There We Are: Somewhere Between the Earth & the Sky

It’s been over seven weeks since I left Oregon after burying my mother, laying her body to rest where she wanted to be, and honoring the years of her life both within and outside of our own. The weeks have felt like years. So much has occurred, so much changed, transpired. But we have been hearing about the 'normality' of the increased energies infusing our planet now for quite some time–that energies, frequencies entering the earth’s and our own magnetic fields, and infusing our bodies, are shifting our consciousness faster and faster. And these frequencies are more powerful than ever–more frequent in their occurrence as they infuse the earth, our bodies, and our consciousness. It's part of the evolution in consciousness many are experiencing and addressing.

For those who are sensitive to these energetic infusions, which is really all of us, these energetic infusions and shifts both speed up the process of change and change perception as well, making the perception of change even far greater. But so too as the magnitude of these powerful energies come in, many are experiencing these energies through agitation, grief, fretfulness, anger and fear, as they succumb to the idea that the world has simply moved into danger, chaos, and everything ‘unlike’ them, everything that does not conform to their ideas of reality, which they believe keeps them safe, is somehow ‘threatening’, ‘fearful’, or just ‘plain wrong’ and to be avoided at all costs.

And I have to laugh, for no sooner had I experienced the presence of others’ fear around me than Lee Harris of leeharrisenergy.com gave his monthly energy tune-up in which he described, as an intuitive, the prevailing energies that we would all be encountering throughout July. It was one of his gifts–to be able to 'read' these larger energy fields beyond the individual one. And one of the primary energetic patterns he spoke of in his Energy Tune-Up for July was “Alignment and Rejection.” If we are not energetically aligned with someone, our environment, circumstances or whatever, we are likely to be ‘pushed out’ of those circumstances, or those people who are not aligned with our own energies are let go from our own lives. Our choice is simply to be in the Truth of who and what we are–not to try and forcefully change everything and everyone around us. People and circumstances will either fall away or align to us.

Sometimes easily, sometimes forcefully.

Alignment and Rejection. Well, I certainly got to experience the rejection, and only days before Lee’s update. And I knew too, even in the midst of the confused feelings of rejection, it wasn’t rejection, it was about Alignment, though at the moment of rejection it was hard to acknowledge amidst the uncertainty, the change. No one wants to be rejected…

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Leaving Oregon, after my mother’s funeral and memorial, I made my way back to Arizona. Along the way, I passed through and stayed near Mt. Shasta where Ruby and I hiked, meditated, basked in the sun, and walked in the powerful energies of its presence.

Mt. Shasta has been known as a powerful center of the earth for a very long time. A dormant volcano, it’s not truly part of any mountain range, though it’s frequently referenced as part of the lower Cascades. With a summit of 14,125 feet above sea level, Shasta is regarded as the second highest peak in the Cascade Mountain range. Her slopes rise abruptly almost 10,000 feet above the surrounding landscape. She literally stands as a veritable summit of grace, mystery, and sacred energy.

Like the energy vortexes in Sedona, Arizona, Mt. Shasta is a place where one can feel powerfully one’s own energetic body, one’s own luminous body, and experience oneself more deeply, emphatically, as energy–an energetic Being expressing in and through physical form. To walk there on the trails, and bathe there in the reflection of its light, is a renewing experience. For the three days I spent there, I felt like I got to be renewed in the energetic frequencies of the mountain, the clarity of its presence, the pristine beauty of its meadows, forests, and streams. I felt a clarity come back to me in my own body and heart, and where I was headed. I got to sing too the vibrational song-lines Mt. Shasta’s nature inspired in and through me. The nature of her presence filled me with loving joy, compassion, gratitude, and freed further what felt to be ‘my voice,’ what it is I am meant to sing, meant to Be, in the days and years ahead.

As Ruby and I sat, played, and dreamed in her presence, I felt that no matter where I was, I was a part of this beautiful earth, an echo and vibration of the powerful song-lines sung by ancient ancestors so far back, we have no clear record of them other than our deepest knowing they were and continue to be here in our presence.

It does not surprise me that I have unconsciously spent so much time around Mt. Shasta in my life, though initially, not knowing her sacred power. In my twenties I’d spent many days at a Buddhist Monastery at the base of its height, visiting multiple times a year. And in these last months on the west coast, I’d driven and rested in her power and clarity several times already. This time, after my mother’s burial was especially significant–re-aligning me to habits of Being I’d let soften and morph as I spent time with my family–not wanting to appear demanding, picky, or critical. And after four days of clarifying walking and sitting, Ruby and I felt ready to head back down through California and then over to Arizona to the gated senior community in which my mother and step-father had been for the last fifteen years.

