Sacred Metamorphoses with Barbara Sanders | Death, Grief, Rebirth - and ...

What Child is This?

Amidst the tragedies that surround him

Hovering around him and through him

He hides, stunned and shocked

Covering himself up with

Dirt and leaves like a hunted animal

His scent remains strong

Fear abounds

Can these predators who hunt and destroy

Find him?

Masked men determined to grab him

Shove him into a van, sending him

Away to no promised land

He was just working

Following all the rules

When a dragnet swept him up

Beating him senselessly

Tasering him

Taking away all of his rights

Only to dash themselves

To hell for carrying out the orders

That were given to them

Just doing their jobs

What child is this?

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A Contemporary Queen

I have been having the most interesting time during the past few days. It began when I returned to what I thought was an obsession, a compulsive pattern of mine. When I get attracted to something, I want it and "fight" tooth and nail to get what I want. As gracefully as possible, that is. That pattern has been true much of my life and usually I am not proud of it. As if it is wrong somehow, or even shameful to go after what I want.  More about growing up female in a patriarchy on another day.

Let me back up.  I didn’t marry until I was 38 years old, and the thought of living with another person, much less a partner, was unfamiliar to me, except in my family of origin.  I remember early in my marriage I was a bit surprised because when I loaned a friend some money to buy a car, my husband was curious about my not talking with him first about it.  "Oh," I wondered, "I don’t know these new rules." By projecting how I would feel if he did that to me (ah, empathy...), I learned to be more courteous and collaborative rather than continuing to make all my financial decisions by myself, which I had done for so long.  Seemed to work better that way.

In any case, for several months around my 70th birthday, after three of my five family of origin members passed on to another space and time, I realized more viscerally how this physical life can be very short, or very long, and I wanted to do several new things for myself. So many practices, healing methods, and meditative and mystery school processes have helped me throughout time.* I actually have great gratitude for the isolation of the pandemic because  I found more time to listen more deeply to my Soul during these past few years than ever before.  Many types and styles of practices assisted me for the past 5 years of transformation and growth, and I am very glad I have also been able to participate in the healing power of psychedelic medicines in safe and well-guided settings, amongst peers, colleagues, new friends, and facilitators.

A year ago when my 99 yr old mother’s health got worse, I decided I could retire from my psychotherapy career (after considering this idea for a few years), and I had never really thought about that idea before then. Naive, silly, or limiting myself and my dreams, I know not what. I realized that I could actually retire and open up space to do something else in my life. having been a professional career woman for 45 years.  I have always been a very hard worker, nose to the grind, focused on learning, making money, being a good girl, helping others, and enjoying my career, as if work was the most important part of life, or at least a primary foundation or grounding for whatever else I have done. So, I began making plans to retire and move forward, shocking some of my peers because after all, psychotherapists work until extremely old ages, if they want to and can.

More than a year ago, I began creating a new website that went through many drafts and phases finally culminating in my current website: SacredFreedomRevolution.com The website partly attempts to define my interests these days and my mission and hopes for a better life for all.

Then when my mother died, I decided I wanted to buy a beach house and live at the beach or at least stay at the beach for some parts of the year, and yes, knew I could rent a place, which would be wiser than buying a home there, hurricanes and all. After reading Ann Morrow Lindbergh and May Sarton as a young woman, I romanticized this dream of living at the beach, being some sort of creative artist, even though I never took that seriously because I grew up very middle class with fear and insecurity about money and having enough. Scarcity vs. abundance.

Also, by this time I had been living in a city, Nashville, TN, where I have lived for almost 50 years and although it seemed kind of wild and adventurous to think about leaving Nashville, I felt ready.  I have my family to consider though, and I admit and confess to having moved them around a lot (probably far too often) even if in the same town. A repetition compulsion,** developed when my family of origin moved from town to town, house to house when I was young.  So again, I thought, “oh, it’s just my usual pattern of moving,” which I have enjoyed in my adult life but which became a coping mechanism or defense for all sorts of feelings, having been traumatized by so many moves in my early life. 

