Musing on Muses - Melpomene

A Tragedy: Ode to Melpomene and her sisters the Moirae

I had a problem and took it to the Fates.

Clotho, the spinner, I addressed first.  “I wish to change my life,” I said.

Clotho, the youngest, smiled at me and said, "Go to my sister, Lachesis.  I weave your life into being, but she picks your lot in life."

I turned to Lachesis, the middle-aged, to request, "I wish to change my lot in life."

"Your lot is now set and entangled with the lives you affect.”

So, I turned to her sister, Atropos, the eldest and asked, "Can you change my life?"

She turned her rheumy eyes toward mine and croaked, "The change I bring will end your life and you are young, yet. Disentangle your life and live it."

I turned to leave them, unhappy. But, Clotho spoke again. "Why do you wish for this?"

I turned and watched her spin.  "I suffer."

Lachesis laughed.  She plucked up a beautiful string and held it out to me.  The colors of the ocean made up the strand, but the weave was broken and entangled with colors that did not match it.  "You sought colors that didn't suit yours. It is no wonder."

"I thought you controlled my lot," I said.

"No, the gods decreed your free will," she answered. "I choose how much string you shall have."

I lifted the string to my face and studied its twists and breaks.  Suddenly, I saw the design it should have.  I saw my own mistakes.

Then a greater design had lain over my sight and it showed me a beautiful tapestry.  I saw what I should have done and what I should have been.

"She sees," croaked old Atropos as she readied her sharp shears.  Snick went the shears as they sliced through the string.

Down I went, my face stained with tears.  The tears flowed into the wrinkles that had marked my face with age. I had waited too long to turn the page.

Past Revealed for Future Growth

Anyone with a 401K should know that the above photo is good growth for your future. Few know, or believe, that this photo could also represent your karma over the course of past, present, and future lives. I'm not going to get into the "proof" of past lives as much as I'm going to reveal two meditations and the past life information passed on to me for my future growth in this incarnation. For each soul's journey, it is based on personal revelation that doesn't require others to accept for you to learn and grow from it.

Temple of the Sacred Flame

While I was with the Arthurian/Old Welsh pagan group, one person had a good idea to have a writing club of sorts. Once a month, we would get together and present something we have written that helps us in our spiritual growth. At the time I was working on finding an elemental representation for the four corners (that's another term for the points on the compass). I did west first, which was water and by far the easiest. Air was the second easier for east, and north/earth was fairly easy as well.  The only hang up I was having was connecting with fire to get my elemental for the south.

So, I sat down in a meditation determined to break through the block.  What I didn’t realize at the time was what the universe decided to show me as a result.  I will write it below in a story form to give you the whole experience as I felt, saw, and reacted to it.

After my body relaxed, my mind felt suspended between this world and the next.  I could only see darkness until I opened my mind’s eyes and I was standing in another world. 

It was night and I was just outside the stone gate of an impressive stone building.  It was encircled with a stone trench in which a fire burned.  The fire rode up the archway that stood as the entrance into the inner courtyard.  I passed through the entrance and walked down a stone path to the temple.  I knew this place.  It was rectangular with obelisks on the four corners.  Instead of a pyramid cap on the obelisks, a flame topped each one.

I ducked slightly on entering the stone temple and was greeted by servants who directed me to a room to the left where I could shed my clothes and put on a white robe.  Then, I walked through another door on the right where stone benches were set within the middle of the room.  Many were already seated in this room and there was a priest at the head of the room, softly directing a meditation.  I sat down and followed the guided meditation to let go of things past, let go of my negative self and seek inner purification.

After the meditation, there was an antechamber to the right where a servant handed me a strigil and bowl of oil as I passed through into a larger room that blasted me with humidity.  The oil was seasoned with specific herbs from the area to speed up the purifying effects of the sauna – one of which I recognized as cassia oil.  The sauna also had benches like the meditation room, this time laid with cloth so the bench wouldn’t burn you as you sat on it.  Here I applied oil to my exposed skin and use the strigil to slough off the excess as an additional meditation on purification.  After the third application, it was time to enter another antechamber to have the servants take the strigil and empty bowl and hand me a thin cloth to serve as a towel as I pass through into another room to the right.  In this room was a large pool.  I handed a servant the cloth, then slid into the pool, my heated skin from the sauna was cooled by the tepid water and I swam to the other side to the exit. Another servant handed me a cloth and I dried myself the best I could as I entered into the next room.

