The Truth is Purely Temporary
This is a remarkable story of my recent trip to Williston, North Dakota where I was scheduled over fall equinox to do an emotional healing retreat and private sessions. But, first, a little background is necessary to set the stage.
One issue that has always plagued me as I have walked my journey back into myself, is the discomfort I feel every time I run into a person or group who has taken something written and created a prison around the words. This could be something as vast as the bible or as valuable as The Power of Now or The Four Agreements. These are prime examples where people have taken the words and created dogma that, rather than serving them, begins to limit their growth. I feel the same feeling when people adhere to a certain spiritual teacher and create a foundation that they then become trapped in such as followers that gather around someone such as Sai Baba or Billy Graham for example.
Because all these things also have great value to those drawn to work with them and incorporate them into their lives, I have felt very confused about my feelings. I have known I needed to create a forum to share my wisdom as an emotional teacher and counselor and yet I didn’t want to take responsibility for how that might trap people who didn’t grow beyond my sharing. Knowledge is light and is always alive, vibrating and expanding. My dilemma was how to create something that teaches and provides the next step but is certainly only that, the next step.
So, I have resisted writing a book that I knew I was being guided to write to share my pieces of the cosmic puzzle. I couldn’t bring myself to write another self help book or create a system, process or group that may very well end up in the every increasing pile of ‘stuckness’ on our planet.
This past January I broke through my own resistance with a good swift kick from my friend Jelaila Starr, who has often provided the push I needed in my life. As usual, the push ended up taking a different form then either of us expected. After a visit with Jelaila in January, I began to write a work that would align with her teachings. I felt I could create that book (of course because it wasn’t my work). But, after the first ten pages, I realized that I was creating my own story in the form of a novel, as I like to say’fictional non-fiction. Months passed and I whizzed through the writing of my novel The Wounded Heart Is The Healer, until I was all but done and couldn’t figure out how to end my story.
Enter the energy of Williston, North Dakota pulling me into a most incredible retreat in which the twelve who participated experienced a huge let and tremendous shift as well as creating of a new template. Not only that, but once I agreed to travel to Williston the ending of my novel fell into place. My husband Mark suggested that I energize my healing work by offering a two for one session special. Of course, at first I didn’t like that idea because I felt I would work twice as hard for half the reward and, it sounded like the Kmart blue light special, you know, kind of sleazy. But, as Ezekiel has always reminded me, stay open and learn. So for the month of July, that’s what I did. The month of July bought people out of woodwork. One such person was a lady from Williston, North Dakota, Tyla, whom I had met back in l997 when she came in for a session and attended a Merkaba workshop I was teaching at the time. She was in Iowa attending massage school for six months. After she left, we just connected occasionally through email every once in a while, usually when I sent out a Heartlights Update.
Mark and Ezekiel were so on right about the ‘special.’ I loved the wave it created, as it not only unstuck me but many of my clients as well. Tyla was one to take advantage of the offer. After her first session, she shared with some of her friends how helpful the session was and several of them called me also. Soon Tyla and one of these women were talking about bringing me to Williston to do an emotional healing retreat. After some date confusion, we all settled into the weekend right around Fall Equinox. I have to share here that I was rather surprised how quickly this event came together. I explained to Tyla how I worked these trips financially and logistically. I usually have a an open Circle the night before a retreat in a new place so people can come meet me and feel safe to sign up. That’s when I usually start to book the sessions too. After all, I am an unknown to most of the folks when I travel to new destinations.
Well, forces beyond my wildest dreams where in play. I needed at least six participants to make the trip feasible and when Tyla called to tell me the retreat was full and all my sessions for Thursday and Friday where booked with a waiting list, I was blown away. Obviously we had no need to hold a Friday night circle to draw in the crowd. The crowd was already there. From that point on, the energy just kept building, guiding me and pushing all of us, into the experience. Little did I know at this point why the group formed so quickly and what I was being brought to Williston to accomplish. It’s really a good thing that my ego hadn’t a clue or I may have baled.
Another miracle occurred once this plan had been set in place. As I did my morning three-mile walk in the beautiful woods of El Shaddai the week before my Williston trip, I realized how to end my novel. I won’t give the ending away but I will say that I was downloaded with the perfect ending that beautiful late summer morning. The Sunday before I left, I just sat down and finished the book in a few short hours. As I typed the very last words and saved the manuscript to my jump drive, I held it to my heart knowing something beautiful was happening to me.
