2012 Yearbook

I almost feel ready to get back to where I left off with my formal presentation.  At the end of 2011 I thought I was game to forge ahead with the chapters on emotional energy between humans, how it flows, how it gets stuck and what we can do about it.  The outline is all there, it's just that I only really had an intellectual understanding of the concepts that I was attempting to write about and since the whole premise of my writing is that it is based on experiential learning, I had to get back in the class room so to speak.  

Unfortunately, or fortunately, for me there isn't a Hogwart's School of Wizardy for me to attend.  My classroom, peers and teachers are composed of the moments of my life, awake or asleep.  School does not let out for summer and there are no breaks, not even a weekend.  Every moment of every day that I am alive on Earth is education.

I know myself well enough to understand my learning style.  It is the same in the actual classroom as it is in Earth School.  I pay attention as well as I can, I ask a lot of questions and I don't take notes.  I let the information pour into my consciousness until my mind wanders off in a day dream and then I take a walk.  The steps clear out the confusion and the ideas get organized.  I hardly ever do homework and I'm not particularly studious, I'd rather go out and play.  The result is that with very little effort I am a straight C student. :)

But grades don't matter in spirit school. It's a pass/fail structure with endless opportunities to retake a lesson, in fact it is required that one retake the lesson until the level is completed.  There is no competition or shame in failure, it's simply the way it is and every student is as valued as the next.

Please enjoy some special moments from my 2012 yearbook, I am a recent graduate from Rock N' Roll High School. :)

A class I had to retake about a thousand times.

With Satya, my mentor and friend

Hmmmmmmm

Animal Allies  

I am whole and complete in myself. I am whole and complete in the Oneness.

MORE:

You know, homework is not such a bad thing and it would serve me well to do it as it trains students to take the test.  And another thing, it's probably going to take some time before I feel comfortable writing about what I learned about emotional energy because what I found out is that there is an unseen world effecting our human interactions and it is something I am still making sense of after getting rocked, pitched, rolled and smashed.   Do you all even need to know? Do I need to tell?   I love my life and the interest and intrigue but there have been many, many times that I have wished I was leading a more simple life instead of being on this mystical trip and the real life Sookie Stackhouse...  I am reminded of a dream I had about three years ago that was a response to me wondering why my life was so difficult.

