The Crying Game

I've just returned from Belgium after a week of nonstop sound healing training, soul excavating, and integration - to say tears were shed doesn't begin to cover it - there was so much more - thus the title of this piece - The Crying Game.

I'll go ahead and destroy your hopes that this piece is not about the 1992 romantic thriller starring Stephen Rea and Forest Whitaker. I've contemplated the games we play with ourselves to keep from feeling, from crying, from wailing to fit into an unsafe societal construct - I didn't have that worry for a week - I was surrounded by those witnessing and witnessing and witnessing simultaneously in our own divine paradoxes. To know you're in a sacred, safe space to FEEL and integrate is a blessing - one I would wish each person would have the grace to find at LEAST once in their lifetimes. Staying in a property originally built in the 1200s on ancient Celtic soil was magical - I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that. The property has borne witness to those on pilgrimages to the local monastery and wars - deep in the Ardennes, she knows a thing or two because she's seen a thing or two - you could feel it in the lake, in the stones, and in the trees. The land gave me a song to sing to her as I offered her honey at the base of a sacred hill with 7 elderflower trees upon it. A hill that has witnessed many Celtic fire ceremonies - a sacred terrip.

All week we worked with the rattle, drum, and voice calling in those who would know and understand the needs of the one before us. Meeting specific spiritual guiding teachers along the way - well, I met one in a terrifying dream - but that's how some power animals are. There's no secret sauce to coming home to oneself - just surrender, acceptance, and tears, a lot of them. Some tears shed in joyous reunion and some in weeping sorrow. None of them were in shame - that's a societal projection that I wish would cease to exist. Tears are a cleansing mechanism that opens up communion with the sacred salt waters of our beloved Mother Earth.

Google tells me we humans are the only mammals that cry due to emotions - I highly doubt that. I was told animals don't feel pain like we do, as a Preclinical Trial Manager, I witnessed otherwise. Other species simply don't judge each other for the tears they shed in mourning the loss of a beloved one - in fact, they embrace that mourning one with witness and unconditional love - we could learn so much from them. I also avoided my phone all week, save tracking my late luggage - that too was wonderful.

When I laid tarot cards out for the coming 2025 year for me back at Winter Solstice, I did not grasp the weight of the 2 of cups that was to be April - the becoming whole and one with the self through sound in a way that I have never experienced except maybe in some long ago past life where resonance was the way in which beings communicated so readily there was no separation between the avatar and the soul. I feel a bit like the Grinch here, complaining about the noise we have now in our world. The noise of engines, news, gossip, and just plain bullshit. Tuning all that out in our modern world without becoming a monk or a hermit is essential - thus why I went to the canyon today to drum and sing - I essentially had the place to myself, how I wanted it to be - I had plenty of chorus members - hummingbirds and frogs mostly - you know, the best backup singers ever.

King Gator, the funny, carefree, flamboyant, bubbly, gigantic alligator from All Dogs Go to Heaven, was an inspiration this week with his heartfelt duet with Charlie B. Barkin' "Let's Make Music Together." I sang it to one of the participants as we danced together - it was soul healing to be playful like that again after years of initiation after initiation after initiation - a round robin for years worth of triggers, trauma, and loneliness. But to say that these last years weren't my greatest teachers would be a boldfaced lie - because THEY WERE. I learned to see anew, to trust my intuition, my instincts, and most of all that my prayers are most certainly heard. Additionally, to be so deeply held by my ancestors - the deep healing and return to sovereignty of my maternal line, and the tree that stepped forward for my paternal line - I dreamt of them, danced with them, and wept because I miss them.

The cover photo, cinquefoil in bloom, was one of the first beings I communed with on the land at the training - eating a leaf as if it were offering me its wisdom of resilience and endurance - something that I seem to have cultivated over the last nine years or so, yet I already possessed deeply thanks to my ancestors - the ones who stepped boldy into the I AM HERE space without question. I don't think I'd still be here if I didn't have that coded within my own blueprint - the resilience and endurance - it goes well beyond athletic training and competition. My first healer and teacher, Ilka, in Berlin, used to tell me that my vessel was trained enough; there were other matters to attend to that required training. I would use the outer athletic training to mask the inner need to develop my spiritual self, and let me tell you, dear reader, that only works for so long. When I was hit by a car on my bike, for the second time in November 2019, I had a choice to make - continue on the path I was on or choose another. I chose the other, and I have not regretted that choice. I spoke about choice in another piece (To be blind pretending not to see) - we always have a choice.

So now I ask, what are you choosing?

I leave you with the Diné traditional prayer, “The Beauty Way.”

In beauty I walk
With beauty before me I walk
With beauty behind me I walk
With beauty above me I walk
With beauty around me I walk
It has become beauty again
It has become beauty again
It has become beauty again
It has become beauty again

Hózhóogo naasháa doo
Shitsijí’ hózhóogo naasháa doo
Shikéédéé hózhóogo naasháa doo
Shideigi hózhóogo naasháa doo
T’áá altso shinaagóó hózhóogo naasháa doo
Hózhó náhásdlíí’
Hózhó náhásdlíí’
Hózhó náhásdlíí’
Hózhó náhásdlíí’