The Consuming Fire of Spirit - The Dragon Who Breathes the Fire of Life

“If you ignore the dragon, it will eat you. If you try to confront the dragon it will overpower you. If you ride the dragon, you will take advantage of its might and power.”

— Chinese Proverb (1)

In Chinese and Japanese lore, the goddess Kuan Yin is representative of the Divine Feminine. She is the female Bodhisattva of the Buddha. She is also the goddess of the sea. She represents the power of all that is the feminine in our lives, including emotion, healing, romantic passion, depth of wisdom and birth to life. As the Eternal Mother, Kuan Yin is often depicted holding a child in her arms, much like our other feminine deities, including the Mother Mary, Isis, Hera, Demeter, and of course Gaia, who is often shown as a pregnant deity holding the world in her belly.

What is different about Kuan Yin is that she is the representation of light and compassion, dressed in white, flowing robes and crowned with a veil, much like the halos over all of the divine beings in all beliefs. She is also kin to Shakti, Pavarti and Sita, the highest maternal goddesses of the Hindu pantheon and special wives to the gods. In the study of the Ascended Masters, Kuan Yin as the Mother of Compassion is known as “she who harkens to the cries of the world.” (2)

What is significant about her character is that she is the original “mother of dragons” (which is an excellent use of character depicted on the famous book and television series, Game of Thrones). Kuan Yin is often depicted in art riding on the back of a sea dragon that rides through ocean waves. She calmly surfs the dragon, which represents raw potentiality, terrifying transformation and death of human negativity and evil. The waves represent the overwhelming emotions of grief, loss, pain, renewal and release. As life gives us its storms of fear, we call upon Kuan Yin for her compassion to overcome the challenges we face before we drown. The dichotomy of a dragon of the sea that breathes the fire of transformation within its core is what we face every day of our lives: the choice to be overcome or bury all emotion or to face the fire and ride the surf of awakening.

So with this kind of awakening being so hostile and painful, why would we want to go through it at all? Well, often as in my case, it was a necessary life process given to me, not something I particularly “asked” to experience. But I do realize that those of us that are awakened are in the positions of changing the world. We couldn't do what we do if we didn't face the fire of transformation. Dragon energy represents infinity, longevity, wisdom, the depths of the Universe, and rising from the ashes. The Phoenix is the feminine Eastern dragon of rebirth, corresponding to the masculine water dragon that we see Kuan Yin riding. Phoenix energy is pure death and rebirth—out of the ashes. This kind of transformation is even more striking to those of us that have taken it upon ourselves to face our Dragon energies.

What transforms us into Dragons who embody Spirit? Why are we different than other spirit creatures? I wouldn’t want to run into a Tiger spirit in the dark of the forest. Nor would I want to be confronted with the giant Whale spirit that dwells in the darkness of Neptune’s playgrounds. Yet Dragon spirit appears as the most lethal and difficult to master. Recently I have been asked, “How does one become a dragon?” This is not an easy, how-to manual of steps to finding one’s inner dragon. However, if we examine the characteristics that dragons possess, we can see how Dragon spirit has manifested in our own lives.

The first of Dragon’s characteristics is fire. Fire represents emotions such as anger, passion and rage. It comes from deep within, often associated with lungs and heart, the fourth chakra. Fire also is colored red, orange and yellow, tapping into the lower chakras of physical, emotional and relationship change. Around a campfire, we huddle and sing and cook and invoke sexuality. Winged insects are drawn to the flame. The candle is a fire that illuminates a space and allows us to see. So if you incorporate these elements of fire into your Dragon transformation, you are invoking the passions within you that radiate heat, light and energy into the darkness. You are also awakening the pleasures and provocations of relationships, from the depths of lust to the fury of facing one’s enemies. Fire is painful, burns flesh and purifies soul. Witches were burned at the stake because men feared their power. Dragons too have the element of invoking fear due to fire. This is the awakening of Dragon spirit.

When you face your demons, examine where your anger is focused or confront your inner passions, you are invoking Dragon spirit. When you are feared by others, you are emanating that spirit. How about when you are protecting your children or have an overwhelming sense of compassion? These too are invocations of Dragon spirit. Each has its own resonation, its own flame color, but they are all manifestations of the depth of wisdom dwelling within.

Dragon also has scales and claws and often is depicted with a vicious tail. These elements are representation of the armor of Dragon spirit. We have the ability to protect our massive hearts. We can use our scales to reflect energies of those who want to control or hurt or steal from our deep fire within. We can pierce the armor of our enemies and oppressors with our powerful claws. And we can knock over those who fear our power with the force of our tails. Invocation of Dragon spirit's armor helps you go within when you feel attacked or take the time to stalk the enemy within that is eating away at your soul. When working with Dragon spirit, remember you are not alone. It is a powerful message for those who have lost a spouse or a child. Our scales may appear to keep us from being "warm" to the outside world. But we are in this together, Dragons, and even in our solitude we have a clan of souls to draw upon in our journeys to wisdom.

More powerful yet are the teeth and jaws of Dragon. There is a saying “for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup” that is a description of how we can use our Dragon teeth to swallow our enemies and those who want to come after us with pitchforks. Fear is the Dragon’s favorite food. We eat our fear in order to transform it. The confrontation of Dragon’s fiery breath and massive teeth can make anyone tremble. So the lesson we learn by invoking the physical characteristics of Dragon is that we can become a greater presence if we fight the powers that be, invoke restorative justice, and destroy those characteristics even within ourselves that limit our potentiality, such as cowardice, the inability to see the truth and the pride of haughty individuality (i.e. narcissism). Better yet, these transformative teeth give us the sustenance to survive the explosion of ended relationships. We can eat those false expectations and bitter words that were shot like arrows into our massive scaled frames. Use those teeth to remove the arrows and swallow the darkness. Transform those experiences into the pure light of compassion--let Kuan Yin ride upon the waves of your memories.

Many dragons also have a powerful similarity in strength—either a dragon has wings or the ability to fly through water at rapid speeds. Whether your Dragon spirit soars into the Universe and astral projects around the stars or it can dive into the darkest depths of oceans and surface many continents away in record-breaking time, all Dragon spirits have power. This kind of power is exactly why others become terrified when you transform. This is gut-wrenching, heart-pounding power that makes any Halloween costume appear cheesy in comparison, no matter how dark and scary. Dragon spirit power uses all its characteristics and gifts to manifest this atomic energy into an explosion of devastating proportions. Invoking this strength of character often manifests into gentleness, so don't limit your power by creating power just for power's sake. Harness your wings and soar into higher consciousness.

This is important to know because it can also unintentionally burn those around us. Often we don’t mean to hurt our loved ones, but in a rage of Dragon fire, untamed and unchecked, we can destroy those souls that mean the most to us. Those that fear us often have a different version of a story to tell about our manifestations. On the other hand, sometimes the fear-invoking power is a way for others to blame us for their insecurities and inabilities. We must remain true to our power and harness it with wisdom to separate those explosions of rage and the true transformation of fire that burns those out of our lives that have taken a lesser path.

When you choose to take the path of the Dragon, be humbled and ask Kuan Yin for her unconditional compassion. Find ways to breathe the power of fire into your relationships, your children, your work and your passions. Make a safe place to learn about your transformation so you can heal from your scars and wound and invoke your beautiful scales to protect your heart. Breathe deep into the fire of meditation. Fly high into the realms of possibility. Use your speed and power to dive deep into the oceans of emotional healing. And when you become the Dragon spirit, look at yourself in the mirror or the water below as you fly over it and grin with those massive teeth as you prepare to swallow those fears around you. And we will all ascend to the mountaintops and into the ocean depths together. Just look for others who radiate with light. We will all come together when we are needed. Don't be afraid. Now is the time to manifest your Dragon spirit.

Quotes from the following pages:
(1) http://personaltao.com/services/school/
(2) http://www.lightascension.com/arts/Ascended%20Master.htm

The Smouldering Fire of Regret

“Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, "It might have been.” ― Kurt Vonnegut

There is a blessing and a curse associated with wisdom for both men and women. The body ages so we either remember or forget our experiences, recalling only what we need to remember. The mind becomes saturated with critical as well as trivial information. And the experiences we have had are woven into our tapestry with great precision like the fine brush strokes from an artist’s brush onto canvas, together creating a great masterpiece. But does that masterpiece resemble one of Monet’s japanese bridges or morph into Munch’s The Scream? Where do we fall along the spectrum of experiences? Where and when do we choose to create a life that is our own and not harbor those pains that were inflicted from others long ago that often keep us focused on the past? How do we process the smouldering fire of regret, that mind game we play that creates a wish to go back and change one of these events?

Trauma Revisited

Life events are neither “good” nor “bad”. They are happenings. What we do with those happenings is most important. An event that creates a powerfully emotive and lasting memory that elicits a negative or fear-based response is called a trauma. Traumas are directly related to sensitivity. There is actually a blessing that comes out of trauma: psychic awareness. Therefore trauma is an event that can either have a “good” or “bad” outcome, even if at the time it elicited a fear-based response. Have you ever had a connection to your “Spidey Senses” and realized something was wrong in your world before actually knowing it? This is one of those gifts. But often this gift manifests when a harmful person (one who chooses to do harm to us) is getting ready to behave in a harmful manner. After a period of time, we recognize that harm is coming because it has been the response of that person, or one like them, in the past. Then we have a “premonition” that it is coming again. This elicits the response and thus reactivates the trauma.

When we have many of these traumatic experiences, the brain reconnects the trauma pathway from the combined reaction of these experiences and we can actually “see” the events becoming a trauma before they happen. This is likened to a novel that you read and predict the ending before you get there based on your own years of experience and your knowledge of events. Well, eventually the brain becomes “open” to these predictions. The ultra-sensitive among us, however, actually become even more precognitive. The outcomes of repeat trauma, fear-based dream states and possibly mental damage due to brain development early on in childhood, all lead to precognition.

