SAFE

[pinit]
Being female in this world, I’ve always held certain unexamined assumptions about How Things Are. I believed the story that I’m weak and vulnerable. I believed my gender made me an automatic target for crime, and therefore I must be constantly on my guard against theft or bodily attack.
And so, like many women, I developed behavioral responses to my environment:
Never walk down alleyways at night.
Always check the back seat before getting in my car.
Listen for footsteps. Be aware of any cars that might be following mine.
Paranoia, in this case, seemed the smart and rational response to a dangerous world. And this hyper-vigilance gave me some illusory sense of control over my environment.
Despite ongoing enquiry into the nature (and trustworthiness) of my own beliefs, I had never seen fit to question this particularly far-ranging and pernicious set of fears.
I’d spent decades feathering my nest and arranging my life into the reassuring picture of comfort and control, you see. So my fears rarely had the chance to parade themselves in full.
Out of sight, out of mind, right?
Uh…no. They festered ever-present just below the surface of my consciousness, oozing low-level anxiety into every corner of my life instead.
•          •          •
So it’s been an interesting several months.
After 21 years as a comfortably married lady, I moved out of the house June 1st and gratefully spent the summer at my dear friend Kathy’s place. While there, my primary hobbies including staying awake nights and obsessing about lack of safety, potential loss of steady income, and fears of destitution and/or homelessness.
The theme was survival – was I capable of taking care of myself? And that age-old unconscious question at the base of all things: Did I really have any right to thrive in this world?
I discovered all my buried fears now had ample opportunity to come out and play: How would I live? Where would I go? Could I run my business without Kurt (I.T. Guy Extraordinaire in the next room), ready to bail me out of any technological jam?
There was more: Without a home base to call my own I’d be traveling around with all my worldly goods in tow, having no permanent place to stash my valuables. How would I protect myself from the constant threat of theft? I felt utterly vulnerable and unsupported in the world.
(Interestingly, I was surrounded by beautiful people on all sides who were offering huge quantities of loving support. But this frightening and pervasive lack of support was an inside job. And it welled up in me unceasingly, no matter what anyone around me said or did.)
•          •          •
At summer’s end, I packed up my little car and drove it across the desert to Sedona. I had no idea why Sedona, or what I might do there. But I had eventually gotten so bored with torturing myself over questions of where to go and what to do, that I surrendered the whole scary bag of worms to Spirit.
And Sedona it appeared to be, so now I was just uneasily following the prompts that seemed to point me toward red rock country.
One of these Spirit-inspired prompts was a Sedona house-share rental that I had taken sight unseen from Craigslist. It was a massive three-story log cabin in the woods, with broad balconies on all sides. It had spectacular views of Thunder Mountain.
So far so good.
This place was quite a bit more expensive than other house-shares I’d seen, but sounded a hundred times better than any private apartment I was likely to find for a similar price. So I took it.
I would have the whole second floor to myself — a huge bedroom with office area; balcony; sitting room; a closet big enough to park my Mini inside (if only I could’ve gotten it up the stairs) and a large separate bath. And there was a very spacious loft area at the other end of the second floor that was also mine – except for Wednesdays, when that space would be used for New Age chiropractic sessions of some sort.
All of that sounded fine, and the pictures looked good. But then I arrived, and saw what the photos hadn’t shown:  There were no doors on my room…just a bunch of curtains across an open expanse. No window coverings in most of the house, either, including my bathroom.
And when I asked for a key, I was told they didn’t use them. None of the locks worked on the house’s several exterior doors, apparently. Which didn’t seem to trouble my roommate Maurice (or any of his friends) because he never locked the doors anyway.
Okaaaaaay….
And then three days after I arrived, Maurice left town for two weeks and I was all alone in this giant, exposed, unlockable cabin in the woods. All alone, that is, except for the fifteen or twenty strangers who converged on the place every Wednesday to have their chakras tuned up and spines realigned.
Not only did this place push every safety fear button I had, it seemed to invent a half-dozen new ones.
I was especially terrified of coming home alone after dark to an empty, unlocked house. As I entered, I would turn on every light, methodically checking every room, every closet, under the beds and behind the shower curtains – investigating every potential hiding place to assure myself no unseen attackers were lurking.
I was also afraid that some of those chiropractic patients would surely recognize this house for the easy mark it was; over and over in my mind I’d picture them casing the joint and coming back after dark to steal the aforementioned worldly goods.
Or worse.
Every night in bed my mind ran obsessively through all the horrifying scenarios of What Might Happen. And I couldn’t seem to stop it. The heart-pounding, sick-making terror of it.
Oh yes. I knew these were all just ego stories I had invented.
I knew these fears weren’t real.
I knew I was One with all these horrifying “others” who populated my feverish imagination. And I certainly knew they were innocent in Truth.
But knowing all this didn’t make it a damn bit better. Not when it felt like my very survival was at stake.
•          •          •
But here’s the thing: These days I’m in a period of consciously examining all my deeply buried unconscious pain, fear and general gunk, together with Spirit. Just the action of witnessing all this hidden crap – just agreeing to bring my awareness to it and be with it unconditionally – this is powerful stuff, and it causes huge leaps in healing.
So whenever dark, difficult emotions crop up, I see it as a gift, and I welcome the emotional turbulence as a prime opportunity for transformation. And back at Kathy’s place, I had prayed to be able to witness my deepest fears and surrender them to Spirit once and for all, for total healing.
Hey, prayer answered.
Or the first half of it, anyway.
So I knew it was no accident I had come to stay in this funhouse of the damned. Besides, even while it made me sick with terror, funnily enough there was something about the house itself that felt like a big, warm hug. On some level I knew this cabin was a loving, gentle laboratory for working out my fears.
A safe place to feel howlingly unsafe in.
But. The obsessive scenarios of violent crime still played out in my head every night and refused to go away. Upon deep examination, I realized my pain stemmed from being helpless to control the situation. (Had the doors been lockable, I could’ve maintained the illusion of control. But in this wide-open vulnerability, I had no choice but to rely on those terrifying “others” – hoping they’d choose not to target this house. But clearly I would never have control over that.)
The truth, of course, is that none of us has control over such things, ever. But we whistle past the graveyard, and we buy alarm systems or firearms or life insurance policies; we build up savings and retirement accounts so that we can stop being afraid. So that we can sleep at night. So that we can give ourselves the illusion of control. But outside forces are outside forces, at least here in the 3-D world of illusion. And outside forces simply aren’t controllable.
The only way to be free of fear once and for all is to meet it where it actually lives:
Within.
After awhile, I found the pain of trying to control the uncontrollable was even more unbearable than the fear itself. So it became comparatively easy to surrender the whole awful situation to Spirit. And that’s saying a lot, because when push comes to shove, we all unconsciously believe surrender to God leaves us completely unprotected and vulnerable to attack.
In that ass-backwards, upside down logic of the ego mind, hanging onto the fear seems to offer some measure of protective armor. Some scrap of control. So if I was going to hand over my last scraps of protection and control, it meant I had to get to a place where I felt willing to die. Where surrender actually seemed a better solution than hanging onto the agony of “control.”
Like: I might as well agree to possibly be murdered in my bed, because living with this kind of mental pain – the endless imaginary future enactment of that murder – is worse than that.
So I surrendered and I trusted, mainly because I saw no other viable options.
 
