I Want to Live As If The World Already Loves Me

strolling out Hanalei Pier

I'm almost there.  I certainly feel loved and cherished inside.

I traveled 5,025 miles to Kauai with two healing intentions: to open my heart, and let the circle come round one decade later.  Reset.  Claim my freedom.  The whole experience taught me to wake up, really notice, marvel and love who I am, where I am, here, now.  I've wondered sometimes why I'm still here.  'Now' isn't an afterthought, some experience tacked on to a happy former life .  It's actually rich with meaning and purpose.  Kauai was rich with healing.   I want to tell you about one key transformation I had.  Just a few days in, my spirit willing, my head spinning with new viewpoints, I confessed my own viewpoint to a healer.  She helpfully noted that I wasn't inhabiting my own body.  Now how can someone possibly see this?  (This is where an open mind comes in handy.)  Evidently, we have energy 'auras' in and around our bodies.  Each person I worked with on Kauai could sense a person's energy aura.  I mean, we all can sense when a person's pleasant to be with, or unpleasant.  It's the energy they're putting out.  O.K. This woman said that I, my aura, appeared to be floating about a foot above my body. 

"I understand. I am!" I exclaimed when she told me.  "That's how I feel!"  Outside my body, not in it.  I describe it as being stuck outside a window, and inside people are tuning in to each other and loving each other.  "How do I get inside?".  Well, she had me lie on a waterfilled massage table.  Opening to 'whatever',  I floated gently while she did her thing.  I left that session inhabiting my body and, and let me tell you, it felt like psychic surgery had taken place.  It took a few days to feel natural staying inside my body.

Now, psychologists have long had another name for this displacement phenomenon: Dissociation.  Ha!  I've known I dissociate, but how to NOT dissociate?  I can clearly remember training myself as a kid to be outside what my body was experiencing.  I would clench my fists, choke back my tears, and resolve NOT to feel.  I trained myself to wipe out my experience, and sure enough, I recall very little of my childhood.  I lived in a home without emotional or physical safety.  I finally joined my brother in zoning out on drugs.  He took me under his wing.  He taught me that sneakiness and cunning were the tools to manage life.  I could do that!  And what of love?  Another tool in the arsenal.  At age 29, after a particularly cunning, heartless move on a hapless man, I reached my waterloo.  I prayed earnestly to learn how to love, really truly love.    Well, God loves the prayer of an earnest seeker.  My hubby entered my life within a month.   I now realize he's never left.  Not really.  He is loving me from afar.  He had everything to do with what happened next on Kauai.

This particular woman healer on was about halfway through my two week experience.  She could sense a loving male presence with me.  Now, this woman heals by transmitting love through her touch.  Pure, unconditional love.  I'd never felt it.  I'd never nestled safely in a woman's arms.  While I didn't nestle in this woman's arms on the beach in Kauai, I did lay on a beach towel, first on my back, then on my stomach, her kneeling beside me. For three hours this woman said nothing, just laid her hands on me.  She gently stroked me, transmitting love.  At first, I had trouble receiving.  Then, a sob.  Then another.  At last, after two and a half hours, I heard in the depths of my being "I want the world for you, and all the wonderful things in it.  I want you to be happy, joyous and free".  I realized this message was for me.  As all the love came rushing in, I sobbed freely.

Well, in case this sounds weird, I've included two photos.  Cropped, one taken before and one after my session with her.  Touch.  Loving touch reached me.

 

 

Tell me, do you see the difference. I see?  I've been very gentle, very careful about my activities since I returned home.  Much gardening. 

Hovering At The Edges. Or Is It The Center?

Mermaid café, next to Java Kai, in Kapa'a, Kauai

Have you ever said "Just hold this moment.  I want it to last." ?  This is where I find myself, first morning back, one foot in Hawaii and one foot in Connecticut.  Bags half unpacked, I simply note the conviction I returned with ~ that the unalterable basis of life is loving kindness. 

This mindset isn't something I will relinquish.  Ever.  I suppose it's something some babies feel in the arms of their moms and dads, this comfort I felt in Kauai.  Now I'm not going to pack my bags and move there, but a lot of people visit, then stay.  There's a balm in Kauai. There's something about the way the ocean wraps its arms around the tiny island that's quite comforting.



Art Café Hemingway

Each day began with breakfast in one of the   café's in Kapa'a.  One of my favorites was Art Café Hemingway's, a simple two story blue clapboard house with ample elegance inside.  Another was Java Kai, a tiny café with counter service, few tables, and lines out the door. Locals mostly.






Kauai is the first time I've ever attached to the conviction, that the basis of all life is loving kindness. Sure, I knew this comfort with my late husband, but this is the first time I've experienced it  on my own.  It's not some ephemeral feeling made up of island breezes and indulgence.  It's deeply spiritual, like my being is secure in the arms of divine love.  Now, every morning I set my intention toward this grace and ease.  From this loving attachment, all blessings flow.  It's like I can be what I've always been, a dependable warrior type, but now I am blessed with love.  Pretty cool!

  Many blessings to you! 

 

Greetings from Hawaii

Kalalau Beach on left

Hello, dear friends!  I'm so very glad to be back with you and didn't mean to be away so long!  Sometimes, when life is in session, well, you know the story.  For two glorious weeks, I've been living on Kauai, Hawaii's magical garden isle.  Did a little hiking and a whole lot of healing.  A few days ago I was on Kalalau Trail, 4,000 feet above the Pacific.  Awesome view!  Helicopters hovered over waterfalls in the valley below.  The beach on the lower left is accessible by boat or on foot, eleven miles through the jungle and along razor thin ridges.  For the hardy and the brave.  It appears to be a rite of passage to make it there and back. 



As I'm sure you know, I travelled here to celebrate my tenth anniversary of my husband's death.  The choice made sense.  Hawaii was the last place my husband and I visited as a carefree couple.  I wanted closure, so how good to return.  Still, I was as bewildered as anybody, in calling this tenth anniversary a celebration.



Wanda and me

I decided to come with a woman I hadn't even met, based on one telephone conversation. Nothing unusual here.  Intuition's my strong suit!  I trusted that going off line, and completely immersing myself in Hawaiian healing practices, would open my heart wide again.  I signed up for it all ~ Lomilomi, the ancient traditional Hawaiian massage, aqua cranial therapy in the sea, aided by dolphins and whales, loving touch Hawaiian massage and dance,  'mamma' Kauai spirit and ancestral healing at ancient Hawaiian sacred sites, native steam room and salt scrub, didgeridoo playing, and prayer at Kauai's Stupa (Buddhist dharma center).  Central to this the transformative process is Chaka clearing (which I knew little about), as well as energy and vibrational healing (chi energy, for one).  Wow!  It is really cool to leap outside the box. 


I got a number of inner spirit messages during my time here, every one of them waking me up to the fact, that I am already all I'm supposed to be, and where I am supposed to be.  All good.  During one particular healing session, I got this very clear message, as my heart burst with love.  This is a message we all know.  Lovers feel it.  Parents.  God.






Following the salt scrub massage

I want to give you the world, & all the wonderful things in it.

I want you to be happy, joyous and free.

 

 

Kauai has blessed me.  I stand on my own two feet, grounded, safe and secure. I feel launched.  I am celebrated, and so are you.  My love from Kauai to you!  I'll be home in a few days.  Three magnificent harmonic crystal bowls are coming home with me.