​Diane responded to one of my Facebook posts, one of my Summer of Surrender posts which talked about feeling the fear and doing it anyway.  She said, “It’s like telling someone with a panic attack to go into the fear.  It works, but it’s scary as hell.”  She is so right.  There is brilliance and freedom in that.

What I realized is that facing fear is like facing death.  There’s a belief that I will succumb forever.  I will cease to exist.  The fear will overtake me like a roaring wave, an avalanche of pure terror that devours every cell of my body in its path of destruction.
And it really is destruction.  What the wave eats, it burns.  It takes all before it, consuming everything the cell has to offer, and more:  its very mode of being.  Once the usual, the habit, the accustomed, the daily routine has been destroyed, what is left? 

Ashes.  Space.  Nothingness.

Cleanliness.  A fresh start.  Ultimate clarity.

And then a new confidence, an exultation and celebration that the old fear can no longer touch me, ever.  I have experienced it fully and I survived.  It became part of me, it took away what no longer belonged, and I am left with peace.

This is a reorienting to a new way of being.  Suddenly the old is gone and I am left with an alert stillness, an exciting knowledge of infinite possibility and potential.  I am so much bigger than I was before.

Because the real truth is, that when I face a fear and come out stronger on the other side, I realize that the fear wasn’t really such a big deal after all.  The scariest part of feeling fear is the idea that I am too small for it.  That I am not enough to come through.  That I don’t have the force or energy or existence-ness to be big and strong and tall and happy and powerful.  It’s not about the size of the fear, it’s about the insignificance of me.

Facing my fears, over and over and over again as each new one rears its head above me in the surf of my emotional illusions, only shows me the truth of who I am:  I am God.  I am divine.  I am a drop in His ocean, made of the same stuff as everything else in the universe.  Nothing and no one can be insignificant because we all are holy and we all wear the face of God.

Our fears are just a reflection back to us, of a part of our being that is wave-like.  Our fears are aroused by our experiences, they ripple the surface of our lives, seeming harmless among the depths.  As our moments become more acute, the waters become shallow, and the wave of fear rises up, suspended in air, curling around our sharp rocks.  We hold our breath to stop time.

Then, the surrender. 

Let the breath go.  Let it out.  Breathe out with force and strength and also with the knowledge that it may be your last exhalation.

The wave crests, the fear spirals in upon itself.  It also has nowhere to go.  The fear also panics that it cannot maintain its course.  It no longer knows who or what it is.  It also surrenders to its own path, to its own beauty.

I have never felt compassion for fear, before.

The final climactic fall:  the wave slams itself against the beach.  It beats itself out of existence on the sand.  It dies.  The water returns to the sea, cleansed, leaving its flotsam at the highwater mark.  It becomes part of the eddy, it feeds the creatures in and around it, perhaps it melds with the next wave.

And the cycle begins again, but the water knows its worth.

​This is what facing fear means to me.

​What does it mean to you?

I've had a hard time explaining what I do to people, which makes it really tough to market my services effectively.  
"I'm a healer."
"I talk to people about their life purpose."
"I help people clear the blocks that are getting in the way of their happiness."
"I'm a hand reader."
"I'm an EFT Practitioner."
None of those explanations really do it for me.  Or for my prospective clients.

So my teacher, Richard Unger, founder of the International Institute of Hand Analysis, asked me this question the other day:  "What do your clients get out of working with you?"
I asked my clients.
The answers were astounding.
"You keep me inspired...you catapult me further in life."
"I felt reassured that I'm awesome and that I have a lot to offer to the world."
"I am a little calmer about handling problems and I feel a renewed interest in pursuing my dreams."
"A deeper awareness of my life's purpose."
"I developed more confidence in my being, was able to just own my gifts and talents."
and finally,
"I came home that day feeling good."

So, I am a healer who helps people feel happier and more purposeful.  I change lives. It is a very humbling thing, to hold someone's soul in my hands and infuse it with all the love I can, and to witness the transformations that take place right before my eyes.  
Reading hands and tapping are just some of the "hows," not the "what. " 
The intensity of my attention on you, my client, is so strong when we are sitting in my office together!  My vision narrows to just you.  My body heats up.  I sweat.  The communication channels are wide open--not just between me and you but between us and Source.  There is a third presence in this tiny room on the West side, and it informs our time together.  I rest in it, knowing it is here for our benefit.
I invite you to experience the joy of being seen.  Fully.  Positively.  In all your Glory and "Rightness."  Bring your questions, your curiosity about yourself and this thing called "Scientific Hand Analysis."  I won't wear a turban or gaze into a crystal ball.  I will use a magnifying glass and a flashlight to gaze into your hands, and I will talk with you about your Life Purpose as it appears in your fingerprints.
You decide what it means to you, and what you want to do with the information I give you.  You decide if the Life Purpose that I illuminate for you fits what you already know about yourself and your secret yearnings.
You decide how you want to describe exactly what it is that I do, for you.

