Eclipsing Light

I had a friend tell me once that I was a lighthouse. I thought it was a nice thing to say, but I didn’t totally understand what that meant. I guess, simply, someone who emits light.

Then, many years later I met someone and thought…that person is a lighthouse. Because at the time, I was in dark, stormy waters. But in their eyes was something familiar. Like someone lighting a match in the middle of a dark room.

I felt like one of those boats, out in choppy waters on a moon-less night, trying to stay afloat. And there, in the distance and through the fog…a light. A light that says, you are not lost, come this way.

I am reminded of a trip my sister and I took to St. Augustine, FL. She was walking and dancing on a wall of stones by the bay, while the lighthouse in the distance flashed its lights in intervals. I stood with my camera, soaking up the night sky and watching her skirt sway in the wind and in rhythm with her dance.

I had to wait for the times when the light would shine in our direction, to be able to get the picture of it illuminating the scene.

And I now sit here feeling in my heart the importance of darkness and the light, and how one seems to follow the other. And even more so, that when the light isn’t shining in one direction, it’s shining somewhere else.

In May of this year, I lost all of my light. I had nothing to give and nothing to shine on anyone. I thought I might die of nothingness, as all I knew was giving.

This came as a result of “healing”. Healing that was unlike anything I’d known before. It twisted me inside out and backwards, it chewed me up, spit me out and chewed me back up again.

I came face to face with the ugliest parts of me and the ugly in others too. And for the first time, I didn’t want to run. I wanted to know what it was like to stand, tall and wide as an oak tree, face to face with everything I’d run from my whole life.

I wanted to know what would happen next.

And that’s when the light turned off.

But now I know, it didn’t turn off…it changed direction.

It lit up the inside, rather than the outside. I thought I would die, not emitting light to the external world.

And in a way, I did. I turned inside out.

And little by little, I started seeing that light emitting from me again.

May we all know what it’s like to be the lighthouse and to be the ship in dark, stormy waters. Remembering that we’re all in this together, even when we’re alone.

In the Meadows

Does Ease still know my name?

Though I wandered in the valleys of doubt

In the shadow of strain

Swam in rivers of anger

In rage and loathing

Does love still know my name?

I toiled in the mines of Ugly

Tearing away at the walls of disease

Does the light still know my name?

They said, go. Unearth yourself.

Be unafraid of what you find.

And I walked through walls of wind

Head down, my whole body

Fighting against the strength of their power

In this, after this,

Does Ease still know my name?

Can I sit in the meadows of life’s beauty once again?

Will it have me?

In the bright yet gentle sunshine-

Knee high grass and wildflowers

Sitting on the seat of the divine,

Will it still have me?

Do my battered limbs and coal-blackened face

Still have a place

In that meadow?

Will it still have me?

Into the Cold

The world became scary
Scary
Cold
And I wanted to run back
To the places I know
Where I feel safe
Those pockets, or streams
Where the world is blocked out
A warm fog of yellows and browns
Carries me,
And the world is distant.


No, stay.


I stayed
In the cold
In the realization of the cold
Briefly, feeling the scary world
Cold and blustering.


I said, Heba stay. Bundle up.
Briefly. Blustery.
I stayed. I felt the cold.
[Time ticks]


And then I came home.
Into the present moment.
And out of my mind.

The Eyes of the Heart

It’s past midnight and I should be sleeping.

I laid awake thinking about this thing that’s been bothering me. I rolled it around and around in my head. Trying to see it with my larger vision, trying to see the trail of ease and light flowing through it. But the more I looked, the more frustrated I became. Sad, frustrated, and hopeless. I took comfort in a few moments of apathy before it started rolling around again in my mind.

I asked for guidance, I went to look with my larger eyes to where I usually find answers. But I was turned away. I’d been turned away for weeks now. Where once there was a well of peace and response, now was a closed door. A sign hanging that said, “Turn back.”

I didn’t understand why. Why on this most-emotional subject could I not see the path? Why was I being turned away by my higher guidance? I didn’t understand, but I knew it was for the best. I could feel it.

My stubborn self, inexhaustible in my constant search for answers, solutions and broader vision was not satisfied. I fought with myself. “Let it go” I told myself. But I couldn’t. So I stayed in the purgatory of the mind.

Endless thoughts that lead nowhere. The incessant ups and downs of emotion, like the waves of a restless sea.

And then, suddenly, I saw a little glimmer of light. I felt it. A little spark of wisdom. It was so small, so subtle, I ran to chase it down in the cluttered mess of my mind. I would barely get hold of it and poof, it would evaporate.

I tried to remember what it felt like. Like catching a whiff of a flower and looking around to find its origin. I sniffed around. I caught it again and again and I listened to what it was saying.

Words like, “Kindness. Soft. Gentle”.

That was closer, but not quite accurate.

Again I listened. “Kindness? Soft. Gentle. Soft.”

The word ‘soft’ became more prominent. So soft. So subtle. Almost unfelt.

I could barely understand the message. And as I used my mind to make sense of it, it was trampled by overbearing thoughts and images.

I listened again. This time I listened with my whole body.

“Soft. Kind. Unfelt. Gentle. Non-judgment.”

“Non-judgment.” I understood this as…’where judgment doesn’t live-cannot live’.

I felt something in my heart space. Something echoed in my chest. A pulsation of feeling.

I brought my awareness to my heart and listened from there.

And I got it!

I understood.

‘Don’t approach this from the head, the mind, or even vision. Approach it from the heart.’

Vision was always my highest. This is where clarity is for me, connection to my guidance, connection to the light.

I follow light streams through this vision, it’s how I travel. And when I feel it, I feel it behind my eyes or in my forehead or somewhere above my head. When I flow energy, I feel it in the palms of my hands, or streaming through my forearms.

My heart lights up when there’s a direct message of love for someone I’m reading. And I transmit that love from my heart to their energy field. I match its essence and I echo it out of me.

Sometimes right at the start of a reading or right at the end, I’ll feel that lit-up heart space. It feels like recognition, someone is being seen with the eyes of Love. Or, love is currently the dominating presence.

Otherwise, I don’t look with my heart. I never even thought about it.

Vision from the heart doesn’t have words. Or rather, its words are so simple it’s as though you’re saying nothing.

It just sends out pulsations. Impulses. It directs you from wisdom that lies outside of the mind. And that wisdom is acted out through you as love.

It feels like a gentle cooing. That maybe if we spoke in a different language that originated in Love, we would all be cooing at each other.

Life would be less complex-relationships would be less complex. Our primary messages to each other would be messages of soothing. Affirmations of well-being and belonging.

But Love is only one language we speak here. There are so many others.

Perhaps I became lost in these others, and forgot the most natural one of all. The one that barely speaks, and in the fewest words gives us more than the endless novels of the mind’s thinking.

Tomorrow I’ll remember. I’ll remind myself. I’ll tap my hand on my chest and remember, “Look with your heart.”

And I’ll be gentle.

I’ll be present and echo that impulse of love that swells into my heart from the heart of the divine.

Tomorrow I’ll practice a new kind of seeing. I’ll steady myself into my heart space and see life through its eyes for awhile.