To Love a Witch

I sat on a yellow chair at the dining table, inching ever closer to the window so the bright sunlight could  set my leg to warm tingling for as long as possible as it arched overhead, sipping on my tea that said this.

I was grounding in after a morning of multidimensional work - taking the energetic temperature of what the planet was asking me to broadcast out for this month's Full Moon intentions, doing some manifestation work for friends, and just having finished an Intuitive Healing Reading.

A book sat open before me on the table, my eyes dancing over the pages, nibbling on the easy prose. I love to do heavy duty research and immerse myself in ancient esoteric scripture as well as modern scientific academia, but every now and then, you need a good novel to just be human and enjoy that experience as much as the weightier stuff.

The book I was reading today was all about a natural born "witch" who, among other things, fell in love with someone she met in her ancestral land of Ireland.

The line that this man said about her being a magical person stopped me in my tracks and had me open my computer, log in, and type up this blog entry. What I read was as follows:

"Because it's there. It is. And I'd like to know one single bloody man," he continued with some heat, "who wouldn't give it some considerable thought."

I sat still for a moment, my eyes'  dancing pace down the page stopped cold. I'm a fast reader, and for me, books are more delicious snacks or yummy meals than long undertakings.
But I was stumped. I felt the truth of what he said resonate in my being. And I remembered how often I'd felt this energy come from people who could love me, who perhaps did love me, but who feared me more, because of something I was born with.

Love can't survive a fear like that. Especially not budding, new love. Even when one has been "warned" about the unexplainable nature of happenings around people like us, it is different when sh*t gets weird with you standing there.

And why, I must add, is natural magic anything to be WARNED about in the first place?

Part of being human is being magical, intuitive, empathic, and conscious of energetic lines running through the world around us.

Mothers can hear the slightest sounds their babies make down the hall. A "mother's hearing" is more often intuition than auditory sensitivity.
I'm sure you reading this, no matter whether or not you think of yourself as magical or intuitive, have thought of a long lost friend before only to have her or him call you in the near future.

When people we love hurt, we feel it. When people we love triumph, we feel that too, often before the phone rings.

But when there are people who have a stronger attunement to such things innately, does our culture treat them like natural mathematicians or musical prodigies?

When a child can call up the winds, talk to animals, or even do something more intense like make an object glow or float (yes, I have seen it), what is the response?

Sadly, it is all too often
Fear.

"Don't bring trouble."
"Don't show anyone you can do it."
"That is demonism."
"It can be dangerous."

Well, so can driving a car or wielding a knife for dinner, but the keys and knives aren't all locked in a vault deep in our subconscious minds.

We learn to use those more mundane parts of existence that can be seen as dangerous, not hide and starve them.

Back to the point of this blog entry -
So many times over my life I've had to have the "I'm not like other girls" chat with potential suitors.

Sometimes this freaked them out right in the beginning and that was that.

Sometimes they laughed it off until they saw something odd happen, and then they vanished.

Every now and then someone would act interested and even fall in love with me seemingly because of the refreshing quality of my magic, only to eventually get overwhelmed and see me as something frightening.

I'll never forget the phone call with a college boyfriend who told his roommates about that conversation we'd just had and later said to me,
"They said I'd better be careful not to make you mad, because you're a witch."
We both laughed.
"….you're not a witch, are you?"

What could I say? Clearly when he said the word "witch," this image is what he was picturing.

In my world, being what I am (which I don't ordinarily call "witch," but which does fit the description if the true one is used, not the fear-mongering one left over from mass hysteria driven by patriarchal mob mentality afraid of the power of the female) this is what I see when I think about how to describe the gifts I was born with and have never been able to ignore with much success.

Luckily for all of us, we are coming into a new paradigm of belief where the less scientifically explainable side of life is no longer cause to board up your windows for fear of rocks or stay inside at night for fear of pitchforks or burning effigies.