In the event of ESP occurring (extra-sensory perception), the mind becomes aware and awake to one’s self outside the body--the disassociation can actually allow us to look at the “greater picture”. There is a fine line, however, that can be crossed into what we call today insanity. The disassociation possible within a “normal” (or typical) human is a mechanism to create a logic-based thought process so that the emotions that are trapped in the body can be released in a healthy way. Often the fear we feel when confronting an event needs to go somewhere. So we release it by separating ourselves from it. The other outcome is that it is processed through a system of rationalization, which can trap these fears somewhere else. Often however, anger (outer fear) and depression (inner fear) leave scars within the body and can be converted into disease or autoimmune disorders. Therefore, we are here to learn to control our minds and our emotions so we can find a balance, release anything not serving us, and learn from our fears to turn away from pain or stop them altogether from entering.

Those that tend to internalize anger and depression become Highly Sensitive. Those that stop the feelings become Highly Desensitized. The interesting part is that both tend to eventually show signs of precognition! I know that sounds strange, especially when we would imagine that the “tough” ones would just be totally closed off. But in reality , they are guarding themselves innately from a traumatic experience through shutting down. Even if they don’t remember anything, or they blocked the experience from affecting them, they too haven’t truly processed the experience. It’s likened to a black hole--the anger and depression will eventually come out in other ways, sometimes by becoming a harmful person, many times by having a compartmentalization happen that can lead to a behavioral disorder, or they find an outlet by imposing their trauma onto something else--like learning to become a guardian, like a police officer, firefighter, emergency room doctor or soldier.

I am obviously a Highly Sensitive. I am highly clairvoyant. It can be annoying, let me tell you. My husband is a soldier. I can see in him a lot of the same clairvoyant reactions that I experience, but they manifest in different ways. Many of us in our generation (we are over 35) were raised with parents who dealt with trauma or anger by yelling, talking “down to”, or somehow convincing us NOT to show our feelings. We were told to “hide” our sensitivities. For men, we have a whole generation that was “told” by social norm that men don’t cry or show feelings because it is a sign of weakness. Women, on the other hand, from my generation were allowed to show feelings freely as long as it wasn’t toward confronting or questioning the authority of men. How strange that our society has built these crazy norms! I mean, who doesn’t grieve when someone dies? Nobody. We all grieve. But how it comes out is so very different, depending upon how we were raised. And who doesn’t want to feel like an equal? I don’t care what body parts we were born in, what color our skin may be, we all put our clothing on the same and we all bleed when we are wounded, inside or out.

Trauma is often inflicted on us from another. These incidences and the aftermath of emotion that follows can actually compound. In Chemistry, there is a point when a solute is added to a solvent where it can no longer dissolve. That point is saturation. Well, traumatic experiences that compound and open the same wounds (brain pathways) over and over again also become saturated and eventually will create a “trigger” response. When a person is then confronted with a trauma, even if the person causing the harm has no clue they are creating a harmful situation to the recipient, the trigger will create an emotive reaction that can be out of control or even response with harm.

If Only I Could Go Back...

Regret is one of these triggers. Since I have been going through menopause, I have been triggered every time I have a hormonal swing. Unfortunately, due to the imbalance of hormones during hot flashes, the swing usually triggers a cognitive memory that ends up in an emotional response. And they are not loving, feel-good responses. In my studying what has been happening to my body, I have discovered it is because the chemical reaction needed to make serotonin is blocked by the body bursting into flames. I feel like a phoenix who is about to explode every time I have one of these hot flashes! And it is followed by sobbing tears.

The price for maturation is trial by fire apparently. I found a way to stop the emotions from being released at inappropriate times AND stop the hot flashes using vitamin B-6 in conjunction with a hormone balancing/endocrine system resetting herb (wild yam) and a phosphotidylserine-phosphotidylcholine complex. I know--a lot of fancy words. If you relate, write them down; if not, don't worry about it. This formula actually prevents the hot flashes, allows the positive brain flow to continue, and keeps my body from “crashing”. Here’s why this has been so important: every traumatic experience I have ever had and had hoped to forget has come pouring out of my memory banks. Seriously--I have not had a past experience safe from resurfacing, all the way back to childhood. Every person who has ever harmed me in any way has been recalled into my brain in some way since this began over the summer. And even if I don’t see the relationship between the person and the memory, the pain from my past has been pouring out of the open Pandora’s box. It has been more than just traumatic. I have been confined to bed, had to leave a crowded room, and I have found myself unable to stop crying and purging memories at the worst moments, until finally my eyes have become swollen and my body is not able to recuperate without massive amounts of sleep.

Association V. Disassociation

The best part about these kinds of experiences is that I was finding there is a direct association with the hot flashes and my triggers, or memories of the past that brought out all my regrets. Once I got the hot flashes under control, I could disassociate, or remove my emotions and then analyze the triggers that were causing the fire. I had always been able to separate my emotions from my reactions under a healthy state. With the introduction of chemicals, hormones included, I was often not able to open up and experience those emotions and grieve through losses unless I had this disassociation removed from my thought process.

The triggers of these bursts of fire center around regrets. It’s strange that of all things to resurface, this is the most powerful emotion. I have been in physical fights. I have been bodily injured. I have been dominantly controlled. And I have felt everything from guilt to shame to anger to hatred in this lifetime. But the only emotion that keeps triggering from these attacks is regret. Why? I believe because I have never allowed myself to get over that one type of emotion. It is self-inflicted. It is not acting upon something that would have changed the course of my life in some way. We are told not to regret the past, but I do. I know not to dwell on them, but they exist nonetheless. I don’t know how others have felt during their time of fire, but this to me is the most powerful.

In the movie Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban, Professor Lupin (teacher of Defense Against The Dark Arts) has his students do a “spell” to get rid of a creature called a Boggart. It can turn into the student’s worst fear and can only be dissipated and controlled through imagining it is a different creature. This was then followed by laughter to humiliate the Boggart into submission. I feel like this every time I have a hot flash followed by an outburst. My body starts heating up and bursting into a smouldering fire that begins at my heart chakra and solar plexus. It then moves outward and upward, extending out of my head and hands, and eventually runs through my whole body. The brain’s response is then to attach to a fight-or-flight memory, often linked to a regret. Under normal circumstances (non-fire), I can usually work through a memory through meditation, talking about it, or writing. Sometimes I do praying or channeling to ask Higher Power energy to release the feelings and memories. This has been my way of dealing with all my past traumas. But in the middle of the flames, I am unable to get control of the emotive responses. And the ones that stick are the regrets. And they are the Boggarts of my mind--powerful enough to elicit fear deep within, but they can be changed once I address them.

I therefore have made a great list of regrets!! They are all subjective and my own personal, truly experiential life lessons that if I had a magic wand or time machine, I would go back and change. So before some of my readers become all offended that I am “airing” my dirty laundry, understand these experiences were real. And I had to endure them. And they are meant to share with others who have been through pain. And I don’t have any secrets. Oh, and I am not a victim any longer to any of my past perpetrators, so it was a part of my life, but not all of it. And now I can look at this list and, once processed, I can now disassociate from these pains. I am telling you this because I want to show you can do the same. Once you read the list you will know why this kind of exercise is really important for those of us who have been through traumatic experiences.

Processing Through the Regrets - Making Amends and Letting Go

I have been able to confront some of these regrets head on. For instance, I was finally able to tell my two daughters that I regret allowing them to feel unprotected or in any way out of control because I was so passive and allowing as a parent. I personally saw all three of my children as little adults because they were and are so brilliant. I never saw the need to discipline in a negative or harmful way. But with that the younger two children specifically missed out on time with me. And at some point all three were allowed to get away with actions that would usually be punished by a stricter, more structured parent who wasn’t living moment to moment trying to survive as a single parent who was denied, and often robbed of, child support. This time of my life, the ten years fighting back and forth for custody and denied repeatedly my parenting time, was the hardest and most regrettable period of time. I have countless regrets I could have avoided if I had been more cautious and more self-loving. It would also have made me a better parent.

These regrets go way back. So, if anyone is reading this and plans to “tattle” to any person directly involved in one of these regrets, feel free. I hide nothing any longer. And my experience, as a “victim” or as a “perpetrator” in any case, was still my experience. Here is my most recent, fire-fueled list:

List of the Most Impactful Regrets Ever

I regret quitting ballet as a child. I know my parents could not afford it, but my disdain for lessons of that sort started at 6. I was not ever encouraged to stick to an activity my mother didn’t want to take me to attend, so it also causes a regret of quitting a series of other activities I wish I had continued to do. This one is just the most prominent because it is linked to my first memories. And I love to dance! Maybe I would have been more athletic or agile or could have had more opportunities on stage. Who knows. I did take up ballet in college again, but not seriously. I miss the music and the beauty of it. But I miss just dancing most of all.

I regret allowing myself to lose my ability as a leader by not standing up for myself in Junior High. Of course, this was also hormonally driven. It didn’t stop me from becoming one after a long period of time. But it was in trying to please others that I lost my drive to take any lead. This caused a series of events for many years that allowed others to take advantage of my kindness. For instance, I had a “crush” in 7th grade. One evening after school, I got a call from the crush’s ex-girlfriend who still liked him. She pleaded with me not to pursue him because she knew he liked me and it was only a matter of time until she knew we would end up together. I did as she asked to please others and they got back together. I never dated anyone in Junior High or High School after that that I truly liked in the same way, and thus I became rather standoffish. And even through high school, I never dated anyone at my own school because of this (except one, but we are still friends after all this time).

I regret allowing my faith and kindness and “turn the other cheek” upbringing to allow people in my life to continue to harm me. I didn’t understand boundaries because I was never shown any healthy ones. I know now the reason this is a prominent lesson in the Christian Bible is because the Romans wanted to create a passive force of people to control. It worked and still works today. I am often confronting my Christian upbringing and the ideals that led me to allow passive-aggressive people to walk all over me (thus more regrets).