The flow into the journey was remarkable. I had trouble in Denver with my luggage when suddenly a sky cap showed up by my side and took my luggage and myself on his cart through the underground employee tunnels into another terminal to catch a Great Lakes Aviation flight (never heard of them!). Four of the Williston ladies (who are now my friends) picked me at the airport in a limo! We got acquainted, drank wine, sang a few songs and toured some incredible North Dakota scenery. As the unusual events unfolded, I kept feeling as if someone or something beyond any of our collective thoughts was orchestrating the event. I had two heartwarming dinners in homes of woman coming to the retreat. One woman, Karla not only had the limo gals to dinner at her home in town but also provided the retreat location, a beautiful ‘cabin’ (it was way more than a cabin) situated on Lake Sakakawea in the northern Badlands. The cabin provided the perfect womb for our work and vortex on which to create our new template, although we knew none of this at the time. The other dinner was a potluck for the retreat participants at my new friend Linda’s extraordinary home on an incredibly lovely piece of property on the edge of town. Linda had just completed a powerful labyrinth that almost became an obsession for her as she worked tirelessly to complete it before retreat. Now we know why. We all initiated the labyrinth that evening as we opened the field for the work we had gathered to do.
With each event and each session, I began to slowly become aware that many of these people had an amazing spiritual teacher named Lorraine. Most of the participants had sessions with me before our retreat so little pieces kept coming out until a whole picture began to reveal itself. Evidently Lorraine was way ahead of her time. She gathered a following around her in Northern California in the sixties to share her wisdom and herself. She must have been a tremendously charismatic woman, healer and mother figure and these people grew to love her and to depend on her guidance. So much so, that they followed her to Williston, North Dakota where Lorraine felt they would be safe as the earth changes geared up. By the early 70’s many had moved their families and friends to join Lorraine in creating this new community in Williston.
As you might suspect, the Williston locals were not entirely accepting of the California transplants and just like a human body accepting a new organ from another body, much rejection and separation occurred. Lorraine and her followers nevertheless remained and grew over the years. They created businesses, rebuilt old homes and seemed to flourish in many ways. Eventually Lorraine wearied and as she aged she headed to a more hospitable climate in Florida and some of her Spiritual family came with her. Loraine died in Florida in 2001 leaving behind an incredibly spiritually oriented group of followers. As she departed through a long-term illness, she assured them she would always be there for them.
As it turns out, seven of the 12 gathered for the weekend were connected to Lorraine and four were locals and then of course, there’s me! YIKES. After completing the sessions, I realized that the seven women were all somewhat stuck in the past, in the past lessons and patterns of Lorraine. Her teachings, which at the time were incredibly advanced, had become still as all truth does, not expanded with the new wisdom being imparted to the human community. Emotionally, I found many of them clinging to the patterns they had developed in their community and not seeing the doorway to compassion and expansion. They were not comfortable at all with the more difficult emotions, the dark ones. Yet, these people were still profoundly devoted to their leader. You see, families are not just genetic. This was a family of faith and yet still harnessed with family patterns as all families are and some of them were dysfunctional. We all know how that works, but it’s hard to see the patterns when we are standing in the middle of them and they are now our own.
The first day of the retreat went very well. Many had wonderful breakthroughs and most seemed to understand the emotional wisdom I shared as well as the changing consciousness of compassion and integration unfolding on the planet at this time. Some of the Williston locals were able to express their feelings about the arrival of the Californians and these folks also shared their discomfort and perceptions of the move that changed them all. The first day went better than I expected but I could feel in my gut that I would have to move more deeply into the dysfunction of the group still caught in teachings that had not expanded with the consciousness of the times. Yet, I could also feel the resistance, perhaps much of it my own. As you can see, this was already triggering my discomfort. Here I was in a group I perceived as ones who had limited their growth by attaching to a pattern that had already shifted. To my emotional body they seemed to mirror my own issue. They appeared to have become ‘stuck’ in their truth. Some of what that they had learned, over time, became a calcified restriction rather than an expanding consciousness. Falling asleep Saturday night took awhile as I tossed and turned in my own emotions and fears. Not only was I touching into their deepest wounds but my own as well.
