Conceiving Divine Beings

My second year at USM has begun and a very visible component of the curriculum is a little thing they like to call "The Second Year Project." This project was one of the features that attracted me to the program initially, because USM says that through this project they help you make your dreams come true.

Really? Sign me up!

Because I have a dream. It's a crazy, irrational, secret dream that I've had since I was four or five years old: I want to be Dr. Doolittle. I want to talk with animals and hear what they have to say. I want to know what it's like to be in their skin, to live in their bodies. I want to feel what they feel and see what they see. I want to converse with them about topics both practical (what's their favorite food?) and esoteric (what worldviews do they have as a result of their biology that aren't in my human conceptual repertoire?). This Dr. Doolittle dream was so crazy to me that to this day, I've never said the words out loud. But this was the little spark of a dream that I hoped against hope I could make come true when I applied to USM.

When I got accepted to USM in the Spring of 2009, I took my first step toward making this dream come true: I signed up for a year-long psychic training program. Every Monday evening, I met with two teachers and six other students and learned practical tools for psychic and spiritual development, including improving my intuition, doing psychic readings and healings, and reading and balancing energy. I did this mainly on the QT because I had so many fears about failing (what if psychic abilities aren't actually real? what if my dream wasn't possible?) or being ostracized (coming from a scientific background, I didn't want to be seen as a wacky, airy-fairy, "out there," delusional weirdo). [So apologies to any of you who might feel slighted that you weren't in the loop on this little adventure.] I learned many concrete, practical tools for reading and working with energy and I now understand that psychic skills are just like any other skills - you start with some amount of raw talent (a lot or a little) but you can improve and hone your abilities with practice. Toward the end of the year, one of our topics was intuitive communication with animals and we spent one class "talking" with three dogs. I got confirmed correct information about a trip one dog had taken the day before, favorite foods, and a few other pieces of information. It was starting look like maybe my dream was actually possible.

My second step was to do an internship with a psychic friend who can communicate intuitively with animals. I've already spent two months working with her honing my skills. So far, I've communicated with horses, dogs, cats, praying mantises, spiders, a snail (!), and a snake in person. I communicated intuitively from my house in Chico with a dying dog in southern California who told me the day he would die and where he wanted to be buried, two things his owner was anxious about. (He did die on the day he said he would and his owner confirmed that the tree he showed me for his final resting place was in her backyard.) I was also able to talk to a cat who had died ten years ago and the spirit of an African elephant who was very angry about our species not respecting the traditions of her species. My "crazy, irrational" dream is actually coming true!

Meanwhile, my first year at USM was a time to clear the emotional and mental debris that clouded my ability to recognize and express my authentic self. A big part of this process was reclaiming my natural psychic abilities, abilities that today feel like part of my basic genetic make up. Another development through the year was my gradual awakening to two deeply held spiritual beliefs.

My first spiritual belief is that I'm not a human being who has occasional spiritual experiences, but that I am a spiritual being having a human experience. I think we're all here to learn spiritual lessons and each of us has a unique gift to offer the world. Our joys are our gifts and our challenges are our lessons. (As a dramatic example, I think of all the rock stars who made amazing music and touched so many lives (their gifts) but were tortured by depression or insecurity (their lessons) and drank themselves to death or overdosed on drugs or even killed themselves.)

Secondly, I believe that all beings, humans and animals alike, are spiritual beings. Scientists are doing really exciting and innovative research these days and they are discovering that animals are not that different from us biologically, genetically, mentally, or even emotionally. It's my contention that, like humans, animals have a soul. Like us, they are also spirits having unique experiences that include spiritual lessons and gifts.

For most of my adult life, I have felt like I've been ping ponging between two distinct selves: the scientific researcher and spiritual seeker. My psychic experiences happened mainly during those times that I was between science gigs (between college and master's degree and between master's and PhD) or with a circle of friends that was completely separate from and unrelated to my academic or scientific friends. I was in two different worlds and never did they meet. Until now.

Over the last several months, I started to get wisps of inspiration for my second year project. I created a dream drawing that was partly a photograph of a dolphin named Delphi that I used to work with at Marine World and partly a collection of words that streamed into my consciousness as I connected to his image. I recounted my experience of my mom's death (and some subsequent visits from her spirit) to classmates who marveled that I had direct experiential proof that we truly are spiritual beings, something they still questioned. I had a vision of how I could energetically bring my awareness into the form of an animal and feel what it felt like to be that animal, whether it be an alligator or a giraffe or a cat. And I started talking and listening to animals that I encountered - my friend's dog Molly, a snake in the park, dogs barking in a yard. Then I realized that my spiritual truth is still untested - I feel in my heart that animals are spiritual beings but why not find out? Right now my truth is a hypothesis. Time to gather some data.

I've decided that my second year project is going to be integrating my scientific and spiritual selves. I'm approaching my project like a scientific investigation: I'm going to be doing science on spirituality. This fall, I will be doing some background research and honing my Dr. Doolittle skills. The hypothesis I will be testing this winter is my spiritual truth, that animals are spiritual beings with their unique curriculum (spiritual learning) and gifts (service to the planet). To do this, I will be using my intuitive communication skills to interview individuals from 15-20 species of animals, asking them what their spiritual lessons and gifts are, and what messages they want to share with humans. Also, I want to experience the worldview of each animal and what it feels like to be in each of their body types by bringing my energetic awareness into their forms. Finally, I will be compiling my experiences and the animals' information and writing a book, Divine Beings ~ The Spiritual Lives and Lessons of Animals.

So, there you have it. The conception of my second year project and the integration of parts of myself that had long felt at odds with each other. Like both of my pregnancies, I expect that the upcoming gestation period will bring both the joy of discovery and the challenge of (potentially uncomfortable) transformation. Stay tuned - the birth of my baby is due on June 10, 2011.

Being Home

My daughter Lexi was born February 5th, 2002 in Tampa, Florida. Although those first several months are a blur and I felt like I never slept, I know that I did sleep sometimes. I know because a few months after she was born I started having a recurring dream. My dream took place at some vague point in the future and in it I was talking to my son. His name was Zane, he told me. I don't remember any other details, but it seems like each dream was the same and in it I just saw my son and he'd tell me his name was Zane. This dream came to me several times over a period of two to three months.

When Lexi was about 15 months old, Chris and I started trying to have a second child. Being over-educated, we applied all kinds of science to our challenge when I didn't get pregnant right away. I monitored my hormone levels and knew when I was ovulating. I read every book and magazine article about fertility and probabilities and best practices. We tried for five months with no success. Many articles noted that women who were too focused on getting pregnant stressed themselves out, which made it even harder to get pregnant. So, I tried to be relaxed, but I wanted another baby more than anything else in my life and it's hard to be relaxed about that.

Finally, in October, my period was late. I noticed the heightened sense of smell I'd had when I was pregnant with Lexi. I was pregnant!

A week later I had my first miscarriage.

In November, Chris got laid off from his job. In March, we sold our house and put our belongings in storage. In May, Chris, Lexi, Iko and I moved to Chico. Through it all, we kept trying to get pregnant. It finally paid off, because in June, I got pregnant. When I found out, my first thought was, "Now our family is complete!" I was ecstatic.

We were tentatively optimistic. We'd wait it out, make sure before we got excited. Two weeks after discovering I was pregnant, we finally went out to breakfast to celebrate.

I miscarried that evening.

Devastated, I took a break from the baby game. All summer, I cried, I whined, I complained, I grieved. I slept. More than once, my sister reminded me that Zane was out there somewhere, waiting for me. Finally, I was ready to start trying again. Many articles I had read promoted acupuncture as helpful tool for getting pregnant, so I went to an acupuncturist, hoping to balance anything in me that was out of balance and preventing me from getting pregnant . . . and staying pregnant.

Six weeks later I was pregnant again. Six weeks after that, Chris, Lexi, Iko and I went to the Bay Area to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family. On Saturday morning, my 40th birthday, I noticed some bleeding and some funny little gray tissue when I went to the bathroom. Afraid I was miscarrying again, I called my midwife. Ever the practical person, she said either I was miscarrying or not, but either way there was nothing to do. We'd just have to wait. Freaked out, I packed up our stuff, fled my brother's house and drove home to Chico. All I wanted to do was go home and feel safe and comforted.

