Epiphany...
Hi Everyone!
Eiphany. You hear the word and wonder what it's all about. Certainly, it's what we call a 'fifty cent' word. People hear it but don't know what it means. Basically, it is an 'aha' moment. A breakthrough of awareness. A connection that you hadn't made before. And all day Tuesday through Wednesday I was having an epiphany....
Today’s hike out of the canyon was with Linda M., who dropped over to do her two miles. It’s always great to have a friend along; friends play such a integral part in one’s life--or at least--they do in mine.
Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
Here is Linda M. up at Sunset Point. She's carrying the snake light--the flashlight--in her hand as you can see....good thing she did!
I wouldn’t know what to do without my close friends. They have seen me at my best and my worst. They have celebrated the highs with me and carried me through my lows. Friends are such a wonderful gift to my life.
Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
As Linda M. and I started our walk,there was a little Cottontail bunny out in the middle of the road. If you look close, you can see him. Also, note on the left side of the photo the rock wall that makes up Echo Canyon Vineyard. That is where the snakes (poisonous and nonpoisonous, mice, rats, chipmunks and ground squirrels) all call home. We all it 'the apartments.'
I had been struggling for sometime with a huge wound within myself and the full moon and a lot of other astrological pressures were bringing it all up to a boil within me to look at and resolve. We’ve all been there in our lives--many times. As you get older, you’re wiser, that’s true and that helps. But you also don’t have the energy or stamina or endurance you had when you were young--so there’s a trade off in such situations. The key is in knowing you gotta make the jump, make the transformation, make the leap before you are too worn down, too trampled and too done in, to do it at all.
Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
As Linda M and I rounded the corner coming off the flat and starting up Cardiac Hill, here is what met us. Look at the 'eye' in the clouds. Also, there was a fascinating BLUE color that only deepened and became more beautiful later on that you'll see in other photos. I rarely see this color of blue and it's gorgeous.
All my dear friends, the rattlesnakes, had been mirroring the poison within me was being reflected outside of me. The promise was, however, that it wasn’t going to kill me as in a rattlesnake biting me and dying of venom in my bloodstream. I at least saw and realized that. And that gave me hope to deal with my burgeoning dilemma that was not going to go away--but really--at a core level--had to be addressed full on.
Earlier in the day, I’d talked with my good friend and homeopath, Yolande, who had imparted some information to me that I was really chewing on and taking to heart. Those who have read Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman (or seen the movie that is out this year with Nick Nolte--which I highly recommend), understand about this concept of drawing two extremes-- peace and warrior -- together so you say them and the same breath--and become them in the same breath -- and act/react the same way. Boy, when you put peace with warrior--they are just about the most extreme opposite words you can think of to be married to one another.
And I’m in a situation where my warrior has been challenged nonstop for two years and I fully have the choice of ‘going to war’ or resolving this, somehow, peacefully. And the trick is that there are other players in this that I have no control over in any way, shape or form. So, I’m pretty much at their mercy most of the time. But how to transform myself from an on-guard warrior to a peaceful warrior to change the dynamic of energy between me and these other individuals? THAT is the real core question. Not only that, but in being ‘peaceful’ does not mean wimp, being run over, used as a rug or being abused. It does mean holding my boundaries strongly, staying in principles/morals/values that I believe in with all my heart and soul. So, how do you DO that?
That is the conundrum I’ve been wrestling with for two years and now, I’m at a point of no return with it insofar as having to catalyze something within me to make it work. Because I can’t continue on as I am. It absolutely requires a remarkable, miraculous, soul change. And nothing short of that.
Put another way: Say you have an open wound. And someone is delighting in dropping salt into the wound. That hurts. It’s painful. The wound can‘t close or heal, either.
We all have wounds and I think we can all relate, no matter what or where the wound is. We carry them around and they color/stain our lives. And so long as we have major wounds, they run our lives because we allow them to because we’re putting energy into them.
Energy.....ah......there’s something to look at.
Emotions clearly catalyze energy. And most wounds are on the emotional level--although they can accelerate to the mental or even spiritual--or physical level--if they are not tended too, cleaned out, sewed up and cared for so they--and you--can heal.
Emotions ARE energy. Pure and simple.
Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
Here is that deep, sacred blue color--the color of a person's throat chakra (at least that is what it looks like to me when I'm in nonordinary reality as a shaman) and it's an incredible color...so rare looking. This is in the east, above our canyon wall. I also associate this color with Mother Mary. She always wear blue and white robes and this blue color reminds me of that, too.
So, my energy conundrum is tied to my emotional wounding. And I got stuck. And I didn’t know how to unstick myself because when you’re defending your wound you can’t see other answers or alternatives. You become a horse with blinders on and your focus becomes very narrow and many other choices are left out of the circle.
This is where friend come in. Yolande was telling me on the phone this morning about Millman’s other book about Socrates the teacher. She told me that Socrates had something terrible happen to him (the wound) and that he sought out a spiritual teacher to learn how to kill and get revenge to make things right. The teacher said it would take him ten years to learn what he needed to know. Socrates said fine and went through the training. What is important with what Yolande imparted to me was that Socrates, in that ten years, had to, in order to learn the ‘way’ he wanted--he had to remove himself and surrender over to a higher power. In other words, Socrates was locked into an emotional dance due to a wounding. But in order to carry out his revenge, he had to get out of the way, release it, remove his energy and himself from the situation.
Yolande told me a lot more but what stuck with me was that I was stuck in a dance with another partner energetically and due to my wound, couldn’t let go--mentally I wanted too--but emotionally, I wasn’t there yet. I chewed on this concept of removing myself from the ‘dance’ of energy that I was locked into. Linda came for a walk and I was able to just verbalize it to her as to what Yolande had shared with me. I told her that this was the biggest test and initiation in my life. And how could I do this? I saw no way except that I knew I had to TRY and do what Socrates did.
We had a gorgeous sunset. I took a photo of Linda M. with the sunset behind her.
Then, we walked back and it was getting dark. Dave and I had talked the night before about the rattlesnake living out in Jon’s stone wall “apartment complex” as we called it. I told him that he should get his Snake Bagger gear and around dark, come out and meet me coming home. This time, we brought a flashlight.
Linda M. was jumpy about the rattlesnake, so I had her put Rocky on a leash and she could walk him on the ‘safe’ side of the dirt road. As we approached the rattler’s apartment in the rock wall, I switched on the light. I felt he was out and around. Sure enough--there he was lying stretched out next to the stone wall--just absorbing the heat of the earth into himself so he could get moving later to go hunting.
Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
Here is our Green Rattler living in 'the apartments.' Note his body--you see the bulges in it? Those are 'meals' he's eaten of late! There's plenty of squirrels and chipmunks and large/small mice/rats in this rock wall. He's VERY well fed! Each bulge is a meal!
I asked Linda to go get Dave and take Rocky with her. I took one photo of the rattler because I didn’t want to get him feeling threatened or turn around and go back into his apartment. I waited about ten minutes when Dave showed up with the Snake Bagger equipment in hand. I mentally told the rattler that we weren’t going to harm him and that we wanted to take him somewhere else where there was less traffic and no humans--where he could live in peace and harmony without getting run over to his head chopped off by some human being.
Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
Here is our green rattlesnake friend who lived in 'the apartments' less than a hundred feet from our road entrance. This was a completely night shot with flash camera only. Beautiful head on this male rattler.
As Dave came up, the rattler got rattled. He struck his pose, his rattles going. And then, he dived into his hole in the wall. Dave got him just as he was going in and bagged him. I didn’t take camera shots because catching a snake at night by flashlight only is far more dangerous.
We carried him back to the house and I got the keys for the van and we said good-bye to Linda. Then, we drove our friend up to the “y” of our road, pulled off, left the headlights on and Dave released him. The rattler immediately headed for a big juniper tree where I’m sure he felt sheltered and out of being in the open. We then drove home.
That night, I was still chewing on what Yolande said. To be sure, I was up and down, and a mass of mixed up emotions and thoughts. There was no forthcoming answer. No easy way to MAKE this quantum leap happen that I could see. And then, we went to bed.
