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

Walking Upright

I had a dream I was on vacation with a huge group of people last night. We were now an hour from our rental house and nearing the airport to fly home. I had left my car (read; Soul) at the house thinking we’d be going back. When I realized anyone who had a car (soul)among us, already knew and didn’t need to be told, was prepared, I was so angry!!

I went around yelling and asking– why didnt anyone warn me?? Why dont you care? Don’t you see that I have no way to get back– I have the keys!! and the husband of the homeowner cannot bring it here because of this.

No one would listen for more than a moment before going back to their vacationing fun and laughter. I was soooo distraught!!

This morning I came upon a rejected part of my psyche. A former ‘bent over woman’ like the one in Luke 13 crippled by her afflictions (trauma). But when she encountered God’s care,she was straightened.

Yesterday at pilates with my friend Irene leading, she had me do an exercise back against the wall and it’s very awkward: I feel hunched. She said “You don’t have kyphosis but you are compensating from a lifetime of this posture”. I understood that ‘this posture’ was a protection for my tender heart– an attempt at holding myself from further harm.

my first years practicing yoga in Colls at YogaWood with Beth Fill, that was the number one noticing– I left feeling taller, upright and straight. This alignment was the beginning of healing my gut-brain axis; my courage center. I’d been ‘crippled ‘ by the spirit of powerlessness and emotional instability for decades. I even went to a neurologist complaining of early Alzheimers and was told I ‘was a bored housewife”. The truth that was relayed was my brain was inflamed and reading Gabor Mate’s “Scattered Minds” and then “Brain on Fire” by Susannah Cahalan were pivotal in healing through a combination of east meets west– faith and practices. Discipline and surrender in order to enter flow state and enjoy meeting Jesus face to face.

Restoring wholeness to MIND is the most difficult embodied path because we are challenged by the culture every step of the way but the Kingdom of Heaven as I understand it, is much more merciful and grace-filled. Still human of course but infused by the divine. It’s not ever been two. It’s simply the original design before the infection of shame and the wound of separation.

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.

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.

The Wound is the Place the Light Gets In

This is a famous Rumi quote.

I had an experience, a dark night of the Soul last week. I had asked God to heal my sacral chakra imbalance that was showing up as over-emotionality. We need to become open-hearted and emotionally sober and mature humans but then we must pay attention to where there is a lack of equanimity.

Once I put out this intention, everything in my life from marriage to prayer to somatic therapy began to participate in helping me achieve healing. The Sacral chakra is called Svadhistana or return to sweetness, just like Jesus our original innocence restored. The wound is mostly unconscious and hidden from us. We are probably not operating actively from this deep recess. But there were absolutely long seasons of my life where my behavior in my dysregulated nervous system was driven by this hidden pain.

Jung said that this shadow pain is 99% pure gold holding immense energy for us. The shadow is not evil but simply unknown and unfamiliar– think “Jesus is the rock the builders rejected” from Mark 12. And so here is the key– regulate the nervous system and be gifted the consciousness of Christ in order to trust these healings that arrive like thunder and lightening scaring the Bejeezus out of us. It’s all scriptural– every time God showed up, the person was afraid.

I too was afraid and told God to lighten up– maybe you don’t know what you are doing (see me smiling here), maybe you are not the Lord and King I can trust– maybe I KNOW BETTER. But the Divine therapist knows my psyche like his own and we were partnering in this, we, in union were allowing my matter to receive the Light in the darkness of my wound and my wound in her healing released energy which was numinous and frightening to my nervous system.

But within a day I was integrated and told by my acupuncturist that I should be very grateful I handled the embodiment of these energies without too much difficulty. Easy for her to say!

My sweet 16 year old self is awakening to her power, her voice, and her sexuality. I love her and I’m so proud of how resilient and creative she is. She took on a lot of shit that she shouldn’t have had to and I’m helping her use it as fertilizer now for the tomb is empty and the ideal plot for tilling the soil and planting seeds. Time for the sunshine to help them grow.

Making the unconscious conscious is good, hard work.

Healing my Mood Disorder

7 years ago we had a day retreat at my church with my pastor and two participants. We ritually walked through a door threshold stating an intention.

I had no idea why my voice released this statement: I AM AN ICEBERG MELTING.

Come to see that these 7 years were about God circumsizing my heart and me yielding to healing my functional freeze state through oceans of tears. Sometimes I was being re-traumatized because I did not yet fully understand the power of yoga practice and was going too deep.

