Birthing Soul

Offering to the Underworld

Tamu dubi. My sweet bear - it was the Swahili nickname he had engraved on the handmade ring he made me out of black Tanzanian ebony when we were starry-eyed teenagers. The ring of first love, made with so much tenderness, so much hope, worn and tattered and cracked by years of loyal wear.

I brought it out of my collection of memories and treasures, holding it fondly, slipping its smooth roundness on and off of my fingers. I didn't realize that this worn ring, and everything it symbolized would play a monumental role in my own personal transformation.

It hurt. Tears tugged at my eyelids, begging to course down my cheeks every time I thought about it. We were asked to do a ritual, putting something of importance down into a dugout hole in the earth, symbolizing our intention to descend into the underworld. I knew it was to be this ring. Every time I thought about it, some part of me wanted to break down in rivers of tears - wanted NOT to do it, wanted to find something else, something with less emotional weight.

It was the only thing I had left, and I realized a part of me still clung to it. He is gone, the relationship is shattered along with all the hopes and dreams we shared. And I felt shattered. It was the ring of my first love. The ring of my best friend. We were going to change the world together, grow old together. But just like I unintentionally cracked the ring, I had unintentionally cracked that dream too.

Tears flowed hard and unabashed as I walked down to the portal hole. I missed my first love. I missed the safety. I missed my other half. I missed my best friend. I missed him. I missed knowing what to expect from life, knowing where I was going. I missed feeling protected from the life's buffeting storms.

But it was fitting that I put his ring into the portal to the underworld. It was from the safety of his arms that I was plunged into my own underworld. And in a way he traveled there with me, through all the agonizing heart-pain of betrayal and shattered dreams, it was his underworld journey too. In a way he and I were still connected, him somehow a part of the deep symbolic language and fabric of my psyche.

So, with tears and trembling, as a sacrifice and a memorial - to honor him, to honor his place in my life, to honor the pain-filled story that would become my own personal myth - I offered his ring to the underworld. The overwhelming symbol of my first adulthood - and its death. I offered the gift and sacrifice of myself, my hopes and dreams to the door of death... In the hopes of one day, a rebirth.

I spent the next 5 days in nature, surrounded by wildness mirroring my own wild soul. I walked sometimes courageously, sometimes full of dread into the land of shadows and death, spending afternoons ankle-deep in fertile, primal muck. Spending time in pitch darkness at the bottom of a swampy gulch, watching as my own projections attacked me from all sides in stereo clarity. I spent time dying and making peace, and then dying some more. My muck was calling me, beckoning me with every step to dissolve into it, back into the fertile, primal source of life and death and rebirth.

And so I gave myself to it, to the process that had begun so many years ago, the process of dying and disintegrating. I honored it. I intensified it. I dove head first into psycho-spiritual darkness, my psycho-spiritual muck, teaming and vibrant with deathgiving power and lifegiving vitality.

When it came time to do the final ceremony, to retrieve the item placed in the portal, I walked with a lightness I had not felt in years. As if all the gunked-up emotionally toxic waste that had been clinging to the crevasses and corners of my heart had been run through with a raging river of cleansing water. Sometimes that steady stream of tears that emanate from the depths have the same effect as a raging river.

I found the ring in the hole without much trouble, and held it with fondness one last time - slipping it on and off my fingers. Looking at the crack in the wood. Loving and appreciating all the memories and even the heart-wrenching pain it symbolized. Appreciating the part it played, the part he played in the mythic story of my life.  And in one last symbolic gesture of death, I dropped it back into the earth to be reclaimed.

And so I celebrated and honored death, and yet transformation continues. Rebirth is also a process, one that I will dive into just as passionately. This is my mythic story; one that I wouldn't change for the world.

There Is a Cure for Diabetes: The Tree of Life 21-Day+Program

MP3 File

Length-43 minutes, 47 seconds

Janette Merrill, host of Birthing Soul Podcast, interviews Dr. Gabriel Cousens, MD, author of There Is a Cure for Diabetes: The Tree of Life 21-Day+Program published by North Atlantic Books.