Dream Sequence ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I'm a younger version of myself, maybe 10 or 11, my classmates are boarding a school bus to travel to a band competition.  At the last minute I decide not to board the bus and walk instead.  The bus pulls away and I am alone on a country road.   Happily jaunting down the lane, i enjoy the sights and sounds of the bucolic scene.  Up ahead there is a fork in the road,  I take a left and find myself in a clearing in the dark woods.  Something in there frightens me and I run as fast as I can to catch up with the bus.  When I do finally catch up with the bus my friends ask me why I didn't get on in the first place, to which I responded, "I choose to walk!"

~~~~~~~ End Dream Sequence

Yes, I chose to walk.  And even though my life has been composed of a lot of trials and error, even in those traumas and tragedies I have been extremely lucky.  Everything always works out in my favor in the most interesting of ways and for that I am truly grateful.  

The New Age, Crystals, Ascension, 2012 etc...

photography by Emilie Rudy

In 2006 I was promoting my new private massage therapy practice by giving chair massage at Richmond's own homegrown health food store, Ellwood Thompson's.    One of these days a woman named Jackie sat down in my chair for a little work.   Her back was in spasm and I asked her why she thought her back was so tense.  She told me that she had been stuck at O'Hare airport for seven hours while her recent return flight to Richmond was delayed in Chicago.  I focused into what I was doing, exhaling through my heart and hands.  After a few minutes she spoke up and told me the REAL reason why she thought her back hurt.

Apparently Jackie was working on sprouting wings.  Without missing a beat I encouraged her to keep it up! Before too long she would never have to worry about being stuck in an airport again.  Jackie thought that was hilarious and so she opened up quite a lot more and started to school me on 2012 and Ascension, something I had not yet heard of.

She said that I would have to become a vegetarian or else I wouldn't be able to live after 2012 in the "new vibration".   She asked me if I had any Arkansas Quartz crystal, I did not.  "Arkansas Quartz crystal is the best clear quartz you can get.  It vibrates at a particularly high frequency and amplifies your energy.  You should take baths with Arkansas quartz and put it in your massage room."  She reached into her purse and produced a two-inch long quartz point which she presented to me as a gift.
She instructed me to carry it in my pocket.

I graciously accepted the crystal as it was shiny and pretty but I didn't put much stock into the knowledge Jackie was dropping.  Even though we connected on some level, she seemed a bit um, crazy.  The crystal ended up in a plant and there it stayed until the autumn of 2010.  There is something about a Kundalini Awakening energy surge that can kinda rearrange one's thinking... I started carrying that crystal in my pocket just incase, I needed all the help I could get!

So here we are, December 21, 2012, the long fabled date has come and gone without notable incident heralding an ending and new beginning.   Gauging by the variety of facebook posts on the subject of the "End of the World" it is obvious that one hurdle a lot of people have in understanding the 2012 shift is a simple misunderstanding of what words actually mean.  "Apocalypse" refers to the End Times described in the Book Of Revelations and has nothing to do with the end of the Mayan calendar,
2012 was never about The Apocalypse.


Honestly, I have no idea of the origins of the 2012 Ascension and how the Mayan calendar and the New Age are tied together.   There is a lot of talk in the New Age community about channeled messages from benevolent extra terrestrials that describe the supposed changes our planet and species are experiencing.  They describe a raising in vibration and subsequent Ascension into another dimension and the "end of duality" which is the inherent nature of life on Earth.  (For those who don't know, duality is the oppositional quality of everything here on Earth: good/bad, light/dark , etc.)   Personally, I haven't communicated with any extra terrestrials, so while the stories are nice to read and may provide hope to their audience,  I just can't believe in E.T.s but I will do my best to remain open to the possibility of their existence until proven otherwise.   I wouldn't want to miss out on something so amazing due to rigid and inflexible thinking.

I know that I have experienced a radical transformation over the last two and a half years.   Even though I had an intellectual understanding of emotional energy being stored in the body and I even had some amazing experiences of releasing that energy with Jin Shin Do, there was (and still is some) a lot to release.  It wasn't until I was well into my Kundalini Awakening that I began to let go of even more of that held energy in an effort to save my life.  I'm not being melodramatic when I say that holding and generating negative emotional energy almost killed me.

You see, the thing is we have a choice. In every moment of our lives we make choices to expand or contract;  to open our hearts and minds to flexibility, forgiveness and compassion or to shrink up in defensiveness, reinforcing hardened ideas and emotions and thereby further separating one's self from the rest of the world.   That is the lesson of the "New Age".  It's a time when humans become awakened to their power and make best choices for themselves and others in the effort to spread the joy we feel in expansion and I think it is just a natural evolution of our species rather than an Earth changing cataclysm.  What will you choose?



  

