Several years ago, as part of a group of prerequisites for going to the Mystery School’s Healer’s academy where I would learn to do DNA activations and related healings, I became acquainted with several facets of energy as it manifests in the material world. With meditations, we were guided to build an inner sanctuary, ‘meet’ the four elements (earth, air, fire and water), how to (safely) astral project, meet our creative and sexual self, and lastly, meet our masculine and feminine Divine[1].
Before each ‘meeting’ or exercise, we were smudged, cleared, and connected to both earth and heavenly energies – or so that was the intention.
Each of these courses cost anywhere from $80-$500 dollars; they weren’t cheap. The actual Healer’s Academy was a few thousand on top of that, and was to take place in Canada…but I was motivated and had the resources. Naturally, I hoped this path would help me feel a little less empty and bring me happy fulfillment- a sense I otherwise lacked (intensely).
First I met my Divine masculine self– that part of us which expresses our will and acts on the world. Mine was an even-browed brown-haired Eagle Scout. He had a meticulous eye for detail, was dedicated and hard-working. He was always prepared!
This wasn’t much of a surprise. Prior to becoming an allergist, I loved running the ICU and ER (but later couldn’t bear it’s obvious exploitations). Each patient was a new puzzle to master and, I thought, help. I could take your “inventory” quite succinctly- and tell you how to ‘fix’ yourself. Such was the nature of my will (to good). It was a comfort to know that was where I was “coming from”.
Next, I met my Divine feminine. Her name was Serena – a beautiful ballerina wearing peach chiffon, intensely sensitive, and almost a vapor. She was really quite lovely. I didn’t ‘know’ her at all, except maybe in my dreams at the ballet barre. Gauzy peach chiffon was not in my wardrobe! She was quite a ‘surprise’.
Once we met them both, so there was an imprint in our tranced minds, we were to “invite” them to dance together.
Neurolinguistically, this is akin to having the right- and left-brain hemispheres work together across the corpus callosum. Consider your left brain, most evolved to be logical, mathematic, rational, and analytical- incidentally all traits of the alpha male, and our right brain processes– receptive, listening, language, relational, and spatially aware ascribed as being “feminine”- how we emotionally (based on our interpretation of symbols) integrate our sensory world.
When the right and left sides of our brain work together well, I’ve noticed that people speak with an more embodied, resonant, almost sing-song voice. You can really hear it in the ‘voice’ of successful writers and comfortable speakers.
AT first my Divine masculine and feminine danced well together. I mean she’s a ballerina and can follow anybody, no surprise there! But then ‘Serena’ pulled away from her boy scout and began dancing evermore energetically. Eventually she was doing literal cartwheels off the ceiling! This was freaky – and clearly she was nuts (!).
But we weren’t supposed to judge, just observe and note with our witness minds, truths about our deeper inner workings.
Since then everyone I’ve talked to has had some version of a shocking truth; what that looks like is different for each.
Given my family history of mother’s mental illness, I naturally felt sad and fearful; being considered crazy was the last thing I wanted- in my world, that lead to isolation, strong drugs with terrible side effects, and being hated and feared. Up until then, I was consciously aware of emulating successful men, and considered quite manly – so much so that many believe (even now) I’m gay; I even had a woman fall in love with me and want me to marry her. (Kissing her just didn’t feel right to me– ever)
These explorations did not suggest remedies to having them dance together more wholly; that was the job ahead.
As our inner world reflects our outer, my husband was, and is, a near perfect embodiment of me as I’ve related. He is a reconstructive gynecologic surgeon- an epitome for meticulous technicality; dresses like a delicate dandy, and in our marriage, was free in all ways except in our conjugal relations (until now).
My credo was that to love someone (unconditionally), means you are willing to let them follow their heart – no matter what, even if it means letting them go. My husband needed me to be his anchor while he rose into successive echelons in his world- taking me with him naturally. Because of this, he was himself no match for my Divine feminine; he had no interest in ‘being there’ for me emotionally. We were bound at the hips, but not at the heart.
