The Ending is Sweet

Friends, if we are a small human with no concept of history and battles, no concept of kairos time, we will find ourselves powerless living in our heads — where the past and future are stored, conveniently. In this headspace, we are not required to come down off our cross, off our high horse and serve the real world. No, we are too busy– busy judging and worrying, busy planning and ruminating. We have no energy to serve our souls or those we encounter. We are exhausted.

Sound familiar ?

It’s in our incarnation that we embody the spirit. In this teeny tiny body that is finite we uncover our capacity to carry the infinite. This is not something our brain can hold and so we must feel it with our hearts. We must draw close to God and one another and feel each other for our humanity depends on this sensing function.

When we do draw close- what do we see with our one eye open and one eye closed? We might see fear, or grief. We might also see ‘sin’. It is only with our growing awareness that our surrender to God’s vision for humanity might save us from ourselves.

And so this sweet and happy ending comes to mind. This long- awaited homecoming into the arms of Creator. Let’s not wait until after we’ve left these teeny, tiny messy bodies, ok? Let’s allow the kingdom of heaven to impact us in the world. That will require vulnerability and courage. For each of us, it will be very different.

Sometimes life/reality/God gives us our medicine watered down. And other times we have no capacity to take in the diagnosis, the accident, the abusive voice, the cheating, the lies.

Our inner child is part of how we grow capacity. We refuse to self-abandon. She’s always included– this innocent one. This creative one. This one desiring fun and connection. He draws close to adult me and wants to feel safe. Will I allow their safe expression?

So if you are like me, you are trying to take your medicine (nutrition, balance, strength, tough conversations, cleaning out the closet for gosh sakes!) and you are not giving yourself enough moments of awe and wonder. Let us walk in nature and allow the largeness of the universe to right -size our worries.
And once again we will draw close to our friend and hug them with genuine care. We will bake those cookies, singing our song into the batter. We will shoot off that encouraging text. Because we matter. Each of us really matters.

The Ending is Sweet.

I am Word made Flesh

I’m often contemplating the shape of the cross. What does this vertical “On earth as it is in heaven” goal mean?

What does the horizontal truth of a wide and gracious

energy or spirit that is far-reaching east to west?

What feels prescient this week is the humility of embracing energy healing that is pure grace.

I went to a Biofield tuning session a few weeks ago and I literally FELT the restoration of water being poured back into my guts, my solar plexus.

I didnt’ have to do anything but believe and in faith trust the practitioner of this amazing frequency healing through the use of tuning forks.

But that’s not the whole picture of course– in these bodies are charged with all the movement, all the nutrition, all the connection to our neighbor. There’s action!!

It’s not all rest and digest

It’s putting legs on our faith in a way that is ordinary (weights, service, fasting, cardio, sweating, cold showers, journaling etc)

And the cross will always be the shape which informs my living in harmony with Christ. The doing, the being, the not bypassing…

The healing is a restoration of immense magnitude!!

We are Word made flesh.

#incarnation #embodiment #kamikaze #anchor #pentecost #HolyGhost #MindBodySoul

What It’s Like to Be Incredibly Unrealistic (me)

Today I went on an audition in Phila. South Philly to be exact– a block from the restaurant Stogie Joe’s. Maybe 11 years ago, I was there enjoying a drink with girlfriends and noticed a sign advertising “Sinatra Sundays’. Well, My Uncle Benny adores him so I told them, I’ll be back with my family for that!

Fast forward a few months and there we sat, all 12 of us, enjoying some of the city’s best pizza and a fine rendition of “I did it My Way”. When I got home I turned to FB to ‘like’ the Stogie Joe’s page and there was the last name Iovacchini. Mary Iovacchini ‘liked’ Stogie Joes. Hmmmmm. I was supposed to grow up with that name. I’d found out about 8 years prior that was my birth father’s name– and you don’t see it too often. At this point, I’d met my half-brothers, their children but no one else (and certainly no one near Philly).

I decided to write to Mary I. Hi!! We might be related. I’m an Iovacchini too. Mary replied right back– cool! She’d married one and didn’t I know that the restaurant which brought us together was owned by her husband’s cousins. Maybe they were my cousins too? I was so hungry for information, for family connections, for pieces of the puzzle. Mary, would you have coffee with me?

Our two hour long conversation was like water for my parched soul. It was as if this divine appointment was part of an unfolding story that only God could write. Dad had left before I was born and I’d created quite the realistic yet unhelpful story of my own for decades–this story now percolated in my subconscious mind and felt a lot like unworthiness and shame with words swirling around like ‘bastard’ and unwanted.

