After coming off a graduate program that lasted fifteen years and after decades of esoteric study and spiritual training, I have had to ask myself what am I doing now? I am at the point in my life at which I am assimilating large amounts of knowledge and integrating some intense experiences that I have accumulated in a relatively short period of time – only five decades! My head is spinning right about now at this age and at this tumultuous period in history.

This is what it feels like to be between worlds

I admit I sought this knowledge. At an early age, and after childhood experiences with ancestor contact, psychic sensitivity, and relevatory dream states, I made a conscious decision as a young woman to walk a spiritual path in this lifetime. I understood at that time, naive as I was, that this choice always requires sacrifice. I took the oaths anyway.

Here’s a younger me with Inti the Snake

Consequently, I spent my life learning from contemporary academic schools that specialize in Western thought, and historic mystery schools that specialize in spiritual and esoteric traditions. I undertook this life trajectory because I desired beyond anything else to make sense of who am I as a spiritual European-American woman. To this end I also underwent several shamanic initiations, in the footsteps of my ancestors, which were totally scary and not for the faint-hearted because such initiations and the training they require to survive them always results in some kind of death.

Getting my mind blown in the ancient Tracy Arm, Alaska

Now I find myself needing a rest period after my initiatory processes in which I need to “let it bake.” I need a minute to let the knowledge I gained assimilate, or what we say in Women’s Spirituality academic circles, to cultivate “embodied wisdom”  — which is a high state of female (and male) consciousness in which understanding is not only experienced as an intellectual lightbulb in the head, but also as a resonance in the body that aligns with emotion. Embodied wisdom occurs when the mind, body, emotion, and spirit all align. For me, embodied wisdom feels like I am firing on all cylinders.

The glorious African sunflower gracing our garden

At this reflective time, I am finding that everything makes the most sense when I am in my garden sitting in the dirt observing plant life cycles. It is here where I am finding the mysteries are revealed. Seriously! The mysteries that I have been seeking about the nature of existence are happening, in so many chaotic and orderly ways in my own backyard. More on this sacred space as a template for my assimilation of knowledge, and hopefully the cultivation of some embodied wisdom, to come. Namaste.