I regret letting go of the first man in my life whom I really wanted to fight for and didn’t. We are still friends. We are both happily married to others. All turned out great. But I ended up marrying the wrong person for me because I never got over that person completely (at that time of course).

This leads to the next one. I regret never taking the time to be single and alone before I got married. I missed out on so many experiences, not only because I married the wrong person, but because I married too young. Many of my friends who married their high school and college sweethearts have had dozens of years of marital bliss. I regret that I made the wrong choice, based on my limited understanding, that led me to a 14 year custody battle after 8 years of marriage (the last 5 being miserable). However, even though it led to a lot of pain for my children and I, they know who I am and how these traumas affected and shaped my existence in order to become a strong leader and guide for so many other women with children. In fact, I became a domestic violence advocate because of my experiences.

I regret not going to college when my grandmother offered to pay my tuition at Loyola. It changed the course of my life, thus how I ended up meeting and marrying the man who is my children’s father. It also disadvantaged me at the divorce not having my own career and being dirt poor. He took full advantage of my lack of education to keep me at home, then to railroad me after divorce. It was one of my greater regrets.

I regret marrying too soon. We only met 2 and a half months before we were engaged. See above reasons for regret.

I regret not standing up for myself with my then-husband and his family because of an erroneous sense of submission due to a faith that was faulty. This led to the horrific divorce, the years without my children, the ruined self-esteem that led to an almost successful suicide attempt, which gave them fuel to take my children away and treat me so disdainfully. That and they are stuck in their beliefs. I am completely grateful though it gave me strength to leave, to get my life back together, to confront and win back custody, to fight for my children so they see me as a strong and courageous person. It doesn’t stop the traumatic memories, but it did create a fighter out of me.

I regret staying so long with relationships that, even though there was a sense of dominance and control caused by an imbalance, I was mentally incapable of leaving them until I was able to fight my way out. The first, after almost 5 years, robbed me of some of the best prime years of my life to do what I needed to do to become a great parent, leader, and educator. He even squatted in my apartment so the University would not allow me to return because the bill was so high from the damage he caused. I attempted to sue him, but he hid long enough to get away from paying what he truly owes. And I have been working to go back to school ever since. This too ends up wonderfully, since now I am returning to become a Naturopathic Doctor.

The second greatest regret was the one who was horribly sick with a mental illness (I believe it was Borderline Personality Disorder) that allowed him to have full-running relationships not just with me, but with several other women who were equally as duped. Boy, he must have spent an awfully long time on the phone everyday to juggle so many of us. But the interesting part is that once I left, he spent 3 years trying to get me back, which ended up eventually resulting in him taking his own life. Yet he had 3 other women to go to. It was strange, but I truly have the least regrets around my life with this person, especially involving his constant need to push his drug and alcohol addiction on me. I believe that is because I know I am not at fault. I don’t regret being fooled as much as I do regret not just walking away sooner. I would attempt to break it off and he would stalk me until I would come back. It happened weekly after a while. And he ruined many potential relationships with others. But if I hadn’t had that last year with him trying to get me back, I might have ended up with another one just like the others….I had many other controlling relationship offers I was then able to avoid and break away from altogether. And in spite of his attempt to reunite, I finally had a year to myself to do what I wanted to do without a relationship.

I regret not attempting to become a professional actor when I was younger. I was so convinced I was going to medical school, I gave up acting. Since then, I have returned to my love of both theater and film. And I have had great experiences. But my life would have been so different--I am truly good at it. Now if I can get the hot flashes to stop, I can create a better control that will allow me to return to acting at my leisure.

I regret allowing my kids’ father to make fun of my singing and quitting altogether. It was funny because both my daughters have pursued and are continuing to sing. All three of my children have more talent in their pinkies than any of the currently popular artists of today. And yet they have a choice if they want to use it. I made a horrible mistake, because it was such a great form of expression that I now cannot use when I want to. Again, it is a regret for not standing up for myself. I still love to sing in the shower. But more than that, I love listening to my children.

I regret not kidnapping my sister and her two boys when I went to visit them in the Spring of 2002. I knew her husband was abusive and I should have just stuck her and the boys in the car. She since remarried another abuser, had 2 more boys, and now lost custody of them to my mother...let’s not get started about the Dragon Fire in me about that subject. That is the fire of consuming rage for the sneaky way she manipulated the system and took my nephews. If there is anyone I ever regret leaving my children in the care of...enough said.

I regret sending my daughter Jacqui back to her father’s when the court denied me child support. She was living with me! And the ex’s attorney somehow used a corrupt system to cut all child support from my daughters. Wow. They are currently under investigation for corruption. This is great news. But being homeless, I felt I had no choice. I did have a choice. But I regret ever sending her to live in the same system I left . I know she has turned out to be a wonderful and fine woman in spite of the religious abuse. But all the same, it is truly my greatest regret.

Finally, I regretted giving up my relationship with this amazing man in my life, Mark, whom I was so blessed enough that he returned to me. We have such a different outlook. In spite of our differences, I am so grateful he is in my life and that we have been put back together, this time permanently. Yet I do feel bad I happened to begin this life stage of constant raging fire right after we have been married (poor guy!). It’s the way of life. And when we get through this, we will both be the strongest leaders and teachers and healers we were meant to be.

In general, I regret not traveling more. I regret not going to Egypt to see the pyramids before it became a dangerous place for Americans to visit. I regret not taking that job with the Arabian horse farm. I regret ever trying certain drugs, even experimentally. I regret not staying independent for as long as I could have been because of the fear of stability. I regret not learning about money management until I was so much older. I regret not buying stocks in companies I saw emerging. I regret not taking more chances. I regret not spending more time learning from my grandmothers. I regret giving away my dogs even if I was told I couldn’t have them (my ex husband’s control--I should have just said no). I regret not completing the many books and screenplays that are still unfinished. But in all, I regret most of all giving up myself in order to succumb to the ideal of another. I am me. I will always be me. I have to live with me. I am grateful for me. And I will never again give in to appease another to the detriment of my own life, health and happiness.

Now that the fire has been purged from my traumas and memories associated with those traumas, I feel so much better. I am going to sit down and finish those books. I am going to invest more time in myself, my husband, my kids, and my schooling. I am learning to do new and different activities, but I still plan to ride more horses, dance again, and maybe I will start singing once more. I want to become the wisest, most peaceful woman I have ever met, not because I am denying my past, my anger or my trauma. But because I acknowledge these things and choose to let them go.

This fire too shall pass.

What is Irrational in the Mind of One is Completely Sane in Another (Part I)

I have been facing some VERY strange life path issues today and within the last week. After having an amazing channeling session with my friend Joshua Magee (http://yournotthat.com/) about what to do with our lives once we acquire all this wonderful knowledge about the Spiritual development and workings within the Universe. I have been blessed by the answers, which include the fact that I AM always swimming in the right direction because the Universe will change us according to our will and our final destinations. We are designed to learn lessons in this lifetime (or recall those that may have been from other lifetimes) to teach us something, whether they be considered pleasurable or painful lessons (after all, our human selves react to ALL situations based on PAIN or PLEASURE). We create a thought form that becomes a belief based on our reaction. Our reactions, of course, are partially spiritually and partially genetically designed to determine our outcome responses.

For instance, a child goes to school and realized she is smarter than everyone else in her class. (Sorry, daughter of mine, I AM using you as an example). Her mother has spent a great amount of time educating her to read and to be aware of her Universe long before she even turns four. So her experiences within her realm of reality are based on 1. her knowledge base that was passed along to her by her mother and 2. the fact that she is already genetically pre-disposed to intelligence since both her parents were scholars. Now, within her framework, this child has a choice to use this knowledge and intelligence to baffle her teachers, to hold her superiority over her classmates, or to become lazy in school.

All these are normal responses for children to experience, especially in the realm of American school dynamics and the sociological upbringings these dynamics have manifested throughout the years. HOWEVER, my child responded to these "gifts" (knowledge, wisdom and information) with humility and often with questioning and wonder at the Universe, rather than with pride and superiority. So I am SUPER proud to say that this child grew up to be an amazing brilliant, responsible AND humble young woman who truly understands her gifts are also that and her Universe is created through her gratefulness. SO she took her spiritual self (higher self) into consideration and has been blessed because of these decisions. She created a world of positive feedback, which activates the PLEASURE center of her brain, to feed her desire to succeed in both her educational and her relational life.

I have several friends with children with disabilities. They are amazing parents! I don't know that ALL parents with children with disabilities are amazing, but my friends are. A couple of examples in particular have stuck with me. We had a young boy in our neighborhood growing up with cerebral palsy. He was a great friend to all and loved immensely among the kids. I watched how his mother, who had 2 sons much older and born "normal", was such a patient and loving and calm woman. I was so grateful and will always be grateful for her in my neighborhood because she was the mom-figure I aspired to be like the most. Her son turned out to be a great young man, who not only graduated with his high school class, but finished college. Her patience and beauty were memories that always gave me the feelings of PLEASURE. I used to babysit often for this young man when I was a teenager because I loved being around him and their family.

The other woman I am thinking of as an example is a childhood friend who still lives in our home town. She is also an amazing woman. In her case, she overcame a lot of family adversity and skewed belief systems that allowed her own mother to treat her very poorly as a child and treat her sister like she could not do anything wrong (both family patterning examples are irrational, but they seem to be ingrained beliefs that are deeply rooted). Black and white thinking is very abusive and also very common. In my friend's case, she has one son who was born with Autism. And I have never seen a more lovely example of a mother! She is such a wonderful, patient, loving woman who is raising her son to be so happy and brilliant. Her amazing tenacity and steadfast unconditional love shine through when she talks about her son. I watched her interact with him and it was apparent he is the luckiest boy on the planet to have a mother like her. He can integrate his PLEASURE feelings with those of memories with his mother.