Monday morning, Chris and I heard Zane's heartbeat for the first time. Aaaah. That was the best sound I had ever heard.

I remembered all this during a USM trio this summer during our 6-day Lab. As I was recounting this story, I flashed on the May USM weekend when I was in L.A. and I developed a kidney stone. I recognized a pattern of having a devastating physical condition in my body that scared the shit out of me when I was far from home. In LA, I had felt the same way I did when I was pregnant: alone and helpless. I wanted to drop everything and run home to be safe and comforted.

And then I just laughed at how silly it was to think I wasn't home. I actually started giggling. I AM HOME. Home isn't a place, home is me. You can't go there or be separate from it. I am home. I am home. It's not part of me. It's not in me. Home is me.

In a spiritual sense, I knew that I am whole and complete in myself and at the same time, I am part of all that is. So, in a way, I am all that is, too. There is no separation from anything. I am a drop of water in the sea and I am the sea.

The power of this realization surprised and overwhelmed me. I was filled with joy and amusement at my misunderstanding -- my misperception that home is a place. I felt so solid and strong. Like a turtle, I could now be at home anywhere I went. But my home isn't a shell on my back. My home is me. My home is part of the essence that is me. Part of the essence of I AM. By virtue of my beingness, I am home.

I recognized that my body and soul are interwoven and inseparable. I am Spirit. I am body. I am me.

I Am Home.

My Summer of Surrender

I went for a bike ride last night.

That doesn't sound like such a big deal in itself but for me it was. It was the first time in several months that I actually felt like riding just for fun and had the energy to do it. Not because I had to. Not because it was part of my fitness plan. But simply because I had the desire to ride along the creek and smell the wet dirt after the recent rain and see the clouds over the buttes and get closer to the rainbow in the sky.

The day after I got home from my June weekend at USM, my doctor gave me the news and it wasn't good: I had anemia, adrenal fatigue, liver dysfunction, kidney imbalance, low calcium levels, low iron levels...and more. I was a mess.

Well, DANG! No wonder I was so tired all the time. No wonder getting out of bed in the morning was nearly impossible through my groggy fog.

But, dang, I was a mess.

It made sense, but, wow, it sounded really bad. Somehow the news felt like a blessing (I can finally justify slowing down and resting) and a curse (I am actually sick. How can that be? That happens to other people, not to me! I take care of myself!).

My first surrender was to my body. I slept 8-9 hours a night and lay down on the couch all day every day for the rest of the week. Lexi and Zane were stoked because they spent the first week of summer vacation watching all the movies and Disney channel shows their eyes could handle. I got up periodically to make lunch and snacks but immediately laid back down again and stared at the ceiling. I didn't even read a book, I just lay there on the couch. Even a book sounded exhausting.

My resting paid off. The next week, I had slightly more energy. I felt like walking to the creek (with a rest afterward, of course!). The following week, Lexi and Zane learned to ride their bikes without training wheels and we added short bike rides to the library and through the park to our morning routine. With plenty of resting in the afternoon.

Each week through the summer, I felt slightly better. In July, I added fresh vegetable juices to my daily routine and I started to have even more energy, another noticeable improvement. I started laughing more, enjoying the summer with my kids. When they went to summer camps a few days a week, I didn't do anything, I just rested some more.

My second surrender was the daily surrender to my body's wisdom and I surrendered every day of the summer. I surrendered to how it is, not how I wanted it to be. I surrendered to reality. I surrendered to putting myself first. I surrendered to my priorities. Everything else was on hold and I made no apologies for it. My health (and rest) came first, then came my kids, then came anything else, such as travel, friends, meetings, whatever. Everything took a backseat this summer and it paid off last night on my bike ride.

It paid off. But it was hard. It was hard to slow down, hard to not do everything I wanted to do, hard not to overdo it, hard to say "no" to fun things that sounded tiring, like going camping or to my cousin's wedding. This summer, I went deeper in my relationship with surrender than I have ever been before.

Through my fog, I had forgotten what it felt like to have the desire for physical activity. I'd forgotten the joy of just moving my body, turning those pedals, moving for the sheer joy of it. As the rain let up and I saw the rainbow hovering over Upper Park, beckoning me out into the world, I stopped myself. Would it be too much? Would a bike ride set me back? How long would my recovery be? I'd finally built an energy reserve that matched my daily requirements, I didn't want to risk going backward, back to the couch.

So, I sat with the idea for a while, waiting to see how it felt in my body to go out for a ride. The rainbow kept calling me, the hills wanted me to ride up them, the creek - I knew it would be gurgling - and the dirt enticed me with its fresh loamy smell. I felt good. I wanted to ride.

And so I did. I smelled the dirt, felt my thigh muscles pumping, watched the acorn woodpeckers flying between trees and felt the breeze on my face as I pedaled through Bidwell Park. I stopped in Upper Park to admire the view - the sky was dramatic with different shapes and colors of clouds, everything changing as the sun set - and watched a deer forage for sweet grass sprouts along the golf course. I took a deep breath, grateful to be alive, so alive, this alive.

I feel great this morning as I write this. I have my usual energy (I've already made breakfasts and lunches, dropped the kids at school, gone grocery shopping at two stores, picked up a bag of juicing apples at my friend's house, cleaned the kitchen and checked my email). I didn't set myself back with my bike ride. In fact, I think I set myself forward, back to the feeling I'd been looking for in March when I turned in my ideal scene about my health: I feel alive and healthy. I'm on my way to feeling vibrantly alive in abundant health as I described in my ideal scene. Right now, though, for the first time in a long time, I'm enjoying being in my body, enjoying my physical self-expression again. I feel like myself again.

I am still practicing surrender, especially surrendering to what is and what my limits are. I'm creating healthy boundaries for myself based on accurate feedback and wisdom from my body. (Mainly because I'm actually listening to my body!) I expect to learn a lot more about surrender in the future, but for now I'm happy with our current relationship. Surrender has gotten me healthy again and it got me back out on my bike.

Just for fun.

Life is a School, Many are the Lessons

One of my favorite bumper stickers says, "Life is a school. Love is the lesson." I think this phrase captures the essence of the work we are doing at USM. We are learning to love ourselves more fully, which allows us to be ourselves more fully, which allows us to express our true spiritual nature more fully. We each come to our lives with our own curriculum, our own personal lessons to learn. Most of them are about love.

What is really interesting to me about the USM process is how the work we are doing in class is so specific. But the goal is so global. Just as each grain of sand adds to a sand dune, each issue that I resolve adds to my spiritual evolution. Sometimes our issues are negative (hurt, anger, irrational beliefs, judgments against ourselves and others) but sometimes they are positive. Huh? Or, more accurately, our issues can be our resistance to seeing the positive. The June weekend was all about owning our positive projections, recognizing that all the positive qualities that we see in Gandhi or Mother Theresa or in any role model or hero are in us, too.

My lesson this weekend was to recognize my spiritual truth and own my abilities to express it and live it. I've been becoming more aware of my particular brand of spiritual truth throughout the last nine months. This weekend, I clarified this truth for myself a bit more.

My spiritual truth is that all beings are here to learn spiritual lessons, lessons they couldn't get in any other form. You get a different kind of lesson if you're a cheetah or a hawk or a caterpillar or a snake. We are all divine beings having a unique earth experience, be it human or animal (or even plant or rock if you want to take it that far), with our own unique lessons to learn.

As I explained my truth to my trio mates during a class exercise, they both had a paradigm shift, suddenly realizing that I what I said was true for them, too. One of them was blown away by the realization, saying that he had never thought about it before, but of course, now that he thought about it, it made perfect sense to him.

