(Continued from “My Own Tsunami”)
What followed was a rearranging of everything I knew. On one level, I call the injury “karma fast forward”, where I was challenged to let go of that which no longer served and had to learn to absolutely trust a higher power for everything. When you realize that you may never walk again, may never even do the simplest things that we take for granted, your ego crashes and dies while something else is born. For me, what was being born was whatever that whale wanted me to become. It was all about the whale.
For those few months that I was immobilized in bed, I felt like the whale was taking over. I saw a blue light almost constantly, like a sphere that hovered over things, around things and within my inner eye as I closed my eyelids. I was being held by a blue bubble of light.
When I first realized I could not move my legs, I inwardly dove down, with my inner eye, to the root of my spine, and took a look there. I knew that whatever was preventing me from walking was at the base of my spine. My spine somehow had broken.
What I saw at my root was a whale, almost dead, with a heart rate I could only describe as nearly flatlining. My relationship with the whale, and its rhythm, guided my healing and all the work with the biodynamic osteopath who cared for me with unsurpassed skill and attention. All I knew is that to fully heal, whatever that meant, I needed to completely surrender to the intelligence within that whale and let it consume me.
As my healing progressed, I felt like that blue light, and the body of that whale, was moving up my legs towards my head. As the blue light progressed upward, I was able to wiggle my toes, then my ankles, then my legs. After a couple of months, as the light fully consumed me, I was able to roll slowly over onto my side, then my stomach. This took weeks of intensive meditative surrender and absolute trust in the higher consciousness beyond my ego. I knew nothing of what was happening, yet I knew exactly what was happening. I felt a oneness with something so much greater than “me”. All I knew was THAT was all I needed to know. I might never walk again, but whatever was happening was totally OK.
With immense faith in pure consciousness and the power of that consciousness to heal, I let go. I was being challenged to surrender with absolute trust to the force of life that unconditionally loves and supports my highest good.
Through my healing, I also actively worked with a system called MAP: Medical Assistance Program, created by Machaelle Small Wright. It instructs us how to co-create with Nature Spirits, the Devic Realm and a group from the Cosmic Intelligence to assist and amplify our healing progress. I had been working with my MAP group for years. Now that working relationship was being taken to a whole new level.
As I connected to these unseen energies, I could feel that I was tapping into the very fabric of life, the vibrant intelligence that co-creates to manifest form, that weaves together the seen and unseen. I could feel Nature’s overwhelming sense of receptivity to my willingness to participate in the dance of life. It is staggering that we have at our disposal a resource of such power, all the while, Nature compassionately and patiently waits for our simple willingness to open and go there.
Through this process of healing, my body began to express itself as an infant’s would. An inner impulse to roll onto my tummy from my back came spontaneously from within. If ever I “tried” to move in any way, I was subjected to the most mind-altering electric shock treatment you could imagine – one I describe to my friends as “if you slowly cut off my arm, it would be less painful.”
The impulse then followed, once on my tummy, to gently press up on my arms and look around. Eventually I was able to press up onto all fours from my tummy. Then it was crawl, then reach up, then stand up, then walk. It was a rebirth. By June 1, 2011, I stood on my feet again for the first time.
In the months that followed through the summer of 2011, I had to learn to put one foot in front of the other, in a whole new way. The whale had guided me through a shamanic journey. I went from feeling at first inundated in a cosmic soup, like an ocean of consciousness, when the injury first struck. As the weeks progressed, somehow consciousness was taking a crystalline shape, like salt in the sea. I was part of those crystals. Then I became like a sea creature, like the whale in a fluid oneness with that oceanic purity. Then I became a land creature, like a lion, as I crawled around the floor as a baby would. As I grabbed onto things to pull myself up into standing, I was like a monkey. Then a new human body was born. None of this was anything I could figure out. It was a force so much greater than me. It was growing inside me, like life itself, enveloping me, consuming me, transforming my very cells. I did not understand how it was working. But it was working and that is all that mattered. And there was no bargaining with its omniscient power.
By the end of July, I was almost well enough to go see my spiritual teacher Amma, who was visiting from India. Not yet physically able to sit, I was able to lie in the back seat of a car, and then barely walk up to see Her. As She greeted me, I looked into Her eyes and bawled. I could not control my legs or spine. My body was a marionette controlled by a force other then my will. I saw there in the most visceral way that I am literally not the doer. This body is a beautiful and perfect vehicle for Divine Will. My job is to get out of the way and witness. Through my tears, I asked if I ever would dance and perform again. She said yes, "after some time".
By the end of October, 2011, I was headlining a festival in Florida, back on stage singing, dancing, in rapturous surrender. It WAS a miracle. And the cherry on top of the miracle, if there can be such a thing, was that the concert I gave was a benefit concert for Amma’s Embracing The World charity. Perfection of perfections.
(Continued tomorrow with “Nature’s Perfect Love”)