If a child grows up with an abusive parent, in a controlling scenario, or is repeatedly rejected based on the family's "treatment" of him or her, that child may have completely different responses or reject their family altogether, depending upon the influences in his or her life. In my life, my father was and is a wonderful man. However, during my childhood, he wasn't around much. He had the responsibility, chosen or imposed, to care for many children financially (I am the oldest). My mother, on the other hand, was very Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde. One day she was amazing, supportive, loving, and created a world of possibilities and experiences for us. The next, she would be upset by something and would freak out on everyone around her and impose her displeasure those closest to her, mainly her children, and principally me as the oldest.

I was NOT a quiet child. I would fight back. So by the time my father would come home, it was just a matter of time before whatever really bothered her in the first place was stuffed and not dealt with because the most pressing issue would then become her imposition of her feelings on me and my blatant disrespect for not allowing her to rant and scream without fighting back (like my poor sister often did). My brother always tried to "logically reason" with her (he is great in that way), but often she would still fly off the handle and all the logic in the world did nothing to console her aggressive and often violent outbursts. But it was only consistent in the fact that we knew, eventually every week at some point, she would lose control and we would have to emotionally be prepared for a verbal lashing.

I was not a perfect parent, especially given these examples that were definitely and deeply ingrained in my psyche. Of course, they were obviously ingrained in my mother's psyche as well, and her father, and so forth and so on... I spent the first few years of parenthood absolutely doting all over my children and couldn't be apart from them for 2 minutes. I was a "supermom" type, but I was extremely unhappy without the balance of my own self-worth and career. I became a "martyr"--home raising children because my husband told me I was not "allowed" to return to school, which imprinted a very negative and PAINFUL bitterness that festered for years. I found myself in the same stale marital situation as my parents, and my kids' father was never around and he was truly never there for me emotionally because he was too busy appeasing his parents and put his work over his family. In the long run, the ideal marriage that was suppose to be a lifetime commitment was undermined by his inappropriate action to make all our marital decisions with his father's control and his mother's passive insistence. But that is not the point of this reflection today. Our marriage did fall apart and I left him because I had had enough being ignored and disrespected and dishonored. And it is totally okay not to put up with verbal and emotional abuse.

But in the course of life events after I went to college and before I actually left my lifeless marriage ten years later, there was a time I could feel myself slipping into the role and becoming the very mother figure with whom I was raised (miserable about my failing marriage, lonely, sad, and several times I lost my temper--yet I always curbed it and ALWAYS apologized to my children, which changes the story drastically). This subtle transformation into negativity was a shock and a horror to me! I never ever in a million years wanted to pass that to my children! So I left the man who was imposing these beliefs on me (male superiority, male and religious privilege, financial superiority, and emotional berating), and I chose to be a single mother. As stated in previous chapter, that didn't turn out well, because there were so many moments I was lonely and would not allow myself to be alone, which led to several bad relationships and several plans to escape. The PAIN center of my life was becoming difficult to manage, so I would run from it, but it always appeared in a new and different form because it was one of my life path lessons.

So the PAIN of the marital situation, which mimicked the PAIN Of the parental situation (I married a version of my mother), led me to pull my proverbial hand away from the stove and I chose to leave. Since then, their reactions (both of them) have responded to me out of jealousy, hatred, vengeance and my mother tried everything to ruin my relationship with my children. Once again, one person's skewed view of life being "unfair" and that because they were not given a break gives one false liberty to hurt others or martyr themselves. Classic Greek Tragedy stories. Which I maintain to this day were and are also genetically linked behaviors in humanity. Betrayal, however, is in my judgment and in MY belief system, the most unforgivable crime. Though this is truly not a reality (everything is an illusion), it is only an attachment that remains from my feelings attached to the divorce, my mother siding with my ex-husband, my youngest sister's betrayal by lying in court to give him custody (and having a relationship with him, also out of vengeance) and my ex-father-in-law still imposing his control by imprinting his male superiority onto his son and maintaining that belief system to this day. It has, however, caused my children and I GREAT PAIN and so we all have reacted differently to it according to our mind's pain reaction to the situation. I continue to write and fight for the just outcome to be done, but my three children are just trying to forget it had ever happened and run from the PAIN, rather than face it.

So we have covered that successes and positive feedback lead to PLEASURE responses and negative and dishonoring feedback lead to PAIN responses. We call the latter in psychology fight or flight. Obviously my most painful examples are used as thus because I am going through this major transformation with them as they are deeply embedded into my PAIN centers of my brain. in my discovery, I have established a median line: all experiences cause both PAIN and PLEASURE. For example, one event that brings a PLEASURE response, like meeting a love interest for the first time, may be the cause of PAIN for that partner's ex. The love interest (in my case, several of them) then finds himself wandering off or getting back together with the ex, both to avoid PAIN and instigate PLEASURE. And thus that first memory of the meeting of that person can no longer be thought of as exclusively a pleasurable experience.

Thus this leads me to my most current situations. I have found that a series of enjoyable events, mainly in traveling across the country with my partner, are not as enjoyable in my memory as they once were. We have torn apart the trip and both assigned negative consequences to everything pleasurable about the trip. It was an amazing learning experience and I definitely felt at the time I was swimming in the right direction. However, now that there are negative memories attached to each of those experiences, I have to reevaluate what is PLEASURE to my memory is not necessarily that to my partner, nor the other way around. But once again, the reality is that what I believe to be a great memory may not be what another would find as great. As we are analyzing our successes and failure over the last year, I have come to discover I find that most of our PAIN-based experiences were our greatest learning lessons, but our minds cannot fathom letting the PAIN out of our consciousness in order to let the experience go.

For example, when we were in Florida this past Spring, we made a 2 week detour to Orlando. We found that hotels in Kissimmee were by the national average the least expensive hotel rates per week of any hotel in the country. So we checked into a weekly hotel and had a few extra days intermittently while we were there at other places. We had made a little money while acting in New Orleans and between that and a tax return, we were able to get a 4-day pass to Universal Studios. That adventure, by far, was my favorite part of our trip and to this day the memories attached to the theme park and how we are both avid movie fans (thus why we own a production company) gave us childlike joy when experiencing the adventures we did. We rode The Hulk ride and saw The Blues Brothers Show and experienced Harry Potter's Hogworts Kingdom and laughed hysterically at the Simpsons ride...and the tribute to Lucille Ball and the Tower of Doom and the Jurassic Park ride...okay, I could go on. But it was in the 4 days that I felt the closest to James and felt that overwhelming PLEASURE of our closeness and our happy memories.

But in a most recent argument, as all couples do, we are stressing over money and our trip to Orlando came up. He is still angry at the amount of money it cost to be there and take that trip. That was a surprise because I thought it was such a magical time together, and it really hurt me. I was saddened by the response. Since then we have begun to talk through why it is SO important to create these memories that are positive. As I pressured him into staying the extra time, I have to apologize for my part in making the memories attached more PAINFUL than PLEASURABLE. In the apology, he has two ways to respond: accept it for an error in judgment and let it go, or hold onto the regret and not allow it to heal as a memory that carries both LOVE and FEAR (the pain of losing money).

This goes back to my example of parenting. If we make a mistake as a parent, we cannot expect our children to forgive us! But we can expect them to have a different memory attached to a bad parenting experience IF we choose to say we are sorry for what we have done. This is truly the only way to change a "bad" memory into a "good" one. This actually has a similar resonance that vibrates with emotions. We can either vibrate in Love or in Fear. I have covered this in many of my past writings. However this vibration, this memory, this attached emotion can only be totally resolved if there is a consistent change in parenting as well, such as in this example. Any experience that leads one to have to repeatedly say "I'm sorry" but never really mean it or resolve it, will then have to continue to get the same responses from the injured parties of such decisions.

So we can only lead by example. We can create great memories for ourselves, our children, and those around us. We have the choice to deal with all life experiences and attach emotions to those experiences. However, as I will further in the second half of my resolution, I will show that it is in the process of transforming all of these memories and thoughts into learning moments by NOT attaching a label to the experience (as I learned in our talk on Saturday with Joshua and his friends) that we are truly free then to vibrate only in accordance to our TRUE NATURE, or higher self, and only allow experiences that resurface to do so in order to process them, not to use them to fuel an emotional flame from days past. This process is not easy and I would LOVE to walk everyone through it in my next writing.

The Smoldering Fire of Relationship Anger—Dealing with Depression, Sadness and Fear

The Battle Scars of Soul Contracts

“When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That's the message he is sending.” ― Thich Nhat Hanh

My scales are shedding. I can fly high and far now. I can see the sadness and destruction among the trees and the barren lands that once were a beautiful deep forest. I connect with the species of the Earth that are now being eliminated by selfish and profit-hungry humans. I see the faces of the children in Africa and the Middle East, Asia and even in North America who are huddling in makeshift shelters and crying for lack of food. I cannot feed or care for them all. It is not within my power. It pains me and my heart sends me back to my cave to gather strength for my next flight.

As I return to my own shelter, both physically and in my mind, I am attacked by those around me! In spite of my strength, I am not strong enough to protect myself from their blows, especially their words or their actions. As I matured in my youth, I often returned from these trips of understanding to find those around me so blind to their own behaviors. I respond to their fire and claws with my own defenses, baring my teeth, screaming and returning the fire. Then I retreat to the cavern to mourn the encounter. I have spent years in my reflective, “Hermit” times collecting these memories and analyzing them for what they are: my attackers are reflections of my own Ego. Thus I must retreat and go deep within the cave and find out what I can do about my own kind.