I hadn't been trying to convince them or convert them or even do anything other than explain the way I see the world. In sharing my truth honestly and from my heart I shifted way from my ego self and into my authentic self. I realized that simply by being in my Authentic Self, being my spiritual truth, my message was transmitted, emanating out from my core Beingness. My ego thought I had to work at it or do something special. But I didn't need to have it all figured out or make a plan or write a book or pull out any smoke and mirrors or bells and whistles. In fact, I didn't have to DO anything. I just had to BE myself. All those things I want to do and be and accomplish in the future (that seem so far away and impossible) are already contained within me. I am already living my future. What a revelation! I wanted to shout it from the rooftops: Everything I want to become is already inside me!! I just need to BE.

I flashed on the Gandhi quote: "Be the change you wish to see in the world." I suddenly appreciated it at a whole new level and found a deeper meaning for myself in the words. Be the change. Be yourself and the change will happen.

My new-found dreams to change the world by sharing my spiritual truth to promote peace, love and understanding among all beings by writing books, giving talks, and teaching workshops will be realized some day. They are within me. My spiritual truth is who I am and it gets expressed through me in a variety of ways: talking, writing, teaching, sharing, playing, laughing, singing, and simply by being. My dreams will manifest themselves naturally and spontaneously, just like they did in my conversation with my trio partners.

Life is a school and these are my lessons.

May - We All Have Wings

I placed my order for vibrant health and well-being with the Universe. It was in the form of an eight-page “Living Vision” homework assignment detailing every aspect of my glowing health that I could think of – hair, skin, vision, exercise, flexibility, digestion, everything. I turned it in Friday night of the May weekend.

Chaos ensued.

It actually all started going to hell earlier that week. During a Rolfing session, as the therapist worked on my left hip, a problem area for me for years, I noticed tears sliding down my cheeks and what felt like an old sadness surfacing. In my mind I heard the words "I can't hold it all together anymore." What did that mean? Where was this coming from? I didn't know.

Was this a pattern for me? The insight had felt old, like it had been stored in my hip for decades. Back in third grade, my sadness had given me the illusion of holding my world together. Feeling sad then was a better alternative than falling all apart and splintering into a million shards of glass. On Saturday, I further explored my issue with my hip, which had begun in seventh grade. Also in seventh grade my group of friends had one day decided to cast me out from the group and completely ignored me after lunch at school. I felt like I couldn't let them see me fall apart, that I had to hold myself together to save face. The pattern was becoming clear to me.

Still I resisted the notion that this sentiment had anything to do with my current life. My life is great, I stubbornly reminded myslef. For the last couple of months, I had been consciously incorporating intuition into my everyday life. I was eating intuitively, exercising intuitively, sometimes even driving intuitively - letting myself feel to right way to go to get to a new destination. But I realized that I had been unconsciously resisting all this intuition even as I was embracing it. I recognized that every day I make up and follow arbitrary rules and arbitrary deadlines that confine me and stress me out. Make sure you eat some protein at each meal, if you run on Monday then you have to run on Wednesday and Friday, not Tuesday or Saturday . . . I wrote in my journal that I want to just relax and allow things to be how they are and let them work themselves out. Then I got it: this is one way that I'm trying to hold it all together now. I'm trying to control the outcome of everything with my mind. I'm not letting go and following my intuition, I'm just "trying" to. And, as Yoda said, "There is no try, there is only do or not do." I was not doing. I was holding on.

Then Ron delivered an eloquent lecture about spiritual evolution. He said that by being at USM, you are demonstrating an intention to grow spiritually. And as you evolve spiritually, you will hit a barrier. With that will come the thought process that says "I can figure this out." Once you realize you can't figure it out, you come to surrender. You will still respond to your world, to your barrier, to fix the situation, but you will do it from a different place - no longer coming from the ego thinking, you will come from a place of surrender inside yourself. By being called upon to move up in spiritual evolution, your perspective changes and your interpretation changes. You give up the idea that it's you doing it when it's really spirit doing it.

Intriguing, but these were just words to me until Sunday morning. I woke up after a restless night's sleep to realize that I had a kidney stone. No problem, I thought to myself, I have lots of tools. I can take care of this. And I proceeded to do an hour of EFT on myself and I did Reiki on my back all morning in class. I talked to a classmate who is studying to be a Science of Mind minister. I applied every tool I had in my toolbox but nothing helped. The waves of pain increased in frequency and severity throughout the day. At lunch, a friend shared his experience with recently reaching a place of surrender on his journey. But before he could do that, everything had come to a head. His was a "it's gonna get worse before it betters" kind of story.

And everything did get worse for me. I felt helpless. Powerless. Small, no, tiny and vulnerable. I was ready to surrender. To anything, to anybody, as long as this pain would stop. My shell was cracking. The illusion was disintegrating. I was not in charge. I could no longer ignore the chronic, little symptoms in my body. They were coalescing into big, in-your-face problems. They demanded attention.

I made it through my crisis and got home to Chico late Monday night. I had probably passed a stone sometime that day because the pain had disappeared but around 11pm, I felt the familiar waves of pain return. This was not over. I needed to do something about this. I was at the limit of my skills, knowledge and ability and finally decided to go to a doctor. I was at the place of surrender that Ron had talked about on Saturday. I had reached my barrier. I couldn't hold it all together any longer. I was having spiritual growing pains that were played out through my physical body.

I remembered what Mary had said at the beginning of the year: USM is a place for your issues to arise to be healed for the last time. Friday night I had placed my order and everything that was standing between me and vibrant, glowing, fantastic health was surfacing to be healed. If I am the only one responsible for my experience then I can learn from everything that happens. Although this was a physical issue, it was also a spiritual opportunity. And it was a whopper. I surrendered to the journey that I am on.

As Ron had said in his lecture, my perspective shifted with my surrender. I had to take care of myself physically, but now I was doing it from a new perspective of love and understanding and creating health, rather than irritation and resentment at the intrusion into my life, and just getting by.

My surrender was just beginning, though, and there were deeper depths to reach. I spent the week after I got home just barely going through the motions of my life, not really caring about anything. I questioned everything, every assumption I had ever made. I reached a level of honesty with myself that I never would have reached before. I admitted to myself where things weren't working in my life - things that I had secretly known but wouldn't even articulate to myself. I'd hit rock bottom and the only place to go was honesty.

Today as I write this three weeks later, I see this journey as a painful metamorphosis. I had been living within an invisible shell made of the beliefs and judgments that I had created in childhood and reinforced by my daily rules and restrictions. I have to break out, but now that the shell has cracked, it is a long, slow, painful process as the broken shards poke and cut me on their way to the ground.

A friend shared a quote from Anais Nin with me that perfectly describes my past few weeks: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful that the risk to blossom."

I'm choosing to blossom. Like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, I, too, must push against my self-created shell and challenge my spiritual muscles in order to fly. I'm not flying yet, but I am on my journey.

April: Self-Judgment and Self-Forgiveness

It's Wednesday April 7 and I'm crying as I drive down Highway 32 to pick Lexi up at school. Not sobbing or anything, just silent tears sliding down my face. I have a vague sense that I did something really, really wrong but I don't know what it is and I feel like damaged goods. I can't love and accept myself, I have this terrible flaw. This is the third time this week that I've found myself feeling this way.

I flash back to my first weekend at USM: a woman was trying to share some awful thing that she had done that she wanted to forgive herself for, but she couldn't say the words out loud. Ron, one of our teachers, gently told her that there was nothing that she could not say here. He was so gentle and accepting in the way he spoke with her that I feel the tears well up inside me again. I want this kind of unconditional love and acceptance even though I'm afraid that I've done something terrible in the past.

I get my opportunity on Sunday afternoon. It's the third day of our weekend class and we arrange ourselves into groups of three to practice counseling. As I start talking, I mention this vague feeling that has been stalking me all week, as scary as it is nebulous. Gradually I sink into the feeling first, before understanding and words come to me. Emotionally, I feel deeply sad and very confused. Physically, I have a stomach ache and tension in my arms. I follow these sensations deeper and deeper until I realize where they come from: this is how I felt after I got spanked by my parents as a small child.