Ultimately, I was healing my sacral chakra and reinstating emotional regulation and maturity after decades of suffering from a mood disorder : PMDD, which is similar to BPD and is rooted in insufficient metabolism/mitochondrial dysfunction. I also suffered with chronic IBS during that time (no coincidence).

Read that again– additionally my drinking was further inducing depression and most certainly the potential for cardiovascular disease. We are speaking about brain energy.

I’ll never forget reading the books “Brain on fire” and “Scattered Minds” and coming to understand that my own body was allergic or attacking my mind in an attempt to wake me up to the suffering self, the pain body Eckhardt Tolle teaches about. This body within that carries death due to unresolved issues in our tissues.

I told my mother last week that I have come to understand these ancestral bodies as having ONLY two choices to carry our pain and memories of being powerless in the face of danger:

Chronically or Acutely, but no one is left without the cost.

I choose conscious healing and therefore experience the emotional intensity TODAY and then it is released. I’m not stuck any longer, nor am I broken.

This day, I am going to walk through my home threshold with a new statement–

Peace LIVES HERE. Harmony is my homeostasis. I can always find my way home to a

stable CENTER.

Whatever it is that you are dealing with mentally and/or physically, know that mind and body are ONE and you are not alone. What is most important is to maintain a hopeful and strong SPIRIT in pursuing relief. We are all in different seasons and must trust that they are varied and important.

Society is sick and we are individual cells honoring these bodies as part of the larger illness at every systemic level. It is not our fault but we have the responsibility and agency to HEAL.

It’s hard work. But knowing how deep rest is critical in finding the balance is crucial too. Growing our ability to sit with discomfort — whether that’s physical or emotional is a sign of our evolution.

We are in this together- no one battles alone and God is on our side. Seek holistic understanding — east must meet west in our wholeness. Mind Body and Spirit are a dance of energies.

I believe in US.

Flow State is Kingdom

I’m teaching my senior citizens a chakra series. For the last two weeks we focused on the root chakra. It is here that we stabilize, find secure attachment and focused attention. Begin at the beginning. Understand that your very body is the ancestors. You within your ordinary flesh contain the All.

This week we will enter the Sacral — woot woot!! the Land of relationship, flow state, pleasure and practicing letting go: into the river of life. We now have the stable container to hold the waters of life and we trust the pouring out. Here we begin to explore sensory communication from the body mind.

We trust that with rest, we will once again be infilled. We have strong boundaries here and any previous traumas and abuses are healed.

At the Sacral we feel that movement– dance, yoga, walking, strength training brings yummy brain chemicals. Movement is holy and ENJOYABLE.

“The universe (God) exists through a constant dance of consistency (Shiva) and change (shakti). Through consistency (discernment) one finds deep meaning. Through change (yielding) one finds stimulation and expansion. To find consistency (peace) within change (flow) is to embrace life’s unfolding nature (tao or Christ).”

I’m adding to the words of Anodea Judith in Eastern Body Western Mind.

Yoga is the practice which works in a spiral– we keep returning to center and along the way our awareness sweeps past debris that needs releasing. Old thinking, obsessions, patterns which don’t serve. If only we would trust these bodies in their innate capacity to heal and release. We with our conscious mind show up and yield to the ancestral actions — we don’t even need to understand. We simply with the faith of a mustard seed keep breathing, chanting, stretching and digesting our lives. Past present and future merge into a mosaic of eternal now. This is where the gods live. This is where we discern Herod from Christ. For we have had Herod consciousness too. We humbly seek the true Padre– the one united with Jesus in unfathomable love, mercy and forgiveness.

We dance here with them– the joyful trinity of our mind, body and breath within the larger context of our Divine Creator.

Build a Castle Within

During the years I penned my 1st book Kamikaze Yogi, I had the affirmation of my then male pastor. I’d go to see my mentor once and month and she’d say on occasion — Anita, do you realize how often you say that man’s name? In repsonse–Yes, Tip, I do realize. I care about that relationship. We call ourselves the preacher and the prophet.

It’s beautiful to build relationships! It’s hard work and they make us who we are. We nourish one another and challenge too. On the day he baptized me, my cousin had a vision of ‘something’ passing between us. Let me say that differently -on the day Jesus baptized me with his Holy Ghost I chose in my spirit to trust HIM in all that was about to unfold. We women have given our power away to man since the dawn of time.