Hurt attracts hurt. Anger fuels anger. I attracted selfishness, depression, sadness, guilt, shame, blame and fear. These are the fires I battle, the lessons I challenge. I honor my faults as a part of my scars and growing pains. I have endured many swords and arrows, licked my wounds, hid deep within the mountain, and recovered. But I will always be grateful that I can go back into these memories and see them as Soul Contracts with those I attracted. Truly, I have found that my deepest wounds, those times when I was injured the most and the cuts run deepest, were the claw marks and tears from those that I loved the most.

You may be surprised to find out that we all have Soul Contracts. If you haven’t heard of them, we can spend some quality time addressing yours if you wish. But I believe after reading this section, you will be able to recognize yours and start to heal them when you are ready. It is in our relationship contracts during this lifetime that we learn our lessons and grow into the beings we are supposed to be.

Simply put, Soul Contracts are the Soul Mate relationships that have significant meaning in our lives here on the planet, including our parents, our children and our closest loved ones, including friends, significant dating relationships and/or spouses. If you believe as I do that we are Spiritual beings here having a Physical experience on this planet, you will agree no matter what flavor of belief you adopt, we meet the ones we are closest to for a significant reason. We are here to learn and grow. We are here to fly and dive and swim and play and laugh. We are here to mourn and hurt and suffer as well. This is why we are human!

Many believe we choose our parents before we are born. This I understand to be a most important Contract because they are the most influential members of our lives early on, whether as a positive example for adulthood or as a significant challenge to outgrow and learn what not to do any longer. Regardless if you believe we were connected with any of our Soul Mates before this lifetime or not, we know that environmentally, our families play a major role in our development in all aspects of life. Most often, our parent, sibling and additional familial relationships influence our choices whether we are education-oriented, whether we pursue careers or are complacent in a workplace job, and where we worship our Creator or if we choose to believe in one at all.

Once we are in our Sacred Initiation, our choices for friends, our mentors and teachers, and our activities and goals are influenced by additional, long-term Soul Mates. Often, we make our life plans based on our peers, our dating relationships and how we choose to leave the proverbial nest. We often choose formative Soul Mates in our post-high-school years as well, both as potential long-term partners and long-term friends. I have seen a pattern sociologically that the majority of adults stay in touch with their very closest friends in high school and college specifically and then they choose to loosely connect with acquaintances from other life encounters as needed or in social situations (e.g. coworkers, community members, etc.) I am more social than almost anyone I know, so thus I have hundreds of friends and acquaintances. In fact, on my social network sites, I actually know the majority of the people that I am “friends” with on those sites, other than the business acquaintances I keep on the business-related ones. I believe it is important to maintain healthy and long-term friendships.

Our deepest Soul Mate relationships are in our private, romantic connections with significant partners, spouses and lovers. The influences they have within our psychic sphere are strongest because, just like our parents, there is a strong emotional attachment to these relationships. With the exception of those who are unable to attach emotionally (whether because of a mental disability or a social phobic disorder), the majority of us crave to be in a community. The basic need to be met in our Soul Mate relationships is the need to love and be loved. We are not meant to be alone, but everyone’s idea of a partner relationship differs by sex and gender, gender preference, belief system, environmental upbringing and connectivity level.

I definitely don’t mean to come across so academic when I write about what I actually have a lot of passion discovering and teaching myself. I am truly reflective and grateful for all my Soul Mate relationships, even the most difficult. And I have learned to be who I am because of each and every one of them. Again, the Dragon self must see his or her reflection in others and actually understand or be aware of that reflection in order to learn from the experiences. I can see parts of myself in every dating partner and marriage relationship I have had—both positive and negative traits. This is so important for me to be able to relate all my experiences in my coaching, training and student development as well. But this also has given me a humble perspective on my own behavior and how to set strong boundaries with others in order to respect and love myself as the Creation of the Universe that I am. I may have reflections, but I am my own being. All of us are unique. It is the beauty of the dance of humanity.

Relationships—the Catalyst for Pain and Drama

A majority of my psychological and sociological studies have involved the ideas of archetypes. This is both a Jungian-based academic concept and a sociologically patterned Spiritual concept to me. Archetypal studies and understanding these patterns gives me the basis in which I can become a character/persona of depth and meaning. Archetypes, simply put, are behaviors that are categorized and build a specific personality type. Every human role is an Archetype, from the Hero to the Magician to the Bully and to the Slave. To become a great actress, one must be prepared for a life of tragedy and sadness. This is somewhat a prerequisite to become the best of the best in both storytelling and in performance. How can one become a true lover, a mother, or a divorcee if one hasn’t been through those archetypes as I have? My life has been given the mosaic path of constant pain and drama of these Soul Mate partnerships to teach me my soul’s strength and life’s passion. I can’t have the perspective of gratefulness without the horrors of remorse and regret. With all my extreme experiences, I am just so glad I survived!

I wasn’t always a psychologically-aware individual. And even now, I can’t say my relationships have shown that I am actually a “healthy” woman or not. You see, most of my attractions and Soul Mate relationships have been tragic, destructive and explosive in some way, leaving the debris of broken dreams and severed family connections, either with my partner’s family or within my own. Add a healthy dose of “dysfunctional,” alcoholic-style behaviors on both sides of my family and the likelihood of a successful partnership was just sabotaged greatly by the attractions of others with similar family backgrounds. I heard once from a counseling friend that we can be in a room with 100 potential partners and we always attract the one unhealthy attraction over the potential 99 other more healthy relationship choices. It took dozens of these unhealthy relationships to finally see and break the attraction patterns. Starting early on, I allowed myself to become derailed from my original passions but it ultimately led me to where I am today.

Instead of reflecting deeply upon the hurt from each relationship, I can tell you that I have experienced many facets of these challenges. I will expound only upon the most challenging of all the Soul Mate relationships in my life. In 1999, I lost my children in a terrible and destructive custody battle that left the three of them and my Soul scarred for life. I fought back and regained my rights as a parent after two years of preparing for the battle, experiencing great rage and an insatiable driving force to protect my children from the same destructive belief system that was imposed upon me during the marriage. My kids’ father never knew how to love anyone but himself. This was not completely his fault, as he was raised to be narcissistic, yet it carried over into our family. I was content not to be in a relationship, desiring greatly to be a doctor. Yet the day we met, I knew he was the father of my children. Thus we were meant to meet as the Soul Parents of the three wonderful beings I call my Angels.

Unfortunately, this Soul Mate relationship ended worse than you can imagine. Those individuals, such as my ex and his family, who can never admit they are wrong and find that in order to support their own ideologies, they must find someone to hate and blame. I have even recently known of this continued anger and abuse by this family because they systematically and illegally kept my two younger children from having any contact with me. My ex-in-laws are the principle offenders, perpetuating a cycle of fear and hatred they started in order to control those around them. And they do it in the name of their god Jesus. But this too is a Contract I have faced. Unlike them, I am saddened by their inability to break free from the pattern and I am even more saddened that it has now poisoned my own children. Yet truth be told, we all have the ability to break free from these scenarios, often at a great price. I will explain further in another chapter, but those scars they inflicted upon me and my family run very deep. I am truly and humbly grateful for my own path, which allowed me freedom from such fear-based ideology and from the pride that comes from being stuck in such a terrible and infective dogma.

I also dealt with physical and emotional abuse from a partner who was bi-polar shortly after the divorce. I attracted this partner because of my self-loathing after such a traumatic event. With all the lies that the family aforementioned spread about me, I truly degraded myself and my worth. Now I realize it was a symptom to a greater problem and I am free from the degradation. Between the allowance of this relationship and the one with the kids’ father, I am amazed I am not vengeful or bitter. I am grateful for being able to let go what is not my battle. I lost my path and my way home during those times because of anger’s stronghold on my drive to fight for a better life and to battle abuse and control. I have experienced numbness and great loss. I have a deep and unending love for my children that will never die. And in spite of my true closeness to my oldest daughter who lives near me, my other two children are not allowed to know of this unconditional love I have for them and always had. And at the time, I was truly not able to express these emotions to them because I was so caught up in the sadness of the situation. Once the abusive and controlling relationships were broken, however, I was able to find new paths and new happiness.

I have been truly in love. I believe out of all the Soul Mate relationships I can honestly say that it happened only three times so far, and because of the controlling nature of the aforementioned Soul Mate relationships, I didn’t truly love either of them. Infatuation is not love. Placing one’s self in a position above or below another person is infatuation. True Love between Soul Mates is that connection from the Higher Self that leads two Soul Mates to connect on a Spiritual and Equal Level. I mean the kind of love that binds you and holds you together in a permanent connection with the other person. Soul Contracts are not all truly loving ones, but those that give us True Love are meant to change us as well.

I truly fell in love for the first time when I returned to Colorado from a year in Spain. I was in a short-lived relationship and ended up at a resort area. I met this love when we worked together at a hotel. We lived together almost right away, and it was always loving and generous and mutual, for almost two years. When it ended, it took years of sadness and remorse because he was unable to break free from his first Soul Mate contract with his children’s mother—I thought we would be married, but he was not allowed to make that commitment to me. I felt as if I lost my best friend. I had to let him go and it was one of the hardest experiences I have ever encountered, especially because it came suddenly. To this day, I still hear from him occasionally. I became a better person because of him. And he was the one that healed my heart from all the pain of the divorce and the separation I felt away from my children. To him, I will always be grateful.

The second of my deepest Soul Contracts was the tragic suicide of my partner (aforementioned in other chapters), bound together like Heathcliffe to Catherine, and tragically he was unable to let me go. I truly felt there was a Soul Connection, even though he was dishonest, unfaithful the entire relationship by committing to many other women, and he had no true love for anyone left when he took his own life. It started as an infatuation on both of our parts, and once he was on a spiral of self-destruction and gave up all the other women, I finally felt true love for him for the first time. But in spite of my deep love, my role was as a Rescuer and his was as a Saboteur, the destroyer of both my life and his. However, this was the Contract that broke the Pattern of unhealthy, controlling relationships. Once I realized he was not meant for me, I could actually see who he truly was as a human being and I felt all the love of the Universe for him. That being said, I truly understand the loss of someone close to such a tragedy and can be there for others who are and have gone through the same. And I am more than relieved that any of my own self-deprecation Archetypes (Victim, Martyr, or Damsel) had all been confronted and I broke through those patterns as well.