Around 3:00 am I awoke with an excruciating pain in my neck, almost as if I was being choked or perhaps stabbed in the neck. I tried everything I could to release the pain but nothing helped. In desperation, I finally took one of the pain pills I carried in my bag from when I broke my leg, which I carry ‘just in case’ and have never used. Well, that pill took me off to la-la land and as I rested enjoying the release of the pain, my body was overcome with chills. There where goose bumps from head to toe. These were not confirmation bumps of my higher self or angels or anything like that. I felt an actual presence and the presence was sitting on my bed near where my neck had hurt so badly. You guessed it. Lorraine had come to pay me a visit. I didn’t see her physically but I felt her clearly. We began to have a conversation, which was all too vivid and real. To make a long conversation very short, Lorraine was stuck too and needed some help to take her next steps. She needed her followers to let her go and she was ready to let go of them too. Since crossing over, she had learned even more and was now healing herself. She explained that she now understood the new templates and consciousness that had been activated on earth. She more or less brought me to Williston to help everyone break through and move on. She asked me to explain this to her flock. She needed a physical, mental and emotional release and so did they.
After she left I just lay there feeling fearful. How do I tell these women its time to move on when so much of their lives still center on Lorraine and their Spiritual family? I didn’t envy my position but I also trusted. I knew Ezekiel wouldn’t let me down. I knew in my heart that I was healing not only their wounds and separation but my own. I was healing the pain in me that was afraid to be Lorraine, afraid to be responsible for those who followed me. I am sure this is all very ancient and old. I knew we had all been together before and perhaps failed in out attempt to understand. Now here we were again. Twelve of us (no coincidence) gathered in Williston to bring up the wound and use the emotions and feelings to heal our wounded hearts. The places where we never believed we were enough. The pattern that had taught us the answers were somewhere else. Of course, I understood it was the right road we all traveled but it brought us to this place and time. This place and time is where the power to change was thriving and the universe and Lorraine seemed to be supported our break through.
I awoke early and Karla was making coffee. When Tyla joined us I shared my early morning visit with them. Tyla had felt Lorraine around for a few days. My neck was hurting again and she offered to work on me. (Tyla is an awesome massage therapist and healer) Karla was very involved with essential oils and understood sacred geometry so the two of them laid me down on the cabin floor and did their thing. Interestingly, the next two women to show up were the other two local Williston folks not connected to Lorraine. They sat down on the floor and began to work on me also. I know we set the field for the healing that was to occur that day. Karla and I saw the grid as she worked on me. Tyla seemed to be orchestrating the whole shift very intuitively.
That morning after we had our opening and everyone had shared their night’s experiences, I took a deep breath and just began where I always do’with the truth of what happened and my reaction to it. I spoke for quite some time. When I was finally silent, I was so stunned by the reaction. One-by-one these people agreed that it was time to shift. They were very ready but just never knew how. Over the next hours we opened up more stuck energy and out dated perceptions than I could have hoped for. To make short of all of this, we did the impossible. Together we moved out of dogma and separation into integration and compassion. We concluded as everyone went around and each in their own way set Lorraine free thanking her for all the wisdom and love she had showered on them. Each one agreed to take responsibility for their own truths and their own healing. Each woman honored their own ability to lead themselves. Lorraine had taught them how to love everyone and care for everyone but they had run over themselves on the way to help others. As we chatted, we discovered that some had been feeling this for a while but was afraid to share fearing rejection by others. I was aware that some very old templates were shattered that Sunday as we all began to let go of stuck places within were truth that no longer served us broke apart and we realized that we were creators of a new, ever expanding, never stagnant truth. We realized that the real journey isn’t home to God but the really journey is into ourselves as we claim our God selves.
You know, in the sixties and seventies humanity was learning about groups and communities and the communes were active and flourishing. Then along came the eighties and the ‘me’ generation gained momentum. Was it a selfish time? Perhaps it was, but it helped us energetically refocus from the group into ourselves. As the ninety’s came along lots of self-help, therapy and counseling took off. Now as we head ever faster into 2012, we are discovering that we are creating our new realities as we respond to our experiences. This is what we did in Williston. We created a new pattern from the wisdom of the old. We integrated separation and we activated creation within our hearts. I feel in the deepest place in my heart that we twelve women are connected through all space and time. I feel we are realizing our potential and we will all take off like shooting stars creating new solar systems and even galaxies with ourselves.
I want to thank all of you who trusted and stepped with me through this doorway. My you always trust your hearts and remember, your heart doesn’t lead into peace, it leads you into yourself and that is where you can create the peace you seek. May you find the ability to learn from the teachers as you become the teachers and may we all continue to learn new ways of expanding. I hope these words halfway convey the energy I felt we shifted and the new reality we created.
In Lak’ech
Nancy Joy