And for me, as I said, there was finally room on many levels and I could choose a date.

Since I am psychic, I decided to be one in the moment. I looked at the energy of the week we wanted to visit and I said, "Well it doesn't look like that week you will have to go in. It really looks open and we can spend time together," and she said, "I can't make a decision based on you being psychic. What if we have no time together? We have to wait till after jury duty."

It felt like an arbitrary wall was raised. It felt like she was raising the wall. Psychic or not, it's up to the person you are talking to to look at what you are communicating as spirit. My mother would not be doing that. I acquiesced to what she could see.

Though I wanted to say, "Snap out of it." (The jury duty dates had been partially involved in an earlier travel debacle with again, much guilt, as I couldn't travel before the dreaded dates.) "Ooooh mom! It's those silly dates again. So arbitrary." OK, so be it.

I've created experiences through the feeling of this has to happen. They aren't fun. It's not a joyous experience to create from the feeling of desperation.

But this was different. The trip felt so clear and not a selfish creation. I wished she could see what I saw, but knew she couldn't. We got off the phone.

I felt disappointed in the universe. What's up with this not working? It really does look open for us to spend time together and my psychic son keeps mentioning it too.

After a few days I looked into her ideas for other dates and was soon awash in the confusion that matched earlier attempts. Uugh. Here we go again.

A week later my mom called.

"Now you have to understand, I wasn't able to ___________ and I've got this really bad ______ and it's because of __________ and you HAVE to hear all this before I tell you...."

I cut her off; I knew what she was avoiding saying, something she didn't want to admit. Here's how she put it later in a message, "The downside to this is that now I'm going to have to listen to you gloat all the time, and tell me over and over and over what a good psychic you are. Call me."

I blurted out, "YOU DO NOT HAVE JURY DUTY!"

Long pause. "No. I finally read the pamphlet (that she hadn't read since June) and the date that I thought I started is the date to meet about my jury duty in November."

Ha.

I was not humble. "I WAS RIGHT. YOUR PSYCHIC DAUGHTER WAS RIGHT!" I laughed and laughed.

The floodgates were open. We will never be the same again.

There were frequent flyer miles open for the exact dates and times I needed, which was a week away. My flight times gave me the room to teach my night classes upon arrival in New Mexico and back on Cape. Every need was met. This matched my original intention.

And my mother, I guess, needed to see that miracles do happen. And that her daughter really is psychic.

Me? Gloat?

Nah, I just took a step in trusting myself no matter what. I'd been working on trusting my trip planning since February. I finally got my answer. When it's right, it is right for everybody, no matter what your mother says.

I asked God where my dildo was and he told me.

2011-09-21T10:32:00.009-04:00

I've had beginning students say over the years, "I don't want to be psychic!" And I giggle to myself. I use my psychic awareness for everything; how to honor a plant I'm about to cut to put in a tincture (singing is an amazing way), what is the quickest line at the grocery (based on the checker's growth period), and, "Where oh where, is my dildo?."

I'd been looking for weeks. Exasperated, I sat down at my kitchen table and said, "OK, God. Where is my dildo?" I got a very clear answer. And it was there. Thank you!

I had to laugh. I'd been going to the same places in my house where it usually was. Not there. I joked about asking my students to do a reading to find it. I kept telepathically sending hellos to it. All I got was a round about.

One day, out of pure frustration with my own ineptitude to gather the information I needed, I sent my question to the highest authority on answers- not myself in that moment- and I got one.

I wasn't able to get through my own growth to find the darn thing. Sometimes you just have to ask, and it doesn't matter what the question is. Everyone needs help once and a while.

I hope you're giggling at this point. Because this is the silliest post I've done! But soooo true.

So why not use your (psychic) awareness to get your answers. Yes, ladies, it's practical. It's concrete. These tools work. These are not your woo woo psychic tools. Your awareness helps you get what you want the most in a particular moment.

Here are some concrete ways to use your tools of awareness.