Then a strange occurrence happened last year at this time. I had spent years asking the Universe for a Soul Mate that was kind, that would share complimentary interests, and genuine. The day after I discovered my ex had taken his life, I went away for a weekend and met the man I truly can now say with whom I am on the right path. I desire this relationship to be a deep and long-term love. We are not perfect. I have had a fantasy idea of what I wanted and realized I actually have everything I truly need right now with him. We have been travelling extensively and now that we are settled for a short time, we can spend the time together to find out if this love will be true and genuine. I truly feel in my heart that I was finally given the opportunity to find that Soul Mate relationship with whom I can connect to the Divine. Finally, after years of attracting control to my independence, I am finding a balance and a calm and loving partner with whom I can see myself and I am so grateful.

Soul Mates, Stereotypes and the Impact of Change

Soul Mates are the reflection or complement to these Archetype selves in the Mirror of another Soul. As I have alluded to above, if we are a Victim, they are either a Bully or a Manipulator or something we attract so we remain a Victim until we are ready to change. But if we are a Shaman or a Healer, we attract a Student, a Seeker, or on the opposite side, an Addict or a Martyr. The Liberator attracts the Slave. The Artist attracts the Muse. It all depends what we have set up for ourselves in our own world. Many believe we set these Soul Contracts before we are born—thus we choose our relatives, our mates, our challenges, our teachers and our children. In my studies and my meditations and channeling, I have found that these ideas resonate with me, but they may not with everyone. It is each of our life path’s responsibility to uncover the mystery of what we believe and why. And we ask our Guides to let us know the truth.

No matter what that Truth may be to you, do not limit yourself to believe that one group has the market on such a Truth. It is in the connection of humanity itself, in the love and community and not in the separation, that you will find such a Truth. So when you look at your Soul Mates, present and past, family or partner or friend, look in the mirror and see yourself in their eyes. All humanity has the same ability to get beyond the faith of their parents and find the truths for themselves. Then that Soul Mate relationship that troubled you for so many years will actually be healed.

I have been so fortunate to have made some amazing friends and have reconnected with so many people after all these years. As I have expounded upon these changes in my life, I find it so refreshing that the karma we build early on can be the saving grace of one’s rebirth. In this lifetime, I have created many of these archetypal characters of myself. I have been given many of these Archetypes just by the connections, environment and relationships I have had. Like a diamond with many brilliant facets, these faces are all different sides of the same stone. I have experienced the Archetypes of the Curious Child, the Evangelist, the Samaritan, the Femme Fatale, the Saint, the Martyr, the Eternal Mother and the Sage all in one short lifetime. I have also been given many titles that correspond with my life’s work, including Teacher, Mother, Leader, Advocate, Actor, Visionary, Mentor, and Friend. I am truly blessed to have been through such pain, so many transitions, and yet in spite of myself, I have become the woman I was meant to be all along.

Archetypes vs. Stereotypes

Now, if you look at your own life, you may be reading these chapters and either feeling grateful that your life has been so much less eventful, or you may be mortified at my attractions or what I have been through. I have one word of advice for all readers and all friends and family: Judgment of another’s character and experiences is a limitation to one’s true understanding of one’s own Journey. Let me explain a little. You see, if we choose to create a judgment or a stereotype for someone we know, and then we label that person as being only that stereotype. But we know that all humans are much more than just one archetypal persona, so how can one be just one stereotype?

Here’s the difference: A stereotype separates us from others by lumping all characteristics into one archetypal persona. Archetypes are multi-faceted, with many positive and negative traits. A stereotype is usually a negatively connotative and shallow label that is created by a lower-minded ideology. An archetype can actually cross all stereotypes. But a stereotype limits the inclusion of most archetypes to its definition. For future reference, I can include a list of all known psychological archetypes in my appendices, but for now, just know that there are hundreds of facets to choose from regarding the archetypal patterns. Archetypes, after all, are traits common but specifically found in one individual as a part of their personality makeup. However, stereotypes are common references to a group, race, gender or living environment.

Most of you probably feel I was oversimplifying something you already know. This may be true. But these ideas are a lot more convoluted than they appear. In acting, I discovered early on that a stereotype for a role is only a blanket covering of the role. Remember, most playwrights and screenplay authors alike develop story arcs and characters that confront each other in some way. We have a Hero or Heroine who is chosen by the gods to be a leader and warrior. We then have a protagonist, an arch-nemesis if you will, whose goal is to harm or challenge the Hero in some way. Almost always there is a Sage or Wise Person who comes in to lead the Hero into a higher purpose. And it is always enjoyable to watch in a journey when the Hero encounters his or her Lover. Finally, there’s always a second level to a truly classic writing when there is a Comedian or Trickster thrown in for comic relief and to teach a lesson. The Jester or Fool is still by far my favorite character to write and to play. Each of these Archetypes can be a part of your own life and journey if you find them.

No matter how you find and recognize personas, they are there in front of us to teach us to change. We can often learn to be a stronger character by emulating those characters found in literature. However, the majority of the best writers and entertainers of our time have experienced these relationships as well. I challenge you to write down everyone you know who is in your circle or used to be. I recommend you write as many Archetypes next to their name as possible and see if you see a reflection, an Archetype you also possess, in the other person.

Now go into yourself and find out where you are hiding your depression, sadness, anger or fear. Why do you have these feelings? Are they specifically related to another person, especially to one of your Soul Mates? Do you have an anger that won’t go away and you can’t pinpoint where it is coming from? Do you suffer from depression or anxiety related illnesses? What or whom are you afraid of? Write down all of these answers as well and match your lower-minded feelings with those who caused you somehow to feel this way.

Finally, you are going to take all those traits and see them in yourself. Who saw any of these traits in you? Can you pinpoint why? Who in your life would you consider a Soul Mate? Can you actually identify the Contract you have to learn with this person? Is there a challenge or conflict associated with a Soul Mate? Are there stereotypes that caused these confrontations such as religion, race or age? And do you see every person you consider a Soul Mate to be a mirror of who you are? These exercises will help you identify where you need to grow, what you need to confront, and how you truly feel about yourself and others. If you need additional help going through this exercise, feel free to contact me or attend one of our classes about this center-based discovery.

Depression, Anxiety and Fear – Emotional Battle Scars that Stunt Our Higher Purpose

Do you have any scars? What do they look like to you? Are yours deep wounds or superficial cuts that need some TLC? Where do you want to fly next to find out if you are ready to confront or challenge your next Soul Mate? Are there any Soul Contracts you have or are in the midst of fulfilling that are painful or cause you to withdraw or retreat? Do you still have conflict with a parent or a sibling? And what do you choose to do when you are confronted with these conflicts?

I have had long fits of depression and anxiety. Anyone who has to fight for their own children does, no matter which side of the battle you are on. Those that control and abuse cannot actually become happy or find happiness because they will always be unfulfilled by the longing to control the other partner. Those that are victims of control will too never find happiness because they cannot release themselves from their victimhood long enough to be whole and complete without the oppression. I have been in the latter role several times, thus the Soul Contract pattern I had to break, first with my mother, then with my partners as described above. I too have gaping scars and sometimes painful sores that are reopened with the arrows of anger and hatred.

But depression, anxiety and fear are only mechanisms that hold one back from growth. In a recent lecture I attended from the world renowned Dr. John DeMartini, I had a revelation that led back to my first discovery of his material and those of my other mentors (both alive and long since passed). I realized that I have been right all along knowing that the past bouts of depression and anxiety were fantasies: they are nothing more than my expectation to be attached to the outcome of a situation. Yes, as a wonderful mother who lived my entire life for my children, I had my highest priority on their health and well-being, but did not have the capability and means of acting out these priorities because I was controlled and subjugated by my husband, his money and his family.

At the time, during the divorce, I attempted to take my own life. And when I awoke to realize that I was not truly the horrible person they wanted everyone to believe I had become (because I started rebelling against the inappropriate behaviors), I knew it wasn’t truly all my doing and definitely it was not all my fault. Promises were made to me during the matrimony that were not honored and most of them just flatly refused—many of them were fantasies because he was incapable of keeping these promises, such as equality and allowing me to be independent and have my own career. He was not able to live this way, but it was a lie going into the marriage that I did not foresee.

Also, I was a passionate artist, writer, actor and singer. These talents were actually neglected and I was “told” I was not to continue them. In fact, at one point right before the divorce, he turned off my phone, sold my car and cut off my computer access to the outside world. These acts are considered abusive by any belief and law. However, they are also reflections of a controlling system that wanted me to be the fantasy as well, to be “content” to be stifled and stay at home to do nothing but raise children and not let anyone else know of my anger and sadness at the failure of the marriage. To admit that one is wrong then would allow one the freedom to allow change in order to grow. I will whole heartedly admit I made a poor judgment and chose to marry the wrong partner. He was the Soul Mate father of my children, but our relationship was never meant to last under these false pretenses.

Do not be misguided by my words. If you chose to give up part of yourself in order to be content in a marriage, then you have chosen to change your priorities accordingly. My fantasy was that I had no intention of giving up my career plans or my acting and artistic passions, but was expected to do so and actually told to do so by my mother-in-law at the time, who actually controlled much of our marriage. Do not feel horrible about my history—I chose to be a Victim and a Damsel in this lifetime in order to break free from this role. I wanted nothing more than independence and was faced with the true challenge of being a Slave. It is an important part of our growth to wake up and be aware of this pattern.