An image pops into my head: I am four or five years old and I'm running from the family room through the kitchen to my bedroom. I've just been spanked and I don't understand why. I don't understand how this could be happening to me. There must be something fundamentally wrong with me. There had to be - otherwise they wouldn't do that. I'm so confused. What could I have done to warrant this? These are the people who are supposed to love me and take care of me but they are hitting me and hurting me. What did I do? I feel so alone and unloved, I want to run away.

This is what had been bubbling to the surface all week. This was the terrible thing that had happened. This is why I am clearly flawed, imperfect, unloveable. I had been afraid that I would uncover something much worse. I feel a little bit relieved that something so simple could have such a big impact on my psyche. Then I realize that I may have found the root of my longstanding feelings of betrayal. I see the threads from this event to many later events in my life, to many misinterpretations that I couldn't trust people, that I would be betrayed.

My realizations naturally lead me into self-forgiveness. I forgive myself for judging myself as flawed, damaged, unloveable. My thoughts drift back to myself as a young girl and a wave of compassion and appreciation washes through me. I was so sensitive. I may have been a rough and tumble kid physically, but spiritually and emotionally I was delicate. My sensitivity always seemed like a weakness to me before, something to cover up, but now I see it as a gift and as a defining characteristic of who I am and who I have always been. My sensitivity allows me to be a gentle and caring parent to my kids, a loving wife, a compassionate friend, an intuitive and intelligent teacher. This is the gift that allows me to have psychic awareness beyond what most people can sense. This is just part of who I am. I love and appreciate myself more fully.

I forgive myself for judging myself as imperfect, bad or wrong, and for believing that it wasn't safe for me to be myself. I know now that it's okay (maybe even great!) to be me. I can relax. I can let my guard down.

I can just be myself. I'm perfect just the way I am.

March ~ Mysteries Revealed

March marked the final weekend of our winter quarter. To complete our inquiry into the psychological theories that are the foundation of Spiritual Psychology, we explored Psychosynthesis and Neurolinguistic Programming (also known as NLP). Psychosynthesis uses guided visualizations to promote insight into a current issue or obstacle or situation while NLP reframes our interpretations of past events to essentially "reprogram our computer" - our subconscious mind. Both of these processes yielded unexpected and powerful results for me. In terms of meangingful outcomes, I kind of got a two-fer this weekend at USM. I got insight into my (potential) future and insight into my past.

First, my future. On Saturday afternoon, our teachers led us through several of Psychosynthesis visualizations. One of them was was a process that was designed to strengthen intention toward a goal.

We were instructed to choose a goal (I couldn't come up with one) and then create a symbol for it (I was still trying to find a goal, forget designing a symbol!). As my mind wandered around, I suddenly saw a picture of myself in my mind's eye. I was sitting in meditation, legs crossed, eyes closed, and there was a beautiful cone of golden light pouring into the top of my head. Okay, I thought to myself, I don't know what this is but it looks like a symbol so I'll go with it.

The visualization continued and we were gently instructed to see a path leading up a hill to our symbol. So far, so good, I could do that. Then we were supposed to notice all the things along the path that were blocking it and distracting us from reaching our symbol. Well, there weren't any so I thought I'd play along and add some but they kept disappearing or turning into cheerleaders encouraging me on my journey. When I reached my symbol at the top of the hill, it told me that this was my destiny, this is why I'm here, I already have this inside of me. Nothing could have stopped me from getting here. Then my symbol did a really crazy thing: it showed me a business card.

My card said:

Cara Gubbins, PhD
Spiritual Intuitive
Readings, Healings, Classes
Humans and Animals

Whoa! Where did that come from?! Never in a million years would I have come up with this. Way cool. Later I told one of my classmates about my card and she said, "That's exactly what you do!" Huh. I didn't know that. I let this revelation rattle around inside me for a while as I considered the possibilities. I still wasn't exactly sure what my goal was or what my symbol represented precisely, but I really liked this card. I felt like my Higher Self had spoken to me, like my Spirit had plans for me that I didn't know about. Yet. I felt like I was starting to get a vague sense of something different for my future, something that I would have to allow to unfold at its own pace, but something that felt good and right and true, even with all the unknowns. I had gotten my first clue.

As our class moved into different information and activities, my mind kept wandering back to the card. But by Sunday I was able to focus on something else when we tried out exercises in NLP. Our instructions were to discuss something that was important to us right now and really right now I was fed up with myself. I was noticing that many if not all of the upsets that I had been examining at USM boiled down to the same thing: feeling betrayed. I was sick to death of it. No matter what happened, I felt betrayed. I felt like if I didn't get the parking place I wanted, I felt betrayed. This was getting ridiculous, but it was very real for me.

Somehow, I traced this feeling back to third grade when we were living in San Francisco and my parents were breaking up. I uncovered a sadness below the surface that was somehow protecting me from feeling scared about all the big changes in our lives. Feeling sad was better than feeling afraid of falling all apart and splintering like a broken pane of window glass.

As the exercise continued, I saw that the sadness was like a comforting blanket wrapped around me, protecting me but keeping me numb and immobile. Through the NLP process, I was able to acknowledge how the sadness had helped me cope at the time and to recognize that it was ocassionally still operating now. But it wasn't serving me now as an adult to keep this part of me operating like this. Using NLP, I transformed my sadness into Loving Comfort, an old part of me with a new mission. Loving Comfort could wrap me up in love and appreciation and affirmation in a really positive way without numbing or immobilizing me.

With my future vague on the horizon but possbily taking some kind of shape, at least subconsciously, I thought about my journey thus far and marveled at the human condition and how life works. I have done lots of healing work around my parents' divorce, but this insight was deeper and subtler than any other revelation I'd had. I felt likeI had cleared away the big debris, uncovering some smaller peices that I would never have seen before, like moving out furniture and seeing the pattern of dust left behind. It's there and it's real and it's affecting you but it takes some bigger changes to be able to see the pattern. I was left with a very peaceful optimistic feeling.

I'm Okay, You're Okay

Friday afternoon February 5th was a funky day for me. I usually stay at my brother's house when I'm in LA but this weekend he had another friend visiting so I was scheduled to stay with my friend Debra, another USM student, and her husband. Because her day was so busy, I was meeting Debra at school and then going to her house. I had made my plane reservations months ago and had planned for an easy afternoon hanging out with Den and his dogs. Thus, I found myself in LAX with four hours to kill before class started. And it was raining cats and dogs outside - the coldest, grayest, nastiest weather southern California has ever seen. All my ideas about walking on the beach or going to a movie or a museum sounded like opportunities to get cold and wet to the bone. So, I decided to hang out in the airport and take a shuttle directly to school right before class started.

That's when my curriculum reared its ugly head.

Okay, maybe my Authentic Self saw an opportunity for me to heal a part of me that hadn't been healed yet. Yeah, that sounds better.

I had left my house this morning in a grumpy mood. It was Lexi's birthday and I was missing being with her on her actual Birth Day and even though we had celebrated the night before and I had made rice crispie treats for her class and she was fine with me not being there, I was a bit peeved. With a perfunctory kiss, I said goodbye to Chris and started the 90-minute process of dropping my kids off at their respective schools.

My grouchiness stayed with me throughout my drive to Sacramento, my plane ride to LA and lunch at CPK (Thai chicken pizza, which was really good). I ate lunch, read a book, listened to some music on my iPod, watched the rain falling on the planes, and then, an hour into my four hour saga, I was bored. So what did I do? I called Chris at work. He immediately made me laugh and talked with me and I felt guilty as hell. Here I was interrupting his work just because I'm bored and looking for some entertainment and he happily spends 15 or 20 minutes entertaining me. Even when I wasn't very loving this morning when I left the house in my funk. Even though I have lots of days when I'm too busy to really connect with him, what with all the cooking, cleaning ,working, kid-shuttling, etc., that fills our regular days. But he is always there, even now when I feel I don't deserve this kind of unconditional love. I haven't done anything to earn this beautiful love and acceptance from him.

And that is my curriculum for the weekend.

