For the past seven weeks I’ve been taking a wonderful workshop with Sandra Ingerman about connecting to Nature Spirits. We’ve journeyed to many animal, plant, elemental and other ancient beings. One of the journeys we did in class was to connect with a mountain. In my journey I asked if I could visit the deva of Mary’s Peak, which is part of the Coast Range that watches over the town of Corvallis from the west. I’ve wanted to connect with the deva since reading Grandma’s Song of Healing, by local author Harry MacCormack. In it he says that the local indigenous people of the area knew that the mountain has the power to attract spiritually aware people to the area. When I read that it resonated as truth within me.

I feel I was called specifically to Corvallis four years ago. Spirit (my general word for spirit guides, helpers and the universal Source of All That Is) arranged my journey here very precisely, and directed me to this exact place, though originally my plans were to move south of here to Eugene. I have met so many other spiritual practitioners, healers and lightworkers who got the same call to come to Corvallis within the past several years. It’s quite remarkable, as I truly had no idea I would be moving here until a few months before I got here. Others I meet say the same was true for them.

In the journey as the drumming began, I reached out to Mary’s Peak. It rose up out of the landscape as a deep green being with vortexes of red, purple, pink and gold moving within it. I asked her if she brought me here. She said yes, and I thanked her, as I love it here. She told me she has brought many others. Her vortexes are fractals, she extends them out across time and space to interact with our fractals in our soul/energy fields and helps to draw us here. We in turn connect to others' fractal lines as we interact with each other. She called it “Fractal Destiny.”

She showed me that she is on ley lines in the Willamette valley that she likens to energetic acupressure points on the earth. Activation occurs on the lines from many things, but us being here on them and having our circles, ceremonies, songs and dances really affects them. In turn, our personal intention to do our work, shine our light, connect with nature and helping spirits and one another has an amplified effect due to the location of these energy lines and points. That is one reason she calls us here. That and the fractal destiny we have with one another as we swirl through interactions we have with each other and our community.

 I’ve been thinking a lot about fractal destiny since then, and about how we all get to where we need to go in our lives. When Spirit nudges or pushes us strongly toward an area and we experience remarkable synchronicities and events supporting that, we can trust the message.  The ease and flow with which it happens are signs that we are fully supported. Of course we have free will and we can choose to stay where we are, but we shouldn’t be surprised if the opportunity comes around again. Spirit has many ways of getting us to where we need to be!

By consciously working with the power of spring at the vernal equinox, we set ourselves to the rhythm of nature. Being in tune with the cycles and spirits of nature helps keep us in a state of receptive flow. In that state it is easier to connect with our guides and helpers and the spirit in all things.

We need to work with the energy of renewal and cleansing on all levels. Physically this means cleansing the digestive and lymphatic systems. It can be as simple as a one day fast, and then a shifting out of our heavier winter diet from fats and starches like nuts and squash to fresh greens, herbs and berries. Nature has made it so that what is growing seasonally now is exactly what our bodies need to detox. Stinging nettles for tea and miners lettuce for salad are abundant now in Oregon. I like to use red root tincture or tea to help flush the lymph, and a daily massage with sesame oil to move lymph from extremities towards the heart for re-circulation.

Emotional cleansing can come up while we are physically cleansing. We may find ourselves grieving with unexpected depth for someone or something we have lost. Anger may also come up, especially if we are adding liver cleansing herbs like milk thistle and turmeric to our cleanse protocol. The energy of anger is stored in the liver.

Mental cleansing is necessary as well. Going on a news fast may be essential for our reset, and we may find we like it so much that we never go back to it, at least not to the same extent! I also reevaluate activities and people I have been spending time with and decide if they feel like an obligation or a partnership. Is the giving and receiving between us reciprocal?

Energetic spiritual cleansing can be done by journeying to our spirit helpers and asking them to help us see what needs to be released at this time. They may do a dismemberment for us. This sounds gruesome, but it really isn’t frightening. This is a universal type of journey that happens at least once to all spiritual seekers and journeyers. It can happen spontaneously in dreams as well as shamanic journey. Our spirit helpers will take our body apart by chewing or pecking off our flesh and scattering our bones. It can also be facilitated by an elemental like water or fire that dissolves the body. It can happen in a myriad of ways, but the end result is the same; we become free of our physical body for a time. We may look back and see our bones - and what was in us that no longer resonates with who we are becoming - dissolving into dust. We will feel an exquisite lightness as we rise, buoyant, and expand without limitation. We become conscious of ourselves as pure light. We may find ourselves expanded into infinite cosmic realms, aware, and a part of all that is. At the end of the journey we are always remade anew, stepping into our lighter, higher vibrational body. It’s like a spring clean for the soul.

As a kid I loved the spring clean feeling that came with the first mild spring days after the harsh New York winter. We opened all the windows in the house, letting the breezes sweep out stale energy. In line with the traditional spring cleaning of our homes, I clean my altars. I take all the dried flowers and herbs from last year’s ceremonies and offerings and give them back to the earth. In their place I put pussy-willows, daffodils, and camellia blossoms. I re-dedicate my altars to focus on what I want to grow in my life this season.

 I hope you’ll take a pause for a reset this season and see what ceremonies, rituals or self-care exercises come up for you. Feel free to share your methods of renewal in the community comments below.

Stinging nettles, Miner's lettuce, daffodils

Last month I felt the Reiki spirits stirring around me, as if they were putting me on notice. Around the same time I noticed that my Reiki was turning on in my hands when I was doing other spiritual or healing modalities like shamanic journeying and meditation. That was an interesting new experience!

So I wasn’t surprised when shortly after I noticed the stirring, I got a message from someone who wanted to learn Reiki from me. I told her that I would see if there were another person interested, because I needed at least 2 students to make a class.  Right away I found two other students and scheduled the class. It’s a rather unusual way to offer a class like this – on demand rather than pre-scheduled, but it works for me. And for the Reiki spirits as well apparently.

I was so excited to engage in the teaching of Reiki again, it had been awhile since I taught it. When I printed the student’s certificates, I saw the last time I taught Reiki was exactly one year ago. And it was almost exactly five years since I took Reiki 2 with Sensei Kelly Jackson, which changed my life forever. That was the experience that connected me with the true path of my heart and my life purpose. I have been thinking about this synchronous timing a lot the past few days.

I’m seeing this as a perfect illustration of the spiral of spiritual evolution. Our Higher Self and helping Spirits assist us with our work and growth. Their job is to expand our engagement and integration of key life lessons. Their message is “Yes, you’re revisiting this, and now you can take it to the next level.” I feel like this leveling-up was in noticing extra energy running through and around me before the class even came to be. And also in integrating a deeper connection to the attunement process during the class.

Before now, I had always experienced the spiral of evolution as one that brought only tough, often painful lessons. This happened a lot in energy healing workshops, as a core part of our learning is to look deeply at our own issues that are coming up to be healed. Many times I have said or heard a friend say “I thought I’d already dealt with this issue!” The teacher’s reply was always, “Yes, but life is a spiral, not a straight line. You’ve gone around the spiral to the same issue, but now you are ready to deal with it on a different level.”  We used to grumble then about never being done with our work!

But this recent experience has given me a new perspective on the spiral path of our soul-self evolution. It works the same way with issues we judge as positive, beautiful, and power-full as well as with ones we judge as negative or painful. Each one can have its challenges or opportunities, it depends on our perception. Each time we come around the spiral we have a chance to expand, energize and level up to a higher state of expression of our soul’s divine perfection. 

Like the spiral, our soul’s evolution may be an infinite path. Ever onward, ever upward.