On Energy Work

photography by Emilie Rudy

There is another branch of my education and experience as a body mind spirit healer/ explorer and that has to do with energy work.

My first exposure to the concept of energy work was while in massage school.    My class had a guest lecturer on the subject.  I remember thinking very dismissively of the presenter, she seemed like a total kook!  She was attempting to teach us how to see auras and I was very cynical about the whole deal, I openly challenged her in front of the entire class.   I just didn't buy it but the truth is I didn't know much of anything at all!  I was being foolish and arrogant to think that such a thing was unreal, I just had yet to experience it.

Now that I am much older and wiser,  I have determined that there are a least three different categories of energy work.  The most basic way that a human being does energy work is by interacting with other humans, plants and animals.   We are exchanging energy in our emotional interactions.  Just consider for a moment how if you are around someone who is being mean and hateful, you might notice that you have been altered by the exchange.   Consider how it feels to be around someone who is warm, open and loving.  Our very nature is energy exchange and we wield an awesome power.  Unfortunately, it seems to me that most people are unaware of their power and there is quite a bit of unskillful use of this power going on here on Earth.

Another way that human beings can do energy work is to use chi building exercises.  Using conscious breathing techniques, visualization and postures or forms one can make a concerted effort to harness life force energy for their own benefit.  One can also learn how to project that harnessed energy to another for mutual use.   Some examples of this type of practice include Thai Chi,  yoga, hara breathing, Qi Gong etc.  Mantak Chia is a well known teacher and author on the subject of this type of energy work.

The third way that energy work is done is through use of spiritual beings or "source energy" and this is the type that I had the most resistance to, of course.   Even after experiencing this type of energy work several times I still had a huge wall up to the idea that one could channel spiritual energy.   It wasn't until after I experienced Kundalini rising that I could let my mind open to the possibility of God (for lack of a better word to describe the awesome power of creation...) and the normal human ability to access that power.  I'll tell you about some of my experiences with this type of energy work.

The year was 2004, I was about 22ish and I answered an ad displayed in a coffee shop, something about being desirous of healing.  The guy on the other end of the phone call told me that he was graduating from the Barbara Brennan School of Healing Science and that he was offering free sessions to anyone who might be interested, it was a requirement for graduation to work with some random people.  I had no idea what the Barbara Brennan School of Healing Science was all about but it didn't matter, I was into exploring new ideas.

I arrived at the appointment and a very nice looking man, about 30 greeted me at the door.    He explained how I would lay on the massage table fully clothed, face up and he asked if it would be all right if he touched my feet and some other non invasive places on my body.  I made myself comfortable with a blanket up to my chin, closed my eyes and took a few neat breaths.  A moment passed when the man asked me if I had felt that.  Curiously, I had felt that.

That felt like a cloud blanket had been pulled up over my body but there was not another blanket, he had simply moved his hands which were a few inches away from my body,  from my feet to my head.  "Good," he said and then began about an hour where I felt completely dissolved, the confines of my skin no longer existed and I found myself in what could only be described as a river of rainbow light. I felt as vibrant and radiant as the light,  ab.so.lute.ly freaking gorgeous! I remember thinking that I never wanted this feeling to end. 

The effects of the "energy healing session" lasted for a week and would have probably kept on giving had I not decided to fall back into some bad habits.  I called the guy up and asked him if we could do more work.   We ended up doing seven more sessions but it was all dialogue, no more energy work.   I found the appointments useful, they catalyzed a lot growth for sure.  I had a strange dream shortly after receiving the first session.

It was me at the age I was then, 22ish.  I'm with a kindergarten class at the top of the Statue of Liberty when the earth quakes.  The children fall to the floor in the tremor.  A little girl with white blond hair is crying, I go to her.  I hold her in my arms with my hands over her heart and belly.  Light pours out of my hands, filling the room with beams of bright white light. When I wake up I have my hands over my heart and belly.

After the dream I started to experiment with "exhaling through my heart and hands" during my massage sessions.  I don't think I read it anywhere, it's just something I found myself doing.   My clients would say they could feel some energy and I had no idea what they were talking about.   Breathing that way just made it easier and more fun to do the session.  It let all of the kinetic energy of the massage flow through my body like water.

