Creating Coherence in Destabilized Times Don’t ask what the world needs; ask what makes you come alive, and go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. -Howard Thurman Coherence: the quality of holding together How are you holding together? It has been my experience that there has always been a deep and silent voice guiding me toward my purpose- what I am to do in life. At the same time, I know that hearing the voice and overcoming all the messages that run crosswise to it in order to follow it has been one of the most difficult tasks I’ve encountered. As long as we are in a body we will have time and opportunity to find and follow the voice of our dream. There is never a better day than today to begin. By waiting until the upheaval, destabilization and...

So much of life is arranged to avoid the very paths of darkness that lead us to the light we long to know. -Michael Meade One of the Christian bible stories I learned when young- and which I think all children in churches learn- has to do with the tree in the Garden of Eden, the first two people there named Adam and Eve, an apple and a snake. I acknowledge that some people take the story literally and as a belief that they are sinful when they are born, and that by living an upright life and following bible teachings they will have a chance to be redeemed from their inherent wickedness and go to heaven after their death. In studying many different religious and spiritual traditions throughout my adult life, I have learned to take for myself bible stories, religious teachings, myths and folk tales as teaching...

I’ve been thinking about a statement I sometimes hear from people who are confronted with something offensive or shocking that they have said or done: “That’s not who I am.” Many times this can come from celebrities or athletes embarrassed while caught in the brief flash of the ever-judgemental news cycle. I’ve also heard this from everyday people who have unleashed public tirades on a person they have identified as other or less than, after the scene was video recorded and posted to social media. As a defense, explanation or excuse, “That’s not who I am” may bring some short-term comfort to the idealized self-image we carry within. A more honest refinement to the declaration might proceed this way: “That’s not all of who I am.” We contain multitudes- of songs, friendships, drives, questions, beliefs, and the memories of our own lived experiences, as well what we’ve inherited...

I’ve read a few articles lately discussing young people choosing to have ‘no contact’ relationships with parents and family members. I thought I would share some reflections I have on this through the lens of Family Constellations and ancestral healing. Whereas it’s possible to stop communicating with your parents on the physical dimension while they are alive, it’s impossible to break the energetic connections we have with those through whom life came to us. We might turn our backs on our family and move halfway around the Earth and start a new life, but the unresolved issues we have with our parents will move right along with us and have a strong influence on the relationships we make in our ‘new’ lives. The energetic cord connections we have with our parents may be the most durable and important that we’ll have in this lifetime. Just as our parents...

Consider the battle between the caterpillar and the butterfly within it. A caterpillar carries within it, throughout its caterpillar time, something scientists call imaginal discs. These discs are grown while the caterpillar is forming inside its egg, before it hatches. There are discs for each of the various body parts the butterfly will need- eyes, wings, legs etc. In some species, the discs remain dormant until the caterpillar’s transformation to butterfly begins, and in others they activate sooner. At some point in nature’s timing, when the caterpillar has fed itself on sometimes hundreds of times its weight in leaves per day, it hangs itself up, its skin begins to harden into a chrysalis or it spins a protective cocoon, and it starts to dissolve its own inner tissues. The imaginal discs activate and begin to feed on the soupy biomass inside the chrysalis. What is left of the...

Our Relationships With Our Bodies I had a milk allergy when I was born, and instead of gaining, I started losing weight in my first few weeks on Earth. A pediatric doctor prescribed a hospital stay for a week in an oxygen tent. That profound experience of isolation at such a young age formed what I came to know as a schizoid defense characterology in my energy field. My pre-verbal consciousness decided that it was less safe here in the physical than in the realm of spirit from which I had just traveled. My energy body probably stayed only loosely seated in my physical body so it could leave quickly to cope with the time in the oxygen tent where I was deprived of touch and emotional contact with anyone. I’m thankful for the four years of study and healing I received through the Barbara Brennan School that helped me...

“Why should families go unchallenged by the reality that comes to them through their children?” -Rachel Cusk, essay entitled ‘The Spy: On seeing without being seen’, Harper’s magazine October 2023 How is it that different family members are impacted very differently by the family wound? How is it that several siblings may appear to thrive in life, while another seems to struggle and may become, in an unspoken way, the identified problem by the rest of the family? What does the different child bring to life to show the family, and how can that sensitive child find the gold in their individual wounding? These are not easy questions to answer. With the hundreds of people we have worked with we can say that most are sensitive, empathic people who have a deep longing for something to be different, in their own lives, with their place in their family,...

There’s an old idea that, before incarnation, the soul makes agreements and is seeded with a gift of purpose and direction entirely unique to itself- and then that purpose is forgotten along the journey to conception. In the flash of the union of egg and sperm, cells paradoxically and simultaneously begin to divide and multiply, the ephemeral spark of the divine anchors in the physical dimension, and a human being starts to take on flesh and bone. The womb-enclosed initial days on the life path start out in tension between the eternal longing that will stay with the individual, and the inescapable limitations of the myriad agreements into which the soul agreed to be born- choices regarding family members and their circumstances, inherited patterns and unresolved material; health and illness; historical era; societal values; location on Earth; and other elements related to the decision to come to life. It might...