I feel like I need to earn anything good that comes my way. My beautiful friend Debra enthusiastically and generously said "YES!!! XOXOX" when I sheepishly asked her if I could stay with her this weekend. What had I done to earn that response? What would I do to earn my keep at their house this weekend? Buy them lots of groceries? Take them out to dinner? I had to do something! Didn't I?

In exercises this weekend, I got to go deeper into this issue and look at the roots of my upset and beliefs. I gave voice to the part of me that couldn't believe people would just like me as I am and it turned out to be me as a little girl when I didn't feel like I fit in, that I wasn't like other people, that I'm different and weird. Once she spoke and I recognized the truth of her words, the spell was broken and I could see how I had felt that way but I don't really want to be like other people, anyway. I just want to be me. I loved and accepted that child part of me and together we celebrated our uniqueness.

In another exercise, I got to directly address my situation with not being able to accept Chris's unconditional love. I was feeling like I take him for granted but expect him to be there for me even though I feel like I suck at expressing my love for him. I talked and talked, trying to figure out what was going on with me. Finally, I was out of words and I stopped talking and just waited for my partner to say something to me. Instead of responding with words, my partner just looked at me. I couldn't meet his gaze. I looked everywhere but in his eyes. There was too much love there. Growing more and more uncomfortable avoiding his eyes, I finally met his gaze for a few seconds. Then I burst out with "Stop loving me!"

"I'm just mirroring what I see in your eyes," was all he said. That threw me for a loop. Curious, I was now able to meet his gaze for a longer time, even though it was still uncomfortable. When he said something about "receiving," something shifted inside of me. I had been resisting taking any kind of love in. My resistance to receiving started sinking away. We looked at each other in silence for several minutes, until the session ended.

My partner was my mirror. He showed me how the world sees me, how Chris sees me. How could he have been my mirror, though? I was just sitting there being myself. I wasn't doing anything extra or special or even anything at all. I was just being me. Then I got it. I'm just being me and Chris loves me just the way I am. Maybe my love for Chris is in me and radiating out from me even when I'm tired, cranky, irritable, etc. I can always improve my expression of my love for Chris, but the love itself is always there, even when I'm not expressing it very well.

As a divine being having a human experience, I am at my core love. That love shines through me even when I am not aware of it. It just is. The simple fact that I am here on this planet makes me worthy and deserving of receiving love. I see that now. I can just be myself. That is enough.

Re-shuffling My Deck

Being a student at USM is unsettling. I'm starting to really wonder who I am and what I'm about. Some things that I was so sure about - like my job - are changing. It's like walking on shifting sand. It looks solid, but then it moves or you step and it slides under your foot or the wind blows and you find yourself lost. It's like that funky feeling of walking on land after living on a boat for several days - you know the ground is solid but it feels like it's swimming under your feet.

I've never been comfortable with the unknown. Goal-oriented to a fault, I'm lost without something to be working toward. But I can live in the future indefinitely - I'm fine with delayed gratification as long as I know something's coming, that I'm going somewhere. And as long as I know my goal, then I know that the payoff is coming. There have only been two times in my life when I didn't have a goal: from birth to age 6 (when I first saw Jacques Cousteau on tv and decided to be a marine biologist) and now. I have no practice at this. I have no experience living this way. I feel ungrounded, unsettled. I have clearly-defined short-term and long-term goals, but I'm starting to question them.

I look at my deepest-held goals, the goals that brought me to USM, and slowly I begin to realize that I'm exactly where I need to be. I'm doing everything I need to do. I'm not missing anything. I am full. I am complete in this moment. One day, my intuition chimes in that this period will only last until June. Can I hang with this feeling for six months?! Against all odds and all past experience, I surrender to being where I am. I decide to relax and enjoy it. Suddenly, it feels like an adventure. Where will I go? Where will these six months take me? I have no idea. But, intuitively, I feel the potential energy waiting for me on the other side of June. I feel like Tony in West Side Story. Something's coming, don't know what it is but it is gonna be great. The air is humming...but not for a few months yet.

When friends ask me about USM, I get a little evasive, a little vague. Yes, it's amazing, but no, I have no idea where it's taking me. What will I do after I finish? Who knows?! Through many conversations that all seem to be the same conversation but with different people, I notice that I am still me, I have all my same parts. I still love dolphins. I still love teaching. I still love writing, and being a mom, and helping people, and being outside, and running on trails along the creek. It's just that I feel like my parts are re-arranging. I feel like a deck of cards, I say to my friends, that is being re-shuffled and I don't know how all the parts are going to fit together in the end. What order will the cards be in? I don't know. But I know that each card is a part of me. I'm not losing anything, I'm just re-arranging.

Going to USM is like surrendering my deck of cards to the great cosmic dealer. Hands of light and love envelope me and move individual cards around. The process takes time - I imagine these divine hands enjoying the process like my grandmother loved to do before a good game of gin rummy, fanning the cards, gracefully folding them back into each other, shuffling again, fanning in a different pattern, folding and shuffling yet again.

And so this is where I am living right now, in the middle of re-shuffling my deck.

January Weekend at USM

My peace stayed with me for several days after the December weekend at USM and about two weeks later I had another dream about my mom. In this dream, we were at her house and we were both being healed in this beautiful golden light. It was like her whole house was filled with the light and we just bathed in it together. I woke up feeling so complete and happy.

After New Year's, I went back to LA for the January weekend at USM. I was starting to feel used to the routine and was noticing and accepting the different feel and flow of each weekend. January marked the beginning of a new quarter and our class this quarter is an introduction to the foundational theories of spiritual psychology. This weekend felt a bit more cerebral than the first three. Ron lectured about the different levels of our beings, noting that unresolved issues keep you from knowing yourself at the Authentic Self level. The first four levels (physical, mental, emotional and unconscious) together make up the ego. So Ron's statement makes sense to me because our issues keep us in the ego level: when we're triggered by an issue, we're focusing on our minds or our bodies or our emotions. The Authentic Self transcends these levels and when you reside here you are in a place of love.

The first theory we learned about was Reality Therapy which is based on the physical level, focusing on your actions and behaviors. When examining our actions, we are confronted with inaction. Inaction keeps our hope, our vision of how things could be, alive and protects us from risking failure - while the old saying "nothing ventured, nothing gained" is true, "nothing ventured, nothing lost" is also true because if we never try in our minds we always could have been whatever our dream is. Inaction keeps our dreams alive in our minds but not in our reality. Changing your behavior with Reality Therapy forces confrontation with your issues. As you resolve more and more of your issues, you start to see more positive results in the physical world.

In an in-class exercise in Reality Therapy, I realized that I was a victim of "hopeful" thinking and inaction. I had performance anxiety about trying new things and practicing my newly-embraced psychic abilities. Old scripts kept popping up in my mind : "You're doing it wrong" and "I'm not good enough" and "It's not okay to speak my truth." I wish I could say that these phrases are now gone from my thinking, but they are not. I released a lot of the emotion around them, but these beliefs feel more deeply ingrained than any pattern I've confronted so far. All I can say is that I took the edge off them and when they pop up now I can bring my awareness to them in a way that I couldn't before - I can evaluate them without judgment and make a conscious choice about whether to believe them or not. The good news is that I'm not automatically believing them and getting upset. (Later in the weekend, we each received a bumper sticker from a USM grad that reads "You don't have to believe everything you think" and I can really relate to that sentiment now!)

In a later exercise, I examined one of the phrases that came up earlier: it's not okay to speak my truth. In the past, I have held myself back fearing . . .well, I don't know what I was so afraid of. I just know that I was locked in silence and rarely voiced my opinions unless they agreed with others' opinions. I was rarely the dissenting vote and never played the Devil's Advocate. In this exercise, I realized that recently in a personally challenging situation, I was strong, clear, took a big risk , and spoke my truth clearly and honestly. In class, I recognized and accepted myself as the person I'd always wanted to be when I grew up. Wow. I shed a lot of tears on that one - it seemed it was almost harder to see the beauty and strength in myself than it was to see the weakness and fear. But the objective evidence was there and I was who I wanted to be. I was living it in my world without even trying. And now I saw it for myself. No more damsel in distress, waiting to be rescued, I can do my own rescuing, thank you very much. I was changing before my very eyes.