It would be several years before I experienced energy work again and even more years before I accepted the possibility that human beings could channel energy from a spiritual source.  Even after receiving several sessions of energy work where I experienced profound sensations of energy moving, leaving and arriving in my body,  I was STILL being cynical and so I reminded myself of what I always say: I don't have beliefs, I have experiences.  Until I experience something I am open to the possibility that it might exist rather than closed.  I decided to be open to the spiritual energy work and stepped through a doorway into a world where anything is possible and we can rewrite our stories to change the course of our lives with the profound and simple power of intention and connection to the divine through our hearts.    

Karma Tornado

Photography by Emilie Rudy

The day after the Big Event instead of finding myself feeling elated and joyful, I felt awful.  I looked at the mold on the ceiling, I thought about my degrading work situation and I wondered just what the hell am I doing here in Richmond, Virginia anyway!?!?  I called my friend Jillian to discuss.

Jillian is the right kinda girl to call when you're thinking about making a big leap.  In 2005 she sold most of her stuff and bought a one-way ticket to India.  And just a few years before that she again sold most of her stuff and moved across the country with her then boyfriend.  Jillian is a whimsical person and she inspired me to wear bright colors rather than the earth tones I was accustomed to.  If not for Jillian's enthusiasm to GO FOR IT,  I would have never followed through with making giant adult sized hula hoops, it would have remained in my notebook full of good ideas.  So I called her up and we talked about maybe heading out to California to study with Iona for a while.  That idea never panned out because a few weeks later, at around five in the morning, I got a text from Jillian letting me know that she had gotten married.  I didn't even know she had a boyfriend...!

After chatting with Jillian I left my apartment to met up with a friend for lunch.  It wasn't until I was out and about that strange and interesting happenings began to occur in rapid succession.  I guess you could call it extreme synchronicity.  I found myself running into people who I hadn't seen in years and a lot of these folks there was some lingering negativity left over from some previous unskillful interaction.    In a state of grace, I let my heart soften to all of these people just so naturally.  I didn't care to hold a grudge.  Along with these interesting meetings came intense waves of energy through my body or a numbing effect. Like my head would get super tingly or my left arm would go numb right before something odd was about to happen.   I made a joke that I was experiencing a "Karma Tornado"  only later understanding that yes, that was exactly what was happening... I also found myself just knowing things that I shouldn't know.  For instance, I knew I was going to be in car accident.


It was 6am and I was on my way to the river with my dog, Henry.  My ex-boyfriend's house is tucked inside a nature preserve and public park.   Several miles of well kept trails wind through a forest, meadow, pond and along the James River, The King's River as it once was called by the Powhattan band of Algonquin Indians as well as the early English settlers, referring to two very different Kings of course.    When I lived in the house with him, I walked those trails every day with Henry, The Prince of the Wetlands, a title befitting of this very fine yellow Labrador specimen.  I was on my way there to do some chi flow exercises and to return Henry to my ex after our weekend together.    Something inside of me just knew that I was about to be rear-ended.

WHAM.  I was the first car stopped at a stoplight at the intersection of Jahke and Forest Hill Avenue. Henry fell down to the floor of the back seat as my vehicle lurched forward into the intersection.   With luck the intersecting traffic had yet to start rolling and so I was able to recover rather quickly without further collision.   A bit discombobulated, I got out of my car to see what had happened.  My first inclination was to be PISSED at the driver who caused this wreck.  It was actually the car behind me that had been rear-ended and absorbed most of the impact, my bumper was crushed but the car behind me was totaled.  A few deep breaths and I was able to shift out of my angry reaction and into a mode of crisis intervention.  Luckily no one was seriously injured, turns out the driver of the offending vehicle had dropped his cell phone and was reaching for it when the collision occurred.

This was the kind of scenario that could go horribly wrong for all the wrong reasons.  If any of us there had let our attachment to personal property and our schedules get in the way of being decent human beings, it could have gotten very Jerry Springer, very fast.  An already chaotic scene was tempered and soothed by my willingness to squash the drama and have compassion.  Of course the whole shebang was laden with even more odd and interesting synchronicity...     My life just went on like that for about two weeks.


The intensity died down and it seemed like life was getting back to what I had previously known as Normal.   Actually my Kundalini Awakening was just getting started.   Normal was now completely redefined.  I had embarked on a long strange trip, one that would activate and purify my chakras.  No longer would "Chakra" be a concept that I had only a vague intellectual understanding of,  I now had real life experiential relationship with my chakras in my physical body.  I didn't have a map of how a Kundalini Awakening would unfold, I had to figure it out with my own wily wit and admittedly, I wasn't always in full possession of my that...