Being busy has been my primary coping skill and moving frequently helped me do that!  My geographical and emotional roots were often shallowed by moving so often, making for a pretty anxious person.  Earlier, moving was not in my control but was my parents’ decision.  So, having mastered moving myself throughout my adult years, I learned to just stay put for awhile as the years have gone by. I have loved every home I have ever lived in and homes became a constant energy or force throughout this life of mine, setting me up to love looking for homes, engaging with homes, picking homes that fit my current phase of life, and more.  Perhaps attaching me more to homes than to people at time, along with my attachment to every pet I have ever had.

This beach longing voice, a part of my inner being, had been getting louder and louder.A few years ago, I traveled down to the beach and spent almost a month there, feeling into what that would be like to live there. My family came too and it was delightful.  I am not sure words can describe how much I actually LOVED it, being in a remote beach area, few people, lots of sand, shells, sea creatures, big birds, salt, and a different kind of light and air.  In the Forgotten Coast of Florida, there are no high rises, no big box stores, few cars traveling the roads, and forests all around the beach areas, offering us so much oxygen, animals, sunrises, sunsets, and bird life, I just LOVED it. Peace and quiet, not the hustle and bustle of city life. Not as much concrete and noise, truck fumes and sirens, stores to shop in, and crime.

I traveled to another beach for a retreat a month later and again, loved the light, the air, and the peacefulness the beach offered me. Fast forward to my looking at houses online and finding out of the blue a realtor who sent me a few listings, and who said he had a special connection to one of the houses having lived there for awhile himself, 7 years ago.

As I tried to tell my financial advisor about my plans, I described a similar romance that also happened when I met my husband. I have a knowing. We might call it falling in love or we might say, I just have a knowing when something fits for me, it fits, and I want to live inside it and all around it, and it works out somehow. Not without conflict or stress at times, but feeling so aligned with me.

Of course this beach house was too expensive and surely someone else would buy it before we could decide about how to even think about such a move.  I even traveled down there alone to see this and other properties, and it didn’t feel good really. Not having my family there, being alone, wasn’t what I wanted, although I have often said and consciously thought in life: "I just want to be alone more."  Being alone there without my family did not fit, however, and I gave up this idea for awhile. On the back burner thinking, why not take the leap?

Weeks later the desire, the obsession returned.  I am writing about all this particularly to tell this next part of the tale.  Usually when I want something I am driven, I stride toward what I want with blinders on, tunnel vision so to speak.  This time I didn’t want to live my life that way or be as anxious and aggressive about what I want, and having learned from so many amazing teachers, mentors and energy healers lately, I decided on a different strategy.  My financial advisor said, “Be patient (the interest rates are high, there may be a recession, people will start selling properties for 1/2 their price soon, just wait.” So sensible.  

Patience is an important value for me to practice and is not natural for me.  So, I decided if this was "meant to be,” then it would happen and if it wasn’t meant to be, it wouldn’t.  I had heard that before from so many people including my mother, and I thought maybe I would sit still with this and see. Still thinking to myself, life can be so short. Now, writing about it in my sweet state of patience.

What I realized is that this process is about trusting in life, or the divine, or the Great Mystery. Or, having faith that what happens, which is surely not always in my control, is OK, it just is. As Byron Katie recommends, life just is, and we can accept life as it is. If we struggle against the flow, we use a lot of energy and drain ourselves.  Yes, I have influence and can navigate around choices and options, but I cannot make things happen like I had previously hoped or thought. What a myth! Just doesn't always work.

All of the sudden one week, as the beach house desire got whetted again, I realized something that I have not consciously experienced before: It seemed like I have already “moved” to this house at this particular beach location.  I was there already.  I joked with my husband about it, after setting up normal tasks to see if we can sell our house and for how much and what plan to use to make such a big decision as this. Ideas popped into me or out of me, like putting us on the waiting list for an Independent Living space here in town so that when and if we need such a space, we will have moved up the waiting list and can make that happen.  Like, not wanting to give up residence in Nashville, realizing we can always return, rent an airbnb, see our friends, our doctors, and family often. There were so many options about how to make this happen, I am still amazed, believing that it would happen. And, if it didn’t, that was OK too. Sure, I’d be disappointed, but I am practicing detachment along with living my dream even before I get to live it in this physical 3D reality - if I do.

