It is time for the healing to begin.

It has been coming, and it will still be an ongoing process for some time to come. I have started to write a new post a number of times and discarded them. I didn’t want to keep talking about how hard all of this is, that is a given. I only wanted to write again when something inside of me started to shift. It has been coming but I have found myself backsliding far too quickly, too often, and so I have sat in silence, with my hands over my heart, and prayed. Prayed and meditated. Went deep with my lotus meditation, taking a deep inbreath as my arms sweep skyward like the lotus blossom reaching toward the sky, and allowing my arms to whoosh back downward with the exhale, back into the mud where the lotus originates and returns each night. This healing process is not all sunshine, there are shadows, but that I have begun to emerge is such a blessing. I can breathe in the love, the light, and release the darkness, and the pain, and continue the cycles, each and every day, as I release all that hurts me, breathe in all that heals me, and spend longer and longer days in the sun.

There is a poem that I have long loved, a haiku, and I always thought it was powerful and deep but I think you can’t claim it as your own until the fire has really burned the barn down in your life. Often attributed the the Haiku master Basho, it was actually written by Basho’s student, Mizuta Masahide (1657-1723)…

“Barn’s burnt down —
now
I can see the moon.”

I can only now, and just barely, see that perhaps trial by fire might have been destined to be part of my journey, so that I might clearcut the field of things around me that were holding me back, that weren’t allowing me to move as deeply as I can, and should, because I was still trying to fit it all within the dream and plan of Dragonfly Cottage which started in 1999 when I left my marriage and needed something to hold onto, to grow into, to help me see my way into the next phase of my life. What a beloved dream, what love, beauty, what splendid days and times and gifts, but to everything there is a season.

After leaving my marriage and then going through a devastating time over the reason the marriage ended, and how that had all turned out, my psychiatrist said, “You were going to need an atomic bomb to get you out of the marriage, and that’s what you got.” Sometimes the way through is catastrophic, but we must have the courage, the heart, and the vision to find our way through to the other side, to see, in fact, that there is another side, and one we were meant to get to, and that the work there has been waiting for us.

Dragonfly Cottage burned down —
now
I can see the moonlit path I am meant to follow.

Extraordinary things are occurring. As a Reiki Master and a Shamballa Master Healer I have only used my skills in my home for very few people and mostly my animals and it has been a very useful tool but something happened when Delilah was so sick in the hotel. After she had been brought back to me, and thank God for the medication, she was still in much pain for several days. I held her, or sat beside her, and as I did Reiki, and then used my Shamballa training, placing my hand on her abdomen and holding the space for healing, I felt the warmth, I felt her whole little body relax onto my hand and she instantly stopped crying. I sat for hours that way just holding her, loving her, healing her. As soon as I moved my hand she would start to cry again so for 3 days until the medication really started to take effect I used my hands and my heart to heal this tiny girl. I have been  trained to do this but it was the most profound experience I have had in a very long time.

Last night Pugsley started having diaphragm spasms which he has from time to time and they can get quite frightening. I moved to him and put my hands on him. He instantly relaxed and the spasms stopped. As soon as I removed my hands the spasms started again, and stopped as soon as I placed my hands on him concentrating with love and intent, praying that I be used as a vessel for healing. I felt the energy move through my body and into my hands. I felt the heat. I felt him relax. After awhile I could remove my hands and he went to sleep.

These are only 2 of a number of things that have been happening with greater frequency, deepening each time. I have had a profound spiritual awakening. My healing abilities have been greatly heightened since the fire. I am surprised, and yet not. I think I always knew that this was coming, and it is being channeled in more ways than just hands on, physically. My intuition is opening, deeper than ever before. The petals of the lotus flower are no longer opening in slow motion. My work is here and now.

It will still take some time to work through this stage of my life. It will take 6 months for the house to be rebuilt and it is very uncomfortable here. I had to call the company yesterday and they are going to try to do something but the little bit of furniture they actually brought in is “staging” furniture that would be great for a realtor trying to sell a house, but not to live on for 6 months. There are a number of things about this whole process that are very difficult, but I shall move through them with the help of family and friends for whom I a deeply grateful.

During this time, since shortly after getting settled in the hotel, I have been studying, going very deep with my spiritual studies, watching several hours of video each day, reading and making notes. I will be opening the school that I have long planned to open but I will have to be more settled than I am now to get it going, and I will be taking a few private students again soon but fewer and I plan to go deeper with them. I am meant to use these increasing healing energies with my students and I feel it coursing through my veins. I feel it echoing in the four chambers of my heart. I am no longer afraid, I am simply in a very deep time of study, preparation, and planning.

And the school will be far deeper than I had originally planned. It will be a Wisdom School For Women. The shamanic journey that I have been going through on more levels than I will share here, the visions, and deep knowing, have led me to realize that while mindfulness is key, and central both in my life and teaching, there is so much more.

Too, through my study and training I have come to understand and embrace the concept of ayni (ay-nee). Ayni is sacred exchange, a sacred act of love. It comes from indigenous peoples and it has become part of the fabric of my being. Not since I fully embraced the teaching of maitri, and took it as my legal name, the Buddhist teaching of loving-kindness, and compassion, the heart of the teaching being that you must first have it for yourself before you have it to give another, have I found and opened to what I know is the next part of my journey and will be a central theme in the school I will be opening. I will be writing much more about this in the time to come but something has come about because of this beautiful principle that comes from the Andean people.

In 2005, after having changed my name and begun to use Maitri informally, my divorce was finalized and it was time for a new beginning. I changed my name legally to Maitri Libellule. I did not choose a middle name. The first and last name were incredibly powerful and deep to me and I was not going to just choose just anything as a placeholder between the first and the last. In nearly a decade nothing has touched me deeply enough to choose for something as important as part of my name, until now.

Libellule is dragonfly in French. Not only has the dragonfly long been my totem animal and teacher but my biological grandmother’s maiden name was Papillon, butterfly. Having been adopted, only finding my biological mother and grandparents, briefly, after my first two children were born, before that window closed forever, choosing Libellule for my last name felt just right.

As I read about anyi and study this beautiful practice more deeply, a loving sense of reciprocity, respect for earth and others, and the acknowledgement of the interconnectedness of humans and the natural world, the more I learn the more I have realized that I have found the missing piece of the puzzle. I am taking Anyi as my middle name. I am now Maitri Anyi Libellule. And it is not just the taking of a name, I realized that in coming to learn about anyi and taking it not only as my name but as something that will be central to my life and teaching I have been led to the next part of my journey and found the missing element that was meant to be part of my work. Since the fire I have been overwhelmed with a sense of sadness. I had just started to work with students in January and as things were just getting going I was stopped by the fire. The barn burned down and in the light of the moon I have more clearly been able to see that I was not meant to continue on until all of the pieces were gathered into my medicine basket. Now I can prepare to move forward, to pick up the pieces and begin again.

It will be a slow start, but the very fact that I feel, even an inkling, of having turned a corner (or I am at least peeking around one), that I am ready to begin considering the work ahead, is an incredible relief. I will not push it, because I cannot, but the thousand petals of the lotus unfold, a few more each day, and soon the day will be here. I am filled with joy.