Our issues come from judgments about ourselves and our circumstances. Based on the number of issues that have surfaced for me since October, I'd say that I have been fairly busy judging just about everything that has ever happened to me. How did I ever get through school? When did I have time to take care of my kids?! Of course, the judging is so swift and unconscious, we could do it in our sleep (and we probably do!). All this judging is just an indicator of where I've been spending my time -- in the ego level of my being. If I'd been residing in my Authentic Self, I wouldn't have been judging myself so completely or so harshly (or at all).

Before the end of the weekend, Ron reminded us that all judgments are a lie. If we are living in acceptance (which is what we are doing when we reside in our Authentic Self), we don't make judgments. Then we act out of love. Here, we can experience more humor, joy and enthusiasm than is possible in the ego level of the personality and our aliveness goes up. I am counting on the cumulative effect of addressing and releasing many small issues to bring me gradually to that place of residing in my Authentic Self. By releasing old judgments and not making new ones, I feel like I'm creating space to be more of my true self. The fewer issues I have, the fewer anchors I have to my ego level of awareness and the more I can transcend my ego and live vibrantly in my Authentic Self.

Based on the changes in my behavior that I'm seeing, it might be happening already.

December at USM - Day 3

I arrived at USM Sunday morning in a fog. We immediately moved into trios and I shared my dream and my realization that my interaction with my mom was the catalyst for me to reject my spirituality and natural psychic abilities. With my two trio partners, I eloquently and beautifully spoke my truth about what I feel is my mission on Earth - to give voices to the animals, especially dolphins, about what their spiritual reality is. Just as we are divine beings having a human experience, they are divine beings having a horse or dolphin or caterpillar experience -- with spiritual lessons that are equally as valid and important as humans'. In this sharing, I shaved a layer off the sadness I was feeling about my mom and the dream this morning.

Our next process on Sunday was a Healing Memories Guided Visualization. I have no memory of what happened for me during that visualization because I fell asleep, but as I listened to the two songs playing afterward I realized that my sadness had been completely lifted and the only healing left for me to do was to apply love, acceptance and forgiveness to the situation and everyone involved. The first song, "I will play the music while you sing your song," made me feel like my adult self was saying this to my younger self and then it felt like god was saying to me now as an adult, "Spirit will support me in my dreams." I felt the message from the second song, "In a simple way I love you," at three levels. It felt like a message from my Higher Self to myself, a message from Spirit to me, and a message from my mom to me. I was left with a real sense of peace, feeling completely loved and supported.

After lunch with my trio partners from this morning, we joined a group of USM students walking down Wilshire Boulevard toward the school. I was walking alone on the building side of the sidewalk as the group coalesced into pairs in different conservations. All of a sudden, I felt a tingling behind my right ear and an energy lightly pressing against my right shoulder. I had a knowingness that there was a spirit there - it was my psychic phone line ringing. I knew I had a choice - I could either answer it or ignore it. I decided to answer it. It felt like someone's grandfather who had died. I called to a friend walking alone on the street side of the group, "Hey, do you have a grandfather who passed over?" "Yes!" was his immediate reply. "Well, I think he wants to tell you something." I proceeded to pass the message along to my friend, who then had some questions for his grandfather (who had died several years ago), who had some answers and some more things to say. Their conversation ended in front of the sushi restaurant across the street from USM. I hung up my psychic phone, making sure that the connection was now closed, and checked in with my friend. Everything that I had heard from his grandfather and relayed to him had made total sense and he was comforted by the conversation. We both began the afternoon session of classes feeling energized and at peace.

The afternoon brought new information about relationships and upsets. We were reminded that all of our issues are inside of us (the problem is never "out there") and that in order to create quality relationships, we need to work our process on ourselves, resolving our issues so that they don't get triggered by our friends, family and co-workers. Our relationships act as mirrors to us of our unresolved issues, giving us material to work on for our spiritual evolution. So, how do we work our process and heal these issues inside of us? With a new tool: Seven Steps to Issue Resolution.

Following the seven steps, I easily and naturally came to a place of 100% self-responsibility for my thoughts and feelings and decisions made as an adult and as a five-year-old. I forgave myself and my mom for whatever happened when I was little. I forgave myself for believing the judgments I made against myself and my family and forgave my mom for inadvertently being my loving stacker. In a twenty minute trio process, I completely resolved the issue with my mom and my rejection of my spirituality and felt at peace about it.

After our final session of the weekend, I was struck by how quickly this issue had come up and been resolved. It originally arose Friday night in my first exercise of the weekend and I worked through it and completely resolved it by Sunday afternoon. And this was the deepest issue I have ever addressed. Throughout the weekend, I had imagined that resolving this issue would take weeks of intensive self-searching and work. But it didn't. It wasn't instantaneous or effortless, but by being honest and accepting what was present for me in each moment, I was able to see things clearly and process the issue naturally. I felt like the weekend gave me a gift - I was given back a piece of myself that I had rejected forty years ago. I felt whole again, like it was safe to be myself. I was so moved by the experience that I stood up and shared the whole thing with all 269 of my classmates Sunday evening.

I had arrived at USM this morning in a fog, but I left on a cloud. In between I owned and shared my spiritual truth, resolved an issue that was causing me pain and sadness, had a psychic experience that completely validated my abilities that I had invalidated as a child, and connected with my fellow students more deeply than I had thought possible.

I just might be growing as a human being. :-)

December at USM - The Dream

In the early hours of Sunday morning, I was in the middle of a dream. It was as if it were today and my family and I were living in my mom's house. I was in a big room that was like a combo kitchen and lab working on something when my mom came in the room and we started arguing about something. It felt like we were rehashing an old argument and I was really frustrated that she was interrupting my work to have the same argument again. A friend of mine from school walked by us, causing me to stop for a moment and think about what we were doing. I realized that I could apply my USM skills to this argument, so I calmly said to my Mom, "I have a request for you. My request is that when I say blah de blah that you respond with blah de blah." (I can't remember the exact words here.) I felt really peaceful and complete and just at that moment Lexi walked into the room, all excited.

Lexi bounced over to me to show me the fish that she had just caught for dinner. Very pleased with herself she put it in storage in the kitchen and bounced off to her next adventure, leaving me with the fish. The fish was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen in my life. It was like a huge flounder (about 6 feet long) with an amazingly beautiful pattern of shimmering golden-green scales on its side. It was so beautiful that tears came to my eyes - it was like being in rapture.

I realized that we needed to preserve the fish, so I started covering it with the sand that it was resting on in the storage area. But this sand was home to dozens of sea turtle eggs and baby sea turtles began hatching out of the sand. They were far from water and I knew if I didn't help them they would dry out and die. I went to the big kitchen sink and filled a large spaghetti pot with water and took it over to the baby sea turtles.

And then I woke up. It was about 6am and I lay in bed, re-living the dream and pondering it's meaning. My mom has been dead for 14 years, but I often dream about her. Usually, we are on a college campus talking together. Every once in a while we have an argument. I hate the argument dreams. I wake up with knots in my stomach, feeling sad that I wasted my precious time with her arguing. This morning that feeling was even stronger. I knew this dream somehow related to my experience at USM the day before and my bedtime prayer. Thoughts and emotions were swirling around in me faster than I could put words to them. Was I literally supposed to save the sea turtles? But the fish was SO beautiful, too! Maybe I was supposed to help all animals. Why was my mom getting in the way of that by interrupting my work and arguing with me? Why was Lexi fishing for dinner?

And then the big question hit me: Was it an interaction with my mom when I was little that had led me to reject my spiritual/psychic self? It must have been. But I didn't want it to be. It couldn't be. Tears began slowing sliding down my cheeks. Mom was the only one who was with me when all that weird psychic stuff happened to me in my twenties. The stuff I couldn't explain or understand but felt deeply. The scary stuff I couldn't control that had an attractive edge of power and beauty to it. Like the time I helped Russian earthquake victims cross over in my sleep. That was a weird dream. And then the newspaper headline announced the devastation wreaked by a powerful earthquake in rural Russia. And how many times had the weird stuff happening in my "dreams" drive me to sleep on the couch in her living room? She would come out in the morning and see me and just know what had happened. She didn't have to say anything. The look on her face was all the love and support and understanding I needed. We didn't know what was happening, but she was my witness and my partner, and together we muddled through.

