It’s Not All Rainbows and Unicorns

The Pagan Experience: What do you define as your “place in the world”? How does that inform your spiritual pursuits?

Ah, the age old questions. Who am I? What is my place and purpose in this world? What do I want to be when I grow up?

These are all questions that I thought I had the answers to when I was a teenager. You can imagine my shock when I got to be in my late 40s and had to find the answers to these questions all over again.

In thinking about this particular topic, I am reminded of the lyrics from an ABBA song, “Thank you for the music“:

I’m nothing special, in fact
I’m a bit of a bore.
If I tell a joke, you’ve
Probably heard it before.

This is what I thought of myself for most of my life. And though I can sing, it isn’t a strong talent, unlike the woman character referred to in this song.

No, I have another talent, One which after years of doubting and years of worrying that people would think me a fake or a fraud I am finally coming to embrace fully and accept in myself.

What is my place? I am a Healer. My place and purpose is in serving others who seek healing. Right now at this moment in time, my major focus is on serving women who are seeking healing from past events, women who are wanting to release old behaviours, thought patterns, and emotional blocks that are keeping them from making conscious choices about their futures. Eventually, as I continue my training in the area of Soul Midwifery, this will expand to working with women who are dying in helping them to make conscious choices for themselves in order to have a good death and in doing psychopomp work. I am able to pull on all of the skills I have developed over time, as a nurse and as an Energy Healer, and as a Pagan witch, to do this much needed work.

My practise as a Pagan witch and my calling as a Healer are both very closely intertwined because in both I am working with and moulding Energy. I use practices learned as a Pagan and witch to improve my skills as a healer, and I use my skills as a healer to enhance my practices as a Pagan and witch. This is why you might just find me scratching a Reiki symbol on a candle as part of a spell or calling in Energy both from deep within the Earth and from the Skies above when channelling it for Reiki. The shields I use when doing Energy healing work were learned through creating my witch’s circle. The ways I have of raising energy in circle were learned in part from pulling in and moving Energy for healing.

While I have had teachers, for the most part many of my skills as a healer and as a Pagan witch were developed intuitively. The advantage of developing skills intuitively is that I didn’t have anyone around telling me that I couldn’t do something a certain way. So I just did it. The downside is that I didn’t always learn the best or most efficiant way of doing some things.

This hasn’t always been the easy way. There have been hardships and troubles. Both Reiki and shamanic healing practices talk of the “illness” that a practitioner goes through. In Reiki it is the Reiki cleanse that one goes through after receiving attunements, in shamanism they talk of the shaman’s illness or death. Both refer to the same thing though – a shedding of your old ways of thinking, being, and doing to make way for a new awareness. For me, this shedding and sickness came in the form of a severe emotional and mental breakdown, and from having everything that I thought made me who I was stripped away. I literally had to rediscover who I was, and my place in this world, from the ground up. It was damned hard work, and to be real honest there were times I didn’t think I would be able to survive. For a long time I could do nothing more than put one foot in front of the other and try to make it through each day. Anyone who has dealt with chronic pain and depression will know just how much hard work that can be.

I have skills, but I don’t claim to be all-powerful or have all the answers. All I can share with others are my opinions and my experiences. I have more questions now than I had 25 years ago when I first started out on this path. And in some cases, I don’t even know enough to know what the questions are supposed to be.

And that’s okay.

If you would like to learn more of the healing service I provide for women:

Sacred Visions

You can also read my healer’s blog at The Healing Room.

An image which has influenced me

Talking Point

For this Thursday’s talking point I want to share with you an image which I created as a reminder of my own inner strength and as a way of honouring the incredible growth and transformation I have been undergoing over the past several years.

Has it influenced me as a Pagan? I don’t know. It has certainly influenced me as a person though, and the two are not mutually exclusive.

I created this montage using public domain images found on the internet with a free photo editing program called PhotoScape.

The bottom half of the image shows a sea of flames. From left to right you can see an orca peeking out from the flames, an angel with flaming sword, fiery butterflies flying out of the flames, and monarch butterflies on a branch above the flames climbing out of its chrysalis. Each image has meaning for me, and marks a point in my own transformation.

Orca is a power animal which acted as a guardian when I was at the lowest point in my mental and emotional breakdown. It leads the way.

The angel with flaming word is my Reiki guide, B’Schiel, who stood guard over my heart soul when my heart was shattered into millions of glistening glass shards. A piece of my soul was lost at that time, and I cried when I discovered that B’Schiel had found that shattered soul piece and was keeping it safe until I was ready to take it back again.

The monarch butterflies are my own newly growing and transforming heart soul, growing and transforming in its protective case until the time is right to take down those shields and allow the transformations which have occurred to climb out. A recent check during a healing session revealed that those shields are still in place. Which tells me that my butterfly soul has not yet finished its transformations.

During a shamanic journey, several months before my life was so drastically and permanently changed, I was told by my spirit guides, “You need to journey through the Underworld. All that you are will be burnt away, and you will be reformed.”

The fiery butterflies symbolise my journey through the world of Death, and my transformation as I have emerged out the other side a new, more whole person.

I’ve not made this journey alone. I’ve had the support of trusted friends, trusted healers, and a trusted therapist, all of whom have been helping me to finish burning away those things of my past, those thoughts, emotions, behaviours, and abusive relationships which were keeping me stuck. Like the butterfly emerging from its chrysalis though, they cannot do the work for me I must do that myself. They can only give support and love, and help me to see where things are still clinging on.

I can do this work without fear though because I know I have an angel with flaming sword standing guard.

Is there an image which has influenced you on your own spiritual path?