- find the bathroom at a store when your 5 year old has to pee

- ask your healing guide to find something you dropped and get it back to you; and it happens

- you know which road to take without your gps

- just when you need to repair your house you receive a sizable grant to fix it up

- talk to the spirit of your baby before she's born

- you know you are going to date someone just by passing them in the hallway

- you can hand a person what they need before the ask for it

- you can teach others how to heal

- you know how to protect yourself from your boss's need to be constantly healed

- when the debby downers are about to arrive at your office, you see the energy change in advance and you leave beforehand

- you know how to create a new job

- you listen to when you need to give to yourself and it feels super

- you turn on the radio just as your favorite song comes on

- your dreamed the exact amount of the surprise check that arrives in the mail that day

- when you get a call to audition out of town, you know in advance that you're really going for another reason and he's wonderful

- you know who's calling without looking at your phone or hearing a special ring

- you see a vision of your partner cheating as if it's happening in front of you, so when he calls and says work ran late, you know a truth from a lie

- your dream warned you about your really bad day, so when it comes, you're amused

- you know the sex of your child without the ultrasound

- tonight you wish that dinner was cooked for you and a friend invites you over for a meal

- you know in advance what your next partner does for a living

- you know when love is coming into your life

- you can find your sex toys

How you have used your awareness? These are our daily miracles.

Spiritual awareness vs safety

2011-06-25T15:40:00.004-04:00

Atheist energy has got a hold of one of my students.

It has pulled him by the scruff into the abyss of "nothing's changing," which brought him to his knees staring into "maybe I shouldn't do this training right now," and finally body dangling precariously on the edge, he slipped into "I want do somethinggggg else, anythinggggg else."

He is struggling with a white energy around his 7th chakra. It has been there since childhood. This energy came into his space to protect him from traumatic experiences with his family. These experiences were overwhelming to his child body and psyche.

When the white energy came in, it created a barrier between his spirit and body experiences. It denied the the trauma, which helped him stay near himself. The end result was this core belief: "I have to deny my feeling experiences."

Flash forward 35 years. He is a busy man who works to help others and puts himself last. He is a martyr to his life.

In his energy awareness training has begun to see himself as spirit. His inner light has turned on. But way back when, he brought in an energy that helped him deny his truth. Now it wants to deny he's changing. He's banging against a door he shut. He is caught between his growing spiritual awareness and his need to be safe.

The atheist energy in his space serves a clear purpose. It denies his spiritual experience and he feels safe.

So what is a next step at this stop gap when we want to shift to a greater spiritual awareness of ourselves?

Here are some ideas:

acknowledge our creative response to a past experience
see the pattern we created to handle it
grieve the loss
get a healing
meditate
allow the new to come in

The first step is awareness. We bring our attention to the pattern. We notice the constant running, non-stop work, handling the weight of others problems, the feeling there is no room to breathe.

We sit still with ourselves and give ourselves permission to know our multiverse of sensory experiences. Slowly, we sift through our feelings to recognize what is true for us.

If we are denying a past time pain, in meditation we can allow it to wash down through our grounding cord into the earth. This brings more of our life force energy into present time.

We get a healing. A healing validates our self no matter what we are releasing. And here is a hint; we are not what we are releasing!

So what allows our new self to emerge? We forgive ourselves. We forgive our response to a moment that overwhelmed us. It's a beautiful and fulfilling moment when we stop fighting our pain and let it be.

When we start energy awareness training we don't expect to be fighting decisions we've made in the past to have our spiritual truth in present time. But sometimes as we grow, the best we were able to do for ourselves in the past, no longer serves us now.

Can I get a grounding cord, Please!

2011-05-10T16:47:00.000-04:00

When our proverbial panties are in a jam and we can't quite accomplish anything, a grounding cord can solve our predicament.

If we feel bent out of shape, it's because we are. Our aura, the bubble of our spiritual information around us, goes cock-eyed. We haven't realized we can let go, as we create. Grounding can be our first approach in shifting from overload into what matters.

Grounding is as simple as creating a connection from our first chakra to the center of the earth. Take 5 to give yourself a new approach to being.

Let's start here: create an image of a cord - a color of light ... a tree trunk ... a rope ... or a slide. Connect it to your first chakra, at the base of your spine. Allow gravity to take the cord to the center of the planet. Listen for it to connect to the center of the earth. Play with the idea that you can release what you don't need through the grounding cord into the planet.

Release, anything. Truly. Allow this sensation of grounding and releasing to take over your attention for a few minutes. Notice how you begin to feel.

You might feel a melting around the base of our spine or in between your sits bones. You may feel heavier and lighter simalteaneously as you settle within your self. Ground, release, settle it, breathe. Become aware of your kinesthetic response to this spiritual tool.