Nowadays, people are understanding that magic is something that we ALL have. And whether or not we choose to use it can be a similar decision as whether or not we choose to learn to play the piano - pianists are not better than those who can't read music or plunk out tunes.

It is just a different specialization.

When I think about what it must be like for someone who has never thought about magic being actually, literally real to come into a conversation with someone like me who not only believes it, but uses its principles daily to make the world a more amazing place in whatever ways I possibly can, from energy healing to imbuing spaces with sacred symbols for activation and harmonic alignment, I get that it can be scary or daunting.

Everything new is a challenge.
Will we accept that which is different?
Will we be tyrants all over again?

And for those of us who are consciously evolving in this way, will we, in turn, be the tyrants, judging those who do not choose to focus on this specialization as something "lesser?"
Yes, that happens, and no, it isn't okay.

It takes all types to live and love on our beautiful planet.

We are here for the rainbows, after all.

I Am A Love Warrior

I am a love warrior.

In older times this may have meant that I was someone who ran from conflict and instead used spiritual bypass to sprinkle flowers on even the most putrid of things, not wanting to look at what was beneath those blossoms, waiting to be seen, mourned, and cleaned up.

I am a love warrior.

In other places this may have meant that I actually went to war to destroy what others had loved in order to spread my own beliefs, cloaked in an illusion of wanting to protect me and my own while hurting "them," and their own, in order to do so.

I am a love warrior.

In THIS time and THIS space, being a love warrior means not being afraid to look anything in the eye - no tragedy, no illness, and no fearsome being in the darkness of her or his despair.
Even if that being is me.

Being a love warrior in this time and this space means bringing love to EVERY situation. Not judgment, not codependence, not envy, and not worship, but just LOVE. 

Pure, true, open, vulnerable love.

The love that makes us invincible because we know that any attempt to injure is just another person crying from her or his wounds, flailing to try to make the pain stop by discharging it on another.

Once you know how the trick works, the magic has no more effect on you.

One WE know that the answer to getting out of this old flawed system lies in unconditionally being present with the most beautiful and amazing pieces of our worlds as well as the opposite, seeing all of it as manifestations of the Divine force of the Universe that has come to us to be experienced and cataloged, then we become free.

With our love, we heal with glances.

With our love, we activate with laughter.

With our love, we breathe beauty.

With our love, we create harmony.

And with our love, we PARTY. We rock our hearts out in parties that EVERYONE is invited to, and that it is impossible to be turned away from because the only criteria to get in is that you have to want to  come in harmony and you have to be responsible for your own energetic contributions to the group. 

Those who can't do this just don't end up coming to the party. But they'll get here, sooner or later. They may just be taking the scenic route.

I am blessed (some, in other times, would perhaps, and have probably, said "cursed" as well) with a multidimensional archetypal vision of the world and those in it that exists for me in every moment of every day. I can see into places that even now some would call imaginary, and I can interact there as clearly (and sometimes more powerfully) than I can here, in this dimension.

And yes, of course, results very often pop through to this one as well, in ways that I never expect.

I have traveled through graveyards of wretched ghosts, tied to the land, chained through trauma and death to places that have changed around them. They have shown me what I looked like from afar - a star moving along the horizon, shining out a beacon saying "Come here - there is a door. You can get out. You can go up."

I have been educated by angels who have told me secrets of creation and shared with me the mysteries of why they have thrown in their lot with the humans as well (they want the energetic codes for integrated passion. They have honor, power, love, and steadfastness, but they do not have passion. They can only "get" passion when we integrate it ourselves, because we are creating a new brand that is available to everyone this time as we merge emotions and create new alchemical blends of energies.)

I have argued with the most stubborn, most powerful dark beings who saw ME as a dangerous thing, moving through their worlds as a Light Being - a race that they see as untrustworthy and dangerous.
I have been locked in will-to-will combat with creatures that some would see as monsters, but when you are actually there with one, you have no time to be afraid, and you have no judgment of fearsomeness if you are in love. The most dire circumstance becomes an arm wrestle (or even better, a dance-off) instead.