Dr. Gabriel Cousens, MD

Gabriel Cousens received his MD from Columbia Medical School and has over 30 years experience in healing diabetes naturally. He is a member of the American Board of Holistic medicine and a diplomat in Ayurveda. He also facilitates the spiritual, nutritional and lifestyle tele-seminars, 'Alive with Gabriel.'

Recognized as the leading world-wide medical authority on live-food nutrition and as an internationally known spiritual teacher, he is a holistic physician, psychiatrist, family therapist, international lecturer, medical researcher, and the author of six books including Spiritual Nutrition, Rainbow Green Live-Food Cuisine, Tachyon Energy, Depression-Free for Life, Sevenfold Peace, and Conscious Eating. Cousens is the founder and director of the Tree of Life Foundation and the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center in Patagonia, Arizona. Visit his website.

Visit Janette Merrill's forum.

The Art of Death Midwifery

MP3 File   Length-51 minutes, 12 seconds

Ms. Janette Merrill, host of Birthing Soul, interviews Dr. Joellyn St. Pierre about the art of death midwifery.

Dr. Joellyn St. Pierre is an ordained interfaith minister with a doctorate in divinity focused on Death as a Transition. Previously and for 25 years, she enjoyed a professional career in theatre with 7 Broadway shows under her belt, including “A Chorus Line,” and “Pippin.”  Visit her website.

Creatura: archetype of a roaring belly goddess

There is a force that lies deep within a woman. A raw, instinctual, chthonic creature with a guttural, reverberating voice. A force often subdued by culture and the fears of men because of the raw instinctual power she possesses. This primal Creatura can be found in the bowels of the earth, in deep caves and mucky places. She can be found in the depths of the ocean. Anywhere you hear a deep rumble or groan, a cry that reverberates from deeper than deep, that's her voice. And she is found all around you, in the dark inner recesses of women in whom she is awakened.

Hers is a primal force that comes out of the gut, but deeper. Out of the center depth of a woman's being, out of the uterus of her psyche. She is a life-force, she is a death-force. She is the force that literally possesses a woman in natural childbirth as cries and pushings and groanings emanate from the mother's core. She is the primal force that watches over tender budding life and then takes over the mother's whole being, banishing the little one from the depths with rhythmic, rumbling deep-ocean-like waves of power. Bringing both mother and child ever so close to the momentarily thinned veil separating death and life.  She is there as the blood supply is severed and death hovers ready to clench its icy jaws, while little cells scream out for life giving oxygen. And she is there as the new air that fills the lungs for the first time with raw vibrant force, and the first cries of the newborn reverberate throughout the room.

The Creatura stirs when sexuality begins to awaken. She flickers open a dragon-like eye when the first days of blood appear and a yearning and primal cry ache from deep within. She is coaxed to a dark, powerful life by adept fingers who call forth groans that emanate from the depths of her primal being. You can hear her same powerful voice in the roar of an earthquake as it rumbles through the bowels of the earth, or in the power of the sea as it surges and breaks forth from the dark depths below.

Clean, protected and cultured women may sense her primal flicker, even feel her power in these fleeting encounters. But Creatura cannot be summoned from the mountaintops, or from the sunny days of innocence, or from tropical landscapes of leisure. It's only in the mucky, dark and painful journey through the underworld where one faces dismemberment and the transforming power of death, that chthonic Creatura is evoked in all her power, passion and vibrancy.

The same power that banishes the baby from the safety of the dreamlike womb also banishes the woman from the protected womb of childhood, the state of unconscious naivete, plunging her into a dark initiation. She brings her down into a land of shadows, demons and predators where they serve as mirrors to her psyche. The descent through the second birth canal can be crushing, dark and overwhelming, but just as in birth, Creatura is hovering rhythmically, carefully guarding the process. Waiting until just the right moment, when the pain seems so great, the tormentors so strong, and the darkness too engulfing, she erupts from the belly of a woman with a guttural roar, a cry that shakes the underworld.  And the woman is born.  Creatura has awakened within her: a razor toothed, chthonic, crocodile creature in her core.