Relief was not immediate.
It took days or weeks. I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but one day I turned around and realized the fear had gone away completely.
The house was still the same.
The people, God love ‘em, continued to come and go, treating the cabin like a benevolent frat house.
It’s me that’s changed. I’m totally comfortable now.
•          •          •
Here’s a related subject: The other day in the late afternoon, Fran and I hiked Cathedral Rock. It had been years since I’d done it. Cathedral combines elevation hiking with a substantial amount of rock climbing, so it’s not a hike that can be rushed through. It takes some time.
I wasn’t thinking. It was sunny when we started out, so I wore my prescription sunglasses.
The sun had dipped below the horizon by the time we reached the top. By halfway down it was getting quite dark, so I had to choose between two less-than-ideal options: Make the rapidly deepening dusk even darker by wearing my shades? Or take them off and be as blind as…some kind of blind thing with its eyes closed?
The dilemma made me recall my first “midnight hike” in Sedona. (If you’ve read Long Time No See, you know about that hike.) How terribly anxious I’d been. And how astonished I was to emerge from that pitch-black wilderness experience entirely unscathed.
The lesson that night had been about trusting in Spirit, which was something I was unable to do back then. Then some time later, in another nature setting surrounded by towering Sequoias, I found myself once again worrying about dangerous predators and other safety hazards. And a lesson from Spirit emerged, which referenced that previous midnight hike:
“…The truth is that the bears and the ice are One with your holy Self. In perfect gentleness they support you and keep you safe within this dream world – just as the cactus and coyotes functioned to keep you safe during your pitch-black Sedona hike. Your One Self (which includes all bears, coyotes and prickly desert plants) supports you in your lesson plan as it lovingly awaits your awakening.”
At the time, it was too much to take in. Oh sure, I understood it intellectually. But it wasn’t until the other night, as I shimmied down a mountain in near total darkness, that I got it. I was entirely calm, without a shred of fear or anxiety, filled instead with a sense of total safety and trust in Spirit.
And, just as Spirit had described it back then, I could really feel the rocks and cactus and crickets and sky as my One holy Self, lovingly supporting my progress every step of the way. I felt our mutual gratitude. And our mutual joy.
In fact I felt like the richest, luckiest, giftiest person alive. And pretty much every minute since then has felt like Christmas morning.
•          •          •
The most extraordinary thing of all: So much more seems to have been healed than just the particular set of fears I thought I was handing over. These days I find myself striding through life in wholly unaccustomed ease and safety for the first time ever.
I have no concern for my personal security or the safety of my stuff. Yes, I remain mindful. I don’t leave my things unattended, or take foolish risks. But fear is gone. I am truly comfortable wherever I find myself.
And even more miraculous than that: For the first time in my life, I now know I have a right to be here. I mean, really know it.
I am safe in My own embrace. And I am Loved. Very, very Loved.
And it’s all an inside job.
I leave this crazy log cabin in a week or two, headed for my next adventure. I will be forever grateful for the things I left behind here. And for the new riches I carry with me, wherever I go.
 