I could write AN ENCYCLOPEDIA about the lessons I have learned (still learning) about myself and my personal karma, karma in general, compassion, love, free will, the mind/body connection, expansion and contraction...  Light and Dark.  Good and Evil.  Fear and Trust.  Duality, Mother Earth and the true power of humanity.  Through willingness to change and face my own phoniness,  I  am reclaiming my original nature as a powerful Light Bearer of Love and I am developing methods for others to do so if they so choose.  

If the end result sounds good to you get started by bringing your awareness to your body, get in your body!   The rest will fall into place, (PAY ATTENTION!)  in perfect order, with your own special "flavor".  My spiritual awakening probably tastes a lot like Chai, Curry, nectar, sunshine, blood, feces and dirt...  Its like one of those "Blizzard" concoctions.  Hey, I have to be completely honest here, if you are going through a spiritual awakening, it is very likely that you will occasionally eat shit but that the next sip will taste better and then you'll eat shit again.  And then you'll sip honey.  And then more shit.  Bon Appetit!    

Worth Mentioning

I am writing this blog some two years on the other side of a mystical experience that dramatically changed my life.  Before I go forward and explain to you how Kundalini transformed me,  I think I should fill in a few details.

Om Namah Shivaya Om  (AUM NA MA SHEE VAI YA AUM).  "Greeting and Salutations to all that which I am capable of becoming."  I started to chant this mantra to Shiva, God of Transformation in earnest during the twixting phase.  I needed transformation.

By no means am I a religious scholar.  Everything I know about Hinduism, I learned via Google... or "The Oracle" as I like to call it.   I wasn't a religious or devotional person either.  I did not yet understand how the mind worked and how it literally creates reality.  I wasn't awakened, basically.  I was still stuck in the dream and the lie of the "real world", which I found out is actually the Fake World and that the Real World is one where everything is energy and everything is connected and the choices that we make create ripples in the endless energy matrix that is our Earth, everything on the Earth and I assume everything else that exists beyond our planet.

I really had no idea that I could actually connect with a spiritual deity.   I had never really tried because I wasn't raised in a household that prayed to any god.  I considered myself an atheist, I didn't know that God is real or even what God actually is!  In hindsight, I see the magic weaving through my history   but because I had yet to awaken, I overlooked so much.  I was a Bobble-head too!


I didn't even know that Shiva is related to Kundalini and I really didn't know what Kundalini was either other than that it was a "psycho-spiritual force that lies dormant at the base of the spine, like a serpent..."  I'm sure I had skimmed over some literature about Kundalini but it was far from understood nor did I posses the scholarly knowledge that linked many ideas and concepts.  My Kundalini awakening unfolded with all of the right characters and happenings though despite my lack of prior awareness.   It's amazing to me how many omens I under valued or just plain didn't understand that occurred in the years leading up to the Big Event.

For instance, during one of the Jin Shin Do sessions I received in Richmond before attending the training, I came in contact with a snake.  During the session I became uncomfortable as there was a tremendous amount of energy pooling in the point over the articulation of my jawbone to my skull on the left side of my face.  I opened my mouth wide to try to work it out and in that moment a spontaneous image appeared in my mind.   A close-up of a venomous snake eye that quickly panned out to show all of the snake and also a desert scene.  Blue sky, a soaring bird and just absolute silence.
I didn't know it then but I was seeing Joshua Tree National Park, a place I had never been before and a place I didn't know I would soon be visiting as it turns out to be not very far from Iona's ranch.

I remember an afternoon during the twixt when I found two cast concrete coiled serpent garden sculptures in the garbage behind my friend's apartment.   At first glance I was startled! I took the casts home and placed them in the outer corners of my garden, tucked into the annual flower border.

After the thirty days I spent in California at the JSD training I experienced a number of shifts including the beginning of extremely vivid dreams.  Snakes were springing out of potted plants! I mentioned it to a client that I was dreaming of jumping snakes and she told me that snakes were a symbol of transformation which was the first I had heard, I had heretofore associated snakes with the Christian mythology of evil.  I believe after that I did some googling and read an explanation of Kundalini but it didn't make much sense to me because all of the sanskrit was confusing and it seemed like the author of the article was proposing that Kundalini would only rise in certain circumstances and that it required a lot of meditation and yoga practice to wake the snake.   So, I figger'd it weren't fer me...