This roaring belly goddess is dirty and caked in clay and mud but incredibly powerful; her tail taking down trees, her mouth shattering bones. She is cyclical, rhythmic, orgasmic. She is birth pangs and grief groans and the rage that erupts from the deep at abuse and injustice. She is life and death and the power of rebirth.

She is not a rational, keen or cutting force like that which is centered in the mind. She is not the light, generous and giving force that emanates out of the heart. She is dark, instinctual, mucky and vibrant. She is primal. She is the power you have in you as a woman. She may be dormant but she is there in every birthing and transformative process a woman goes through. She may lurking in the deep with half opened eyes, but once she is awakened, and indeed she will awaken, nothing will stand in her way.

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I like it RAW

So I had the opportunity to go hear David Wolfe - raw food guru - speak last weekend. He was amazing! If you ever have a chance to hear him, I would push you out the car door with my hands flailing wildly and otherwise say... go!

To give some background, I've been slowly working my way toward a healthier lifestyle over the past few years, weaning away from processed foods and unhealthy food additives (msg, aspartame, refined sugar). My little ones never had a jar of baby food that I didn't make myself and have never needed antibiotics in their nearly 3 years of life. We've gradually been moving toward a more vegetarian and even vegan lifestyle (though not strictly).

I became interested in Raw Fooding a few years ago... I'm not even sure how. Probably in one of my learning kicks of holistic health and living. The philosophy makes sense to me as I gravitate toward a more simple lifestyle and could probably be more than happy living in a tribal community in the jungle somewhere, close to the earth and all her wonders.

So while eating more naturally made sense to me, it's happened in little lifestyle changes here and there. I started sprouting my beans and making nut milks last year, and when I found out about the amazing properties of raw cacao and goji berries and unrefined coconut oil I incorporated them into my repertoire as well.

So... back to the seminar... David showed some stunning kirlian photos of raw food compared to cooked food, and the results were, let me just say wow. Basically, food left in it's natural state is bursting with energy and vitality, and once it's cooked, well it's just blah. Nothing there.

Raw, organic cocoa nib

So David's seminar inspired me to another step on my personal path to healthy living: a variation on the "green smoothie." The green smoothie is a blended concoction of basically whatever you want, but it includes a green leafy vegetable that is masked by all the other yum stuff. Great way to get kids to eat greens by the way!

So here's my particular take on it: soaked almonds and pine nuts, hemp seeds, carrots, half an apple, half an avocado, frozen mango chunks, heaping handful of raw spinach, kale or swiss chard, freshly ground flax seed, soaked goji berries (or powder) and a couple heaping spoonfulls of raw cacao powder, some kind of liquid (rice milk, almond milk, juice, water, whatever!) and maybe some agave syrup to help sweeten it. Blend it all up in the famous Vita-mix (this will kill most other blenders) and voila! A super smooth, creamy, thick and rich green/brown smoothie that has more nutrition, vitamins, fiber and just plain good stuff than you can shake a stick at. Not to mention it's filling, tastes amazing and gives you a better energy boost than coffee. My body LOVES it, and so do my kiddos :).

Anyway, just another step on the path of becoming a more conscious being, and enjoying myself in the process. So next time you see me and I'm glowing, no I'm not in love (and it's not the pregnant glow!), I'm just eating raw food :).

"Awacate chuculate"

"Smoobies!"

 

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La Luna Roja

I took the girls tonight to the little strip of country on the edge of town to watch the moon be gobbled up by the earth's shadow. Filled with wide eyed wonder and excitement we saw our first glimpses of the partly shadowed moon through the trees as we made our way to the dark little road that cuts through an agriculture area.