Let’s circle back to today and that audition, shall we?

I was so so brave.

On my walk from the car, I heard in my spirit about how all of heaven was supporting me. And by heaven, the Lord meant my ancestors. I also understood that heaven was below my feet and was rising up like a geyser of love or I was the rocket ship hovering over the base of fuel ignited and preparing the vessel to take off. I felt powerful!! I felt that my soul was charged and the art that I made yesterday tittled ‘Voltage’ was hard at work– propelling me toward goodness, fun, connection, and success.

My ancestors (first, I’ll speak about the 2 paternal grandparents that I didn’t meet) were alcoholics and abandoned their 3 boys to the Philly orphanages…separated into three facilities. Breaking up their brotherhood forever. And My Oma who helped raise me, never seemed to get out of survival mode. Her own husband divorced for being alcoholic and working full time– peace came in the evening with a cigarette and her crochet needles. But mostly I saw her struggle, anxious…secretive.

Did any of these people live in anything but a realistic way I ask you?

So today, when upon returning home to my loving, supportive husband, he asked me to be realistic about the likelihood that I’d get a callback when the others were professionally trained actresses and me, well I had a few classes of improv under my 59 year old belt. My initial response– my very ordinary response was “You are right. Of course I should be realistic.” but my words were hollow.

So I climbed in the hot tub to pray. I’d asked a dozen people to pray this specific prayer– that I’d have a door opened to be surrounded by like-minded creative people. So when one of those friends texted me with “what did you discern about the like-minded people’…this is my response.

My mind is like this– unrealistic

I understand that those who break free from generational patterns of trauma might lean into this magical way of thinking. Not in way that disregards all the hard work but that counts the emotional labor and prayers as the hardest work we do. To believe again.

To believe in possibility and breakthrough — not necessarily that we end up on stage performing but that we live from tenderness. That there are no more monsters under the bed. That my inner child is safe to be completely and utterly unrealistic. Dreaming and planning and enjoying her little funny silly self.

And that ‘big me’ has plenty of space for her to play. Because the opposite of trauma just might be play.

I know my ancestors unlived life in me is cheering today– Go, Anita Go!! Keep

up the unrealistic expectations that God is real, the spirit of God grows us way beyond

living realistically.

A life of faith is oh so unrealistic — thank God for that!!

Understanding God and the Human Nervous System

We see how God entered the human nervous system especially as we contemplate the cross of Christ. Did Jesus dissociate when he cried out– Abba, Abba why have you abandoned me?

I have thought so yes but in a sense, there was still a part of Him who understood the mission. Take the trauma of the people of the world and transmute it– once and for all. Turn pain and suffering into a creative new life force filled with connection and restored to a primordial power.

When the nervous system is regulated- the fear and memory of nervous system activation for survival has been healed ancestrally and personally. Can you even imagine this?

You must– you must 1st imagine and visualize this level of peace, safety and divine guidance. A God who breaks His own patterns and recollects us to the primordial system of the fascia. Yes, still physical– still in and of the body!!

Spiritual and harmonized while remaining in Her– the Source of all. In HIM, the placenta, the Lion, the Dove: All the metaphors apply here. It’s the best news about the sound of Heaven. The echo of the Ommmm. The frequency of Love and power.

Flowing to us and through us– uniquely singing our small part in the great Chorale — where the spiritual heart is able to be an open vessel for God’s mysteries.

This is my prayer over you today and in the season to come.

That all people everywhere trust in the consecration– you are a sacred and holy people.

Mental is Physical

Yesterday I restrained my ankle walking through Philly’s Chinatown in search of meat on a stick. Over a month ago, I went over it, falling in a shallow hole in the meadow across from our home. I thought it was healed and haven’t gone to PT as I should. That re-injury yesterday was the reminder from my 25 year old self that I still haven’t fully addressed her wound. And so today up before the dawn, I pray. I have been experiencing obsessive thoughts and that is my pointer. Who is doing all this thinking? and what needs processing. I know how to build the door to heaven. I’ve built thousands of them.

I call it breaking through the firmament. It’s a veil between upper and lower realities. the lower densities contain shame, memory, pain, trauma, grief, fear and so much more. The upper chakras hold the lightness of being and if we yoke ourselves to God’s ways we will find healing. God is merciful and so I am merciful. God is filled with creative solutions and so my soul finds them as well. We have never been separate and I bring this to her– the missing me. She was lost in a sea of worry and anger. Rage really. She wrote a bunch of fuck you letters this morning as part of her process. To all the wedding guests, the bridal party, family. No one recognized her disguise as one placed on her by God– no , she was ignored. Her pain, the abuse, all of it. Ignored. Maybe that is the way of the world after all. Maybe that is the path of liberation. Not human compassion but human ignorance that dives us into the arms of the Divine. Our heavenly Papa. Where our true power lies.