Also worth mentioning is that I wasn't even consciously aware of how much work I was actually doing to raise Kundalini.  In the week leading up to the big burst I had been hula hooping like mad to a lively raja produced by the Osho Foundation called Kundalini Meditation.  I had also been to see my acupuncturist who I had been working with consistently for a year.  Between visits I had a birthday so to celebrate she burned five giant moxa cones in my belly button.  I also worked on myself with acupoints, using a Belt and Penetrating Vessel Release pattern created by Iona Marsaa Teegaurden.  The pattern started at the inside of the feet, worked up the inside of the legs and then used points up the center of the body to the top of the head.  The pattern influences the blood and therefore all Chi and I think I may have applied it several days in a row.  It wasn't just the brainsync.com product that created this magical happening after all.   I guess I was really asking for it,  not really knowing what it actually was.

Shiva, meet Shakti...

So on this fateful day, October 14, 2010,  I found myself at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts during my lunch break.   I was really hungry but couldn't eat much on account of the extremely perturbed emotional state I was experiencing.  I recall being in the Best Cafe and it seemed like I must be invisible to everyone around me,  it was as if the general rules of personal space were not applicable on this day.  I could feel my energy field most acutely and it felt like I was a porcupine in a hyper-state of agitation.  It was difficult to contain the tears that wanted to burst out of my eyes, my heart was weeping inside.

After lunch I went upstairs to the East Asian Art wing and sat down in front of a beautiful statue of a Dancing Shiva.   Let me take a moment to share a bit about my relationship with Shiva, Hindu God of Transformation...

For some inexplicable reason I have been drawn to Shiva since age 21.  I am not religious at all,  I considered myself an atheist.  My parents had been involved in a controversial religion and because of my upbringing I was a hard line PROVE IT TO ME kind of gal.  I didn't have beliefs, I had experiences.  Until I experienced something I tried to be open the possibilities.  I recognized the difference between skepticism and cynicism but up until this point I only had an intellectual understanding of God, Oneness, Unending Now , etc.  I was about to have an experience that would once again dramatically shift my perception of reality.

So there I sat before Shiva at the VMFA and I decided that today would be a good day to listen to for the first time the Awakening Kundalini meditation track created by Kelly Howell at Brainsync.com that I had loaded onto my ipod weeks ago.  This guided meditation contained lovely music, breathing techniques and theta wave frequencies.   Within ten minutes of listening to the track, I began to feel my body soften and relax and my mind settle down a bit.  I was getting really good results and this was the very first time I had used a Brainsync product.

My reverie was short lived because a maintenance worker came up right behind me and despite the fact that I was sitting there in a proper meditation pose with my eyes closed, breathing deeply, this guy had some work to do and so within about a foot and a half of my body he fired up a drill.   The angry feelings returned instantly.  I grabbed my purse and ran out of there in a huff escaping to a quiet lounge off of the wing.   I took a moment to regain composure and to my surprise I found myself feeling good humored about the invasion of my solitude.  This may have been the first time I realized that everything is perfect...

I went back to work to do a 90 minute session.  Something was different in my body.  Usually I flow like water, both active and passive but during this session I felt like a tree.   My body was much more solid feeling.   My client noted a difference in my performance.    I made it through the session and felt relieved that I would soon get to go home and rest after a stressful day.

At home I made dinner and tidied up a bit around my place.  I started to notice an interesting sensation in my lower abdomen,  it was a tingly warmth.  When I focused my attention on it directly it seemed to subside.  I went on about my business keeping it in my periphery, excited to see where this might lead.  The energy continued to build.

Whatever was going on inside of me, and it was inside of me not on the surface of my skin, grew in size and intensity.  Before too long, maybe an hour, this intense energy, unlike any energy I had ever experienced, was on an upward trajectory through the core of my body.  On that rise it became stuck underneath my left ribcage, creating a significant amount of pain in my body and chaos in my mind and emotional state.  A wise and knowing part of myself instructed me to go lay down in my bed and hold acupressure points.  The fearful and terrorized part of me questioned if I even knew the correct points to hold.  The wise and knowing part of myself reassured the fearful and terrorized part of me that of course I did.

It wasn't that complicated, really.  I crawled into my big, comfy bed and held the Grand Luo points on both sides of my body and began to practice Hara Breathing.  A Luo point is an acu-point that disperses energy, there are Luo points on every meridian.  The Grand Luo, on the spleen meridian, disperses energy in the whole system.  Hara breathing is a basic Toaist technique that pulls breath/energy in through the nose, down into the belly (Hara) and it is a crucial element of my Jin Shin Do training.  Within ten minutes I passed out into a deep sleep.

Two hours later I woke from a dreamless sleep.  The energy, no longer stuck under my rib cage had returned to center.  I felt calm.  The pain had transformed into a pleasant buzzing sensation.  I sat in my bed and I intuitively knew to hold points along the central and conception vessels, up the center of the front of the body and points between vertebra on the back.  I sat in my bed holding points, helping this energy raise up,  knowing that I was having a very special experience.