We pulled up into the same little turnoff where I stumbled onto the Leonid meteor shower a year or so ago. We unloaded from the car and watched in the cold night air as the silvery brightness gave way to a deep reddish hue.

The last time I remember seeing this event was as a child of maybe 4 or 5. I vividly remember the moon turning red and I didn't understand why though I'm sure my dad explained it to me. I just remember the wonder I felt.  Maybe that's why I felt full of excitement, giddy like a child again tonight, seeing the world with eyes of awe.

Through the many phases of my life, I've looked up to the night sky and felt that same sense of wonder and awe. A sense of the infinity and grandiosity of the universe that overshadows our short little lives. To see the intricate workings of the cosmos in such a dramatic way like tonight's lunar eclipse makes you for a short time, glimpse the world - and your place in it - in a vastly diffrent light. And even though you feel like such a small organism in the scheme of the universe, it somehow imparts a sense of honor, a sense of purpose. I belong to this place, right here, right now, and yet I'm a part of the infinite expanse of time and space, part of the universe becoming conscious of itself. Wow. What an honor!

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Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World

MP3 File

Length-1 hour, 6 minutes, 38 seconds

Ms. Janette Merrill, host of Birthing Soul, interviews Bill Plotkin, Ph.D, author of Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World published by New World Library.

Bill Plotkin, Ph.D., is the author of Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World and Soulcraft: Crossing the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche. In his work at the Animas Valley Institute  - and around the world  - Bill draws on dreams, the natural world, poetry, depth psychology and many cross-cultural soul-encounter practices such as vision-fasting, council, trance-rhythms and conversations across species boundaries. Visit him online at http://www.animas.org.

Visit Janette Merrill's forum and Myspace page.

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Bellydancing babies

"Can we shake it mom" Eliyah excitedly pleaded while holding up the jingly coin belt for me to wrap around her little hips. The ritual is the same every time: the almost 3-year-olds strip down to bare essentials and don the scarves laced with sparkles and silvery noise makers, we turn up whatever music happens to be on hand and then have a ton of fun "shaking it." Of course mama joins in here and there. You just can't resist but indulge in pure uninhibited movement (because of course, nobody else is watching!).

Tonight their bosom buddy was over and they initiated her into the world of shimmys and hip circles and the general art of shakin it. Somehow tonight they discovered that if they stood on the table, they could see themselves in the mirror I have hanging in the kitchen, and so all three girls were table dancing, very seductively for 3 year-olds might I add!

I'm fully dedicated to raising my girls with a healthy view of their body,  but every once in a while I feel a little surge of anxiety. I imagine it's the voice of my conservative upbringing, fearfully prophesying that if a girl is raised being comfortable with her body and its movement, it naturally follows that she will be loose sexually, or prey for predatory teenage boys. The natural remedy of course is to forbid any movement whatsoever of the body, echoing in my mother's own injunction never to shake our hips (and especially not in church!).  As if feeling at home in one's body and celebrating its movement was the reason for society's sexual ills of early teen pregnancy and sexual predation.

Of course there are a myriad of other factors that plays into a girls feelings of shame towards the body and a desire to hide behind loose fitting clothes. In circles where sex (outside of marriage) is evil, women have the responsibility to take extreme care in how they dress, how they move, how they present themselves, lest they be a temptation for the men and end up like the first woman who tempted Adam into eating the forbidden fruit, therefore being the reason for the downfall of all humankind.

The early church father Tertullian (3rd century) wrote this speaking of the curse on women:

And do you not know that you are (each) an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age:⁴ the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the devil's gateway: you are the unsealer⁵ of that (forbidden) tree: you are the first deserter of the divine law: you are she who persuaded⁶ him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God's image, man. On account of your⁷desert - that is, death - even the Son of God had to die.  (Ante-Nicene Fathers vol IV).

