Siberia

He Just Shows Up – Day 556

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An Exquisite Sunset 20 May 2020 – Photo: L. Weikel

He Just Shows Up

I hope I never take for granted the ways in which Karl continues to reach into my life, metaphorically tapping me on the shoulder or giving me a hug when I need it most. While he is every bit as unpredictable in the afterlife as he was during his life as our son, I have to say – he’s also every bit as tenacious. Indeed, if he has a message to deliver or a situation he feels adamant that needs attention, he will go to great measures to orchestrate circumstances that will enable him to communicate with me – either directly or indirectly. And then, at other times, he just shows up.

For the longest time, especially during the first several months after he died, I didn’t want to hope for any communication from Karl. I was acutely aware of what can happen when those of us left to mourn hang on too tightly to a loved one when they die, especially when the death is sudden or unexpected.

In my work, I’ve had the honor and responsibility to escort souls back to the Source when I discovered them trapped here on Earth. The need for such an intervention is often the result of a death so sudden they don’t realize they’ve passed away, or the person is confused or profoundly fearful of what they might encounter if they allow themselves to ‘move on’ to their next experience. I’ve also experienced situations in which the grief on the part of both the dead and the living is so profound – or wrapped up in a tangle of such complex emotion involving much more than simply ‘love’ – that neither person can move forward until they achieve resolution.

He Was Frustrated Too

There’s no denying that he was actively communicating with me right after his death. But again, I was having an oddly split reaction to it all. On the one hand, I desperately wanted to ask him questions, discover the details, hear his voice, have proof that he – his consciousness – survived the death of his body. And on the other hand, as I said, I was adamant that I not impede his ability to move on. The absolute last thing I wanted to do was hang on to him too tightly.

Knowing what I know, I was certain it would be the furthest thing from impeccable for me to interfere with his evolution. And I was determined that my unconditional love for him and my desire for him to move on to his next set of experiences unimpeded would exceed my mortal, short-term, ego-driven love. The love that balked at being deprived of a parent’s ability to watch their children live their lives, replete with the joys and heartaches living brings.

Only a few months after Karl died, I spent a month in Peru, intensively working through my own grief so I could better support Karl (my husband) and my surviving sons. Karl came through to me both while I was working with the paqos (mountain shamans or medicine people of the high Andes) and with the jungle shamans in the Amazon. He expressed irritation with me that I seemed to be ignoring his attempts to communicate with him. He told me in no uncertain terms that he was frustrated and – knowing this would get me, I suppose – how sad it made him that I seemed to be deliberately refusing to recognize his efforts to communicate and meet him half way.

It’s funny, in retrospect, to realize how successful I was in frustrating my son even after death – simply by trying hard to be the best mother to him that I could; by letting go and doing my best not to hang on.

Startling Appearances

And so, I think in some ways just to get back at me for frustrating the (living?) shit out of him as he tried to communicate with me, he periodically shows up in such startling ways or in such unexpected circumstances that I just have to say, “You got me!”

One such instance was in July of 2017, five and a half years after his death. Karl and I and a few other family members were in Siberia. (You read that right.) We were in the Sayan Mountains and had hiked up to a glacial waterfall where myriad healing waters were accessible. As I made my way to the falls near the very top, I had to step aside to make way for trekkers descending from the falls.

This is what I encountered coming toward me. In Siberia:

Sayan Mountain trail, Siberia (She didn’t speak English) – Photo:L. Weikel

*I hope this photo turns right side up. It is showing up, for me, as sideways and I can’t make it go right side up. But no matter what…you get the picture.

(T-555)

We CAN Do Something – Day 284

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My “Perelandra Stash” – Photo: L. Weikel

We CAN Do Something                 

I have a couple of subjects I was contemplating writing about tonight. That’s a rare occurrence, let me assure you. I just hope I remember what they were tomorrow!

But I realize there’s one thing I intended to write about last month, but let the time slip away until it was too late. I don’t want that to happen again this month, so I’m making it a priority tonight.

It’s In Our Faces

It’s probably all the more timely that I write this post tonight because it’s likely everyone has at least seen some of the photos and perhaps read an article or two on the astonishingly huge fires raging in the Amazon at the moment. This should be of global concern (and outrage), as the fires are so massive they can be seen from space. And it bears repeating that the Amazon rainforest acts as the lungs of our planet.

If Mother Earth’s lungs burn up, we die. And the speed of our demise is all the more accelerated by the double devastation wrought by the burning of the rainforests: (Wammy #1) Losing the rainforests means we lose all those trees that breathe in the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere (and in turn ‘exhale’ oxygen for us to breathe); and (Wammy #2) Beyond the loss described in Wammy #1, the actual burning of the trees creates more carbon being released into the atmosphere, thereby doubling the devastating effects on the world.

