So that you would WANT to come home...

I keep asking WHY AM I HERE ?

In Scotland. Where the wind bites me. Where the rain always soaks through my clothes to my skin until I am wet and uncomfortable. Where the sky is big and beautiful, but also damp and grey. Where the air I breathe in feels cold and pure but sharp and cold. Where the sun sometimes comes out to dry my bones, but it is a solitary gentle soldier in this army of elements. Where every day I feel like I am in the wrong place. Where every day is a struggle to survive - to know what to wear, to know how long I can stand to be outside, swaddled in a thousand layers, too soft to face the cold without them, unable to move freely with them.

I feel stuck here. I feel stiffled. I feel every moment as a struggle.
This is not my land. It's cold. It's harsh environment. My body can not relax here. I am always holding myself tense. Teeth chattering. Shoulders hunched. Arms folded. Back straight.

All my life what I have really wanted is to live and work and settle in NYC. More recently I feel like I am going to live in and learn healing in California. Before NYC. And then NYC and California at the same time. I know that's where I'm meant to be. I know it's where I am meant to be.

I am bewildered by how much everything is changing and wonder whether it's possible that I am completely mad. But I more bewildered, more confused, as I walk around this wet, windy, cold, damp country, wondering, wondering, wondering:

WHY AM I HERE ?

This last week, quite unexpectedly and on separate random occassions, sitting on a bus, window shopping, over a pot of Earl Gray tea in the local doctor's surgery, these words came to me, clearly and repeatedly:

SO THAT YOU WOULD AWAKEN.
SO THAT YOU WOULD REMEMBER.
SO THAT YOU WOULD WANT TO COME HOME.

Oh.


***************************************************************

I first saw her on the 14th Oct 2007. This is what I wrote in my journal:

"...I came out of the tunnel with small brown bare feet. I was a little girl. In the desert...red, hot stones...red, sandy, clay like roads and lanscape...burning hot and deeply still... Two thousand years ago. Or more. And I had been abandoned. Left behind by my tribe. Had there been a war? Were they killed? Did they leave me? I think there was a tribal uprising/upheaval and battle because somehow I was lost/left alone. I think they all died. And I was wounded. I was barefoot. On dry red sand/clay earth. In the wilderness. My leg. My vein. Maybe from that ? I tried to survive. But it hurt to walk. And I stopped. I died weak, weary, abandoned, alone..."





This was a past life meditation.

I had seen myself as a 10 year old girl who died alone in the desert. Abandoned by her tribe, unable to physically survive. Overwhelmed by her environment. Wounded in her leg. Desparate, afraid, weary from the struggle to survive, aching and alone, she gave up the fight and lay down and died.

My vein on my leg appeared out of the blue when I was 10. A family full of doctors (father, brothers, sisters-in law, ) and none of them know why a 10 year old girl would develop acutely disfunctional veinous valves resulting in a varicose vein appearing on her left leg literally overnight.


My journal entry continues from the 4th October 07:

"...and here I am now...not sure, struggling to get on my own two feet,...my aching feet, which feel as if I've walked barefoot on hot, gravelly, rocky, sandy roads. Aching feet... Knowing my power, but then feeling...lost...unsure...(a) girl who doesn't know if she can survive for real..."


At the time I was experiencing these mediations, I was beginning to know in my self that I had to leave my job to take up healing, but I was so confused and conflicted by this urge within me to commit to 'energy work' that I was feeling powerless over my destiny. In the meantime, every night my feet started to feel so hot,burning up red hot as I lay in bed every night, aching so I couldn't sleep without holding one in each hand.


Past life regression teaches that to heal a past life wound that is presenting in this life, you should visit that life and visualize a positive outcome. So by that logic, what I would need is for that little girl to survive. To grow up. To blossom in to a beautiful young girl. A desirable young woman. A vibrant and nurturing mother. A strong and wise and abundant woman living a full and active and joyful ife.

I tried for the first time on the 22nd October and wrote:

"I see her growing in to a stong...peaceful woman...she will be free. Unstuck. I see her smiling. Fit Vibrant. Full of energy. Running. Strong. Natural...she is well..she is happy...she is joyful, courageous, playful, beautiful...SHE IS GIVING ME HER SUPPORT, HER VIBRANCY, HER WELLBEING AND HER LOVE NOW. Always now. She says she is with me....belssing me...Thank you Manna. Thank you..."

...Thank you Manna...



My business that I closed, that I loved more than anything else in the world, was called Manna. Manna (from Heaven).

And yet somehwehere in that meditation, the name Manna and that girl are connected.
What had she to do with Manna ? And how ?

