Reborn: Means having your Soul Rebuilt

Disclaimer:  My previous post was not meant to be a stab at Christianity or the Baptist church.  Both provided me with a foundation from which to spring into my spiritual journey and I would have been completely lost without having had these firmly beneath me in the first place.  In other words, they provided me the milk and honey I needed in the infancy of my spiritual journey so I could be ready for the meat of it.

Now on to the second discourse....

Over the course of five and a half years, I lived in Florence, OR; Ellensburg, WA; Hereford, AZ; Sierra Vista, AZ; and Crestview, FL.  Each move was costly and hurt my finances further.  While in Ellensburg, WA, I returned to college and changed my name from Frances to Cassia.

Why?

• Reason #1:  My grandmother and I were both named Frances and shared the same last name (long story short, my mother was married four times and I wanted a stable last name).  The credit reporting agencies and even the medical record centers continuously got us mixed up.  I was hurting my grandmother's finances and they kept giving me store credit for senior citizens.  Not cool to treat someone like a thief when its your mistake to begin with.
• Reason #2:  There is a Native American tradition among some tribes where when a person undergoes a rite of passage, or survives a natural event/disaster, or does something completely amazing, they would also change their name.  Why is this significant to me?  I am 1/32nd Native American.  The name of my tribe has been lost when the last of my Kentucky family members passed from this life.  Part of the tribe that was left was adopted into the Cherokee tribe, but our heritage has been mostly lost due to marriage outside the tribe.  In fact, I look more like my German heritage with my blonde hair and blue eyes, than Native American.  My grandmother is ~1/4th and she definitely has many of the characteristics from her Native American bloodline.  For me, reclaiming this tradition is reclaiming my heritage as a part of my spiritual journey - which I will go into more soon.

When I finally returned to Michigan, my focus was on my mother's health.  She was diagnosed with Hepatitis C and finally found a doctor who could treat it.  She would need weekly injections and oral medication for the next 11 months.  I came back to help her, get away from the ex-boyfriend, and start reclaiming who I am.  I learned how to administer her injections, made calls concerning her medical treatment and medications, and even represented her with her need for disability.  She couldn't see due to cataracts, so I also had to drive her to every appointment.  It was me who finally got an ophthalmologist to admit she was legally blind.  However, he wouldn't complete any paperwork in that regards because he wanted to simply perform a surgery to correct it.  She couldn't have the surgery to correct it without insurance and the ability to work to have insurance.  This was a big mess and her story to tell, so I will move on.

During this time I had a long distance relationship with another boyfriend who broke it off with me over the holidays and it threw me into a horrible depression.  I hadn't learned my lesson.  I was still changing myself too much to fit someone else.  I had surgery to remove a ganglion cyst shortly before this and still had the pain medication around, so I decided to take a bunch of them.  I came very close to overdosing one night and it was the latest ex-boyfriend's mother who talked me back from the edge of my despair.  She is still a very dear friend to me today.

Then, I reached out to a friend from junior high who lives in Grand Rapids.  We had kept in touch during my time out of state and my soul was starving!  She had become a Wiccan and was working with the Arthurian/Old Welsh tradition.  The Old Welsh tradition was based on the lore found in the Mabinogion.

And the preferred lore for the Arthurian portion was both the Mabinogion and Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory.  (To the right is a statue of Arthur found in Innsbruck, Austria and to the left is Ceridwen, an enchantress from the Mabinogion.)

While staying the night at my friend's house, I had a dream where Guinevere came to me.  She would be my guide and thus began my immersion into the world of pagan tradition.  While the group of people I was with was in my age group and very open, still I didn't feel the sense of homecoming I've been looking for.  But, I had managed to open myself to Insight, Past Lives, Intuition, Astral Projection, and enhanced my natural psychic ability (yes, I can see, hear, and feel ghosts and other energetic beings).

I was beginning to piece together who I was and who I was meant to be.  My starving soul began to find nourishment it could be sustained on.  The opening of my mind, led to the opening of my heart and I once again "fell in love".  It started with a few letters exchanged back and forth with a man who claimed to be a pagan as well and was just coming out of ...prison.  But, once again, it wasn't meant to be (whew!).  It was, yet again, another long distance relationship that my clingy nature didn't nurture but choked out of existence.  That's when my pagan friend suggested I start reading some books on co-dependency.  I definitely fit the bill.  So I read every book she suggested and started going to a local group gathering once a month.

The group work was great!  After three months, I had switched my life around and became more independent instead of co-dependent.  I started using my head over my heart.  I still sucked at relationships and continued to go through boyfriends like they were toilet paper, but, hey, I gained a new confidence in myself which was very liberating.   Right?

So, for my next post (near Valentine's Day) I will post some of my past life experiences, including the time I met my Twin Flame on the Astral Plane and found out about a very interesting past life I shared with my Twin Flame.

Until then...Happy Reading!