To make matters worse, the forest fires in the taiga of Siberia are also far worse this year than usual. Again, these raging, out of control forest fires are having a doubly devastating effect on the global environment.

One Unconventional Method of Addressing the Fires

One means of addressing these out of control, raging fires is via weather shamanism. I’ve linked that phrase to a wonderful book I’ve owned and read many times and refer to often. This practice is common and an essential aspect of a shaman’s duties to her or his community in Siberia. Wildfires in the taiga are not uncommon, often being sparked by lightning and dry or drought conditions. Shamans are routinely asked to step up and journey to the spirit of the fire to see if there is a message or a demand that can be met. Journeys are also often taken to the atmosphere, with efforts made to communicate with the essential natures of clouds and water vapor in the atmosphere.

The shamanic aspect of journeying to work with the spirits of these Beings can have profound effects, and I could probably write more on this subject.

Perelandra

But for now, I want to introduce you to an organization based in Virginia that is dedicated to working with the sentience that is Nature. It’s called Perelandra.

There’s a pretty amazing story of how (from very unlikely circumstances) Machaelle Small Wright discovered she could communicate with the devic realm, including Pan. Working in concert with Nature and her own Higher Self, she discovered she could not only co-create a physical environment that supported astonishing growth in a seemingly inhospitable environment (not unlike Findhorn, with whom she consulted and collaborated when first beginning this work some 40 years ago), but also work with these Beings to bring balance to human beings.

I am both grossly oversimplifying the story of Perelandra and simultaneously making it sound far more complicated than it is. There are short versions to be found on the website, and for those of you who, like me, enjoy memoir and learning in an author’s own words how they came to ‘be’ who they ‘are,’ she has written several books documenting her rather remarkable journey.

An Easier Way (If You Don’t Journey)

Just as I could wax on about weather shamanism, I could write a lot more about Perelandra and my experience with it beginning at least 30 years ago. (Man, I was busy discovering lots of cool stuff back in my 20s and 30s!) If you’re intrigued, I suggest you to go the website and poke around there.

I can assure you, I work with these essences every day. I also work with my MAP team, which you can also learn about on the website. (And maybe I’ll write about that sometime, too.)

But for right now? I’d like you to consider investing in a bottle of Essence of Perelandra (also known as EoP) so you can participate in the monthly EoP Biodiversity Project Machaelle just recently instituted. It is a very simple protocol that takes no more than five minutes – and only ten drops of EoP. The power of the process is magnified exponentially by the power of all of us working with Nature on the 1stday of each month.

Check It Out For Yourself

Click on some of the links I’m providing in this post and read about it for yourself. It’s a simple thing. But it is a tangible act you can take, joining with thousands of other people around the world, all in an effort to work with Nature to contribute to the overall health of the planet.

If you order EoP now, Perelandra is running a great sale on EoP. They want to encourage as many people as possible to participate. I feel extremely confident in the integrity of Machaelle Small Wright and Perelandra.

And I hope this gives you the opportunity to feel you are taking a tangible step to stop the insanity.

I’ll also wager you’ll find the astonishing variety of applications of Perelandra essences to be intriguing and very possibly holding the potential of dramatically improving your well-being.

(T-827)

Remedial Instagram – Day Eighty One

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Photo by L. Weikel

Remedial Instagram

Good grief, I’m starting to wonder about myself.

I’ll come clean with all of you, since we’re all about intimacy, right? I feel intimate with you, anyway. I know there are a number of you who are keeping me company and making sure I do indeed keep my commitment to Karl’s memory. (I can’t thank you often or sincerely enough for that camaraderie, by the way. And my most heartfelt means of expressing that gratitude is to be radically honest with you. Intimate, in other words. Letting you see and hear my inner me, warts and all.)

My confession is this: I was honestly excited last night when I wrote about getting myself much further along in Instagram World than I’d ever managed before. I knew I’d successfully posted (what, a post? Do you post a post on Instagram? God, how can I do it if I don’t even know what to call it?); anyway, I knew I’d successfully put something on my IG ‘feed’ yesterday afternoon because people had reacted to it by later in the evening.

Even better, I thought, I’d figured out how to get links inside my post to actually get opened without some rigamarole that I didn’t even understand. It sounded like a good thing to do and I thought I’d figured it out. The app I was using to accomplish this task is called Link In Profile. Technically, I’m still using it, I guess, as of tonight anyway. Luckily, they give you a month’s free trial first.

It seems pretty neat. At least, yesterday afternoon, as I said, I managed to post my initial Instagram and, in it, include a link to my Devotion blog post, which explains the inception of the whole 1111 Devotion commitment I made in November. And I thought it meant that people could click on the link inside the post and go directly to the webpage it referenced, instead of people having to go to my Instagram bio to click on it.

Yeah, this is making my eyes glaze over, too.