I didn't know then. I think I do now.

************************************************************************


I had never been to California when I wrote those words in my journal on the 4th October. And yet something within me guided me to go. NOW.
Within two weeks of making that entry, I bought a return ticket to San Diego.





On the 4th December 2007 I was walking along the track of Torrey Pines State Reserve feeling like I had come home. I couldn't stop looking at the ocean, the sand, the sky, the cliffs - as if I was looking at them for the first time ever and yet as if I were looking and touching for real what had been just a celluloid memory in my mind....I walked down the red track down to the beach, looking out for rattle snakes and looking at the cactii as friends. I walked right in to the Ocean, fully clothed. And cried. I walked all wet on the sand.



I felt like I didn't want to leave ever. I felt like I had to be close to this place always now that I had found it for myself.

***************************************************************
I came home to Scotland. And found myself able to express the feeling I've always had here: THIS is NOT my home! Simple.







I decided I would give up my job. And go back to San Diego. And study Holistic Health for the next two years. Become qualified in massage, pathology, herbology, nutrition, flower essences. I decided I would try to find work to support myself in Chopra centre so that my whole world would have mediation, yoga, and holsitic healing at its very centre. And it would be in an environment I understood. Where the air felt in tune with my body, where the sun shone bright and deep on to the glittering, healing, expansive Ocean, where the sand and cliffs made up a landscape that feels familiar.


I came back on the 11th of December. And gave up work on the 1st Jan 2008.

**************************************************************
And here I am. In April. Planning my move. Feeling more and more challenged in this cold and damp and windy land every day. Struggling with the issue of survival. Getting through the day. Wondering why I am here. When the words come:

SO THAT YOU WOULD WANT TO COME HOME

So if Southern California is my home, then HOW ?

I did a meditation to open my first chakra.




I saw her again. This time, I took her in my arms, and I watched her grow, from a small girl, in to a strong, laughing young girl, in to a beautiful and vibrant young woman, with her man, with her children, with older women, as a wise old woman, sitting around a fire, the coals red hot - her hair in pleats, her skin glowing and wearing tanned moccassins.

She is in Southern California, but I don't know where.
The rocks are red and I think it could be Sedona. And I think it's possible I have been drawn out there of all places because that is where I need to heal. Heal something deep within me. So that I can be whole enough to heal others.


*************************************************************

Last night I did a meditation to take me back to Native American Sacred Lands. It wasn't a 'conscious' decision to investigate this deeply. In fact it was casual. I was distracted and pretty much ignored it, I thought. Mostly.

When I closed my eyes, I was unable to direct my thoughts in tune with the Native American theme. Instead my consciousness took me on an unexpected and vivid journey, but it had nothing to do with Southern California or Native American Sacred Lands.

I saw myself in Manchester, England. Travelling down the road to every house my ex husband and I occupied in our time together. I was on the roads, noticing the shops, the letter boxes on the streets, the trees and then I would arrive at each of our homes: I could see in to them. I could see the view from each window. I could see us, in various states of togetherness and distance. Happiness and distress. Whispers of conversations. Then on to the next place. At one place in particular, everything stopped. As I saw us together, and the words came loud and clear and still:

THIS IS WHERE YOU LOVED HIM.





I cried and cried and cried. My body shaking. Until I was quiet and still. And wondering why I went to Manchester when I was promised Native American Sacred Lands!

And in that quiet and still state I felt a gentle prompting to look up the meaning of Manna in Native American history. So I did. I got up and started my internet search.




And there i found out about the Kumayaaye people of Southern California. Who had inhabitated the Torrey Pines region for 9000BC.



And then I found that Manna is a girls' name in some Native American tribes, like the Cherokee. And there I found that some Native American tribes name the Great Spirit as Manna.




And then I found out about Mannahatta: the name used by the Lenni Lenape people of the Delaware Nation for the area we now know as Manhatten, New York.






******************************************************************

If I put together these synchronicites to understand the message that is here for me, this is what I get:

And so it comes full circle.

Manna is her name.
My native girl whose wound I need to heal.

Manna is who I am.
It was the name I gave to my heart's work, but it is the name of my heart it Self.
Manna is for healing.

Learning about healing in California, I will take up my path, and stand alone on my own two feet, and come to know my whole Self.

That's a healing for Manna, in my soul.




And then, when I am whole, Manna will branch out once again in to the world, healed and here to help others heal, and building a life that centers on NYC.

And that's a healing from Manna, the divine, the cosmic, the spirit.



That's how this happens.

That's how this works. That is my path.

A path of Love, through time and space.