Furthermore, whenever I expressed my intensely sensitive flighty intuitive self, he was palpably disinterested; he liked me much better when I was at least a little stoned or drunk.
That was about seven years ago.
As in the Celestine Prophesy, I let my intuition guide me. It was my job, and Dharma, to navigate that path alone during which time I discovered the “Shift Network” on-line and their signature course with Elayne Doughty Kalila and Devaa Haley Mitchell. The Soulful Women’s Certificate program (SWCP) is a nine month course exploring 13 archetypes of female based on distillations of Joseph Campbell’s and Ariel Spilsbury’s work. As all original works spur ever-refining copycats, there are many similar courses today.
Before SWCP, I was aware of many of the negatives of each archetype and embraced only one or two. When I was an “initiator” self, everyone called me a bitch. No wonder my Serena was a vapor! Each archetype has her gifts…and lessons, including death and poisons.
Eventually I stumbled onto Chloe Goodchild’s course on ‘singing yourself into wholeness’. There were many broken souls in that course…I was amongst good company. Using a set of seed sounds resonating with each chakra (SA, Ray, Ga, Ma, Pa, Da, Ni, Sa), we explored blockages in our energy system. The singing gave us some ease, but for many of us there were lots of tears! Early on, Chloe especially emphasized grounding in the “SA” sound to let it “lead us into ever widening circles of consciousness”- and to deepen our root chakra connection to mother earth. Most of us were ungrounded by abuse and trauma.
You might imagine that my masculine Divine needed some more grounding to be able to support Serena!
During the last few years, while I wallowed after quitting my job, my Serena grew mature- and heavier. Crippled by mild arthritis, she couldn’t do cart-wheels off the ceiling anymore. She was increasingly despondent. My Divine masculine was a bloated couch potato. He looked like Rolli, a neighbor who drank pretty heavily. It was not pretty. My husband became increasingly unhappy with me too.
One day sitting in meditation, after I had done my typical practice of sacred clearing to calm, center and purify myself, my Holy Guardian Angel (whom I’d met years before in Kabbalah) suggested I pick up a ‘key” that I’d received during a shamanic journey (with Sandra Ingraham) to the “Snake G-ddess” which I’d let my spirit animal keep for me safely[2].
With no small amount of trepidation, but trusting it was for my highest good (and “to serve all beings” as I have always intended), I embarked on a version of soul retrieval (apparently) .
Descending down several levels of dingy, narrow stone stairs, and at the end of a long dark corridor, was a furious ball of whirling color locked behind thick prison bars. As a condition of unlocking it, I made it promise to only serve “light and love”. It agreed and seemed to slow a little- so I unlocked it.
Together as we regained the stairs, with it on my right side, the ball of whirl slowly morphed into a humanoid shape, then into a man. By the time we got to the top, he was handsome, quite a bit taller than me and kingly. I felt compelled to ask him his name (not something I normally do with guys), he carefully told me he was called, “Hades”. Oh shit, WTF have I done?!
My HGA said, “go look Hades up on Wikipedia”. Hades said he was here to give me, “boots full of gemstones”- some weight for my earth element.
Interestingly within the next 48 hours I somewhat randomly found an exact picture of the whirling ball (in a depiction of Uranus), and of Hades in a summary slide of Hell’s demons. All except Hades looked like scary monsters! Even in that depiction, Hades was a handsome king, and almost identical to the one I’d retrieved. Please know, I have NO background in mythology. Ah, So this is Serena’s mate!
Who is Hades? According to Wikipedia, he is the King of the Underworld. He rules over all of Gaia’s resources and man’s attachments to them, including our protectiveness for children. He is both Pluto’s energy named and he embodies the masculine Will of Gaia. He shares her resource freely. Bear energy is one of his totems (as well as Russia’s). He is the manifestation of Love, whose dual side is Hate.