But I think it did the job. I don’t actually know enough yet to even be able to tell.

First Opportunity to Show My Stuff: Brain Fart

Problem is? By the time I published my blog post late last night and shared it on FB in the couple or three places I usually do, I totally forgot how to actually, literally, POST on Instagram! Yeah, I’m saying I forgot how to do the single most basic function on (and the whole point of) the entire stupid platform.

So I’m sitting on my couch last night, eager to put my blog post ‘out there’ on Instagram, too – especially since I’d just written about it to all of you! – and I’m clicking on every damn icon I can see on the Instagram app on my phone. None of them take me where I want to go or let me do what I want to do. Mostly I’m just reminded that I need to complete my stupid bio.

Oh my Goddess. I wanted to scream.

And then, once I accidentally discovered the ‘entry’ screen (and I still don’t know what I tapped to get there), I couldn’t even figure out if it would somehow access the photo that I’d included in the blog and publish that as the ‘accompanying’ photo (like FB does)  – or if I had to publish a photo independently, from my phone’s photo archive, and then include the link to my blog post in the comment area.

My head was swimming by this time.

Hence the random photo of our Boston Terrier, Sheila, pretending to be Princess Leia (even though she actually bears a much more uncanny resemblance to Yoda).

Moving Forward, Figuring It Out

The bottom line, therefore, is that I’m still figuring this out. I know some of you are clearly adept at IG and others of you, while you may be trying to make me feel good (and it worked, thanks) by telling me so, admitted to being in the same boat as I am. You know who you are: the ‘I have a name on Instagram too, but haven’t used it yet’ gang.

My pledge to you: I will be your guinea owl! We can figure this out – together. And I will report back on how much fun and success I’m having as an Instagrammer.

In the meantime, here’s both a photo of a rock formation on the Siberian steppe south of Lake Baikal (above). And another photo of Sheila, her son Spartacus, and Cletus. Our Black and White Triumvirate enjoying a bit of warmth and respite in front of the hearth fire .

Because Instagram.

(T-1030)

Take a Chance – Day Fifty Four

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Take a Chance

You never know how a day is going to turn out.

I’d expressed an interest in attending a program tonight in NYC several weeks ago, and then forgot about it.

The Rubin Museum is an absolute treasure. I’ve been to several programs there and every single one has been well worth the trip.

The program that was scheduled for tonight at the Rubin was Altai Kai – a world-renowned throat-singing ensemble from the Altai region of Siberia. If you’re not familiar with throat-singing, it is hard to describe with words. Similar to shamanism, you have to experience it to truly appreciate it.

Indeed, hearing throat singing for the very first time caused me to spontaneously burst into tears. Not because I was offended or frightened by what I heard emanating from my car’s speakers but because it reached right into the center of my chest and pierced my heart. It spoke to me in a way I’d never experienced music before. And that extremely unexpected occurrence sealed my fate of actually taking a trip to the former Republic of Tuva (now a part of Russia) in 2003.

And that trip ended up being my literal and completely unexpected initiation into shamanism.

But that’s a story for another day. Suffice it to say, though, throat-singing is near and dear to my heart.

So I’d tossed out the idea to Karl that we might want to attend this concert tonight and we’d agreed it might be fun. And then we just put it on the back burner. Wait and see.

Yesterday, we suddenly remembered that this was a possibility. I contacted the Rubin and almost bought the tickets – but had the possibility of a session with a client today and didn’t want to make plans that might have to be canceled. So I held off.

Turned out that the session never took place today, so I logged on to order the tickets and – you guessed it – they were sold out.

We were so bummed out. Checking further on the website, I could see they had a process for a waiting list – but you had to sign up for it in person – and not a moment before 5:00 p.m. (the concert started at 7:00). And then you had to show up again at 6:50 p.m., again in person, to see if you were lucky enough to be given the opportunity to buy some tickets at the last minute.

Why Not?

After only a moment, we just looked at each other and said, “Why not?”

So we took a risk. We threw caution to the wind and left for NYC at 3:00 p.m. Wow, we made fantastic time. In fact, we got to the Museum at 4:45 – and they wouldn’t let us sign up for the wait list literally until the stroke of 5:00!

We grabbed a quick dinner and made our way back to The Rubin.

Didn’t we see my niece and nephew (who’d introduced us to the magic of The Rubin to begin with) sitting at a table in the lobby? They, too, had put themselves on the waiting list and were hoping to have their name called at 6:50. (I guess procrastination might run a tad in my family?)

We hadn’t even realized the other would be there – and neither of us had contacted the other because we knew we hadn’t been able to buy tickets ahead of time.

Turned out all four of us got in! And it was a great concert. Just…amazing.

I hope you enjoy the taste of the Altai Kai, above.

And next time you have a chance to take a chance? Do it.

(T-1057)