I have learned to meet both ends of the spectrum with non judgment and love, and have woven a new net of realities and timelines where we can all exist in harmony, using the same thoughts and feelings that you too reading this have had about how the old systems don't make sense and in order to truly create what we want, we have to make new stuff.

You know this because YOU are a Light Warrior too. You wouldn't be reading this if you weren't.

It is not a plush job. Wills battle on the daily. And more than that, wills inside of us writhe and shift as we adopt new paradigms that make us question that which we thought to be unshakeable truth yesterday, once we see the holes and who is left out of that equation.

None of it is easy.

But it is worth it.

And we are in this together.

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Rocking the Twinkle Toes with Love and Travel

Several days ago, I read a blog post called "Don't Date a Girl Who Travels." Here's the link. It has been translated into several languages, and after I posted it to my Facebook page, I discovered that I wasn't the only woman who felt the same way that the author of the column did. Friends of mine, ranging from soul sisters to acquaintances, commented on the article link describing that same heart call that I felt when I read it - that bittersweet feeling of "Yes! This is me!" combined with, "well wait, does that mean that I'm unlovable? Do I care?..." with the thought trailing off into a silent, pensive moment of wordless wondering.

Oak Creek Vortex, Sedona AZ

Let me begin this little rant by saying that I love love. I seriously do. There are not many energies more delicious and addictive than a yummy, activating, intriguing romantic connection that captivates the mind and tugs at the heart. And, in my defense, I can say as well that I know a LOT about love. I've been married and divorced. I've lived with several partners (um, not at the same time of course.) I've even parented the children of past lovers, whom I loved as well and miss on a regular basis (er, the children, of course.) I can say with full confidence that right now, at age 30, I have had 6-10 great loves so far. These are the kind of loves that books are written about and songs are woven around. I am tenderly aware that some people (some people who I know and am close to) have never felt this feeling, even at nearly double the number of years on this planet, this go-round, that I have had so far. I am also attracted to greatness, so I can say that I have been in love with many amazing men, who all had and have world-shifting potential, whether they will ever act on it, or even ever admit it to themselves.

But...

The other, darker truth is that we live in a time of shifting energies and overhauls of entire planetary paradigms. I have seen prophecies fulfilled in my time - yes prophecies. More than one. And we are, as a planetary race, trying to figure out what the heck we are doing as we emerge into a new age of consciousness, alignment, presence, and attention. Lots is changing. One paradigm that is shifting dramatically is romance. The other is travel.

Speaking of travel...

Weisbaden Hot Springs, Colorado

Much like love, I have traveled a lot. Some people may chuckle that off, saying that because my wanderings have not taken me abroad, my worldliness doesn't amount to much. But I have criss crossed this USA countless times, in small and large measure. If you were to take a US map and draw the routes I have taken on the map, you would have what resembled a preschooler's art project. Swirls, scribbles, spirals and grids have marked my passage. This land is huge. And it is varied. And it is beautiful. And if you were to put it next to many other countries on this planet, it is easy to see that what we call one nation is actually quite a collection of kingdoms, cultures, climates, ecosystems, and even languages. I've been around.

What does it mean to have gone so far? To have glimpsed mountain tops of love and earth, to have walked in caverns deep below the surface of our planet and of our own consciousness, where not only warm, cleansing waters run, but where the things we don't want to look at hide shivering in the darkness until we are brave enough (and triggered enough) to lead them back into the light?

It means good stories, for one. ;)

But aside from that, I have found that we are still figuring it out. I have never yet felt that feeling of "coming home" that looks so appealing when I see other people talk about the space on earth where their heart rests. In my 30 years I have never spent more than 2 in the same house - hardly ever even in the same town. I've also never had a place where my heart could rest in the keeping of another person for very long. That is the drawback of a life full of non stop expansion, growth, and epiphany. You can't get out of the fast lane, even if you want to (which I don't, I'll clarify...) 

