Dharma + Karma in Harmony

We are in our own way! I was at the neurologist over 11 years ago complaining of memory issues, brain fog, mood swings and guess what he told me–

You are a bored housewife. I was so very angry at that rude man! Didn’t he know that I had 3 part time jobs?

He brought the sword of truth to a place that needed the pain of Christ to divide up my small ways of thinking patterned in a hostile past. I was repeating my trauma conditioning without being conscious. I get frustrated with myself. And I get frustrated with others but our heavenly Abba is simply never frustrated with us. He will keep dropping hints until we are ready to make the change because we need new energy, new inspiration and purpose to drive the action.

The only way to new neural pathways and a new good life free of self-imposed suffering was daily bravery. Stretching who I thought I was and what I was capable of.

Here I am all these years later and nothing has changed at 58!

I am a lifelong learner evolving and finding ever deepening faith and meaning.

We must all balance the forces of foundational dharma (stability, structure, fundamentals) with the forces of karma (mobility, chaos, change, growth).

Yoga is one powerful daily ritual which brings structure to the inner chaos of the subconscious mind, merging consciousness and unconscious (hidden cosmic) power so that we can be of service in big and small ways.

Jesus brings the sword and we must trust when we hear the words which are meant to challenge and anger the tiny, fragile ego– there’s more of you to BE. Inhale the Ruach of the Living One deep into your belly. Fill your whole body with the breath of new life and exhale deeply, sighing out a loud trumpet sound of stress. Again and again until you are more sure of your abiding in God’s body and heart.

Receive Divine Love and go!!

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.

We are not Lot’s daughters

Hubby and I walked over the bridge today from Jersey to Philly. Bridges have often been portals for me to process. I got to thinking about the bizarro story of Lot’s daughters sleeping with their father in Gen 19. Any time there is a strange scripture that on the surface makes no sense, we can be sure to dive deeper and ask the Holy Spirit to inform us of meaning. Earlier in the day I was contemplating our belly button (see me literally naval-gazing) and it’s connection to our mothers and how once disconnected they are actually scars representing our severing from our earthly parents.

We are children of God.

All of Creation awaits with anticipation for the sons and daughters to be revealed in order to trust the unfolding of the path of Christ’s resurrection life– fueling us and healing us from our traumas. Trauma remained in us as stuck depressive energy for too long– we did not know we could freely grieve and freely express our anger to the Lord, but we are emotionally maturing.

Our father is not of this earthly realm and when we ‘sleep with’ him in cahoots with a powerless parent, we will produce fruit that does not remain. We will see that this father has become our maker and we are bound to the ways of the world– our lusts will drive us, our wounds will cause us to seek success in unhealthy ways and our ties to the lower thoughts of jealousy, comparing, and lack will fill us with despair. We will not see miracles for our children and our grandchildren.

More importantly, We will not see that our Heavenly Father has placed manna all around for our consumption . We will miss that this prana is energy as fuel for our bodies and minds because it is from above– it’s spiritual nourishment in the form of relationship. In the form of remembering who and who’s we are. We will build the door to heaven in any way we see fit for we were created to fight and battle for this union: when we have momentarily forgotten our birthright. We are not fathered by this ‘man’ down here– no, we have an Abba who took on human flesh to win back our souls.

An Abba who did HIS OWN DIRTY WORK in the body of the Son.

One who delights in us and repeats all day every day– You are my sweetie, just My best girl. You hear me? You are mine and I am providing the resurrection life. Lean in. Ask. Seek, then wait on me. Trust the seasons– the living and the dying, yes but this can be in a day or a week or a year. We do not control the chronos time. All we can do is our spiritual disciplines which help us enter the mind body spirit trinity of kairos: where heaven meets earth. “Heaven is here, when the mind is clear” croons MC Yogi.

Abba promises –I will show you that you are cared for and loved. Do not for one moment be anxious. Turn your eyes to Jesus- the one who carries your bricks on his back. And like my friend Jane’s vision from Him, He will hand them to you, to place in the earth as your incarnational career. Yes, your whole job is to simply be you. Be the best most authentic and vulnerable courageous you you can be. You are innocent and you are bold. Be not afraid daughters of our King– love wildly and dance as if all are watching!! They see the life of the Son in you and on you. We are here to display the image of Christ in our lives as we glorify our sweet and sacrificial Father in heaven. Then the whole earth will sing with the assurance that She too is included in the plan. All are included. All get to participate. Arise. I say to you Arise!