And Mom was the one who came to the hospital when Petey broke his back sledding and wouldn't leave until I passed on her posthumous message to Petey about what he needed to do to heal his back. And Mom was the one I clearly felt on the top of Mount Tam a few days after she died, bringing a smile of joy and communion to my face. And the day I'd been mountain biking and was so sad about her death that I stopped by the creek to cry, she was there, too, cheering me up, her sweet, positive energy swirling around me. She was the one who was always there, loving and supporting me when any "other-worldly" experience happened to me. It couldn't have been her that squelched my natural expression at such a young age! But I knew it was and I was tormented by that knowing. It left a heaviness in my body, a dread, a feeling that this was completely unacceptable.

And that yucky feeling stayed with me as I dejectedly showered and ate breakfast and headed out for my day of classes at USM.

December at USM - Day 2

Saturday was a very powerful day for me at USM this month. I still felt that vague, raw feeling but now it was topped off with the sense that I wasn't to be trusted, that somewhere in my past I'd betrayed myself. Things were pretty murky!

In the first exercise of the day, I shared my current experience of feeling completely inadequate and unable to fulfill my dreams. I had never articulated these goals out loud, and it was very hard to say the words now, but I recognized my two reasons for coming to USM were 1) to regain that feeling that I had had as a little kid of being directly connected to God and able to talk to God and angels, and 2) to make real my childhood dream of talking with dolphins (by which I mean conversations in which they understand me and I can understand them and there is a real exchange, a dialog, a shared connection, a meeting of minds - call it psychic, call it intuitive, call it soul-to-soul, whatever you want). I felt like I needed to achieve the first goal before the second could happen because I felt like that kind of communication was a spiritual endeavor.

In the same moment that I articulated these goals, I knew, with deep conviction, that I would fail. Of the 270 students in the room, I was confident that 269 of them would reach their goals and that I would completely fail. "It's a pipe dream." "It'll never happen." "You can't do that." These were the words that I heard inside my head.

Six months earlier, last June at an On Course I workshop, I had drawn a picture of my dreams. When the exercise began I had no idea what I would draw, but then I felt that dolphin energy swirling around me and in my mind's eye, I saw a close-up picture of a dolphin's face. All I could see was the side of his face, part of his slightly-open mouth, his melon, and his eye. Where the pupil should have been, I saw a black shape - an outline of me standing with my arms stretched above my head. I clearly heard the words "We've got you in our sights." And that is what I drew that night when asked to draw my dreams.

I thought of this picture now, and I remembered the feeling I'd had this morning of being surrounded by dolphin energy. And the comforting message that the dolphins have me in their sights.

Later that afternoon, I got the opportunity to explore the connection between trusting myself and failing to achieve my goals. I looked far back into my early childhood and remembered not being believed when I told someone in my family that I was talking to God and the angels when I was about 5 years old. This was a regular thing for me and I thought everyone could do it. I was surprised that my ability to do it was denied and I was told to stop making stuff up and that I was imagining things. Today at USM I realized that I had, in my infinite 5 year old wisdom, I decided that I could not be myself and be loved and accepted in my family. I realized that I had to reject this part of me in order to fit in. (Not ignore it or keep it secret, but reject it completely.) And so I did. In my current exploration of my memories of the past, I realized that I felt like I had completely betrayed myself when I did that. (See why I can't trust myself? Clearly, I'm not to be trusted.)

Once I recognized these feelings, thoughts and beliefs, I decided to re-accept and embrace that spiritual/psychic part of myself that I had been hiding and denying for 40 years. I forgave myself for ever buying into the belief (that I had created) that I had to deny myself to the world in order to receive acceptance and love from others. What a feeling of power and relief and peace! (Five year olds should not be running the world!) As the exercise concluded, I felt like I was glowing - with peace and love and acceptance rippling through me. It was a truly wonderful feeling.

(Interestingly enough, in this exercise I also had the same deep longing for time alone, time to just be with myself, time to rediscover who I am by just being that I had felt the night before.)

That evening, I said a little prayer before going to sleep: Dear God, given my gifts, my talents, my abilities, and my heartfelt desires, please show me how I can be of service and how you would use me.

December at USM - Day 1

I arrived in LA Friday afternoon feeling a bit unsettled. I'd had the feeling all week. Hard to define, hard to even notice, but it was there, just under the surface. I felt a little raw with a vague sense of something coming up, but no idea of what it was.

Our topic Friday night was cultivating an Attitude of Gratitude. Ron and Mary began the session by quoting Ram Dass ("If you think you're enlightened, go home for Thanksgiving") and reminding us that we each have a choice in how we interpret any situation. We can see our issues as problems or as blessings.

In two different trios, we practiced re-framing our issues as blessings or opportunities. My issue that evening was feeling like a failure because I couldn't "fix" my work situation. I felt that I was letting others down and that they would judge me for it. I was afraid that I'd lose opportunities for future work if I weren't in that position any more. I realized that those "others" were not the real issue. I was judging myself and I got so sick of being stuck in that rigid, judgmental place. I realized that my opportunity is to trust myself to make the right decisions for me right now. As I looked deeper, I realized that this was the real issue for me - trusting myself.

I finished the exercise with a deep sense of wanting some alone time to explore and experience the USM curriculum with no pressure to have a job or make money or do anything. But there was that nagging sense of not being able to trust myself to make the right decision for myself. I wasn't sure where that was coming from, but it was very much there as I left USM, went home and got ready for bed.

I slept fitfully that night after waiting a long time to get to sleep. But when I woke up, I felt surrounded by dolphin energy. It was like there were dolphins in the room swimming all around me. It felt just like the old days swimming with dolphins while doing research in the Bahamas - it's an unmistakable feeeling to have swirling around you. I wallowed in the energy for several minutes until it faded away and it was time for me to get up and get ready for Day 2 of the weekend.

My Second USM Weekend

My second weekend at USM was a lot like my first. Things went smoothly logistically. I met more great people and had a great time going deeper into the philosophy of Spiritual Psychology.

We learned about how Stackers set up our life lessons based on our own, unique curriculum and our previous responses to our earlier lessons. We learned how pervasive judgments and upsets are in our lives and how the word "because" (as in "I'm upset because...") can lead us to new levels of spiritual healing.

My take home lessons this month:

First, everyone has a purpose and we have two choices - to go toward it or to avoid it. If you choose to avoid your purpose, you don't get to experience the fullness of life.

Second, completing incomplete cycles of action can free up more energy to give to moving closer to your purpose and your ideal life.

Third, "responsibility" is the ability to respond within your self. We are each 100% responsible for anything that goes on inside of us, which means that there is no more blaming or pointing fingers anywhere else. Our reactions, thoughts, judgments, issues are ours and ours alone.

And finally, my teachers say that you've resolved the issues you've resolved and that work is done. USM is the place where any unresolved issues will come forward to be healed for the last time.

I've already experienced the last lesson and welcome the new issues that will come up for me to resolve over the next two years.

My First Lesson Tested

Two weeks after my first surprising meeting with my boss and our dean, I walked into our follow-up meeting like a blank slate. I had no idea what to expect. I had healed my issue with love and attention and now I wasn't quite sure what the real situation was. Was I fired? Was there still a job for me? I had no idea because I was so triggered during that meeting that I couldn't objectively evaluate the situation.

The meeting was an interesting one. It started with their proposal for a new job description for me: as On Course Coordinator for the college, they still wanted me to lead the faculty and staff development in On Course, teach the new On Course class I had developed for students and teach the one-hour On Course workshops for students that I had co-created over the last two semesters. The job description included almost everything that I had been doing already. The only change was that my position would be kind of pieced together with a stipend for coordinating On Course and regular associate faculty pay for student workshops and classes instead of being a single hourly position in CAS (the Center for Academic Success). I would set my own hours and have projects to work on. It was exactly what I wanted! The second major change in my position was that I would no longer report to my current boss. In fact, she pointed out that she never wanted to be alone in a room with me.