This is the antechamber to the Sacred Flame.  Knowledge of the legend of the Sacred Flame filled my mind as I walked into this empty chamber where two servants waited on either side of the door to the labyrinth.  Legend around the Sacred Flame was that a god came from the sky and gave mankind the Sacred Flame, starting with the first priest and priestess to tend it.  It was carried within an urn before the temple was built and the Sacred Flame itself gave instructions on what should be within the temple and be required of those coming to seek its wisdom.  The labyrinth was a way of initiating the mind’s higher frequencies before seeing the Sacred Flame and those who do not achieve that higher frequency only saw a bowl in the center of the room the labyrinth ended at with nothing in it. 

A successful person would see a flame within the bowl that needed no oil or some other flammable material to maintain its fire.  No heat would come from the flame either, but it provided light immeasurable.  The Sacred Flame would form a face to speak with or a creature such as a fire drake or dragon for the person to identify with.  If bidden, one must climb the stairs leading to the large bowl and enter the flame for direct communication. 

When I had finished the labyrinth walk, I met the bowl with a flame within.  I was bidden to enter it for direct communication.  Once inside the flame, I was shown myself as a Nubian priestess who once tended the Sacred Flame.  I was shown that Nubians once ruled Egypt and this temple was located in the southern kingdom near the Nubian homelands.  This was before the Great Pyramids were built.  I had six children, all tall and strong and blessed by the Sacred Flame.  Now the Temple of the Sacred Flame only resides in the astral and the Sacred Flame itself was separated into parts and distributed among the priests and priestesses to carry within their person to be reunited at a later date.  War had torn down the temple and scattered its worshippers.

I asked what elemental should be my representative for the south.  The Fire Drake was shown to me. And that ended the meditation.

Twin Flame Meditation

I wasn’t actively seeking my Twin Flame.  I had no idea one existed until Guinevere showed him to me.  I don’t recall much about the meditation, only I was in my special place I designed myself on the astral – an isolated and protected island with a four pointed hut, mountain, white beaches, lush jungle and natural springs and pools.  I was in a garden within the jungle not far from the hut and sitting on a bench talking with Guinevere.  We were arguing about the soul, whether or not it could be split and still reincarnate.  She told me to come back to the hut and she’ll bring someone to prove it.  So, I went back to the star-shaped hut and sat in the middle on a settee and waited.  When Guinevere came back, she was with someone very special to me.

Guinevere wasn’t very tall and neither was I, but the man with her was well over six foot with broad shoulders.  He was wearing a robe of green and white which made him look even taller and thin, so very thin.  His features were boy-like and almost feminine.  His blonde hair was dark, almost a brown, and hung down to his shoulders.  His eyes were brown with hints of green, like hazel.  His nose was petite, lips full, and had a high brow.  Not exactly what I would say as handsome, but there was instant attraction.  Something about him felt raw and familiar all at once.  Guinevere made the introduction, “This is your other half; the Soul that was split from yours many lifetimes ago.  I will leave you both to reacquaint yourselves.”

He came forward slowly and took my hands in his and looked down at me.  “Do you remember me?” he asked.

I shook my head.  I was afraid and not very trusting of my own feelings at the time.  As much as I longed for something like this, I was also very frightened of it from experiences similar in the real world that were wrong and deceiving.  

He sat beside me on the settee and began to tell me a story.  He said he was a woman in the 1400’s in France during the time of Joan of Arc.  He was a widow at the time and his name was Geraldine due to his mother’s German heritage.  I, he said, was a nobleman who owned the lands the village he lived in at the time belonged to.  I was somehow distantly related to the man who claimed to be king of France, but I was also a soldier.  I was married, but the woman was sickly after giving birth to a stillborn child shortly after our first year of marriage.  I had seen Geraldine in the village many times and was very attracted, but it was years before I began seeking her out and became her lover. 

Due to the religious beliefs of the time, I never set aside my barren wife and took Geraldine as my wife.  Geraldine became a “kept woman” and received a stipend each month which grew as she birthed another child she conceived by me. 

I was speechless.  I asked the obvious questions:  What was my name?  What were our children’s names?  What did I look like?  Why tell me all of this?  I was told to go to the Akashic records to look up this life.  If it is to be revealed to me further, I would have my answers.  The guardians who protect the records would give me all I need to know in order to fulfill my work and destiny in this lifetime. 