Jesus is our Sabbath Rest

Day two of grief: the day after our sweet golden retriever Sierra left us, I’m wont to sit with my Jesus and listen.

Jesus rests me

Jesus lifts me

Jesus is a frequency as am I

This frequency shatters illusion for it is Truth with a capital T

Jesus cannot leave me

Jesus is my rock

and my living well of energy

Free energy- no need to draw upon systems built for this age

His system is built for eternally knowing who I am

I cannot forget for I enjoy secure attachment
Even my grief does not destabilize me

Every wave that hits is another opportunity to reach for his hand

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.

You Are the Firmament

You Are the Firmament

” Man does not know he carries the stars hidden in himself and he is the microcosm and thus carries within him the whole firmament.” Paracelsus, the man who brought chemistry to medicine.

When did I stop believing what others told me about God and begin to experience firsthand? That’s an unanswerable question but I imagine the age of the guru/priest is coming to an end. When did I become the woman who brought yoga to Christians? Lots of people are on a similar East meets West path but in my neck of the woods (Jersey, )my calling has always felt a bit lonely butI’ve come to be a proud unicorn of sorts.

I first met the monk in residence at Community of Peace at the Wild Goose festival in Hot Springs, NC in 2015. It was kismet. With my 15 year old son asleep nearby in our tent, I wandered over to sit on the ground in the front row of an afternoon kirtan. Back at home I’d found kirtan to be one of my most powerful sound healings. During those years, my body still carried enormous unprocessed trauma charge and I was actively seeking relief from unhealthy patterns of thinking and behavior.Chant had become a place of yielding and of unity- one with God, sound, community and nature. On this day, a new ‘charge’ was expressing in my body as the chanter repeated Shakti, Shakti and my wildness began to unfurl. 

I let Her. 

I agreed, D’accord.

And in Stefan’s own words, “I was now the leader of the band.” See me smiling.

For there was no ‘I’, no self. There was only the invitational energy to be liberated from every social boundary, every cultural norm to behave, and any care for what others might be thinking. I imagine my feminine form morphed into one beautiful expression of shakti that day.

You see, if we get out of love’s way, we become the firmament. We can find ourselves being danced by Reality’s rhythms.Most of the time we are torqued within by unprocessed life experiences. Most of the time our nervous system is in some measure of fight, flight or freeze thanks to powerlessness in our past. Times when reality was just too much and our own energy did not flow freely; no, it had to form a dissonance. 

Enter yoga— the ideal method for untorquing energy and creating resonance. It is love who will invite all of our survival mechanisms to unfurl. Only love and grace and mercy have the power to unhinge these protective boxes we’ve stored within. 

I arrived at Community of Peace etin search of a weekend retreat without boxes. I desired to be surrounded by shalom, song, scripture and conversation. I found what I was looking for and much more. 

I Once Hated the Light

I saw a TikTok the other day where the creator said that as our light in Christ grows, our circle diminishes because the carnally minded despise this Light.

The next day I was talking to a friend and out of my mouth I found myself admitting that I once hated the women who appeared to be so gentle, so innocent, so peaceful. I hated the women in my circles who did nothing ‘to gain’ this power. I hated these perfectly sweet and faithful women because I did not understand how God’s grace works and I was convinced that if I sacrificed enough of my pain to Him that surely He’d allow me into this heavenly life of light.

I only knew and enjoyed darkness as my comfort. Complaint, moodiness, bossiness, powerlessness, gossip- these were my worldly currencies. How one shifts into the Light is as unique as the individual. But in my understanding we all have the capacity to awaken to this higher way of operating. Above the fray so to speak.

This shift will cost you everything, mind you. Friends, maybe even jobs. But you’ll gain your mind back. You’ll have authority over what sticks in your brain. I remember reading that most of us think the same stale thoughts day in and day out. Something like 80% of our thoughts are on a repetitive loop. In order to break free from an addiction to our own stinkin’ thinking, we must create new neural pathways and synapses and in order to do this, we must ‘die’.

Of course this is in line with our following Christ, picking up our cross and agreeing daily to die to what we perceived, what we preferred and what we understood to be reality.

Now I love the Light. I love having spiritual God goggles to see and pray for the world’s carnality, my carnality. I love that it’s all a messy and forged path which includes my complaining self. It’s all included. This Light sees all, loves all and welcomes ALL.

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.

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.