Our first chakra holds our survival information. Our grounding cord releases energy that has been stored in our body, energy body and aura. As we allow ourselves to release energy that no longer serves us, we create more room for our spiritual truth within our consciousness vs misunderstanding who we are. We are not the energy that keeps us in a constant state of survival.

Let me explain this. We don't need to hold on for dear life with our grounding cord. We can release the sense of having to hold on for dear life, through our grounding cord. This is a picture that sits within our first chakra and programs our sense of survival, to overload. Allow this picture to release.

Grounding is the first step in embodying ourselves. When we learn energy tools, we start our path to recognizing ourselves as spirit within our body. We learn these tools as visualized concepts, then they become an energetic truth and a body sensation. Grounding will feel real. And you won't want to go back to being a balloon above your life.

Self Love

2011-04-16T22:17:00.001-04:00

How often do we feel in love with our self; the feeling of fully radiating from within our sense of connection to our soul. Self love is what Gallway Kinnell talks about in his poem, St. Francis and the Sow, he writes, "For everything flowers from within of self blessing." This is the space of expanding from within. This is the God of our Heart.

All That Is, I Am, I Am Love speak to the connections between our soul and god. Self love is our connection between our own soul and who we are right now. It is our ability to give that space of All That Is, I AM, I Am Love to ourselves in the body. An action verb, a state of being, self love is our ability to receive fully who we are and bring it into the physical. When we do this peace follows, our energy settles within our body, joy is simple and present.

In the Gospel of Mary, Jesus says, "Acquire my peace within yourselves!" Jesus is in constant contact with the communication between his soul and God and he continually brings that communication within himself as a physical being and then out into his world. The universe within is who we are right here and now, then further within lives our soul and deeper inside we have God. Mother Teresa, Quan Yin, Ghandi, Jesus, they gave so much to others because they gave so much of themselves to themselves. They did not deny themselves.

Acknowledging the God of our Heart doesn't solve our life problems, we don't have all our answers; we have now, and the peace of not knowing what to do, and the peace of knowing instinctually what we need and the ability to follow that next best step for ourselves. But mostly its the ability to hear ourselves.

We start with conceptualizing self love and then dive in to the reality, the courageous reality of self love which moves throughout our thoughts, feelings, inner talk and then into actions. With the God of our heart, we are not reaching out to God, "Come and fill me"; to the other, "Come and fill me"; to a job, "Come and fill me"; we are reaching within, "Come and fill me." We are settling within our own god nature. This place is full and knows what is best for us; it is a close voice calling us home.

We are not here to become I AM, we already are that. We are here to become, as Mary says in The Gospel of Mary, divinely human, "He is calling us to become fully human." The epiphany space of I Am Love melts, into something not as overwhelming but more constant, we are called into the simplicity of giving to our self. When this has become internalized, self-fulfillment, then, we allow this feeling to expand into our world. And we become the change-maker the world asks of us now.

The cry for other has been replaced by a calm reassurance within ourselves, so that the other can stand separate from us in their own god nature. The first person we need to share our self with is our self. Allow yourself to wake up slowly in your internal garden, the god of your heart.

Excerpt from a sermon on Self Love
Unity Rhode Island

I'm Happy While I'm Feeling Crappy.

2011-03-03T17:19:00.014-05:00

Do you recognize this statement: "I want everything to change, but I don't want to change too drastically!" I've been told this many times by new students, though it comes out like this: "How will my life be if I do this work? Will I be OK and happy?" They want to do the training but in the moment of deciding to commit their heads go into overdrive and their spiritual knowing gets bottled up.

When we take action on the feeling of wanting everything to change, we enter these mystical realms: The Land of I Don't Know, The Isle of Cultivating Curiosity, and The Compost Pile of I'm Happy While I'm Feeling Crappy.

We have to enter these new lands of learning if we want to change. It goes something like this, "I have no clue. I'm curious. I can laugh." Simple, somewhat ridiculous, these three ways of being allow for the majority of our growth.

When we find ourselves deeply drawn to a particular training, this is where trust comes in. We don't know how we will get our answers. We enter with a curious mind. We smile while we're in the compost pile as our life's answers surround us. Our answers aren't always pretty. Life in motion is not perfect. OK and Happy are points on a dial, not stopping points. Where our essence is in relationship to the movement of our lives is the question to look at.