It can be lonely, I'll admit.

It can also be glorious and blinding and invigorating and...interesting.

So where does that leave us?

We are figuring out new ways to interact with our planet. The most comfy house I've spent time in was a handmade off-grid place in the mountains outside of Santa Fe. With an outhouse. Yes, I said an outhouse. One that gave you views worthy of the highest caliber photography as you're ... doing your business. You know what I mean. Anyway.

The point is to say that what we think the best option is may not be what it actually is.

Levitation Practice, Santa Fe, NM

With this whole Divine Feminine vs Divine Masculine thing, I've found myself observing tribes of people who identify with one side or the other. Both call the other vampiric. Both blame the other for not showing up with all we've got to create epic partnerships. But in the interest of taking full responsibility for one's own creation, I have observed the duality of men not wanting to grow up emotionally into magnificent, king-like beings, and of women holding onto the trauma of many lifetimes where a relationship was tantamount to being given a prison sentence. And there we go, manifesting the same things over and over, knowing that something isn't just right, that we diminish in each others' presence, and that we both must eventually free ourselves in order to survive.

But is this always true? Will we traveling chicks and guys ever find places where our feet love to dwell? Will it be a space or just our delicious planet overall?

What about where our hearts yearn to dwell? Will it be a person or just a delicious energy that comes and goes behind different faces?

I think it's up to us to figure it out. There's no wrong answer here.

And I think we will figure it out. But I am positive that we haven't done it quite yet. It is time to look at what we are creating and not blame anyone else, but find where we are hurting, from this time or others, and really dig deep to get out the roots, the seeds, and the rest, and to heal it to be able to face our horizon with new eyes, fresh hearts, and dancing feet.

Grand Tetons, WY

www.charismelina.com

The Best High Ever

            Whatever the course ends up authentically being, I think the key is to not slumber in waking life. To not be hypnotized and tied up by the pretty light show of all that is happening in this terribly dangerously beautiful dimension, but to remember and actualize our purpose and intention behind coming here. To master this space by mastering ourselves.

            What does that look like for each person, though?

            I assume that there are as many mastery methods as there are people. But I do suspect that the space I reach when I am deeply breathing (a challenge in itself to hold more than a minute or two) has to do with it. Coming fully, deliciously into the present moment, over and over and over again, lights the world that is “seen” with an inner illumination that can only be likened to states of being that are enhanced by chemicals of some form or another.

            True Presence is the best high ever.

            And rather than numbing you down into your body or shuttling you out of it, the altered state given by focus and attention on the lines between consciousness and physicality (namely, breath and attention) provides you with a key.

            A key to see through the illusion.

            I’ve been practicing this – for me personally, it does also have to do with the way I focus my eyes – a sort of looking “through” things that I have historically only allowed to happen when doing an intuitive healing reading or other type of non-3D-limited work. But considering that I am my most Whole when I am doing this work, why in the world had I limited my full self to the “office?”

            What was I afraid of?

            That’s an easy one to answer. I’ve been afraid of freaking people out, of them thinking I see things they may want to keep hidden (which of course I do) and of being all alone.

            Well, here’s a wake up call – aloneness comes when aloneness comes, no matter what camouflage you wear.

            And so does connection, and deep beautiful communion on many levels.

            But it is sure that the connection and communion that can gloriously blast through awareness and change everything to bring in greater expansion of this Universe we’re squeezing into finds it a more difficult path in if you are pretending to be less than you are…

            Today is the day to try it, methinks.

The Present Storm

        Let me take a look into the ethers to find some direction.