As I realized I had already moved in some plane of my life, some interesting feelings and fantasies arose.  One morning, I woke up and realized that I was already enacting in my body, mind, and heart, where I would walk the dogs down there at the beach.  Maybe I would walk them out onto the 350 ft pier that penetrates the bay, but maybe I would walk the grounds of the community first with them, then feed them, and then take them to a nearby beach where we can walk in the white, warm sand, and view the ocean, the sky, the sun, and breathe that beautiful, satisfying salty air that envelopes us. I saw myself doing just that almost as if I was now leading a parallel life there along with being here at home, walking the beautiful green, spring time streets of Nashville after a nice rain. No longer as needy or pushy about the physical move at that point, because I was already there.

I am also holding on to this quotation as I allow these energies to flow:

"The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight." 

~ Joseph Campbell

* I want to thank so many of my teachers and mentors in my life, here are but a few: growing up with my parents; Breathwork training with Kenneth Robinson and Linda Manning; Art and Soul, Tobi Fishel and writing circles; Jenna Longmire and the Tree of Life Mystery School; Tammy Roth and all that she is and does; Rebecca Campbell and the Inner Temple Mystery School; Virginia Satir on a beach in Destin, FL for a month in the 1970's, learning all about family systems and magic; all the groups and circles I have participated in and all the members of these circles; my family; my friends and my clients, and so many more.

** That phrase, "repetition compulsion" and even the term "obsession" and "psychotic" are such pathologically oriented terms, I like to believe that many types of thinking, feeling and experiencing life are just fine unless they cause distress - even though I know sometimes we get into trouble using our best survival skills later on in life when those behaviors may hurt us more than they help us.

Barbara Sanders, Sacred Metamorphoses YouTube channel, Lineage and Poetry

https://studio.youtube.com/video/FoYTLFER3zg/edit

Serious Every Day

I have been serious every day of my life

And now

I can’t stop laughing

Giggling when I make mistakes or 

When non-harmful accidents happen

Laughing so hard at Steve Carrell in 

Bruce Almighty* that my abdomen hurts

Not being able to breathe while the 

Tears stream out of my eyes 

Giddy

Except maybe when I was a little girl

I can imagine myself laughing a lot then

Snickering at all the serious  big people 

Around me

Chuckling at nonsensical silliness

I have a family member who, when he was young and

Make a mistake, instead of saying how stupid he was

(Like most children I knew)

He would say: “How silly!”

I marveled at how his parents must have raised him

What joy, what comfort, what fun!

Maybe this only happens when

We older people have suffered and

Felt so much grief, sadness, and rage

So much of our lives that 

It is time to let go and

Let the child-like goofiness emerge

Bubbling up from way deep down inside

Hidden away for so very long

Now, we are so easily taken by surprise and 

Hope that we are not acting too sacrilegious or

Irreverent

And, now

If we are

Who cares?

* the clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iplfWUtKMzI

ReBecoming

Part 1 

What happens if I cut my metaphorical

Umbilical cord to my “mother”

My human deceased mother and

My society’s and culture’s “mother”

Which has actually been a patriarchal place to live

If I cut that cord to Mother

How will that feel?

How will I feel?

Will I float out into the cosmos separated from earth?

Will I detach from my usual worldly realities

So that I am unattached, all alone

Except for the Divine Mysteries?

(That's a big "except for”)

Will I live in a spiritual womb

That offers me all that I want

All that I need?

What will it be like to be with Spirit

All of the time

Not just once in awhile?