 
 

Walking the talk

Fran’s been here visiting with me, off and on for the past few weeks. If you’ve read Long Time No See, you know about Fran from Sedona. If this blog post is your first intro to her, I will tell you Fran is, among other things, a powerful synchronicity magnet.
Translation: When she does that Fran thing of focusing deeply in tune with present-moment awareness, the “divine coincidence” starts to flow all around, as an outward sign of gentle communion with All That Is.
So we were walking on my favorite beach here in Ventura, the other day. There’s something about this place. I’ve had so many spiritual experiences on this beach, I’ve lost count; I even wrote about it in LTNS. And when Fran and I walk this beach together, the synchronicities pile up. New awarenesses unfold. Big stuff happens.
We went there with no agenda in mind. A short walk for some fresh air. It turned into our longest beachwalk ever – and what emerged from it is a new workshop series that Fran and I will be conducting together, here in Ventura. Here at this beach.
The inspiration flowed, and we started to realize we were feeling called to share too much information to fit into a one-day workshop. It should probably be a full weekend. And it really ought to take place within walking distance of this beach so all participants could get here easily, which meant the workshop would have to happen in a nearby hotel ballroom.
I watched my mind as it began making tired old assumptions and inventing stale, familiar stories of lack: People will pay for a one-day workshop, but will they come for two days? And won’t a hotel meeting room be too expensive? After all, only big famous spiritual speakers book hotels as venues. The rest of us make do with funky backroom spaces attached to bookstores or yoga studios.
(It’s not even like I think hotel ballrooms are nice – they have no natural light, pinkish-tan chairs and those Vegas chandeliers from the 1980s. But even so, in some part of my belief system, they’ve been too good, too legitimate, for me and my work.)
And so Fran and I had a very deep discussion about trusting and allowing abundance; about letting go of old mental stories; about doing what feels authentically right, doing what you feel genuinely called to do. And how when you step up courageously and joyfully to do whatever it is you’re meant to be doing, the inevitable response from the universal One Self is always recognition and support.
And I heard it. I felt it.  And all those old stories fell away. We were absolutely confident, but more than that, we felt a deep knowing that this information we’re called to share is so truly hungered for by so many. And it’s time to start putting it out there.
So we’ll book the hotel it’s meant to be in, whatever the costs involved. And whoever is drawn to be at this workshop will show up. It was clear to both of us that we should feel absolutely free to create this workshop series exactly the way we feel inspired to do it, and then trust it will come to pass.
Just then we both looked down and saw something lying in the sand. Something round and flat and sort of strange. What could it be? A thin crosscut piece of wood? A plastic disk? Fran nudged it with her toe. Finally she bent and turned it over. It was a sand dollar.
Let me repeat that with a little more emphasis: It was a sand dollar. And I almost didn’t recognize it. Almost left it lying there, face down in the sand.
This, ladies and gents, is a prime example of the language of synchronicity. Is a sand dollar on a beach unusual? No. But this is the first one I’ve ever seen in my 9 years here. This sand dollar’s appearance wasn’t accidental. And it wasn’t saying, ‘Hey, you two can make a buck (a dollar) by putting on workshops together in the sand.’
This sand dollar was a gentle affirmation saying, ‘Yes! Go for it. Be fearless about living your truest self, about doing what authentically brings you joy. And don’t worry about the rest.’
So we listened to that little sand dollar’s message. We stopped at the hotel on our way home, all windblown and sandy, to ask if they have meeting rooms. Why yes, we have meeting rooms. Let us show you our very nicest one.
Our jaws dropped as we stepped into a beautiful sunny room, its glass walls overlooking a sea of sailboats bobbing in the marina. A pair of French doors led to its own private outdoor patio complete with a beautiful rock fireplace.
I looked around and thought: Honey, I’m home.
•            •            •
Did I mention? We got the room for a price not very much higher than the cost of a fluorescent-lit backroom of a bookstore.
So there you go. It’s a brave new world, and I’m happy to call it mine. Our first workshop will be held in mid-August, by the way. For more info about it, go to http://www.carrietriffet.com/events.php .