Around midnight the energy exited through the top of my head.  I felt calm, peaceful, good- humored and completely relaxed regarding all of the problems that had me feeling like such garbage earlier in the day.  I opened my computer and saw that my friend Georgia was online.  How perfect.

 Georgia, a yogi,  had a mystical energy experience in India a few years ago.  People in her life at the time told her it was Kundalini rising and discouraged her from working with it.  Turns out a lot of people are afraid of Kundalini.   We chatted a bit about what had just happened.

That night I slept soundly and had a vivid dream.  I was making my way alone through a Fun House.  Through a hall of mirrors, a haunted house and the Tunnel of Love, I emerged into an opening and there before me on a platform stood 6 shadowy figures of staggering height.  I knew that these figures were my guides.  I expressed my excitement to them about what I had experienced and asked how long will this be going on?   My guides directed my attention to another carnival game, the one where you try to hit the target as hard as possible with a sledge hammer to dig a bell.   The "dinger" shot up like a rocket to ring the alarm and when it struck, fireworks went off spelling out for me  in glittering silver light  ****2012!!!****.      Ha! Naturally...

Twixting, Twixting, 1, 2, 3

I really had no choice but to end my relationship and move on without him.   My hairstylist, who had been recently separated, told me about the brand new loft apartments she had moved to.  New Manchester Flats down in the Abandoned Industrial Warehouse section of Richmond, it sounded perrrrrfect for me.

One of the most depressing things about apartment hunting is how dirty and lived in everything is; NMF was a new "green" construction in an Up and Coming section of Richmond.  That's what everyone would say, "Ohhhh New Manchester? That's an up and coming neighborhood." Yeah, that's right.  It was still coming.   My building was phase one completed of a three phase VISION of Urban Habitat. New Manchester Flats was a "Lifestyle Center for the Creative Class."  Or something. That is what I thought I was getting myself into.

I moved my bed to my new place on August 31st.  That night I slept on his couch.  In the morning I took a shower and when I went out onto the deck to dry off, I was surprised to find there on this platform some 20 feet off the ground a perfectly intact, freshly shed, three foot long snake skin.
I thought it was an awesome confirmation from the _(Universe???)_ that I was on the right track.  I had no idea what sort of significance the snake would soon play in my life.

Six weeks of relative calm go by and in that space I learned to unwind.  It was weird not to have some long list of things to do for my now ex-partner. I kept finding myself getting up to take care of him.  It was a strange knot to untangle.  I slept in my big, temperpedic bed alone and planned how I was going to create my empire.  It was when I was finishing up the last bit of work I had promised to do for my ex that things started to get shady.

My dream apartment was turning into a nightmare.  This loft apartment may have come with a 40 inch flat screen, free basic cable and wifi but it also came with 3-dimensional mold and fungus growing on the ceiling,  dog owners who did not clean up after their dogs- inside and out of the building, gross! and loud and rowdy neighbors who were definitely smoking crack right next door.  The walls were so thin I could literally hear a fork, and knew it was a fork, drop in the sink in the still morning hours.

The same crack smoking neighbors also had a traumatized Labrador who would bark in defensive terror every time a train would go by which was quite frequent and very close,  I could throw a rock out my window and hit the train.  I could do that if my windows actually opened that is.  I  remember going over an exit strategy in my mind for escaping my high-end luxury cell in case of fire.  I would have to chop a hole in the paper thin dry wall to get into my crack cocaine using neighbor's unit that had a door that led to the courtyard.

The stress of the apartment situation was getting to me and so it didn't help when I showed up to work at the office I still shared with my ex-partner one morning mid-October to see that he had made an appointment on his calendar for dinner with a woman named Rebecca.   I truly didn't care if he was dating but I really didn't want or need to know anything about it.  Of course he probably didn't consider that I would see that appointment, even though our computers were synced.

There were some other bothersome dramas going on in my personal life and work space that were contributing to the way I felt on the morning of October 14, 2010 but I don't really want to go into the details for sake of brevity.  On this day I felt more angry than I have ever felt in my life, ever.

I still had to go to work and maintain a professional demeanor and hold space for my clients to heal.  It was difficult to hold back tears so I let myself have a few in  silence while my clients were laying face down.  Another interesting fact to note is that on this day, during the morning, I wrote the first page of my writing project.  It really wasn't any good on account of the angry feelings lacing my communication efforts. Regardless, it was an important step toward reclaiming my power.

To Be Continued...

Coming up: Shocked by Shakti... What does that mean? I will tell you...