You Have A Choice—Let It Go

Yet I can see that millions of people today still remain in these roles and these dogmas. I know women who convert to Christianity or Islam in order to please their idea of a God and a spouse, only to find themselves trapped in these situations. In the movie “Not Without My Daughter” the main character also faces this when she is trapped and kidnapped and taken far away from her family and to a Muslim country where she was not able to leave and return to the U.S. with her child. She eventually found a way. In my case, I had to leave the family without my children and fight to have them again, only to continue to be painted as the “bad guy” so they can justify what is still happening.

I know other women who don’t survive these scenarios. I met many of them in my lifetime. However once I met one of the strongest women I have ever known, Wendy Titelman, who lost custody to her husband who was molesting her children. To this day, she hasn’t seen her children since they were babies. And this was here in the U.S. Her case has gone to the Supreme Court, but the outcome has not been a victory. Hopefully, one day her children will too find out how much their mother sacrificed to fight for them.

I have every right to be angry. So does Wendy. So do my friends throughout the World, men and women, who have to challenge a domineering and unfair system. But the only True Freedom is that given to us when we realize we are all part of the Collective Consciousness. We all accept these battles, these scars, and these tragedies. Losing a child to drugs, alcohol or suicide cannot be any less tragic than one lost to divorce or religious oppression. Losing a parent or a spouse or a sibling to a needless accident, disease or war is horrible. Yet we all feel the pain together. How can we alter these relationships? We can’t. We can only alter the one part of us that is the factor within the relationship: Ourselves. How do we get over the depression, sadness and fear once and for all? We accept them and then no longer allow them to control our lives.

Let go of the fantasy. Let go of what should be. We know if this was a “fair” world, these tragedies and losses would not be happening to wonderful and spiritual people. But because of these atrocities, we have wonderful and spiritual people waking up and being born every day. Do your daily part instead. Stand up for someone you see hurting. Allow yourself to grieve and recover from these scars. Love your children and your spouses for who they are, and if you cannot, let them go. And if you have it in your heart to change anything in the World, change the one thing that will open you to the next level of Consciousness: Be grateful for what you have and where you have been, for all of it, because you are the beautiful Soul that was given these gifts and challenges to make you the very unique person whom you are. I am grateful for all of you, my friends and family, who have taken the time to read this and reflect upon your own lives. Do not live in fear, for you have everything right in front of you.

Taming the Dragon – Righteous Fire

Igniting the Righteous Fire

In this chapter I will explore the awakening of the Righteous Fire within myself and our society. If you will allow me to give you some background, I have explained more about myself and my childhood awakenings. If you read through it I hope you can understand that my journey, like so many, has been challenging and because of these challenges, I have become a strong leader but also I have created a strong outer shell. Like most everyone, I have been directly attacked by those around me, but it doesn’t stop me from loving humanity or those that are in true need of love, guidance and are willing to change. Thus I see attacks by others specifically toward me as a challenge and as a learning experience. I hope you can all have these same revelations.

From my earliest childhood memories, I knew I had one specifically strong, powerful and yet debilitating gift: Righteous Anger. I know now it is part of my makeup, possibly my past life accumulation of experience, but it comes from the childlike attitude that the World is an unjust place because there are too many injustices. I was not one of those girls who would burst into tears when offended. Instead, I would become enraged, often with bursts of loud, angry expressions of “that’s not fair!” and other times resorting to a wrongfully appropriate behavior, such as hitting the offender (usually my brother or one of the neighbor boys), or freaking out (usually reserved for my mother and father). I am now slow to anger and rarely allow it to get to me. Not that this is 100 percent guaranteed….

Many of my life’s relationships realized early on that I was the “strong” one. I carried a large stick it seems. I was a “tom boy” in grade school, though the label is subjective. I wanted to do what the Cub Scouts were doing, not what we were doing in Brownies. My mother was one of our Brownie Troop leaders, but my father was into hunting and camping and was excellent at carpentry and fixing up the house. From my earliest memories, my fondest recollections were doing activities like sawing wood and hammering nails. Between third and fifth grade, I started to become passionate about being able to do anything the boys could do. I had a train set and a microscope and a guitar and a plethora of collectible animals. I loved riding horses and I kept a detailed diary that was about how someday I would travel to all the cool and far-away places my aunts and uncles travelled. I wanted to be a doctor and I was determined to do it.

At this time as well I was cast in my first musical—“The King and I”—at the local high school. I was bit by the acting bug! I had a few parts in third and fourth grade in school. But this opened up a new ballgame for me. I religiously participated in church choir as well, which was such a gift and opened many doors for me throughout my life. I was a natural “ham” and a natural leader, so this was my outlet to shine. It was also a strong influence on my siblings because I encouraged them strongly to be a part of this world. I had a feverishly active imagination as well. At one point I decided I wanted to be a pirate and taught my sister how to be one too! I scarfed up books every summer as if I was starving for stories. I read all types of fantasies, from the Narnia series to the Dark Is Rising. I couldn’t get enough of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. And I loved any adventure that took me to a far-away place.

I also realized by fifth grade that there was a terrible rift between my parents and me, but specifically, I was always fighting vehemently with my mother. The anger started building when I would see her do things I thought were unjust. I am the oldest of five siblings, and by the time I was 10 I had a brother and two sisters. I could go into detail about all the stupid fights we had, but it’s not necessary since most of them were sibling rivalry. But my brother was also very angry and we fought almost daily. After studying sociological behaviors, I realize that because my mother had been so openly angry at my father and the injustice she felt about her own life, her projection toward me specifically and the rage she outwardly expressed on us as children trickled down to our own behaviors. As the oldest, I was always told by my parents that it was my fault if we misbehaved because I was supposed to be the good example. This was so wrong to me! This created a lot of the mindset I adopted on how to truly understand fairness and rightness in my world.

Friends, I implore you to know that this was a common dysfunctional pattern among parents at that time in history. I am not excusing it, but even cinema at the time showed how there was a strong divide between adults and children. There were the wars many fathers fought in Korea and Vietnam. The country was openly rebellious against the system and these wars. In the 70’s as a child, these sentiments were also rebellions against the system of gender roles, with feminism and women’s liberation. I was definitely a rebel and a critical thinker. My mother was a traditionalist. I resented the role as a subservient wife. I wanted nothing more than to be a career woman with high goals to help save the World. I wanted to join the Peace Corps like our neighbor did. I wanted to become a missionary like our friends’ parents. I wanted to heal the sick, travel the world, and get away from these systems. I dreamed about this almost every day.

In my childhood, we were also actively involved in a Christian environment. And I grew up in Wheaton, Illinois, the home of Wheaton College, the alma mater of Billy Graham and several other famous Evangelists. The town was infused with Christian principles and thus the hierarchies that come with it: Religious Oligarchic communities, supremacy of men over women through patriarchal conditioning, ultra-traditional roles and invisible ceilings, and children were to be seen and not heard. The community was also very wealthy as a whole and very conservative. This actually enhanced my chances to get a better and more competitive education. But it also gave us naivety, closed-mindedness and being closely monitored and sheltered.

I am grateful for the aspect of my youth that allowed me to be protected for such a short time so I could learn voraciously and know that someday I could accomplish these goals of becoming a doctor and a missionary. I chose the path that did not allow me to do either of these things, but now I see that my path is not less important by any means. I just had to go through the fires to get here.

Walking Through the Sacred Fire

Initiation in most cultures involves some sort of sacred fire. Coming of age for me was also of a sacred righteous fire burning deep within me. I had been connected to the Spirit at an early age. My deeply loyal love for the Creator was my own, not taught to me or ingrained in my environment. In fact, growing up where we did showed me that the majority of believers in a particular faith were human in nature, not actually believing what they subscribed to be practicing. And I saw many leaders fall prey to “sin” and “temptations.” There were Christians in my community who were unfaithful to their spouses, many of whom were pillars of the church. I have learned that many of my peers also endured hidden sexual intimidations from leaders of all faiths. I was fortunate—I only encountered my hypocrisies among my own family system and among my friends’ families. But nonetheless, it was the awareness of these “do as I say not as I do” encounters that led me to be more high minded.

There was still a strong propensity for bullying in school in subtle and outward ways. I was a “nerd” and one of the smart kids. My initiation into puberty was a dichotomy of blossoming knowledge and a growing distance between those of us who were adamant about our grades and the “popular” kids. It was fine with me. I had the long-term goal of getting as far away from this environment as possible. Meanwhile, I also had a strong desire to protect the bullied, the underdogs and the downtrodden. I couldn’t stand to see anyone suffer from harsh words, especially because secretly I endured so much of it at home with my mother. I also learned to “rescue”—this led me to many years of protecting those less fortunate and eventually led me to my current career choices.

Middle school was the hatching of hormones and discovery of the opposite sex, which I had no issues being around as a child, but suddenly I felt awkward and unable to approach with these newly discovered feelings and biological changes. As the Dragon hatchling, I needed a strong example to my rebellious nature and I found that in my aunt in New York. She was a doctor. She was my idol. But she was also very far away and disconnected. I wanted to be just like her, but I also wanted to honor the Creator of my childhood, whom I saw through the eyes of my faith. And I needed more than anything a guide to get me through the wading guilt of our belief system as well. Parents chided us, teachers scolded us, we heard the messages of guilt from the pulpit every Sunday, and we even perpetuated systems of shame and guilt amongst ourselves.

The Sacred Initiation of most teenagers of my time involved alcohol, sex and rebellious behavior. In our community, however, this was either less prominent or more hidden. I knew of things like marijuana and the psychotropic adventures of many of my aunts and uncles, distant relatives and what we saw on television. But we were in a bubble in our community, so I never saw anything. But the guilt-and-shame system of our adolescence forbid us from open sexuality, gender identity differences, discussing things like domestic violence or child abuse. We were socially forbidden and internally driven to be “perfect.”