Past-life murder and present day forgiveness: The ultimate do-over

I remember bits and pieces of some of my more colorful past lives. I never get the full story, though – just quick, disconnected flashes lacking any kind of meaningful context.
I know I was once the leader of a secret religious order called Lamb of God. But I only see images of torchlight flickering on roughhewn walls; of long white tunics and heavy crosses worn around the neck. It would be nice to know a little more, but that’s all I have.
And then there’s a shamanic episode a couple of centuries later that took place on Navajo land: I see images of a black horse galloping at me, its rider silhouetted against the sun; I’m raising my arms, and wearing a long cape that seems to be made of shiny black feathers.
In general, I’m not all that fascinated by the idea of past lives, so I haven’t gone out of my way to find out more. I don’t know, maybe that’s because I tend to remember less about past lives and more about past deaths.
I’ve been burned at the stake. Shot in the back. But before I talk about past death, I want to go back a minute and tell you more about that shamanic memory. It took place at Spider Rock in Canyon de Chelly, during an amazing 5 day InnerVision journey I did with Fran in 2008. (if you don’t know who Fran is, see any of the blog entries listed under ‘Sedona’s spiritual connection.’)
We toured a great big loop through Arizona and Utah. It was amazing – someday maybe I’ll write the whole story as an epic 5-parter. We hit lots of well known sacred spots on that trip: Valley of the Gods, Monument Valley etc., as well as some lesser known areas like Mexican Hat.
Fran had long been telling me about Mexican Hat. She was afraid of that place; she knew she had a deep connection to that very troubled land, and that she was supposed to do something powerful there but had never felt ready. She told me the land had been raped – mined for uranium which was then processed at nearby mills, leaving the area with permanently polluted groundwater.
InnerVision journeys are never planned ahead of time. Fran just goes wherever Spirit leads. As we approached Mexican Hat, her description of its painful history grew more heated and angry. I was expecting to see a ravaged landscape, but as we got out of the car the place struck me as astonishingly beautiful, a study in red rocks and green (don’t drink it) water.
Suddenly she stopped in mid-rant. She was remembering she’d been ‘told’ long ago that she would one day bring someone there who would heal the land. And she just now realized that someone was me.
Time stopped and I watched myself out-of-body as I said to her: “To heal the land, we need to love the rapists.”
I wasn’t entirely sure at the time what I meant by that. But the other night I realized that this episode actually connects to another one, a past-death memory. Here’s that past-death story as it’s told in my book:
…The next thing I knew, I was in three places at once. Part of me was reliving my own murder from a previous lifetime, a brutal rape and strangulation. Yet it wasn’t nearly as scary or disturbing as you’d expect, because a second part of me was peacefully watching it unfold from a detached bird’s-eye viewpoint and the third part of me knew I was safely lying in my own bed the whole time.