When my parents moved to Arizona, one of my sister’s and her husband also bought a place in the community, to be near and assist them as they needed. Since I have been on the road these last months, they offered their place to rest, to regroup and consider my next move after my mother’s death. It was a lovely offer–gracious and generous. I took them up on it, unsure yet when I would be ready and able to head back east or to my next destination.

The community is organized around an oasis of a golf course–an emerald green gem in the middle of the desert. Flanking the course were small vacation homes, community club houses, two pools, a gym, courts for tennis, racket ball, and more. There is a library, a hall for large events, central offices, and services. It was a safe place for our parents where caregivers were readily available. A place that gave them community, social activities, and multiple ways to engage physical and social activity. For years they had lived in Montana, but the winter snow and ice had become too much for them to navigate on their small ranch.

Staying in the community, I was a bit of an outlier: while I was of the age that could apply to live there–in my mid-to-late-fifties–I was nowhere near the average constitutional presence of most of the community’s members. Ruby too was outside the bounds by 10lbs. of what was normally permitted in the community. But we were staying next to one of the gates that allowed traffic in and out of the community, and each morning, I would rise early and walk Ruby outside the park. Then, we’d return for breakfast, then I’d gather us both and we’d go to the Colorado River that wound through the landscape nearby. Ruby would swim, and I would throw sticks and read or write for several hours. When the heat reared its voracious mid-day gaze, Ruby and I would head back to my family’s place where we’d spend the hottest hours of the day inside, working, resting, or organizing things of my mother’s to be distributed or taken to community organizations where others could benefit from them. Then once more we’d head back out for Ruby’s evening constitutional.

For two weeks, this was the routine for us. And it gave me a chance once more to ‘ground’ myself back into the rhythms of my own work–channeling for a weekly group, beginning to plan an online course, write, and work individually with clients. As well as reflect more deeply on my mother’s passing, and our relationship. All good. All needed.

It was a surprise then, when one morning, I received a call from my brother-in-law who said, “Allannah, the office needs you to fill out paperwork for your car.” Fine, I thought. Simple enough. I’ll go immediately. And so I went.

To my startlement and shock, the car was hardly addressed. Instead, I was what can only be described in so many ways as ‘interrogated’. While they knew my relatives (parents, sisters, brother-in-law) and the fact that we owned two properties in the community, they wanted to know, “Why are you still here? Don’t you belong somewhere? Three weeks is long enough to take care of your mother’s details. And your dog, it’s too large–it has to go. You have to go.” The emphasis on the ‘you’ jolted me, as it made it clear this interrogation was not really so much about the car, about the dog, but somehow ‘ me.’ Their questions and intense interrogative attitude was leveled at me–the questions they asked, the inferences they made. I was startled, and unsure what could have occurred to have them respond this way. And more profoundly, I could also not understand what felt like some underlying deep fear. How was it that I appeared threatening? How was it that a simple dog who behaved so well could break ‘their camel’s back’? It had only been a couple of days over two weeks. I had been here before visiting my parents. And I had had lovely conversations with some of the community in the pool, the gym. Nowhere had I felt ‘rejected.’

To appease them, I sought to find Ruby a place to be for the extra week or so I had planned to stay. And indeed, I did find a place, only she could not arrive until Thursday evening or Friday early, and it was now Tuesday. I let them know. But on Wednesday morning, the day before the 4th of July weekend, I received a phone call at 8:05 am informing me that I was officially ‘trespassing’ and if I did not leave the community immediately, I would be arrested–for trespassing!

“You have to go,” said the woman on the phone. “You don’t belong here.”

I was shocked, incredulous, and in those moments fearful, anxious, and startled. They wanted me out immediately. I had to literally plead, cajole, to be allowed to stay until evening to properly close-up my sister’s place, pack, and ensure my mother’s place also was secured for the coming months.

And where would I go? I had not yet thought through my ‘next move.’

But there it was…. Rejection and Alignment: Out.

And so I began to pack: breathing deeply, methodically, as I gathered my bags, folded clothes, gathered books, cleared food, and cleaned, knowing I’d be leaving and probably not returning for some time. And regardless of my sister’s and brother-in-law’s efforts long-distance to change the circumstances, the ‘evening’ deadline remained.

“I am so sorry…” my sister apologized on the phone. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand why they are being so rude…” I could feel the tears in her eyes, the confusion in her throat.