Those are the facts of the meeting, but the more interesting part for me was how I felt: fine. I was no longer angry, upset or anything. My boss was still angry at me and wouldn't look directly at me during the meeting. Whenever she spoke to me, her anger came to the surface. I saw clearly that we had both been inadvertently triggered by the other. Because I had cleared my trigger, I wasn't upset anymore. She hadn't done the healing work on herself and she was still very triggered. I was able to remain neutral and clear-headed throughout the entire hour-long meeting. I knew that although my soon-to-be former boss and I would never be alone together, we would be working together on various college committee in the future, so I asked if my boss would be willing to resolve the original issue, whatever it was. She refused. I persisted and finally she admitted that she thought I had filled out a travel form incorrectly last June. Although she still insisted that she didn't want to resolve the issue but wanted to just move forward, I got her and our dean to agree that if we could resolve the question about the form we would. And then the hour was up and the meeting ended.

So, I left that meeting feeling the victory of the deep healing I had done the week before. (Thanks to USM and Skip for gently nudging me in that direction!) In a situation that had all the elements that had triggered me before, I had remained neutral and un-triggered. I was able to be present and aware and communicate clearly and honestly in the moment. This was a big deal for me! Plus, the proposal for my new job description validated the excellent job I do. I was experiencing the payoff for doing the emotional work on myself and it felt great.

[Note: I've had two more meetings with my boss and I remained untriggered and neutral in both while she was still very angry at me during both meetings. And this is not because I am trying to be neutral or that I am such a great person or anything like that. It's simply that the triggers that used to be there are gone and their departure appears to be permanent.]

My Curriculum Begins

It's two weeks after my first weekend at USM and things are going smoothly. I'm doing the assigned reading (there's lots!) and creating my ideal scenes for my homework. Suddenly, my school is in session.

At a regular weekly meeting with my boss and her supervisor, I am shocked to discover that my boss has been mad at me for weeks about something that I did that I thought was totally okay (I arranged a substitute for a workshop in case my daughter's field trip went long and I couldn't make it back to school in time to teach it). Unbeknownst to me, my boss and her supervisor have decided that I am not dedicated to my job because of this. My boss tells me that my contract ends in December and that she will allow me to finish out the time on my contract but that I no longer have any duties in the Center for Academic Success. The three of us discuss the situation for a while and start discussing next semester, but I am really in shock and literally can't register the words that are being said. We agree to meet in a week or two to follow up.

A week later, I am recalling the meeting to my friend Skip and I realize that I am still angry about it. As a USM grad himself, he reminds me that at USM they teach that underneath anger is a hurt. "So, if I find the hurt then the anger will go away?" I ask him. "Sounds good to me," he replies.

I have no idea what my hurt is and I don't really give it much conscious thought. But 3 days later, as I'm dropping Lexi off at her school I have the strangest thought: I'm afraid that my boss will stop loving me. This idea is so outlandish that I stop in my tracks and wonder about it. What could it possibly mean? The thoughts are knocking around in the back of my mind as I drive to Butte College and drop Zane off at his school. It's about 40 minutes later and by now I've figured that crazy thought out and emotions are welling up inside me. It's all I can do to keep from crying as I leave Zane's school and walk to my car.

I whip out my cell phone as tears start to fall down my face. I reach Chris at work and tell him, "I figured out what my hurt is!" I then proceed to explain to him about my crazy thought at Lexi's school and how I realize that when I was 8 years old I watched my parents disagreeing and fighting. When they separated, my dad moved out of the house. I put the two things together and, in my eight-year-old wisdom, I created the belief that if anyone disagrees with my dad, he stops loving them and the relationship ends. I had recognized this two years earlier in my interactions with my dad, and saw how I had played this pattern out with past boyfriends, but this was the first time that I recognized that I had generalized this belief to everyone and everything: if I disagree with anyone they will stop loving me and will leave me and the relationship will be over.

On the phone with Chris, I share my realizations and re-live all the pent-up emotions surrounding the night that my parents told me and my sister that they were getting a divorce. I re-lived my deep sadness and loved and accepted all the feelings that I had then but had buried deep inside of me. I felt the sadness of loss and the fear of being left, as well as a deep, deep feeling of being unworthy of my parents' love, time and attention. Chris listened deeply and openly and loved and accepted me as I went through the experience as well as honored the feelings that I had had as a child. I also loved and accepted myself and my feelings then and now and honored (and released) the pain I had been carrying around with me. Together, our love healed that deep, old hurt within me.

Thus, I experienced another of the lessons from USM: healing is applying love to places inside us that hurt. Although it was really sucky at the time to feel all those strong emotions (and it took a couple days for my body to physically process everything), the feeling of freedom and release and openness on the other side is AWESOME!

NEXT: What happened at the follow-up meeting?

My First USM Weekend

My first weekend at USM was lovely. I got off the plane, caught an airport shuttle just ready to leave (and met two fellow USM students on the shuttle), and got to my brother Den's house by mid-afternoon. Den and I took a bike ride to Whole Foods and around his Venice neighborhood and hung out and had dinner. He loaned me his car for the weekend and everything went smoothly.

In the very first class, the teachers created a great feel in the room and we started counseling each other, which was a great way to get to know a few of my 269 classmates. I met some great people over the weekend and had a nice time, but nothing was earth-shattering or amazing. It was fine.

One thing we did learn about was USM's view that underneath every anger there is a hurt - some part of us that feels unloved or unworthy or hurt in some way. Underneath that is the Loving, which is our true nature, our Authentic Selves.

After a nice weekend, I headed home, still unsure if this was the place for me. Maybe I was expecting instant enlightenment or bells and whistles or the clouds to part and golden light to rain down and angels to sing. I don't know. All I know is that I had a lovely time, everything went smoothly and easily and even effortlessly. And although I had no great, compelling reason to keep going, there was really no reason not to either. My kids had had a great weekend with Chris, everything went smoothly and easily for him, and nobody was traumatized by my 3.5 day absence.

I guess I'll go back next month.

Is this for me? Now?

Getting ready for my first weekend of classes at USM, I had some reservations. Although part of me felt like Harry running through the streets to get to Sally on New Year's Eve in the movie "When Harry Met Sally," I wasn't sure that this was the right thing for me to do right now.

My concerns were:
1. Timing. It makes more sense to wait a year. Then Zane will be in kindergarten and the logistics for where my kids are during the day will be easier. It won't be such a burden on Chris to pick them up Friday afternoon (30 minutes drive out to get Zane before 5pm) and to get them to school on Monday before work at 8:30am. Not only that, but I'd also started a year-long Monday night class in June. Maybe it would be better to wait until that class is over.

2. Money. I cut back my hours from 20 per week to 15 per week this semester. So I am no making less money and adding a monthly expense of $800 - $1000. Nice math!

3. Cold feet. Maybe I'm just not ready. It's kind of a hassle. Do I have time to do the homework? Am I being selfish? Am I overcommitting myself? Why am I really doing this? Do I even know what I want? Is that even achievable? Am I asking too much of my family? Am I deserting my kids? What is "Spiritual Psychology" anyway? It seemed vague and I certainly couldn't define it or even explain to friends and acquaintances who asked me what it was and why I was doing it. And didn't I already have a master's degree and a PhD? What was I going to do with this degree anyway? (My inner critic found lots of ammunition here.)

Most of this was going on inside my head as I packed and drove to the airport and gave last hugs and kisses to my kids and husband. Small tears in my eyes as I said goodbye to my kids, I silently reminded myself that I could stop any time. I'm just going to check it out and see if I want to commit. I was committed to the weekend and so I went forward outwardly clear and strong but inwardly wishy-washy.

The Adventure Begins

It's January 4th, 2010, and I've decided to start my very first blog. Over the next few days, I will try to post the highlights of my first 3 months at USM (amazing) and then start adding regular updates as the school year progresses.