I’m being shown this for a reason.’ This was the thought that filled my mind, and I knew it was the truth.I’m supposed to forgive this guy.’

Yet it didn’t seem to require forgiveness in the usual sense of the word. I didn’t get that I was supposed to be saying, “Oh, there, there, it’s ok that you’re murdering me.”

It seemed I was being asked to remain open-hearted and peacefully present while he did this awful thing. So I did. And as I made the choice to do it, I dimly sensed that this decision to stay loving in the face of hatred was having a big effect, shuffling the deck on my own past or future timeline, although I couldn’t begin to say how.
This past-death experience occurred shortly before I was introduced to A Course in Miracles. Now I recognize that it was asking me to practice forgiveness as defined by the Course: To completely overlook the imagined transgressions of this world – no matter how evil or terrifying they might seem – and to respond only with love.
And what’s the payoff, you ask, for responding with love instead of attack or defense? The payoff is huge. Probably more awesome than you or I can comprehend, in fact.
When I made the choice to offer only love and peace to that rapist-murderer (instead of responding with terror and rage as I had done the first time around), I felt a massive shift that I described at the time as ‘shuffling the deck.’ But it really felt as if time itself was collapsing, shortening my journey immeasurably. I had the strong impression, in fact, that it was rewriting my past or future to leave out certain painful portions because those lessons were learned now.
A Heavenly do-over, if you will. Pretty powerful stuff.
So, back to Mexican Hat. Could that ravaged land really be healed through the simple action of choosing to love its ‘rapists’? I’m thinking yes. If time and destiny fall like dominoes when love is chosen over fear, surely the Earth can be healed by that same gently loving choice.
After all, that’s another of the Course’s basic tenets: We’re all One with everything that is. Which presumably includes every rock and stream. Heal ourselves as we heal the rapists, and in that simple choice the land is automatically healed too. So can you imagine just how powerful love really is?
I don’t know; something to think about.

The Sedona connection – red rocks and spiritual power

A great big chunk of my story takes place in Sedona. The place has changed a lot in recent years; when we first visited, it was sort of a nondescript little town surrounded by staggering scenery. Now it’s much more developed and resort-y, but still surrounded, thankfully, by that same jaw-dropping beauty.

I’m deeply connected to the rusty rock energy of that place. Of all the spots in the world, that’s where I find it easiest to absorb messages from Spirit.

It’s ironic, this deep connection. Before all this happened, I was never what you’d call ‘into nature’, being more the slick fashion and trendy restaurants type. If anybody had told me I’d one day be developing a great fondness for hiking boots, or venturing hundreds of miles into remote wilderness on purpose…well I don’t know what I would’ve thought.

I guess in the grand scheme of things, this newfound outdoorsy-ness is probably the least unusual development of the past few years. But it was astonishing news to me that nature could facilitate profound spiritual experience.

Oh, sure – stillness, beauty, all that John Muir stuff. I got it, intellectually. God’s glorious handiwork in the American West, and all that. I just never managed to feel any real connection between spirituality and nature.

It took that crazy-powerful Sedona vortex energy to shock me out of my city girl complacency. Wide open conduits just waiting for a hookup. Who wouldn’t want to get right up in there and explore?

It’s kind of funny, because these days I practice A Course in Miracles. One of its core tenets is that everything is one. Which means, among other things, that all places are one. No individual place is more sacred or spiritual or special than any other. All are exactly the same.

Spirit sends me beautiful, loving messages of oneness all the time, but I continue to experience those messages, visions and deep synchronicities most powerfully in Sedona. So I get messages about the non-special nature of Sedona, while absorbing those lessons most deeply due to the special nature of Sedona!

I used to feel a little bit bad about that. But now I realize that nobody is able to put the Course’s very challenging teaching of ultimate truth into practice right away. Or at least, nobody I know.

And Spirit is endlessly creative at using whatever tools are available at the time. In this illusory 3-D world, I get a huge communication boost from being in Sedona. And Spirit is happy to make good use of that particular illusion, as it has made good use of so many others.