About 2 a.m., I got up because I had a hot flash. And then, I laid back down and was dozing off and dreaming about Cinnamon’s leg and the fact that the inside knee knob had something in it that was being flushed out by Unna’s boot. Linda M. had looked at the two holes in Cinnamon’s leg earlier, before the walk, and agreed that the ‘core’ of this open wound needed to come out. It was still pretty stuck so we let it go and I told her I was going to undo the boot for the night, let her leg and wounds ‘air’ over night and then redress them the next morning and continue to put pressure on this core (it’s looks like a huge pimple with a white/yellow core in it) to force it out and to completion.
Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
Look at the interesting texture to these clouds in the east.
Remember the shredder on top of my tall white waste basket in the room? The same one where three mice fell into it and were jumping up and down but couldn’t get out?
I was just spiraling down into deep sleep when I heard CRAASSSSHHHH!!! Dave and I both jumped up in bed, out of a dead sleep. What the hell was that?! I mumbled, “The waste basket....” thinking another mouse was in it--again. Dave got up and turned on the light. I put my glasses on, groggy and walked over to the waste basket. It took a second from my numbed brain to registered what had really happened.
The shredder is huge, black and covers 75% of the top of the opening of this large 3.5 foot high waste basket. For whatever reason, something or someone had LIFTED it off and dropped it into the wastebasket. And there was no mouse in the bottom, either. I stared at it. Dave stared at it. I couldn’t believe it. That shredder weighs at least eight pounds. I pulled it out of the basket. True, it had been resting in place on the lip of the wastebasket--but that’s the way it sat for over a year and never fell into the basket. Dave, this time, locked it in with the lip of the basket so it couldn’t fall or be jostled. I looked at it, thinking there was a lot more to this event that I realized. But I was too shocked and sleepy to think straight.
We went back to bed. As I was once more falling to sleep, my guides showed me something. They showed me like a dark can of soda standing toe-to-toe, face-to-face, with my adversary. Behind me was a wall of white light. But the light couldn’t move forward to engage the other party because I was in the way. Not only that, I was holding the energy with this party so that it couldn’t move. Everything was locked in. Everything was in stasis. Nothing could move. Nothing could be resolved.
And then, they told me to watch. They showed me folding in and curling up on myself and moving aside. As I did this, the energy I had with this other party was no longer connected. And then, I saw this wall of white light move forward to embrace the other party. Amazed, I saw myself again, in the same position--locked in energetically with this other party--and this time, I willed myself to curl up and then roll out of the way. Again, this wall of white light came forward, moved through and around the party and then it was complete. I must have replayed this five or six times.
Then, my guides put me back into position with my party. They told me, this time, consciously detach my emotions from this dance. I did so. Then, they told me to surrender control of the situation over to them. Somehow, I did this. I felt it. And then, I sort of became like smoke and disappeared from my stance with this party. And then, the white wall of light came forward to envelop the party.
This was done three or four times until I ‘got it.’ Then, as I stood off to the side of this drama I had been playing in, my guides told me that so long as I agreed to play energetically, that the party who was trying to learn something more, was stalled out, too. That by me, getting out of the way--handing over the situation to Great Spirit--that I was no longer a block to them learning what they wanted to learn. And, my guides pointed out to me--that by me withdrawing my energy,that I too, could heal up my wounds, too. In this kind of action, everyone got what they wanted to learn.
Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
Here is that fabulous "blue throat chakra" color that just holds you mesmerized. It was with us all the way down from Sunset Point until it go dark--like a light in the night...or maybe, a guardian angel looking over us...
This made a lot of sense to me. I woke up the next morning and told Dave about it. He asked me about the Road Rager (this was a guy, who for ay ear, would see us on our dirt road and literally block out car with his big truck, get out and scream, threaten and yell at us that we were driving too fast (25 mph).). Dave said we stood our ground--called the police on this guy every time he did this to us--and I kept my Nikon camera with me in case he ever did it--I could record it. And then I could take it to the sheriff and press charges. Dave said that it pushed a lot of emotional buttons for me--sure did--any time a man gets out of his truck and is screaming, yelling at you, waving his fist and coming at me--you bet I get scared and into survival mode. Anyone would. But, Dave pointed out--wasn’t it interesting after a year of carrying the camera--there was no other confrontations. And after that, we withdrew our energy from the situation entirely--and although we’ve seen Road Rager many times on the same road, going the same speed, he’s no longer attacking and threatening us.