So if that ‘s you today. Know I understand. It’s a very painful journey of transfiguring the creature. Pope John Paul wrote in “Light of the East’ that the transfiguration of the creature would inaugurate in the coming of the kingdom of God. And so here we are doing the inaugurating. Some days that’s a party and a feast and some days it’s crying into our coffee mug and writing fuck you letters.

But it’s not like before.

No, it’s nothing like that. Those years of having to pretend and act nice and be a pretty bride on the outside while the inside rots….

My Hungry Ghost

What addicts get are relief from pain” Dr. Gabor Mate

When I was 23 I had my wisdom teeth removed and was prescribed a powerful opioid Percocet. When that script ran out, I was scared. I didn’t like going back to ‘me’.

I LOVED who I had become while ‘high’. You see we don’t know about trauma and the pain body. We only know about fighting our own selves with the weapon of shame.

You shouldn’t be so attached to that feeling, Anita. You shouldn’t desire something so harmful. What the hell is wrong with you?!?

I didnt’ know until about two years ago – when a friend said “Ohhhh, that was your first taste of freedom from the demons of your mind”. Why yes, how did you know?

How did I not know?

We do not know or understand ourselves. We are patterned for survival and thriving is not even in our daydreams I mean who is thriving? Movie stars and music makers? Finally their shadow is allover for us to see that their inner demons have been driving their addictions into the darkest places imaginable– human trafficking and sexual child abuse.

Do not look ‘out there’ for the answers my friends. The answers lie within the human heart. Do not even look ‘out there’ to judge. Let God be the judge…may we find our power sweeping our side of the street.

You will find the crack your demons have been feeding on and you will starve them. This is necessary.

Do not feel sorry for them. Let Christ throw them into the pigs who dive into the sea because they know their time is up.

Everyone has a pain body. You are not special– that is the worst and best news I can share.

Because what is special has yet to be expressed.

The hardest part will be when you enter creation mode and make stuff to satisfy your own Self. It might be shared or not.

It’s about being a creator now.

The shift in the nervous system is from consumer

to supplier.

You supply your hungry ghost with nourishment and love in the

form of creativity., connection and being an eye witness. You no longer look away into your addiction–

you take a good hard look at the pain and you create capacity

to feel it.

That

freedom

And you must want ti. Jesus comes for the sick, the poor in spirit and desperate. that was me…still is me some days.

Like today.

Are you a Bummer Lamb too?

You can have wild consciousness shifting experiences without ayahuasca.

I was at a yoga training in NYC in 2015 when a woman was instructed to slowly place her hands over my heart (front and back body) and in that moment I felt that she’d had to PUSH

through an energetic block.

She did not feel it

She’d opened a portal in me.

Over the course of those 3 days I entered another realm.

I was connected to all the people on the streets of NYC.

I cried with the homeless and yelled at those who were asleep to being kind and responsive.

Ultimatley on Sunday eve. this ‘bummer lamb’ came up against the divide within. I saw the severing that occurred at birth from my father.I went into the abandonment wound

And my Shepherd showed up as a repairer of the breach.

I cried– I’m so little and you’re so big!! He replied I’m so little and youre so big!!

There is a great mirror above. We are God’s chosen people and this is their chosen kingdom. If we seek, we will find connection, magic, healing and wholeness.

“Jesus said, my sheep listen to my voice, I know them. They follow me. I give them eternal life. They shall never perish. no one will snatch them out of my hand.” John 10: 27

From time to time a ewe will abandon her healthy lamb and is raised by the Shepherd. They call her a ‘bummer lamb’. I am honored to lead others back to the Shepherd.

Why Kamikaze?

Why “Kamikaze”

I was in Japan last month and had a wonderful conversation with Endo, our home- cooking chef, who spoke to me that he was spiritual not Buddhist. He said he could feel my heart for life, for faith and for Jesus and in that way understood why I was gifted this difficult word from the heavenly realm to relay my message of holy guidance.

It was a comforting conversation from a Japanese resident who’s grandparents had known war and the history of violence on their land and surrounding Asia. Yet, Thousands of years before in 1281, the Japanese people were saved from invading military attacks thanks to the typhoon they coined a kamikaze wind. A gift from the gods.