I phoned an old friend and teacher and asked, "When you did the training, did you expect to be happy while doing it?" "NO!," she said and laughed. She just knew she had to do it and by the end of her training she knew why. I felt the same way. I wanted more "room" for myself. But I never had the expectation in the beginning that I would reach a state of stillness and perfection by the end of the year. There are many trainings that will tell you where you will be once you've graduated and how rosy life will be then. Each of us has taken years to assimilate, undoing this to attend to our essence is a simple and lengthy task.

I love the way Sandra Kovacs puts it in her article, The Whys and Ways To Meditate.
http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/Whys_And_Ways_To_Meditate.html
She re-frames it so that meditation is not the Answer but gets us to our answers. Meditation is the tool that brings us into our spiritual growth and shows us the way out of it. While we meditate, we meet ourselves. This is what Inner Alchemy and Inner Light teach; a way to meet ourselves.

I do not know what you will do with the tools you learn in the training once you bring your essence into your body. Whether you decide to create miracles, mock-ups or mash-ups for yourself is up to you.

Can I sell or package this work to reassure the folks in the midst of the daunting fears that arise when we are about to say YES to ourselves? Well... I can share some of the curriculum: grounding, running earth and cosmic energy, having seniority over the guides in our space, learning how to create mental image pictures, seeing the distance we've created between our spirit and our body and being able to change it, reading the layers of our aura, and giving, giving, giving to ourselves... For those who want reassurance, I can remind you that:

-the tools work when you use them
-you are capable of understanding your grace lives through the door you are resisting the most
-your commitment can move mountains of old beliefs and uncover amazing beauty within
-when you access your spiritual information within you won't want to look anywhere else
- to recognize your voice you need to trust the quiet voice behind the loud ones
- these tools mean nothing on the page but everything in action

I will not tell you it'll be OK. Don't ask me to be in collusion with your lack of commitment. I will not meet you there. This is what you are wanting to shift through. I stay in the space of possibility. I see you in your next step as spirit which may be different than what you are aware of on a body level. You need to open the door and walk through.

This work is not what you expect. It never is. It is way more than you or I can imagine. So let's answer the original question, "Are the Inner Alchemy Classes or the Inner Light Program gonna make me happy?" No, but you'll get your answers. You are the miracle worker. Being OK is small gesture compared to the miracles you haven't imagined. Spend time dreaming the dreams you haven't yet dreamed and this is what the Inner Alchemy and Inner Light Program offer.

Junk Mail from God

2011-02-14T15:56:00.002-05:00

For many years now, All-that-is has spoken to me through junk mail. Unsolicited Teacher Resource magazines, Feild and Stream and Essence have thudded their way into my mail box with my name etched onto a glued piece of paper. As each arrived, I had the same response, "Huh?." Initially I was dumbfounded, I'd ask, "What do I need Field and Stream for? I don't hunt."

When I received the first magazine, I knew it was a sign. But the future it suggested had no ties to my present. So I noted the future poking it's head into my present and let it rest.

As each new mag presented itself, I was intrigued. These random, slightly absurd calling cards from She-who-cannot-be-named had my current address printed on the front page in tidy letters. How did she know I moved from Maryland to California to Cape Cod?

The Absolute Truth had sent me a Teacher's Resource Magazine as the first informal glossy. Three years later, I was a teacher, struggling to teach 8 year olds the finer points of theatre at a summer program in Alaska.

One fresh morning the children were hiding in the science cabinets and trash cans when I came in from the staff meeting. We had a good laugh until I could not talk one particular stubborn child out of the trash can. So I pulled the can up to the circle and the oh-stubborn-one did her morning warm-ups in there, until she fell over as she stretched.

Her tumbling set me off on a 17 year series of teaching jobs. I taught all ages, but it was the youngest of my students that I learned the most from.

I had been gently led back into my childhood, as a teacher. I had to reclaim my inner and abandoned girl child who had forgotten how to play and hid from others. I needed to learn it was ok to make a mistake. And God sent me the sign through junk mail.