I’m currently offering an IG body prayer each week for Lent this year as a complimentary practice to help others connect mind and body and awaken to the ways we all disparage these hard working creatures. This week I’m sharing from Eccl. 3:7 a time to break and a time to mend. Don’t we just hate the seasons of breaking? It could be job loss, divorce, illness, death..breaking is so painful.

When my book finally released, my pastor wrote the most beautiful heartfelt review on Amazon. My favorite line was about how ‘strange Anita’s writing can be because that is in line with the Bible. The scriptures are so very strange!”

But then in my spirit a week or so later I awakened to a knowing that the review had been removed. Yes, without first discussing it with me. As you can imagine this breach of trust ripped me to my core. From not just any friend, but my pastor, a man of the cloth. See what I did there? See how I had placed this ordinary human on a pedestal? This means I was meeting a part of myself lacking agency, a part that was disempowered from a prior ‘rupture’ by a man or men.

See how all things can work together for us to restore our identities and wholeness in Christ? It took me about 6 months to forgive and to discuss how I was taking my power back. Ultimately, my final lesson came when there was one more breach and I really wish I’d responded with ‘Get behind me Satan” because between us, there was a masculine/feminine demon dividing up the Divinely-ordained love that is available. Mutual respect and connection of the heart are what revelation speaks of in the new heaven and new earth.

But we cannot make others see and we can only choose to walk away with dignity, understanding that this is our story to tell.

Abuse fills our ears with the lie that we should keep quiet. For to keep secrets is survival.

I’m no longer in survival mode. I’m thriving. Especially after taking all this power back to fuel my voice in the world. Our nervous systems will keep us safe with our fawning, and our freezing. But we are able to move up into fight mode and stand up for ourselves. We do not have to abide by the ‘nice girls’ trope. We are to be authentic and with courage tell others what is and is not acceptable. We will not be bullied. Either the person plays by our rules or we walk away. We have choices and boundaries now. We no longer have to be held down by the boot of an imbalance of power.

Grab the soul key Jesus handed you and set yourself free my friends. Live a liberated woman in the ornate and many-roomed inner castle of your psyche. Your power is in your voice and your voice is a harmonic message of truth and love. The spiritual life is complex and beautiful and backed by God’s word.

1 Cor. 4:20 For the Kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of Power.

Holding opposing forces in tension

How are you going to hold two seemingly opposing views together in tension?

A year ago December I was in church and all the grief and lament of our community filled me to bursting. I was alone in my wailing publicly until someone came beside me and embraced my shoulders and allowed me to process what was flowing through. Is this a gift? Sure but

It’s also a sign of an excessive and imbalanced sacral chakra.

I did not know this although I’ve been studying my own energy and chakras for about 8 years. Well I should say– I knew it but I did not yet embody this understanding .

I was at a new chiropractor last month who said “you are leaking energy all over the place”… I somewhat took offense.

You see, my acupuncturist told me that I have a very strong constitution and am powerful. I have friends who comment on my anointing, I don’t like seeing myself as ‘leaky’

I did not want to hear this. Enter beginners mind

Humility

And yet, he planted a seed and I have been actively healing my sacral since. It’s brutally painful work. We are dealing with a young child developmentally–maybe 7-10

and her unmet needs.

We are listening to her not feeing safe and her emotional outbursts. We hold it all for HER.

This is the work of the cross in that we all have mostly ignored the depths of our suffering selves and so there is

a fair amount of stuck life force or trauma charge stored in the body and ALSO–

there is energy leaking

as others draw upon us without our consent.

It’s a WOUND. In need of compassion and balance.

In need of Justice.

Kamikaze Kyle (an excerpt from my new book Kamikaze Yogi)

KAMIKAZE KYLE

“Death and life are permeable states because

the ‘Risen Christ’ represents to us everyone who has ever died.”

I Cor 15 (version unknown)

Life is a mystery. Death, also.

Of one thing I am certain, Heaven would never be selfish and keep our loved ones locked away from us. Jesus’ Paschal mystery (the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ—the work that God the Father sent His Son to accomplish on earth) is about much more than the miracle of a physical body resuscitated beyond the grave. For every human, there is a path of ‘dying to the Self’. In Christian theology it is called kenosis (a Greek word meaning the act of emptying), and relates to our fears, and to the identification with a limited, disconnected ego. The word kenosis is used in Philippians 2:7, and says that Jesus made himself nothing. The verse translates to becoming entirely receptive to God’s divine will.