Copyright Eileen Nauman
This is a Linda M. request photo--she loved the pink sky after the sunset and how it reflected pink down on Oak Creek below.
So, then, I agreed with Dave and told him I finally figured out WHY the mice falling into the wastebasket with the shredder on top of it happened. I saw that in my dream as well. I began to understand that the wastebasket symbolized me--the actual basket was nothing more than symbolic for a human body in which the personality for this lifetime lives within.
And since Eileen was symbolized as a wastebasket--guess what was on top of her head? A shredder. And the shredder covered 75% of the top of the wastebasket. The shredder symbolized my wound. When I saw how the wound was stopping energy from coming into (the mouse falling into the wastebasket), but because the wound was there, like a cover, energy I needed to circulate in and out of me, could not occur. (just as the mice kept hopping up and jumping up to try and get out--the shredder stopped them from making their escape).
And finally, last night, I think my guides figured out I needed a real, honest-to-goodness synchronistic event to put this together, i.e., lifting an eight pound shredder off the wastebasket lip/top and dropping it into the wastebasket. By the way, the shredder was sitting on one end, on one side of the wastebasket. Take up much less room and also opening up 100% of the top, so that all the energy I’m to have--can finally come into me, circulate as it should, and then flow out of me, as it should.
I got it. I really got it.
Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
This was a beautiful 'back' sunset in the east across our canyon. I call this an 'orange' necklace. See the blue at the bottom near the top of the canyon wall? Later, this developed even more intensely and the blue was just a stunning color.
Now, does that mean I’ve made the shift? No. I’m sure there’s going to be ample opportunity in the weeks and months ahead for me to try out my new training wheels about withdrawing my energy from this situation and surrendering it over on an emotional plane. Because, if I can do that--then I have truly become a peaceful warrior. I have learned that my own wounds are battlegrounds that draw battling people or situations to me--that mirror me in some aspect or part of wounding within me--and that ‘like cures like’--and that I can do this.
Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
here the sunset is developing its orange coloration.
It was such an amazing night of epiphanies that I’m still digesting it all--replaying it all. It’s going to take me a week or more to get a real handle on what all I was shown, went through and now understand in my spirit.
Thanks to my friends who care enough about my soul-deep struggles and wounding. Friends play such catalytic parts in our healing whether they know it or not. And I’m very grateful to Yolande, Linda, Karen David and Dave who helped me to ‘see’ certain things, to plant certain visuals or ideas or thoughts or concepts into my head so that I could cast around, like a fish out of water, and find what I was looking for. In a way that I could see it, understand it, grasp it and ‘get it.’
Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
Here are the golds developing in the sunset.
It’s so easy to speak of concepts or philosophies or ideologies. Where the rubber meets the road is in actually IMPLEMENTING the concept/idea/philosophy and practicing it every day and in every situation.
Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
This is the sunset starting to blossom.
So, this day of awakenings has been a major breakthrough for me. Right now, it’s still mental, but I can feel it begin to drip, drip, drip,down into my emotions where the real battlefield is at--where the real wounds are out. And I’m ready to work there. I’ve got these images, that made sense to me, in my head. And I’m going to hold on to them because it is a door through which I can gain my freedom to have all of the energy that is there for me--circulate FULLY through me someday. And not be blocked with a shredder as before.
Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
Here the sunset is developing it's 'signature' which was yellow with orange.
Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
Here is part of the sunset looking over the hill toward Cottonwood and Mingus Mountain.
Once Dave came up with the Snake Bagger equipment, he got the rattler before he dove back into his apartment. We drove up to the "Y" and let him go. He promptly went over to a juniper where he felt safe. Now, we can walk at night through that area and not worry about getting bitten--or our dogs--by this rattlesnake. We figured out a win-win situation where the snake is free to go and so are we. Peaceful Warrior stuff.....at least in the making...a formative movement toward it if nothing else....we learn to coexist, respect and honor but we don't kill or destroy because we think the reptile has no right here. Indeed, it does. We two-leggeds must learn how to share...
In Spirit....
posted by Eileen Nauman @ 8:59 PM
3 comments