High School, however, was my Sacred Initiation into adulthood. Besides my obsession with learning and becoming a top honors student, I was actively involved in acting and theater, student counsel, Spanish Honor Society, and anything academic. I found this diversity helped me connect with peers and friends from all backgrounds and I could see myself in the reflection of everyone. I was mostly devoted to Speech Team and became an accomplished speaker and performer. I am eternally grateful to my teachers and peers for leading me there. I was shaped to become the higher minded person I am because of them. I loved competing in events, spent hours memorizing scripts and perfecting my characters. I learned method acting, which obviously led me to my studies in social psychology, anthropology, political science and religious studies, all of which I incorporate into my leadership trainings and life coaching today.

To be fair to all my friends who know me, I could have easily adopted any belief system and become a strong leader in that faith. All my years of leadership training within my church, youth leadership, camp counseling and club organizing in school could have been translated into any system that honors a Creator element. I have studied intensely Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism and the Wisdom Texts of many beliefs. I subscribe understanding and commonality with all of them. I am open to all the understandings and ideologies of Shamanic and Pagan leadership—they just come at Creation from a different angle.

Indulge me to explain briefly a little further. You see, all my studies have come to the same conclusions about this Righteous Fire:

1. There is a Creator or Creative Force.

2. We are all connected on this planet Earth as a part of that Creation.

3. We are all made of the same organic materials that permeate the existence of us as a part of that Creation as well at the atomic level.

4. The nature of all humanity is to create order, community and find something to believe in, whether it is family or religion or politics or corporate capitalism or nationalistic identity. We are all part of a greater tribe. And we will protect our beliefs and our tribe and our deep-set systems at all costs.

5. We naturally rebel against our Creation when we feed our Ego and commit thoughts and acts of racism, classism, and social separation because we believe only our system of belief is the correct one. We actually feed into the nature of destruction and create more anger and rebellion than we purport to be fighting against. It’s the age old Cain and Abel story—brother against brother--Ego-based anger and jealousy. And outlying acts of socially unacceptable injustices, such as child molestation and serial killing and excessive violence, are often glamourized in our American society today. We feed into the fire with an excess of horror and violent films and video games. We create archetypes of these injustices through the internet and cartoons and we spoon feed them to our children. So of course we are dividing our society based on the one element that separates us from our Creator: fear.

6. Righteous Anger is a normal system of purging injustices by utilizing the tools we have to educate and incite change around us. Though many historical and religious accounts claim that God or the Gods are responsible for this kind of purging, it is actually a collective human philosophy to administer these changes among our own tribes and family systems, whether by law or by rebellion. In our country we essentially have Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, and the ability to change laws to protect the weak, punish the criminals and honor the changes of socially acceptable and not acceptable behaviors. Of course, take this one with a grain of salt--this is not always possible or allowed by the higher control systems. Unless you are a member of Congress, a public figure or an outspoken famous person, a lot of these thoughts and injustices go unnoticed every day. However, it is truly possible to be part of a larger fire and create a movement to alter the social system. Often lives are threatened or lost in a rebellion, but it does change the course of history.

7. There is also one other trend in the World today. The more groups of us become educated and enlightened, the more there are groups that become hateful, promote prejudices and separate themselves from the natural progression of thought, community, technology and fight so adamantly against Oneness. The bully still exists to control the people. The underlying message of faith and hope among those who truly love and believe in the Higher existence is often undermined or altogether pushed down by those that want to stay in power, have resources to lord over others, and refuse to look at their own atrocities or behaviors. Folks, guess what? This is not any different from the earliest beginning of human civilization. But it has become super-intensified and blatantly obvious. The common citizen is well aware of the oppressors.

What is most fascinating is that I was angry at the World, not at my system around me. I became educated on foreign affairs and war crimes and human injustices and abuses. I saw killings in Africa, Communism in the U.S.S.R. and China, and human rights abuses in South America all as horrific atrocities to which I wanted to fight. I also joined a group against Apartheid in South Africa while I was in college for the same reason—I was aghast at how human beings could belittle and destroy each other so terribly based on race, class and governmental corruptions.

Now my fire is strong and I breathe it hard. It is the age-old fight against corruption and hierarchy and the desire for peace and a Common Consciousness. I am one of many. I am humble that all my life lessons have allowed me to see these truths. The “ah-hah” moment of enlightenment comes for those of us who are aware of who we are and know we all have a Shadow side but choose to live in Love and Light. The more I read, the more I see, the more I come across daily information from the internet and in my studies, the more I want to shout out to those around me about what I have learned.

Modern Cases of Righteous Fire

Today, we have seen thousands of wars in human history and a large number internationally in our own lifetimes. We read about bombings in train stations and in crowds everywhere in the World. Our friends and family are losing loved ones to major diseases and illnesses, such as cancers and AIDS and auto-immune disorders. We see the population of the World at an all-time high, but the incidences and crimes against humanity and the Earth are thus just as prominent. We have WMDs and military technologies that far exceed and cost more of our resources than medical care, feeding our people and education combined. We are relying on pharmaceutical companies and nursing homes to take responsibility for our elderly and their conditions. We are watching a record-number of children being born with genetic and environmentally-based abnormalities. The future looks very bleak.

You should be angry. I am. I can say this: be grateful for our current freedom of connection with the internet, by cell phone, and even connecting openly in person in groups and social clubs. Free speech can be poisonous, yes, and divisive, yes, and can corrode our society. So don’t allow it. Instead, keep your own personal connections with others. Continue to spread the words of hope and community. Remain loving and brag about your family, your children, your friends. Connect with those who you don’t often hear from online. But don’t allow this “box” to be your only source of connection!! Please, reach out and be a part of the bigger picture in your groups. And not just as a sports fan or an entertainment junkie. Be an actual member of society. We can continue to spread our knowledge, call out the leaders who are corrupt and unfair, and reach out to a hurting and fearful world around you.

Most recently, here in Colorado, a young man, seemingly “normal”, walked into a movie theater and gunned down 58 people, killing 12 innocent victims, including a 6 year old child. I am flabbergasted. He apparently tried to reach out, sending his entire plan and manifesto to his university that apparently was never opened or read by anyone. How could this have come to pass? Crazy thing is: he could have been any of us. Or one of our children. Is it so unlikely that with our 3D video portrayals of blood and gore that it is any less likely for someone that plays an obsessive game like World of Warcraft or Grand Theft Auto could easily find a way to transfer hate and fear into using real weapons and take out real people? But this incident has superceded all current injustices and the most news-worthy of the day.

But there are so many more injustices. I recently left Chicago and found out the average rate of shooting deaths is between 20 and 40 people per month in the City!! We also learned that in the city of Chicago, you are not allowed to have a gun to protect yourself and often concealed weapons permits are not honored. We are arguing gun control, but in reality, who is watching what our children’s minds are absorbing from film, television and the internet? What are we mentally feeding our youth?

In our travels this past now-7 months, we have lived among the homeless and there are an inordinate number of them that have served in our war with Iraq and Afghanistan and have severe PTSD. Why is this phenomenon not addressed? We also saw a plethora of families that lost their homes to the banking system’s corruption of taking our tax payer money but not forgiving debts to starving families. Food bank and meal lines are packed. Yet our U.S. Congress continues to cut back financial aid to the poor and downtrodden. We were lucky. If we ever needed help along our journey, I would ask the Universe to provide it and it came in so many different forms. And I am grateful that for many years I helped and volunteered and provided for others because I honestly believe that is why the favor was returned. But I am angry and hurt for others.

On the flip side, we met a number of people with plenty, many of whom we were able to become acquainted. We met other networkers like ourselves in our producing and filmmaking community. New Orleans is teaming with work because of the tax incentives Louisiana has provided for feature films. This came about by the vision of the community. We were on set with many amazing people, from lawyers and doctors to those who were retired and now act as extras in films. And I often encouraged any of the homeless families we met along the way to apply for positions in Louisiana as extras and crew. We were blessed to be in movies and television shows. And we were able to make a little money along the way to help our own cause. As a filmmaker, I encourage everyone to write to their Congress members to include tax incentives for other states as well. It can really help bring jobs to a community. So there is a solution for every little injustice, like our increasing unemployment rate, if we just find those answers among ourselves.

Igniting Your Own Fire

What can you and your friends do in your own community to create jobs? What are we doing to help the homeless and the displaced in your own backyard? What can you do in your own family to help an elderly relative? What can you say to encourage someone around you during a hard time? What can you offer in your own social groups to educate, provide for or ignite the passion of those around you? What are you teaching your children about the World? And what are you willing to change within yourself to ignite your own Righteous Fire?

As I come to the end of this treatise today, I realize I could easily spend my time on a soapbox and stand on a street corner and yell “the sky is falling” and it won’t do any good. We already know the dire situation of our own country, the poverty and the depression and the bullying by large corporations that led to overseas hiring and unfair trade practices…this didn’t happen overnight. I could go on about pharmaceutical price gouging and insurances not covering wellness and GMO food production that is destroying the nutritives in our foods. But you can read about these injustices every day, sandwiched between the massive press coverage of reality television stars and who in Hollywood is getting divorced this week.

So regardless of my good intentions to expound upon Righteous Anger, it is inevitably a part of our human nature. Power and control and abuse are an everyday event in our World. So the best thing to do is pray to your Higher power/Creator and to continue to connect with the Spirit and with your community. Inform everyone about these injustices in your daily world on the internet, in the office, in your mother’s groups, or at the gym after work. Do not hide from them. Do not ignore them. Be grateful for them.

Whatever you do, feel the fire. If you have gotten to the end of this reading, do not ignore the call to do something. Allow it to transform you as it has me. And we can all connect together to break the cycles of anger that are ingrained in our humanity, one person at a time.