I imagine, on resurrection day, Jesus burst through each realm—from earth to hell, to heaven, and back to earth—to reveal to us what is possible.

My husband, Bob, and I have a GodSon, Kyle. Kyle passed in March 2019 after a courageous seven-year battle with a brain tumor.

Kyle, like all of us, is a child of God. God’s son. In those final months as he endured suffering, those two words, usually with different meanings, began to merge, becoming one and the same in my breaking heart: Godson and God’s son became GodSon.

When his body died, we experienced deep grief. In a time when we needed support from others, it seemed difficult for others to understand the effect of Kyle’s passing on us—we were close. This was not the passing of an extended friend. There was a stinging pain to this; even our church family didn’t seem to comprehend the relationship. It was painstaking to repeatedly explain that our grief was intense and prolonged because of this special assignment—that we needed prayers and care too. Over time, I have been able to show our community what it means to Bob and me to have a spiritual son. Once we see ourselves being God’s child, we extend this to others much more readily.

Kyle loved to express himself with tattoos and, about a month before he left his body, I was visiting and he wanted to tell me about his next tattoo (his tenth, I believe.) On that visit, Kyle found it difficult to speak and became increasingly frustrated. Mark, Kyle’s dad, told Kyle not to worry, and he pulled out his phone and brought up a picture of a skull with goggles and a helmet. It was a morbid image. For a moment, I was lost for words. Then I noticed the skull had a yellow scarf and so I said how much I loved the sunny color he’d chosen. But in my head, I was thinking: Kyle, WTF?

The next day, as I prayed for him, it hit me. That was no ordinary skull, that was a kamikaze pilot. I googled the image. Sure enough, plain as day, there he was. I’d missed it because I had been taken aback with the death imagery. I texted him excitedly: Kyle, you couldn’t have known this, but that is the name of my book. You are getting a kamikaze pilot tattoo.

(Note: even before I knew what this book was about, God had given me the unique name for it.)

Kyle couldn’t use his hands that well, he was limited to texting with emojis. He shot back a thumbs up. I typed back: We have such a special connection, you and I… I later wished I’d added: a soul connection…

And then he sent me a red heart.

Moments ago, I stopped typing this draft and went to my phone with the thought that the old text thread would be there so I could quote verbatim. But I found an empty thread. I burst into tears. Gone. Whyyyy? I wailed.

The day after the red heart text, I prayed for Kyle, again, and texted him: Buddy, you know you are not this body with an expiration date, a brain riddled with tumors. You are not a mouth that can’t form words or hands that can no longer type. You are a soul filled with love, a Spirit which soars with God throughout eternity. I know he sent me lots of red hearts that day. My heart burst; we understood one another at a level beyond language.

Kyle’s soul knew he’d put on his goggles and helmet to protect him as he traveled through the realms. No need to make that stop in hell since Jesus took care of that for all of us. Kyle was fiercely declaring: death has no hold on me. Death is not the end. What appears dead is only dormant.

Search for love beyond your fear and your limited mind. Enter your heart to discover a realm of heaven. Go searching, come looking, like Mary Magdalene did at Jesus’s tomb. Look for evidence of Heaven in your life. Discover Him in your inner world.

Wherever there is beauty, there am I. Laughter, that’s me. The break of dawn, me. A peaceful time chilling with friends, I’m right here. Tears? I am with you in your pain.

Know that this is Him, this is you, and this Him is in you.

These hearts of ours, these walkie talkie hearts that work as spiritual receptors, can receive the love of heaven and get you to feel it, all from the realm that Kyle now occupies. Heaven is within us. Heaven is now. It’s a newly opened space from where grief dug its grave in us.

We may have had a fixed idea about our physical reality. We may be stuck in our Western brain. But we can change. We can and must lift ourselves out of our despair and continue our searching in the East.

Bob and I do it for Kyle. Who are you doing it for? Who will you do it for?

Out in nature, we’ll find our nervous systems regulating, and we’ll relax and get present. We’ll invite the Spirit in and tell Her to have Her way with us. Enchant me! We consent to your action. We want to know about God’s son. We shout into the void of the night sky: “What have you done with him?”

This speaks to Christianity rooted in wisdom and mystery, recognizing us as incomplete until love opens the door to connection to the Holy Spirit. Our Eastern practices bridge the way to what was always intended but somehow derailed. I recall many occasions where the Spirit required obedience; the ‘go’ to receive or serve in ways that I didn’t often understand at the time. We follow the One who makes us “go”. He is the Life.