        I see a storm swirling all around me – some of the damage I sustain as a result is my doing because of my resistance and unwillingness to let bones fall as they may, but much of the storm itself is due to the pure energetic “weather” sweeping the worlds I reside in at this time. Okay. What is in the storm? It is indigo in color, shot through with golden lightning and silver rain, beating down old structures that have stood for ages upon ages and renewing the land beneath, toppling fortresses and towers made of meme and paradigm, even decimating places such as epic gardens and blooming walkways, all being cleared for the formation of something completely new.

        What will this thing be?

        …

        I am not allowed to see yet. For now, there is only the storm.

        So how to navigate such a thing?

       Obviously no external source of support can be trusted. Not because of treachery, but because of the strength and fury of this time of change. No umbrella can survive this. Whatever force is knocking down millennia-old towers of thought forms’ stone and mortar will pulverize any small, temporary (or even less small and less temporary) rain shelter that one may seek safety under.

        So grasping for any anchor outside of oneself is a fool’s errand. Okay. What other option is there? To look within, of course.

        The image that comes to mind is of one curling downward, sitting on haunches, head down, arms around knees, back curved, breathing in the still air made by the heart-filled cave between chest and chin, waiting. Feeling the storm lash and wail around the tiny space of sanctuary created by one’s own body (in this case, one’s own vibrational pattern,) but choosing instead to focus on the space of safety created by the sureness, strength, and motionless calm created by the choice to remain steadfast in the mist of such a transitional force. If one lifts her or his head to look around and focus on what is happening to objects, people, or places that are outside oneself, that head (a.k.a. that center and clarity of thought presence) can get whipped off in the debris flying about, or by the pure energy itself. To keep one’s head, maybe just for today, it must be kept quiet.

       I see. I see that old beliefs, old structures that were constructed by ourselves or others made of paradigms, expectations and understandings of “how the world works” on ALL levels, are being cleared. What will come next – that I can’t see. We have to wait until the storm shouts itself out and wet streaks of sun break that presently impenetrable indigo cloud barrier. And we can’t expect to be able to trust any one other than ourselves at this time as a source of support and inspiration. This isn’t reason to feel alone – but it is reason to feel strong. 

      Mostly because no other choice exists.

Rewriting the Empath

            This morning I do feel slightly different. I feel as if I am pushing through a transition, one that is difficult to describe but that is also giving way before me, slowly but surely, unveiling a new way of living, of being, of thinking, feeling, and experiencing the world. And the world itself is changing too, as well as my place in it.

            I used to wonder if I could hold the responsibility and charge that I could feel headed toward me. I think that this was an unconscious fear – one that I never quite let arise to the surface of my thoughts, but that only bubbled and swirled deep within. Now, I feel confident, from experimenting (and mostly seeing how frustrated interactions are when I DO “play small” and people assume me to be less than I am) that I can in fact complete my next mission. I test it from time to time, allowing the thought forms in any given area – a grocery store, a restaurant, a city square – to merge together into one flavor of varied, yet unified thoughts and feeling. In my olden days, this “noise” deafened and confused me. I remember afternoons spent lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, drifting in and out of consciousness with a pain that no one around me understood, all as a result of simply spending a few hours in a crowded place. Now I can name that feeling. Empathic overload. The lines are too stretched, and rubbed raw by the fears, worries, rage, and disappointments of others. If everyone went around swimming in gratitude and enjoyment, the backlash wouldn’t be a backlash at all. But historically, we haven’t reached that place quite yet.