Daily, when I walk down the street and see

The goldfinches whizz by and hear

The young mockingbird singing

At the top of his lungs

Rejoicing in the sounds that he makes

I smile

These are gifts from Spirit

When I hear the doves coo

When I see dandelions and other wildflowers growing

All offerings of beauty and delight

Shared by Grace

I am happy

Perhaps these are sensory seductions of the Divine

If I cut my umbilical cord to Mother

Meaning to my earlier patriarchal conditioning and training

I may become an aging hippie crone witch

Living in the Florida swamps

Among the bugs and alligators

Spanish moss, pelicans, and osprey

Brown skinned, hot and sweaty

My hair, a tangled mess

Much like it was when I grew up

So that my mother braided my hair carefully

Every day for 7 years until

It was cut shorter

I may also become a large Amazonian priestess or

Shaman, I guess we never know

I may not feel rebellious toward my mother anymore

I may not feel defensive no matter what others

Say to me or in reaction to how people seem to feel around me

I may no longer really care much about how I look or

How I speak, no longer worried about acting appropriately

In public or even at home with other human beings

No, I may not really care much about those things any more

I will feel embodied breathing deeply, meditating 

(and whatever else I choose)

To help me dive into the Spirit world and be with the elementals and

The fairies in the deep, dank forests, wet and fertile

While I sing, chant, dance, and hum, bowing to Mother Earth

Illustrating my deep devotion to the Divine

Throughout the remainder of my life here

Unlike my mother, does Spirit require anything of me?

Do I need to replace Mother’s and follow Spirit’s rules

Dictating my behaviors, thoughts, feelings and deeds?

I wonder

What will life look like?

Who will I become?

I really don’t know

Not yet being able to shed

Many of the teachings I have learned

While growing up with Mother

If I disengage from my identity as

Mother's Child and

Deepen my identity with the Divine

Who am I really?

Who will I ReBecome?

I do thank my mother for all she helped me do and be

How do I unlearn or re-learn new ways of being, ReBecoming?

No longer nervous, anxious, or worried about doing all the “right” things

Not so tied to results of my performances while human

I will be free, liberated from the shackles I have adopted to bind me

I will race through the world at times, and at other times

Be so still that Spirit will hover closely beside me, within me, and I can

See and hear and feel and even touch more spiritual and mystical

Energies than ever before

I will be so relaxed and I will rest so well

I will feel deep, delicious, and sustaining energy

Without needing to create a job or a new career for myself

I will not have to work so hard but will create all sorts of art

Playing and enjoying my lazy days

Just being

Not doing

What paradise that may be!

What joy and bliss!

And, I don’t have to die physically to ReBecome

(Which I guess I may have believed before)

I can just sit with Grace and Love and not Do

Just Be

Feeling worthy and enveloped by the Love of

All the entities and guides

All the energies, dark and bright, that I wander through

While living in this world

I will be more content and comfortable

Than I have ever imagined being before

The best description is Peaceful

Amen

Hooray

And, so it is

Part 2

What will I miss if I am with Spirit all of the time

Or even more of the time?

I might miss all the rules I have learned so well

I know how to play by those rules (or rebel from them) and

Act like a success

I might miss being the anxious, excitable and

Enthusiastic, animated person that I am

You know, the one sometimes filled with adrenaline

Supercharged and hyper-vigilant while following

Mother’s seemingly easy rules

I might miss the attention I get from humans

Who seem to accept me (if I perform well)

But I have to wonder if I will need so much of

That kind of attention if I feel more at

One with Spirit?

I won't miss so much doing for others

Because I have often been driven to do more for them

Than they ever even wanted

Trying clumsily to maybe feel loved

Instead, I can do for myself and for others

As I get inspired to, rather than

Just being driven and bound to (tied to)

I know I fear that if I slow down too much

I will become a puddle on the floor

Not making myself exercise nor

Managing my food intake, instead I may be

Like an amoeba with no boundaries at all

Oozing and maybe even gushing at times

Spilling out, losing the self I have known

I fear getting heavy and that is about Mother, too

Maybe I also won't need so much soothing from food

Because I will be filled with Spirit

And maybe even more satisfied than

What my human body craves and delights in

(Salt, grease, and chocolate)

If I ReBecome, I may appear to other humans as

Brain damaged or psychotic

Maybe demented so that they may

Feel sorry for me and my family

Or not

Wow, what fears these are and more!

No wonder I have resisted this invitation by

Spirit to join more fully into the divine energies

More consciously, more exuberantly

Than I have ever before imagined

Having experienced such human fear and anxiety

What will my life be like

Without that fear and anxiety?

Heaven