Like Zeus, his brother who rules the heavens, and Poseidon who rules the Seas, he is also a god-king. All three together are part of G-d. Of course G-d is ineffable, omnipotent, omniscient…. These entities are constructs to describe aspects of His absolute dominion, and work to bring us our heart’s desire. Yet, we always have free will as to “how” this is done.
I guess I shouldn’t have been that surprised, I recall being full of rage kindled by what I perceived to be insults to earth and her peoples.
I hate litterbugs- yelling after cars that casually toss crap out of the window- then resentfully picking up after them.
Until recently, I was an untiring advocate for the abused and underdog. That part of myself did not belong in pleasant company. I learned to stuff it- as those who perpetrated such acts were invariably considered my betters. AT least they had power, prestige, and drove damn nice cars!
But I noticed too, their active cultivation of that status, even as they were naturally rich, naturally beautiful, or naturally successful- they didn’t leave anything to chance. They were taught how to keep others back at the same time- using exclusivity and micro-aggressions (at least).
Remember I grew up on Marblehead Neck, surrounded by expensive mansions looking out over beautiful and dramatic coastline. While we lived in the middle, meaning non-view part of the ‘island’, my parents were very social. We went to fancy parties all along that northern Massachusetts corridor – such as in Manchester, Rockport, and tony areas of Beverly.
Yet if these people were so happy and successful, veritably living in the Garden of Eden of their own choosing, why were they all sleeping around (both parents had affairs; my mother with John Updike), alcoholic and pill-addicted, or suicidally depressed (at least 3 women and children died by their own hand before I was 6. One of them was my father’s mistress who killed herself jumping from a bridge). (This is also an example others can be inspired from when it’s their turn to feel (whatever – insert destructive emotion here).
Why did my own mother seemingly hate me? Is that the price of being alive in today’s world?
As I matured, so did my ‘mask-cutting’ self; there was nothing in their lives I wanted if it meant being so unkind.
Bruce Lipton hypothesizes in his book, “The Biology of Belief” that depression and discontent is sowed when the subconscious doesn’t get it’s (hard-wired) needs met. These aren’t fulfilled – but normal expectations. I hope even the scientist reading this would agree, though I doubt there will be many. Failing to get our (creature’s beings) needs met is a prime driver for e-vil behaviors.
We need to feel loved; we need the medicines of Nature; we need meaningful connection; we need a space where our emotional self is safe.
Interestingly, our particular expression of how we obtain these necessities, either from our personal lack or environmental (family- as in parent or sibs, or home) shortfalls, is described quite clearly in the natal astrologic chart along with the strengths and weaknesses. These can serve to guide us -to our higher most embodied and mature expressions of self.
Shortly after meeting Hades, I was sitting next to a very attractive junior league- type woman on an airplane.
Perfectly coifed, nails done, makeup and outfit impeccable. She seemed visibly uncomfortable with me, a somewhat dark and wild appearing woman (I didn’t wear any make-up and my hair was pulled straight back). While I don’t think I smelled (!), she acted as if I did and didn’t speak to me throughout the flight (although it is a fact I can be very standoffish- to egg things along). In the baggage claim area, somehow I growled at her with my eyes. Down boy!
Today, I’m in a sort of limbo. Like being suspended upside down, Like Mem strung between posts. I’m adjusting to a new norm having shed my life and that skin. With that, my new skin is thin. (I seriously just avoided being hospitalized for a “nervous breakdown” – no doubt!
So I try to consciously dedicate some portion of each day to honor where I am- which is exactly perfect.
This is essentially a backstory to why I believe I met my “Love Demon”. Mashallah Habibi.
[1]Or at least what our lineage-bearer self’s expectation of “best”.
[2]All journeys and meditations, with few exception, were done when I was stone cold sober. While many shamanic journeys are done with entheogens, mine have been induced with rhythmic drumming and rattling.