“It’s Ok,” I assured her. “It’s just not meant to be. It’s Ok… I know it’s not you…”

Somewhere inside, I knew it was about fear, control, and the need to assert their authority–to keep the status quo in the community. But I did not know how I disrupted the community. And a part of me felt panic–where was I to go? I had planned to be there for a month or two, to re-organize, re-coup and rebuild my funds. I had never been kicked out of a place, and I had, in my many years of travel in the Middle East, Central Asia, Turkey, Russia, Southeast Asia and other places ‘in transition’ been in real moments of political crisis in which my life or others’ lives could have been in imminent danger. I had landed in Kyrgyzstan in the middle of its last uprising and government upheaval–driving through the streets of Bishkek empty save for burnt out cars, military tanks, and barricades, our car eerily the only vehicle passing in the very early post-fire dawn. Smoke still smoldering up from a building off the main square, and soldiers leaning into the car to look at me, to speak with the driver… Now, I had to get on the road in short order and prepare not only myself but two properties to do so. I took a deep breath in, asked the Universe for assistance, and began packing as methodically as I could.

As I packed, I tried to ‘think through’ anything I might have done, stated, that would have made them fear me, not want me in their presence. But there was nothing I could come up with. They knew my mom and step-father and spoke fondly of them. Those who knew my sister and brother-in-law spoke affectionately of them as well. “There have been complaints” they said evasively, “about Ruby…” But Ruby seemed hardly enough to threaten ‘trespassing’ and ‘arrest…’ especially when I responded by immediately finding her a place to be.

It is hard to describe the feelings and state of mind Ruby and I were in late in the day as we began to drive east away from the Colorado River, the temperature still well over 110. In the rear-view mirror, the sun looked burnished as it settled over the distant Spirit Mountain and Grapevine Canyon where Ruby and I had explored some of the oldest known Native petroglyphs in the early mornings before the heat belted down on the day. We would walk, sit, and marvel at the deer loping in pictographs across the granite, allowing their sacred presence to speak to us as deeply as possible. I would marvel that Havasupai Natives and other tribes had spoken to the universe and recorded their wisdom there and that we, so many hundreds of years later, could put our fingers on the pulse of its knowing.

As the sun burned in the late sky in the rear view mirror, I tried to hold that feeling again, to let the energy of those images on stone to lift us once more into the realm of spirit, the realm of gratitude, and the intimate knowledge that the universe was larger than what we could see, and that actions were being taken on my and Ruby’s behalf that we could not yet know, realize or understand. That night in a motel miles now away from those sacred images, exhausted and befuddled, I let Ruby sleep next to me on the bed, her body tucked deep into the harbor behind my knees, an anchor in an otherwise ungrounded moment.

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We slept deeply. The next morning, we rose late, walked, slept again. It was clear my body was needing to release the stress, the shock. For three days, Ruby and I rested in Kingman, a town largely now developed and focused around senior care, the welfare of the aging. Each morning, we woke to the heat of the sun already building in the day. And without any forethought, on the second day, I suddenly found myself laughing out loud immediately upon waking.

“Oh, my god, Ruby” I said, "Unbelievable… Unbelievable.”

And the truth was, it was. Unbelievable. Suddenly, it occurred to me, dawned on me, that I had been asking for almost two weeks for the Universe to show me where to be, to show me where to go next. And while it might not have come in the way I wanted, might not have looked like the answer I wanted, the Universe was indeed showing me where I was NOT suppose to be. It had in fact given me a good swift kick in the butt to get out of what somewhere inside of me I knew felt like a ‘safety zone’, a place I was being because I had not yet committed to any next move. And I laughed further too because I recalled the times I had heard the “Zs” channeled by Lee Harris, and the Guides, channeled by Paul Selig, say that when we ask we receive–but not necessarily how the small self, the personality self, wants to receive it. Our Soul has other plans for us, and when we ask and don’t hear or listen, we get the answer anyway–but often in a form that arrives through discomfort or sudden change. I wondered, “What had I not allowed myself to hear, see…?” I didn’t know, but at this point, it seemed not to matter either. I was out on the road again.

Later that day, when I spoke to my friend, Cara, who was arriving imminently to visit and to tell her what had happened and that instead of staying in Bullhead and Laughlin, we’d be staying entirely in Sedona for her visit, I laughed too because she reminded me of a conversation that I had had with a man I’d met at a coffee shop in Bullhead: He had said, “Do you know how much you stand out here? Do you know how ‘other’ you look here–alive, vital, awake. My god, you are awake when you come into this place, alive–everyone looks up. It’s how I noticed you–everyone else looking up.”

“It’s not Ruby” she said. “It’s that you represent a presence that they’re not ready for…”

I laughed and thought about how often Lee Harris, an intuitive and transformational leader, had talked about the fact when we are indeed energetically present, others notice, and are either attracted or somehow fearful and pull away or push us away.