Once upon a time there was a soul—pure, innocent, open and sweet.  

This soul was me, this soul was you.  We had everything we needed, and our wants were in line with reality:  love, light, clarity.  We lived in a state of perpetual adoration towards everything around and within us.

We were clean.
 
Birth as a physical being then sparkled as a sunrise on the future’s horizon. We felt drawn towards this other light with its presence and its dense matter.  Where are we going?  What experience is beckoning?  How shall we meet this gravitational adventure?

Our guides support us in choosing the formula for this lifetime.  What will we need to clothe our sweet soul during this solid existence?  We choose our flavors:  courage, applause, leadership; scarcity, violation, grief.  Knowing what we learned last time around, we up the ante.  There is a goal here.  Existence for its own sake is rootless, but existence for the purpose of becoming closer to Source is a worthwhile endeavor. 

We attach our choices to our essence with firm fasteners.  They will not come loose during this lifetime.  They emit a strong outward magnetic pull.  The need for applause has a vacuum-force that reaches out with Velcro arms to catch and imprison episodes of approval.  Grief also grasps and will not let go.  

Then we are born.

Our Velcro-vacuums begin to work immediately.  Each of us experiences the full range of emotional encounters, but only our pre-life choices have that express connection to our core.  Now those matching experiences stick like super glue.  We have asked for this specific formula, remember?  So we are especially sensitive to these frequencies.  And we begin to gather baggage.

Still, as children, we have long moments of peace and joy.  Our burdens are still light.  

As we grow older we exhibit patterns of behavior consistent with our burdens and our gifts.  How do we navigate this dance of light and darkness?  How can we find the best path through our prickly garden, so that we smell the sweet scents and see the vibrant colors as often as possible?

This is an unconscious journey.  We are beings without awareness of choice.  Our time has not yet come to question by stepping outside what is known.  All is well….

Then we are laid low.  Experiences pile up, tragedy strikes, out of the blue, beyond our choice and control.  We become victims.  

In fairy tales, this is where the princess falls asleep.  Or is locked in a tower.  Or the king and queen die and she is forced to live in slavery.  In some way, she is outcast, seemingly through no fault of her own. 

After years have passed, someone arrives to help:  a fairy godmother, a handsome prince, a genie.  A force of magic awakens us, all is put to right, and the princess lives happily ever after.  

I propose that we are our own genies.  We have the power to wake ourselves up from the sleeping spell.  But it is not easy to pick ourselves up off the floor.  Physically it is impossible.  But somehow, some of us do it.  

What is this process of saving ourselves?  It takes infinite forms, unique for each of us, but it is born of a desire to get out of pain.  Something is unbearably uncomfortable.  One of our Velcro-vacuums has met its quota and filled its reservoir of misery:  our need for approval has been denied by a series of humiliating experiences, culminating in ridicule and ostracism.  Or Grief has overwhelmed all our senses and now colors every minute of our day.  Or perhaps scarcity has gathered so much momentum that we are constantly manifesting loss and need.  Or we are in physical pain.

This pain, whether physical or emotional, gets our attention.  We ignore it or deny it, and we do this successfully for a long time.  Perhaps for the rest of our lifetime. 

Or we may tackle the pain head-on:  think about  it, talk about it, write about it, exercise about it, see a therapist or a doctor about it.  

At first it makes no sense.  We are given answers and advice that serve the needs of the advice-giver.  We try on different solutions.  Some partially fit.  Some allow us to limp on. 

Ultimately we must find our own solutions, the ones that make sense inside of us, that speak our unique language.  Stumbling upon these aha moments is a gift of grace, a momentary elation that marks our progress toward cleanliness.  

And when we do have these realizations, it is a dumping out of the Velcro-vacuum clog.  It is a switching off of the suction power, even if just for a moment, to allow the collected mass of energy, positive or negative, to be released.  And when the switch is turned back on again, as it must be for the duration of this lifetime, the power of the suction is less.  The contract has been fulfilled to a degree by the wholeheartedness with which we have embraced this experience.  We breathe deeply and sigh, and rest. 

Another aha moment arrives after repeating this experience enough times to see a pattern.  “Oh!  I see it now!  I understand the process through which I can fulfill my life’s agenda!”  

And one by one, we address the needs of our soul for this lifetime.  We notice.  We zero in on a particular Velcro-vacuum.  We bring it to a level of awareness that makes it impossible to ignore.  We think about it, talk, write, exercise, therapize, and clear.  Each time we do this our soul-bodies become cleaner, our chosen Velcro-vacuums smaller and less powerful.  And we move through our days with greater ease and higher perspective.