For several nights of meditation after this initial meeting, we continued to meet and talk.  We shared chakra energy and talked about my karmic debt.  I came up with the name Herald (like Hark the Herald Angels) as a pun on his role in being a messenger of “good tidings”.  I begged him for information about himself and begged to meet him in person on the physical plane, but I was always denied and the begging always ended with him leaving my space on the astral.

Soon he was no longer joining me on the Astral.  I was told by a guide that his time with me was up and I needed to move forward.  It was heart breaking to not see him, but I had a lot of unfinished business and souls to meet and learn lessons from.  With my focus on Herald, I would never move forward and find release from the karmic debt I have built up. 

My fellow writer, and dear friend, DianaMurdock has written a fantastic blog post on this very thing.

What I found out recently was that he has never left me, only stayed away from direct contact.  He looks different now in my mind.  In the past seven years, his shoulders are broader, his hair shorter and darker and his thin body has filled out with lean muscle.  He comes to me in a guide role now and helps me to recharge and raise my vibrational energy. 

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!

Internet Strike - Our Right to Freedom of Speech

Join the blackout tomorrow January 18th for 24 hours and show the Senate and House we do not want this bill supported.  Our freedom of speech is being threatened and as a writer I see this as another way to put manacles on us and limit creativity.

Click here to show your support of the strike and add your name to the electronic petition. 

Breaking Down to Build Back Up

The first thing I learned on my spiritual journey is that all my preconceptions, prejudices, and comfort zones were going to be challenged.  I grew up in an independent, fundamentalist Baptist church where I sang gospel music and hymns and was taught the Roman’s Road to lead others on the “true” path to heaven.  Even when I was 110% working in the church and following all their precepts and dogmas, I didn’t feel completely whole.  I felt like I was missing something.

Then, I started that fateful journey in March of 1998 and I realized a lot about myself.  I had days and nights of tears as I realized just how much I depended on my family and how I missed them.  I learned that I couldn’t put my trust in people I met online who I had thought were my faithful friends.  I realized the man I had an affair with wasn’t the love of my life, but I got stuck with him having no place else to go and feeling like I should always be with the first man I shared myself body and soul with.  For five and a half years, I gave him my loyalty, to realize we really weren’t meant for each other.  I had given up too much of myself to stay in that relationship and it was causing me physical, emotional, and spiritual distress.

It was a painful part of my journey where I had to be broken to be fixed.  Ever have a deviated septum?  Often the process to fix this is to break the cartilage again in order to reset the septum so it will heal in the correct place.  That was what had to happen to me.  I had to be broken in all the places that I deviated from my destined path in order to get me back on track.  Nothing could be more humbling than to be shown you don’t know everything about trust, love, and family, especially when you are 2,000 miles away from everyone and everything you grew up with and were familiar with. 

During this time of being broken, one of my favorite books to read was “The Tao of Pooh”.  Taoism helped me to categorize and filter everything going on inside of me.  This breaking down process was trying to get me back to Pu, or the “uncarved block”.  In “The Tao of Pooh”, Winnie the Pooh was portrayed as Pu as he was simple and untouched by society’s cutting tools.  This is the perfect state in Taoism.  The rest of Pooh’s friends were shown as various icons in society who are living in disillusionment.  Owl was the scholar who imagined himself the most intelligent of everyone around him even when he was completely wrong on a subject.  Rabbit was the control freak who got distressed whenever someone strayed from what he felt they should be doing.  And so on….

I like how Wikipedia puts it:  “Taoism posits that people may gain knowledge of the universe by understanding themselves.”  I started to see what I was, what I became, and how some things were just not right about me.  Once the process started, I began to see how I wasn’t what I was meant to be.  Then I actively started to seek out what was right for me, dabbling in other things and seeing how they effected my life and either moved me forward or backward.

Next post will be around the first of February and I will discuss discovering co-dependency and how paganism affected my life.

Happy Reading!

ROW 80 Round 1 2012/1998 Journey

Hello, followers.  I apologize for the lack of postings.  I'm adjusting to my new schedule with my children starting school, mandatory overtime, and other daily activities.  I have managed, recently, to figure out how to create a new page, so I can post my ROW 80 updates on a separate part of this blog.  To view my goals for this year, please click here. 