I thought about meeting Ted in the coffee shop. How in fact he was a gift of presence for me as well. In fact, he and I went on to have several more conversations in the days following our meeting, for indeed, we both appreciated the connection–spiritual connection in which the word ‘energy’ was a well-received and an understood phenomenon, presence. He had come to the area to be with an close elderly friend who was in the final stages of his life, a friend who had served in WWII and found this area of Arizona to be highly attractive in his later years. He wanted to be there for his friend who had been present for him at various moments in his life.

We found each other’s company welcoming, even vital in a community in which it had proven difficult to connect spiritually with others; though, when he told me his name I had nearly gotten up and quietly left: Theodore P. Carrenter. It was too much, far too close to T’s name for me to be easy with it–T’s name was Theodore as well. When he said his name, I had thought to myself, “What kind of joke is the Universe trying to play on me?” T. was still so much with me, so much in my heart these months to be able to find any man attractive beyond friendship.

But like myself though, this man stood out in this environment–arriving in his well cared for older Jaguar, wearing worn blue jeans and a deep blue jacket, his eyes a constellation of fiery blue as he read the New York Times and smiled over its top edge above his readers. He was intelligent, present, alive. I had told Cara about him and his own astonishment at finding me to visit with there–how he felt he had truly been in the desert without Soul food. Though he was quick to add, “It is not to criticize anyone here, it is simply to say, ‘We are not in resonance–I don’t share a great deal…’”

Cara reminded me of all this on the phone as she laughed with me and found my circumstances somehow not only not surprising but somehow predictable. And I laughed, knowing its truth. She reminded me too that it was ‘not me’ who had been rejected, but ‘presence’ itself, that to have me in the community was a mirror for what others in the community were not embracing in themselves. That was what was threatening. When we are energetically present to our Souls, those around us feel it, and it asks them to experience their own connection to Source, to experience and engage their Souls, as well as what they have not been connected to in their lives, and this takes them out of any complacency, exposes their fears and more.

Lee Harris and the “Zs” and Paul Selig and ‘the Guides’ had all spoken of this so many times: when we attend to our interior life, our Souls, eventually, our outer life is required to change. People who are not energetically aligned with us fall away, or we separate from them out of a need to live more deeply, more aligned with others.

Alignment and rejection. The Universe was not allowing me to ‘hide’, even for a while, in a retirement community, not allowing me to become complacent in a place where I was not energetically aligned. And because I had not removed myself, Source stepped in to help me along.

I had been asking for direction, and I had received an answer.

As Ruby and I walked Kingman, I thought of Ted from the coffee shop and how I would not even be able to say “good-bye” and “thank you” to him. I didn’t have his phone number–we simply knew we’d see each other there at the coffee shop. I thought of him and his ‘echoing’ of Ted, of ‘T’, who I'd been carrying with me on this entire journey, whose presence simply so often accompanied me throughout the days. What was this ‘Ted’ trying to show me? The “Zs” often say we’ll meet the same person in our lives over and over again, just a different version, or a version more in alignment with who we are or have become. Was this ‘Ted’ another energetic version? Or the same? The fact was, he did remind me of T. A lot. Though there was indeed difference, there was so much similarity. And why was Source being so direct by having his name literally be the same as “T”’s. As I walked through the town and parks with Ruby, I pondered all this. I had come so far on this journey, and still there he was, present with me, as clear as day, as close as breath.

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One of the first things I do when I arrive somewhere is Google for dog parks–parks where Ruby can be off leash and play, have a sense of her own autonomy. In each place, we would wake, get coffee, write, and then head to a dog-park where Ruby and I would play. Kingman had a lovely one, and so we ventured there our second morning.

Not long had we been there than a tall, lanky man walked in with a small grey tight-haired dog. He sat at one of the tables and read while his dog wandered over to greet and play with Ruby. I played with the dogs for a while. I hung back from saying, “Hello.” All too often I had been ‘approached’ by well-meaning men in dog parks, as if there were some unwritten law of “woman alone with dog” equals “let me approach you for conversation….”

I had developed a pretty intense posture in parks to ward off unwanted conversations, unwanted gestures. I wasn’t looking for someone, especially on the road at a dog park. I was of all things still entirely connected to Ted. But for whatever reason, I decided to venture over and say, “Hello” since our dogs were hard at play with each other. Perhaps it was the book, perhaps it was simply because he didn’t take my being there with Ruby as an ‘opportunity.’

“May I join you?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said looking up. “Glad for it.” And he laid down the book he’d been reading, placing a small string between the pages as a marker.

We chatted for a while. Laughed at the dogs, threw sticks. Again, here was a man who was well cared for, articulate, alive and present in his body. He had retired here to Kingman and found himself exploring the region–its history, archeological sites. He felt the history of the country deeply, felt that if people could only see it through the land and the people's relation to it, they'd feel very differently about our country right now.

“I’m a great guide” he said, “if you ever want to explore…”