The Holy Spirit is in my experience the expression of the person of Jesus from the scriptures – an all encompassing ‘God’ who is sacrificial in nature, evolutionary, sacred, and when connected to the physical through us, is evidence of how the Christ can be enjoyed in a thousand faces not his own (Gerard Manly Hopkins). When the spirit is embodied our vessel is enlivened by the power of our Creator and we begin to allow this good tree of Life to heal our roots. With healed roots ‘out of the abundance of the heart the mouth will speak’.

For when the ‘west’ is steeped in dogma/agenda, it takes the powerful, creative Spirit out of life. As reliable as the rising of the sun, when East meets West, we are whole- mind body is one.

We were never separate but the spirit realm created various wounds and chaos due to being on earth. These bodies made of earth must adjust to carrying ‘Light’. But we know from Einstein that e=mc2…matter is slowed down energy. We are quantum beings operating as if we are simply physical. We desire to see on earth as it is in heaven!

And so without our knowledge of the spirits at work, we suffer. Ancestrally we carry what has not been processed in our bodies.Then we add the multitude of ways that our individual life has met danger and abuse, or simply early in life unmet survival and emotional needs. And the armor and anxiety build.

And all of this is deposited in the subconscious mind/body for us to awaken to and address. The healing is multi-dimensional and so we need community and experts along the way to understand ourselves. Society and culture are sick so they will battle us every step of our liberation: enter ancient yoga. A spiritual orthopraxy rooted in being a path of liberating the Soul. And as Pastor Ben White once wisely stated- I think yoga is one path to an all-consuming bond with God.

The good tree of Life will grow once we’ve created a healthy environment for flourishing. Our health will be restored because much of the body knows what to do on its own.It’s brilliantly designed both for survival and thriving.

But we must be our boldest selves in order to break free from functional freeze (depression). I was stuck in flight (busyness/distraction) and mostly unaware of my unconscious depression — but my chronic constipation was the physical signal. Now the science is behind the value in healing the gut-brain axis.

My ‘sin’ was the sign of the gaping wound yet to be addressed. Many wounds of course, but abandonment is my primary and led to attention seeking and emotional upheaval.

My suffering became so great that I had to embark on the spiritual journey with the Kamikaze– the Divine Wind.

And along the way I was awakened to the spirit realm and the ways those daemons (Jungian) were creating chaos within and in my outer life. Our transfiguration is the revelation that there is not truly an inner and outer– there is just life and how we interact.

How much change can we embrace safely?

How much unsteadiness can we tolerate in search of Truth?

How much of our inner child’s soul needs and cries do we have capacity to address (in the eternal now)?

Only you can answer these questions. We create capacity through nervous system regulation, mindfulness , community and intention.

I have found the courage to emerge. And if you are ready to embark, I am a humble warrior to come alongside.

“For sorrow awaits those who feed themselves instead of their flocks. Shepherds feed the sheep. You have not taken

care of the weak. You have not gone looking for

those who’ve wandered away. So my sheep

have been scattered without a shepherd.

They have wandered through the mountains

and across the face of the earth, yet no one has

gone to search for them.” Ezekiel 34:2

For it is only the Life of Christ in my soul which can pursue and accomplish anything so lofty. Praise His sacrifice (this is my body given for you) that we might invite God’s powerful love to draw us where there is an absence of Love,

A shortfall of Truth.

Yoga Nourishes Your Spirit

Yoga has been a body prayer for me because it’s 30-90 minutes dedicated to time with the Lord. Initially people may think it is physical because the practice meets you right where you are but eventually it opens your heart to the reality that its worship of mind body and spirit. Your inner Trinity aligns and you dissolve the ordinary worries of the day as you enter a higher consciousness.

The mission of yoga according to the Sutras is the exact same mission as becoming a follower of Christ–

A yogi’s goal is to ascend to the cosmic spirit from which the soul has descended.

A Jesus follower’s goal is to ascend to the christ spirit from which the soul has descended. ‘We believe in ONE GOD”

See how East meets West in such a powerful realization of who we are at our deepest essence?

Knowing the Holy Spirit is an actual embodied endeavor– not intellectual (some of the time, sure) but it’s got to include your WHOLE self! This is how healing ensues.

Holy Spirit gives us revelation of the Father and is your personal tutor. Life and life abundant comes from the awakening energy of the body and spirit both and how they dance.

I have not been afraid to be wrong. I’ve been afraid to minimize the power of Christ in us. This power will transform your entire life trajectory when you begin to have faith in the unseen.

Sure, Yoga is demonic (spoiler alert: I’m not one of those Christians)

Opening the body is a massive risk.

A holy Saturday reflection on what a body even is.