            In trying to describe what this feels like, I often reference radio static. Because I’ve devoted my life to it over past years, my intuition and “reading” ability has increased to the point where I could potentially pick anyone in any crowd and give you a low-down on their situation, and their feelings about life  - their “flavor,” so to speak. Sometimes I practice this ability in traffic by reading the person driving a car before I can see them, and then once they are visible to me, checking for accuracy by using visual cues and personality assessments the way they are taught in conventional psychology to see whether or not I was right when I received my impressions. At this point, my accuracy is pretty much 100%. Great. So those degrees were good for something at least. J

            Before I could control this, as I said, it was as if there was static all around me, all the time. Wait, who am I kidding – there is STILL static around me all the time. But it isn’t verbal, as in hearing a running stream of consciousness the way movies portray this type of thing. Rather, the static is made up of emotion. Of fears, judgments, worries, addictions, envies. This is because most people walk around in this state most of the time. And since it is as if I have no skin in this matter, and I can just feel what someone else is feeling, especially when I am in an enclosed space with them (don’t even get me started on conferences,) if there are people around I always feel a blurry jumble of subjective life experience that isn’t mine.

            This can be crippling. Historically, it was for me and it still is for many, many people. And I, too, have to work around this – I had to cut a day of errands short last week here in Portland, explaining to my father (one of the people I’m visiting here) that I was brushing up against empathic overload. We were headed into a coffee shop and I balked.

            “I just don’t think I can be in a small room filled with people right now,” I told him, my eyes filming over with unshed tears.

            He startled and looked more closely at me, and then agreed that the coffee stop would be canceled.

            Over the next few moments I explained to him how it’s basically just in my code to not only feel things, but to cleanse them with my aura –

            “I’m like a walking Brita filter. For emotion, and karma, and people’s journeys.”

            Which makes me great at my job, but hinders me at, you know, life.

            However.

            Now, I am reaching this new state where I am finally VISCERALLY FEELING what the other side of the empathic spectrum is.

            Put simply, it’s this:

    Remain in your awesomeness and everyone else will have no choice but to come too.

            A common misperception is that empaths need to change those around them in order to thrive.

            Nope.

            All you have to do is HOLD YOUR CORE VIBRATION, focusing on your breath, on your movement, on the easy smile on your face and how it is sending soothing chemical triggers to your brain and body, and choosing to mentally focus purely on the game – on the sensation of downloading in here, into this very intricate role playing hologram, and rocking your Avatar in your own specific, unique ways.

            In my experience, this is only half of it. I’m pressing up against the barrier of the next phase of my mission – one that will be more challenging than others, but also almost certainly will make all other rewards I’ve gotten on all levels pale in comparison.

            About a year and a half ago,  when my guides were adjusting and tweaking EVERY second of my life down to the way my foot hit the pavement and the angle to which I held my head (I’m not kidding,) I had a moment when I felt completely fed up and exhausted.

            “Come on. I need a freaking carrot here. Show me what I’m working towards.”

            And I did that familiar whoosh through time and space meditatively, until I was standing on a stage in front of a stadium full of people. I knew that this wasn’t the present “me” because although I was technically in what appeared to be the same body, I was SO much stronger – my meridians were lined with steel basically, flowing shining energy through more quickly than I’d ever experienced. My inner state was calm, happy, languid, and completely focused. I was speaking to the assembled group, and I had no clue what I was saying, even in the moment. This was because what I and everyone else were experiencing had nothing to do with English. I was interacting, verbally and energetically, with the complex, living, moving, fractal mass of consciousness floating in the middle of the stadium, made up of the combined thoughts, feelings, emotions, potentials, and gifts of each person there. It appeared to 3D eyes that I was speaking and that was it, but both I, and everyone there, could feel the truth. There was a massive healing and activation going on – and I wasn’t directing it, I had simply refined my form and structure enough to be a conduit for Divine source energy, that could pour through me, splash right into that beautiful behemoth mass of combined focus and consciousness, and then filter down through unique and living lines to each person seated before me, shifting and altering to give them exactly what they need.

            That is what I am training for, these long years.

            Well, one of the things.

            And it sounds pretty freaking fun, to be quite honest. I’ll take it.

            My guides assured me a few days ago that I’m closer now to my perfect potential reality than I ever have been before. I believe that. And while this current nomadic life certainly has its challenges (many of them having to do with breaking from ingrained cultural paradigms,) I won’t lie – it’s also pretty awesome.