While modern teachings of the church aren't nearly as harsh toward women, there is still an underlying thread that comes through. The body - especially the female body - is still seen as a  temptation, and many women are unconsciously taught to feel shame for their bodies.

Well I'm taking a different approach. It's my hope that my daughters will feel happy and alive inside their bodies, seeing themselves as unique, sacred and yes, sensual beings. Dance in all its forms is a beautiful expression of that. Through bellydance and all sorts of creative body movements they can begin to appreciate the beauty of their own bodies, instead of seeing them as shameful and evil, or too fat or skinny, too tall or as in the more probable case with my girls, too short. And that they can grow into powerful young women, confident in their bodies, but also able to consciously choose the appropriate time and places to celebrate that beauty.

So while that flicker of anxiety crosses my mind, seeing my daughters dancing on the table, and my internal mother raises her eyebrows at me in conservative disapproval, I'll just smile, put on my own hip scarf and start dancing along with them.

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Childhood limbs and wide-eyed wonder

I went to yoga last night for the first time in a couple weeks. It seems I go in sputters and spurts, then get busy with other life happenings and slack off for a while until my body starts reminding me how much I miss it. The heat, the sweat, the dissolving of all other aspects of life for 90 minutes while you immerse yourself in pure bodily sensations - stretchings and burnings, creakings and groanings. With sheer determination working your way through beautiful contortions you never imagined you could do, stretching molding the body as if it were clay.  Then to come out the other side drenched in sweat but nothing short of blissful.

My seven-year-old came with me last night and we did the floor series together. Of course I'm bursting with motherly pride as we go through the poses and she pulls them off with ease. When it came time for the camel though, I was a little concerned. Maybe it's because it's one of the most difficult poses and as an intense and complete backward bend, can be dangerous if you do it wrong.

I whispered a little caution to her as I creaked and groaned myself into the pose, only to turn my head a little toward her and see that she was effortlessly and deeply in the position already. I did a double take and about fell out of the posture as I whipped my head around toward her. While I have a hard time getting my own short arms to grab my heels, she was bending so far backward her head was touching the floor. And what's more, she was giggling with pride as she saw the look of shock and surprise on my face... and nobody giggles in camel pose!

It started me thinking... as adults we have gained so much knowledge and understanding of the big wide world, but we have lost so much in the process. Most of us, along with loosing the flexibility of childhood limbs loose the open hearted wonder and curiosity at the world, the wide-eyed imagination, the sense of a great mystery hovering in every shadow, under every curious leaf. The sense of awe at a budding spring flower, a worm in the driveway or a bird perching on the window sill.  We loose a sense of connection with the body, and the joy of uninhibited movement.

It's not that these things are lost forever, we just have to reclaim them and consciously begin look at the world with the eyes of a child once again. It's not always easy as adult pressures and responsibilities weigh heavily on our backs, but it's worth it. I'm not saying I'll be giggling in camel pose next yoga class, but I'll let the awe of living and the wonders of the Mystery wash over me as I look wide eyed into the beautiful world full of worms and flowers and bright yellow birds on my window sill. And I'll enjoy my yoga bliss and the feeling of admiration and pride I have for my little girl who is teaching me so much about life.

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Come check out the forum

Hi all, just an invitation to come check out the Birthing Soul forum. It's a place that encompasses the topics that are the focus of Birthing Soul. I have just gone public with it, so there's not much activity yet, but I'm hoping to change that! So if you are interested in subjects like:

sacred sexuality
awakening intuition
intentional community
dreamwork
Jungian active imagination
shamanic journeying
mythology and symbol
natural childbirth
transformation
creative ritual/ceremony
end of life transition

and a few others... Please stop by and contribute. I'd love to hear your thoughts on these issues.

It is my also hope to begin a thread for each interview I conduct and open up the topic for discussion. I'm hoping to even get some of the authors I interview active in discussion over their topic, so we'll see! 

Either way, come and stop by now and then to see what's happening.

Blessings,
Janette

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