My Early Spiritual Life

I've always been a very spiritual person. My earliest memories of feeling God were on a swing singing. I felt escstatic, joy overflowing. I think one of the reasons I have always wanted to fly is because of those body memories. Every Sunday at my Catholic Church, I remember feeling in total awe of my surroundings. I would feel myself soaring in the rafters of the church, way above..not in an out of body sense, but elated. I fervently prayed to Mary- she was the one I focused in on in my childhood. I had various statures of her, a blue rosary, even a blue Bible. I felt called to be a Nun so I could devote my life to Mary and Jesus.

It was a little before I reached the age of eleven that I started to have slight shifts in my ideas about the nunnery. By the time of my Confirmation I knew that something was wrong with the church I went to. In that ritual, the Bishop was supposed to symbolically slap us (it wasn't a strong slap, more like a tap). In response our ritual response was to kiss his ring. I remember feeling full on rebellion.

By the age of 13, I was done with Catholicism. I remember sitting in church, having a difficult time listening. I could find no shred of reverence or respect for the what I felt were hypocritical teachings and rituals. The Eucharist no longer took my breath away. I had long ago stopped going to Confession. All I could see was people making their four year olds come to church and sit for an hour when it wasn't their nature, and yell at or spank them for being who they were. I stopped going to church entirely at age 14. I had discovered that Christianity wasn't the only religion in the world. Even in the Midwest.

A teacher in my high school had introduced our advanced college prep English class to Krishnamurti, the Moody Blues, Paramahansa Yogananda and Herman Hesse. We read his book, Siddhartha. I read all of Hesse's books after that. My world changed.

Here was my Path- the Path of Life. Of fully going into it, embracing both the ecstasy and the pain. When I read Narcissus and Goldmund I saw that I had been Narcissus when young. I had been taught, and in my trust I believed, that the way to God was through structure and religion. Now I felt/knew/remembered that my true Path to God was through the body. Goldmund's woodworking, his finding the ecsatic in sex and the body rang true for me.* Texts, lessons, scriptures, rules, laws, commandments were all about the mind, not the heart. Here, my heart flew. I knew I had found my spiritual me.

I lived in Detroit at the time--not a haven for the mystically minded. I had no Teachers, no guides. I became pathologically shy.** I literally couldn't talk, except to my family and a few close friends. I mean literally...I would open my mouth and could not speak. It was weird.

I started smoking, drinking and taking drugs (the speed cured me of shyness). My reading interests were books on Hinduism and other Eastern thought and Satanism...which, I'm sure completely freaked my mother out. When I took acid, all my trips were spiritual. I had visions of spiritual symbols, read the Bible while high. I became a vegetarian at age 17, much to the chagrin of my grandparents who were cattle ranchers. I was a wild child, a Child of the Wind. (which I remember singing running down the road one winter night higher than a kite on acid with my shirt off....heheheh...quite fun!)

Then in my second year of college, I met my soon to be husband. I knew we were soul mates. I knew we had been together lifetime after lifetime and that this was more a matter of finding each other again than mere chance encounter and attraction.

Not much is available to my brain about that part of my life. I know I drank alot. I worked alot. We went camping alot. I know I had a spiritual life, but I also felt a bit lost. I had read this book that said if you drank or smoked, you were not worthy of being on a spiritual path. I remember throwing the book away.

We got preganant. I had my first daughter in a hospital. The birth wasn't a bad one, it was intense and really fast. The only "complication" was when the placenta didn't come out within three minutes so the doctor decided he needed to dig his hand into my belly and massage the uterus to detach it.** This was extremely painful, equalling a contraction, but worse because it was such a violation. He was being so forceful that blood sprayed all over him and the wall behind him when the placenta detached. And this while my daughter was still on my belly. The nurses were furious, but nothing like I was, once I came down from the high of giving birth.

But that man did me a service. My anger over this and other invasions after the birth gave me a cause. I was going to save babies and mothers from the medical profession. I became a midwife.

Birth is an extremely powerful experience. A birth at home is nothing like one in the hospital. I've never felt the energy in a hospital that I do at home. I could feel it the minute I would walk in the door. I have only kindasorta seen(?) one spirit in my life and it scared the shit out of me enough to know that I don't want to ever see one again. But I feel Spirit. I feel the energy. When you walk into a house where a mother is in labor there is a whole host of Beings and energy around there to assist this new Spirit into the world.

Those experiences of feeling Spirit, of witnessing and being midwife to souls entering the world opened me to other places within myself. I didn't know where I was going, didn't know it had a name, but I knew I had to find out what I was feeling.

A new chapter began.....

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* This was my first realization/connection with Tantra, even though I had no idea that Tantra existed then.

**many years later, I got an astrological reading done by a man named Edwin Steinbrecher. I will talk about him in a later post, but he told me I had two of three "alien" constructs in my chart. It is common for teens with any one of the constructs to become shy, suicidal, alienated if they have no mentors at this time in life. It was an immense relief to hear about this.

*** completely unnecessary and dangerous...not to mention a really rude thing to do to a newborn baby and mother.

Photo/Art credits:

St. Peter's ceiling from Declan McCullagh

Carved Wooden Leaf from Paris Parfait

Birthing Universe by Majak Bredell