Do you have any idea what your body is comprised of in the spiritual realm? Your body is the quantum field of your ancestors– all they carried around in their fear and hatred, all they were addicted to and all their unmet hopes and dreams. The weight of this energy is an enormous drain on the psyche. But we have the Holy Spirit, the Divine Wind regardless. That’s very good news that in any moment, no matter the state of the body and soul, the Spirit is at the ready to respond with insight, direction, comfort, and peace (and much more! the list is endlessly creative).

In my experience, trauma- personal, ancestral and collective is part of our agreement with our Creator in how to live a life. The charge of trauma in our nervous system reverberates through us and is part of nature. It’s a brilliant survival mechanism by our brilliant Artistic Director. Learning how to understand how we are wired and our potential is the task of our lifetime. We learn beginner’s mind and patience. We trust we have the essence at center of being made by, for and with Love. All our ‘sin’ is rooted in major and minor wounds from this life and the lives of our people. We sit on the shoulders of the great and the pitiful.

Jesus spends time with the pitiful. Do we know how to spend time with them? We start in the outer world by being of service with those who break our hearts- their earthly suffering so great it breaks us wide open. And from this softening of the heart, the Light begins to address our cracks. We are the divine fragrance from which the cracked vessel pours.It’s our vision which needs adjusting and our systems which need calming.

Regulate the nervous system and find the kingdom of God. Inner life will begin to overtake outer reality and by continuing to venture within we begin to see with our spiritual vision, our God goggles. Oh, here’s where I am pitiful and powerless and I was responding like Pharaoh. Oh, here’s where I was feeling jealous and lusty, I must meet Jesus’ frequency in order to heal. If I continue to block my healing with my stubbornness, there’s not much He can do. For we must be in accord. We are One after all. It is our solemn responsibility to agree with who Abwoon says we are.

Innocent.

Our sin is part of our Tikkun Olam– our agreement to take on the ‘filth’ that invaded a perfect garden and co-redeem this not so god -forsaken place. This is where the demons come in. When we draw close to the wound, we come to awaken to the cast of characters at play in us. You could call them chakra demons because they seem to align perfectly with our seven gifts of the spirit when redeemed. The battle is real until it shifts to more of a dance. With the agency and authority we have in Christ, we learn to train them up to listen to our voice, as we return to our Bema seat. The body becomes the vehicle by which we move energy and settle back in our center, where eternal shalom abides.

To me, Jesus Himself teaches us how to live the one life, the one path through the desert and wilderness, meeting Satan and learning how to be a warrior in mind, body and spirit. We discern our Shepherd’s voice. It’s part of Yah Weh’s instructions to Moses– I love and know my people; now, I want them to know me.

We must trust it’s a two-way communication. I know I had no way of trusting the wild nature of God in a body operating from a deep base of unprocessed anger, fear, resentment and unforgiveness. It’s all one fabric of fear and it permeates every layer of how we operate – mostly subconsciously. Until we awaken and remain alert.

If Christians dont want to do this path as I’ve laid out, they don’t have to. Not everyone is called to break generational curses and be in their body so deeply. But in my experience, in order to fully embody the soul, we must walk Jesus’ path to the cross and wait on resurrection. Talitha Koumi, He announces! Arise little lamb.

He calls up our innocence and our original goodness, we live from this place now. We live from Anahata- the heart. This beautiful Sanskrit word means unstruck or before the wound of separation, any harm at all.

Sure, we are impacted by the world and it’s filth– maybe next week or next month. But now we have tools to transform what we’ve encountered. Not demons, but suffering. Not anything to fear because our nervous system is now rooted in a state of love. We have shifted from survival up to thriving. We have learned how to ask for and receive our daily bread.

We learned how to harness a bit of the wind in order to heal. We learned to trust the dissonance in us.

We must go through many tribulations in order to enter the Kingdom Acts 14:22

Emmanuel God is with us. There is nowhere we could hide from the depths of this sacrificial love. He’s the gift and the giver of that gift as my friend Jen likes to say. Somehow, mysteriously as I lean into my practices of discomfort- cold showers, weight training, sprints, breath practice I have come to trust the dark face of God, the feminine yin. Somehow, quite mysteriously when the dark night of the soul visits me, I am a ‘yes’ and although I am terrified, there is a part of me who understands what John meant in saying

The light shines in the darkness, and the dark has not overcome it

Open the body if you dare. You’ll come to be that Kamikaze yogi Christ created you to be. Knowing your warrior nature, your Imago Dei. You’ll be so proud of yourself and your walk in step with the mission to ‘colonize the earth with the life of heaven” as N.T. Wright so beautifully stated. The great commission to being all about God’s big comeback.