I never did question the Cosmic Controller, why not O, The Oprah Magazine or The Sun? I assumed she was decisive in her choices. As the supplements wound up in my post, if I was feeling stuck, I accepted my junk mail with a sense of curious dread, "Now what? Which direction am I supposed to head in, that I am obviously missing?" Why else would I receive these directional love notes?

But, I hadn't missed anything. The installments I received were spiritual hellos about my path. Hello Michelle, this is coming. Michelle, you might enjoy this, Hello. And Hello, you have some answers in this direction.

I knew I would have to decipher her messages and enjoy my future as it landed in my lap.

Black Birds

2011-01-06T23:40:00.001-05:00

Sometimes, as a psychic teacher, I think, "My students hate me."

As I reflect on a recent class, I lash myself with psychic wet noodles. I resist giving myself any kudos for the class I just taught and focus on the one really wrong thing I said to a student.

I weep on my healing guide's shoulder.

I was wrong because that student couldn't handle what I said. I poked a picture in her space. A picture is an energized event, belief, value. It may or may not have originated from the spirit who owns the body. But it lives within our aura, energy body, chakra and can determine our reactions.

We can believe our pictures. We can recognize they are not our spirit. We can discern which ones are us. Or we can have no separation from our pictures, no consciousness that breathes in between our spirit and the picture. So when a teacher pokes one, and communicates the difference between the spirit and the picture, there is always a reaction: laughter, confusion, anger, disbelief, a sudden discontent within, "Who am I, if not this picture?"

This particular student's angst, has oozed into my space. It has effectively doused my enthusiasm; I am pouting, sighing and rolling my eyes at myself. "Why am I even doing this anyway?”, I ask. I’m feeling guilt for having touched a subject that made my student close down, shame for speaking up, and I’m questioning my ability as a teacher.

This is what happens when I lose my space to energy that is not mine: serious self doubt. After 18 years of this work, I am walloped by the rawness of certain moments. The length of time I’ve practiced my psychic tools has shortened the time in between the rawness and my ability to find my answers. Usually.

I make a decision. I allow the discomfort of the moment to lead me to an answer. I put on my psychic-Nancy-Drew-hat. I step out of the mass of feeling information that has taken me over. I'm doing this in a split second; the self-flagellation hasn't stopped. I've shifted my perspective of it. I find a moment of stillness inside and ask, "Where is this coming from?"

Then I recognize the energy traveling down my female line. It is an energetic place which has a physical structure within our female body, two lines of energy between our 6th chakra and our ovaries.

I am facing the firing squad. Generations of grandmothers and great grandmothers hurl their opinion at me. Aghast with my word choice, my blatant disregard for their rules, they say, "Women do not speak like that," and stamp their feet. There I am, right there, alone underneath a telephone line hung low with ravens cawing their discontent, stomping a beat into the phone wires.

Their disapproval has registered at an instinctual level. It bypassed all my psychic tools and went right for the womb, which I thought was mine, but they are currently claiming as their own.

Ah... the energy of the female line. When I least expect it, I can be pummeled by a century old mentality which leaves me little room for breath. My Puritan grandmothers and Scottish Catholic great-grandmothers. These days I experience this momentary loss of self (ie: pressure to be perfect) mostly as a Psychic teacher and Minister. I have eradicated the effect of our differences out of my personal communication; I can say the wrong thing. But I can't quite move them out of my teaching space.

This is my student's challenge as well - allowing herself the freedom to say what needs to be said in the moment - otherwise I wouldn't be contemplating self-loathing so acutely. We are beautiful mirrors.

If I am not responsible for everything that happens around me, my grandmothers become uncomfortable. This is what prompts their pestering for my perfect communication skills. This is their trick to keeping me in line. "Tow the (female) line, Michelle," they squawk. This translates to, “Don’t push people’s buttons. Don’t say anything wrong.”

In a psychic reading, I tell my clients what I see. If they are off their path, I tell them. I have a gentle way to do this. I name the energy that is getting in the way and speak directly to the recipient. But when I teach or talk at a Church, the recipients I speak to can be neatly bundled energetically with their ancestors, who may not give them room to hear. This is where it gets messy. There may be no separation between the spirit in the body and their family's truth for them.

I bumble my way into truth. I sidestep my grandmothers' tether in order to share an opportunity a student can bring into her life. I try to set it up in a way that can be heard. But sometimes a student isn't ready to make a break from her inner black birds. And everybody flies away.