Joy 201: Receiving Nutrients, Offering Shade

If you deeply love Divinity while not being grounded in your body, will you stumble through dialog when folks lack a spiritual bent?

Will you ignore and abuse your body, which feels unattached to your being?

Will you ignore an intuitive warning as you chalk it up to fear in your mind?

Will you long to leave the earth, so you can commune forever with your Creator?

Will you consider driving your car into a truck on the highway to hasten your ethereal connection?

Can you relate to any of these questions?

Does this sound familiar or foreign?

For years, this was my understanding.

Joy 101 didn’t understand the separation she was living.

Joy 101 felt uniquely ill-fitted to be a human being.

Joy 101 grew up in a family which prized the intellect, and which didn’t understand grounding or being, as drama and doing ruled.

While it feels odd to write this introduction, it’s wholly true; so today while at the keyboard, my heart caresses Joy 101 for the soulful pain she carried.

The year I turn 50, my husband and I move to the mountains of western North Carolina, where I swiftly connect with folks studying Bill Plotkin’s book Soulcraft.

In this circle, I am given language and practices to connect in new ways with my soul, and I begin to ground into my body.

Before long, our marriage ends, and I‘m able to process the grief through my body with baths, naps, and journaling, plus energy work from a friend who visits and a massage, when I’m able to drive down the mountain.

Hooray!

I don’t push this pain away, down, or run away.

I move the anger, resentment, dismay, and every other feeling through my frame as well as I can, because a wisdom within understands the need to deeply feel this loss, and to allow it to move through.

Six months later, I step forward with hesitation to receive hands-on healing.

In the unfamiliar chapel, after a moment in prayer with the practioner’s hands on my shoulders, I’m given a jolt of divine energy, which ignites my heart past stuck anger.

Yes!

I feel lighter…this is good.

I give up television and begin a program I’d felt called to…to become a spiritual director. I lean into more being, contemplation, and breathing into moments. I’m in a dream group where I gain insight into my psyche.

I skip into life dating Ben, though one afternoon on a forest hike, I slip on a wet root, landing hard on my tailbone.

Okay…looks like l’ll follow an avenue of bodywork, too.

There’s always more to learn about ourselves, isn’t there?

When my injury heals, I continue pilates, rolfing, chiropractic, and massage to unwind held tightness against life and the remains of a car accident (the one where I ignored the intuitive warning I chalked up to fear), and to gain physical strength.

Inside, I’m aware of an interest to reach the beauty of alignment…that I want to stand tall and grounded like a tree, connecting to earth and heaven, past injuries, tightness, and abusing my body. I want to receive nutrients, offer shade.

One morning in Pilates, my instructor says, Joy, I practically see light coming from your head and feet…you are so aligned!

The next day at dinner with Ben, I’m aware our conversation feels above us, and I hear myself say I feel called to go within for a few days.

Solitary days in the womb of my house three years ago are a sacred memory for me….of prayer, journaling, communing with divinity through telepathy, and being taught there is no separation…that separation is an illusion, and that with us in matter and divinity carrying the power of the Universe, we are powerful beyond measure.

After the personalized lesson, there’s communing in bed where my Higher Self enters my body.

OMG

THIS is the BELONGING I’ve longed for my whole life, and maybe through earlier lifetimes.

This is amazing.

I AM ONE with myself, my divinity, and the Universe.

My body is a Sacred Vessel.

The more awake I become, the more I’m able to treat myself with all the honoring I desire…which means offering myself healthy food and drink, time to Be, time to commune, time to journal, to exercise, to nap, to create, to hug, and more.

I honor myself with monthly massages and weekly Pilates.

I hula hoop in the living room after time at the computer.

I stand on the deck in sunbeams breathing into summertime days.

And I’m grateful, grateful, grateful beyond measure to live into Joy 201, honoring my sacred self, body included, carrying peace and joy into the world to offer shade.