When we get back to our Place and recount our experiences and learnings, what will we report?  How fully did we live this life we chose? 

All right, this is weird, but I was asked to share it, so here it is.  Last night I went to a Vocal Toning event at my friend Janene Cummings' house.  Janene is uber gifted at the piano, has a voice like warm chocolate syrup, and gives the warmest, safest hugs of anyone I know.  She hosts toning events at her house in Olympia.  Toning is an ancient, natural form of sound healing; it utilizes the voice to promote the release of blocked energy that manifests as physical or emotional discomfort.  For more information about Janene, click here.






During our singing event, Janene very thoughtfully guided us through images of clearing out negative energies, and bringing healing light to ourselves and to the world.  At one point she had us focus our energy onto our hands, rub them together, hold them apart, then move them slowly toward each other until we felt resistance between them.  We formed an energy ball between our hands.  Mine was rather large: about 18 inches in diameter.  As we moved further along with the toning, I had the following vision.






The energy ball became the Earth.  I held it in my hands, in my arms, like I was keeping it safe.  It was beautiful, with clouds and blue oceans and brown land masses, and snowy mountains.  






I wondered, Where am I on this Earth?  I was a pinprick on North America, too small to see with the naked eye.  Is this all that I am?  As I watched with my mind’s eye, I grew taller.  My chest pushed forward, shoulders drew back, face turned up, and I grew and grew and grew.  My body was part of the Earth, the lower half of me embedded in a rocky hillside.  The rocks grew as I grew.  Pieces broke away as we erupted together, boulders tumbling down and crashing to the ground below as my body and the matrix it was embedded in thrust upward, toward the sky.






When the growth stopped, I saw the Earth, still about 18 inches across, with this huge craggy me-mountain sticking straight up another 18 inches or so, about 6 inches across at the base and narrowing at the top, hard as stone and pulsing with life.  My skin was in some places soft and fleshy, and in other places brown and stony, merging with the mountain that was my foundation, my lower half.






I enjoyed this vision for a few moments, and then looked to my dear friend sitting next to me.  Where is my friend in this world of mine?  Is she just a dot on my Earth?  And suddenly she was holding an Earth in her hands, just like I had been, and then she too grew out of her own Earth with her skin melding with stone and with her own colors and shape.  I smiled at her.   






I turned to the woman on my left, and the same thing happened, and then to Janene, our hostess, and the same thing happened again.  We were no longer just four women sitting around a piano singing hallelujah, we were four magnificent, individual and complete souls, anchored to our own Earths.






What about the rest of the population?  I then saw billions of these Earth-Mountain-Statues, all floating around in space, suspended by nothing, just existing.  This is the human race.






What of God?  He was there, above and behind my left shoulder, normal-sized compared to my actual physical body, but much larger than the Earth-Beings floating all around.  His beard was gray, very long, and wavy, and his robes draped over his shoulders and arms.  His eyes saw everyone, simultaneously.  He was smiling, nearly chuckling as his secrets were revealed to me.  I could not see what his mountain-body looked like, could not look upon his foundation for being.  Only his upper body was visible to me.

 

Now what, God?

 

He smiled at me, and his hands raised immediately, poised in the air like a conductor timing the first beat.  And in fact, that is exactly who he was.  He moved his arms to the beat of the most beautiful, flowing, complex, poignant and joyful music I have ever heard.  I saw the music.  I saw the five lines of a music staff flowing from his hands in undulating waves, up and down, back and forth.  And each Human-Earth rushed eagerly to find a place between those lines, laughing and smiling as they jostled together in joy.  The Human-Earths each became a single note in this creative melody of life.

 

My physical body sang in tune with the three women in the room, Janene accompanying us, guiding us, inspiring us.  The sounds really are just vibrations.  And that is what connects each soul:  vibrations.  The sounds we were making, and the sounds God’s choir was making, they were waves shimmering through space and time, flowing through matter to provide each of us with the language we need to talk to each other, with and without words, and always with love.

 

What does this all mean?

 

We are not merely physical beings taking up ever-lessening space on this finite blue and brown and white planet.  We are not crowding each other at all.  Rather, we are each of us a part of our own Earth.  We each have our own world to live in.  We are defined in this lifetime by the planet to which we are born:  space, time, matter, energy, color, form, society.  It is all ethereal as a soap bubble.  And also hard as rock.

 

This is why we cannot inhabit another’s world.  It is their own, and only they can see it and experience it the way they are meant to.  We each have our own world to live in.  My space is here, and it is for me, in which to learn and to grow and to show my face to the sun.  The illusion is this:  we feel separate and alone, and we struggle to survive.  The truthful melody is this:  we have been planted upon a speck of dust for a short period of time, to sprout and take root and to grow, given the constraints of physicality. Yet all the while we are a soulful and unending note in the melody of love.