I think I would like to take this time to explain my blogging plans a bit better.  The year 2012 seems to stir strong reactions in everyone.  Some believe the end of the world approaches, while others are looking forward to a year of great leaps of faith and consciousness.  What I have decided to do on this blog for the next twelve months is to share my personal spiritual experiences in great depth with my readers and ask them to share theirs. in return  Each person's spiritual journey is unique and beautiful, even the ones who have horrible experiences, but find the light.  And each journey of personal awareness and growth is unique and beautiful as well. 

My journey began in 1998.  I was raised in a Baptist church all my life, but still felt unsatisfied and empty.  After taking a few practice jumps in my beliefs, I took an enormous jump on March 13th, 1998 (It also was a Friday).  I packed my car up with as much as I could bring, mailed a note to my family, and began my journey west across country to people I thought I knew and trusted, but never met before except in a webchat site.

My car began to leak oil very early on my journey and I didn't have much cash or credit because I gave myself no time to plan for this leap.  After all, a leap of faith is done without much planning.  Every 200 miles, I had to stop to get gas, put oil in the car (typically a quart, sometimes two), and prayed I would make it to my destination:  Florence, Oregon.  Little did I know at the time I was traveling 16 hours a day for the next three days, that when I arrived, more challenges faced me. 

When you don't live in an area and know people, your ability to get a decent job isn't going to be easy.  You'll have to take what you get and I finally landed a job as a hotel flunky.  It was a small inn with only ten rooms and I had to learn a lot of new skills.  The owner wanted hospital bed corners when making the beds.  I had to learn how to run a credit card through the old swiping machines and calling in the numbers.  Money got harder to come by and the bills got out of hand while scraping by cleaning rooms, doing laundry, taking reservations, and making coffee.

To be honest, I was very young.  I did what I had to do to survive my choice.  I learned a lot because I made a lot of mistakes and bad choices.  I missed my family, but I was too proud to admit it and felt ashamed for feeling that way after all the trouble I went through to make the leap I did.

And, that is how my life path changed.  My personal destiny and legend changed to meet the new and unusual circumstances and even my spiritual journey took off.  Sometimes it takes relocating yourself into unfamiliar area to begin opening your eyes to the world and what it has to offer.

Happy Reading!

The 12 Days of Christmas Challenge

Some families start the count down toward Christmas as soon as Thanksgiving dinner is off the table.  Traditionally, in my house, that is exactly the case.  My tree is up the Saturday after Thanksgiving.  Mostly because I can't on Black Friday as I am finishing up my shopping for the year. 

Some start it December 1st, like ABC Family, where there are 25 days of Christmas movies, specials, gifts, etc. 

I recently did some research on the 12 days of Christmas, which is well known as a song.  It's more than that, however, but its not what you think.  Commonly, it is known as the 12 days prior to Christmas.   There are calendars and Christmas knick knacks that have secret pockets in them for each of these 12 days available in stores.

Traditionally, the churches mean the 12 days of Christmas as a countdown from Christmas day to a day called Epiphany, which is January 6th.  Epiphany is traditionally celebrated as the day the Three Wise Men finally arrived with their gifts to Jesus and his family (a year after Jesus birth, of course, not less than two weeks). 

No matter how you celebrate it, the 12 Days of Christmas is about giving.  And that brings me to the challenge.

There is a beautiful foundation out there called " The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation".  What I am challenging everyone who goes to this blog is to spend the next 12 days performing a single act of random kindness to a perfect stranger.  There are many ways to do this.  Donations are most common.

For example, today, as my RAK, I left my $15.76 in change at McDonald's to be a Pay-it-Forward to individuals behind me waiting to buy coffee or breakfast this morning.  I don't know any of them, but I touched them positively today and that is what this is all about.

So, I ask this of all of you reading today, be a light.  Touch someone's life in a good way.  Give a little bit each day for the next 12 days and help this be a wonderful holiday for someone that could really use some good cheer.  Even if it means just buying something to put in a food drive, or a toy to be dropped in a Toys for Tots location, or even coats, mittens, or scarves as some banks ask for to be given to families in the local area that are in need, it is in the spirit of this challenge.

Each day, you can make one person have something a little bit better this season.  If you do this for 12 people, and your neighbor can for 12, and so forth, by the end of this, thousands could be blessed.

So, what do you say?  Are you in?