It was within days of that seminar with Carolyn Myss, and my life-awakening jolt that I decided my follow-up treatment for the breast cancer would be to go on a spiritual retreat for several months. I knew that what I really needed was peace and quiet, fresh air, good food and time by myself. Just the right place presented itself to me that very week. The retreat facility was within two hours of my home on the Big Island of Hawaii. It offered me the quiet and peaceful atmosphere I needed to heal. Malama Ano Spiritual Sanctuary (meaning nurturing the seed) is on the slopes of Mauna Kea (which means white mountain). Mauna Kea is the tallest island mountain in the world rising over 32,000 feet from the ocean floor. It overlooks the majestic and powerful Pacific Ocean on the north side of the island. Mauna Kea is a dormant volcano but the power of Pele, the volcano goddess is still very much alive in the magna beneath the surface. Only miles away, she flows into the ocean on the east side of the island.
A friend loaned me a book to read on the retreat after I told her about a dream I had about a garden I was going to create on the land at the retreat center. The book, Behaving as though the God in All Life Mattered, written by Machaelle Small Wright, talks about working with the devas and nature spirits in gardening. I have been blessed with wonderful gardens my whole life, first my grandmother with her magnificent irises, and then my mother with her perennials and vegetables. I learned at an early age to plant myself in the earth and see what grows. I knew that continuing that ritual would be important in my healing process. I am reminded of a wonderful poem called Unlocking the Door by Angela Passidomo Trafford from her book The Heroic Path. Angela is a two-time survivor of breast cancer and now lives in Naples, Florida.
She lay back
Her face in heavenly repose
Revealing secrets
That would
Shatter the glass dome
Under which she had lived
As an innocent earth child.
After the terror passed
She gathered the splinters shards
And planted them
In a garden she watered
With light and love and tears
Watching them grow
Emitting prisms and rainbows
And shafts of blazing brilliance
That promised
All she had ever dreamed of
And she had hoped for and
More
The new crystals
Could grow into shimmering towers
And sacred palaces
It all depended upon her vision
And her power
And the strength of
A gardener's love
The garden (pictured at the left) became my canvas on which I would paint with color and sound. My days were spent with my toes in the dirt and my spirits in the heavens. The "work" was amazingly easy as I put all of my energy into receiving the life force from the earth. I communed with the spirits of the land and the plant spirits who made themselves known to me even before I planted one seed. I felt the nature spirits knew the best way for me to plant, and they came to me in my dreams with the idea for planting in an eleven-pointed 3300 square foot mandala pattern—sacred geometry on a very large scale. It took me several weeks just to draw the design to scale and then transfer the design to the garden patch. I felt guided to plant in the colors of the Chinese mystical octagon used in feng shui that incorporates the eight trigrams of the I Ching and the five element colors. It was fascinating and exciting to apply these principles to the land and watch it come alive. The Bagua wheel corresponds to the eight life fortunes, corresponding colors, the body and the directions.
The spirits of the land and the garden seemed happy with what I was doing. Often I would hear music and sense movement in the garden when there was no "real" explanation for it. Dorothy Maclean received devic messages for Findhorn in Scotland. She was able to translate them with lyric beauty and one of the messages talks about the sounds of plants. Angel Sound--"Each plant sounds a note which attracts its builder to it and calls substance to itself through the nature spirits. We devas know the individual notes for all in our charge, and we sound them, like tuning forks, to be picked up by each plant. When a seed is ready to germinate, moisture and warmth do not of themselves set its note vibrating--we do that. We set the seed on its way and hold out its note before it to follow. That note changes with growth and stages, as does man whose voice changes as he advances into maturity."
The Hawaiian hawk called the "i'o" sat in the tree near the garden or circled overhead talking to me constantly. The Native Americans say the hawk is the messenger spirit who teaches us to be observant and to look at our surroundings. The hawk speaks of an initiation and the power of magic to be used in overcoming stressful or difficult situations, and the shrill cry calls for heightened awareness to receive a message. Hawk medicine is filled with responsibility and the ability to circle over life and look at it from a higher perspective.
Dragonflies have always been very special to me. I remember on two occasions in my life when dragonflies have landed in my hand and stayed there for extended periods of time. They seem to find me wherever I am. This garden was a beautiful place to enjoy them, and they were constantly darting around me. It was almost as though they were trying to get me to play with them. In Native American lore, the dragonfly signifies illusion of what we accept so blindly as reality. Their message is of wisdom and enlightenment as well as communication from the elemental world. They remind us that we can shift our perceptions and look at situations from another perspective.
I often sang as I planted, watered, weeded and harvested. Sometimes I just sat under the ohia tree that was in the corner of the garden and sang for no particular function except to make sounds. I felt the incredible life force of the garden strengthening my own life force and making me stronger in body and in spirit. The plants continued to grow at such a fast pace that I could hardly keep up with the bounty. I accepted this as a metaphor for my life. I could plants the seeds of creativity, tend to myself, and gratefully accept the prosperity that lay before me.
During this retreat I would return home to Volcano on the weekends to visit my friends and family. I needed this as much for my spiritual healing as I needed the peace and solitude during the week at the retreat. A good friend and I began to spend time together when I was home for the weekends. He had been visiting with family on the East Coast during my illness, and wasn't aware of what had been happening with me while he was gone. We developed a wonderful close friendship that evolved into an intimate relationship after several months. I was self-conscious about my body and all the changes that had taken place over the last few months. I was concerned that I wouldn't be attractive enough for him to be interested once he saw my scars. He was wonderful and supportive, tender and loving with me. It was just what I needed at just the right time.
Several months later, though, he announced to me that he was moving away to the mainland to be with another woman. I was devastated. I felt as though my world had come crashing down around me, and that I was lacking something that made him leave our relationship. My issues of self-love and acceptability came to the forefront, and I was incapable of functioning for several days. I became a waste-dump of self-pity. I sobbed, I moaned, I wrote lots of poetry.
One of the poems I wrote is called Love Heals:
Fear poisons my mind with doubt
Envy breaks my heart in pieces.
Longing cuts me like a dull razor
Desire burns in me like a raging fire.
But love... Love, is the magic that heals me.
I realized during this time that I had always put my self-worth in the hands of my partner. If I wasn't in a relationship, I just seemed to coast along. So I entered a new phase where I didn't look for love from anyone else, and began a new journey into loving myself unconditionally. I started standing in front of the mirror and looking at the scars on my body, seeing them as badges of courage instead of ugly scars. I learned to see my True Self, not my self-image. I began to do things that made me happy; things just for me. I felt a new sense of self and a new joy that I hadn't know before. People began to see this in me and commented on the glow they observed. This was a wonderful validation. I was finally able to take compliments from others because I no longer needed them. What a freeing feeling it was to have a sense of self-worth and self-expression.
A woman from Germany came to visit the retreat center. She was a music therapist and used the combination of music and guided meditation to help people access buried issues. One day she asked me if I was interested in a session. She played classical music of Edward Grieg, Joaquin Rodrigo, Benedetto Marcello, Anton Arensky,Vivaldi and Antonin Dvorak as I moved into a meditative state. Visions and pictures flooded my consciousness as I let the music take me to other realms. I had never experienced music to that degree before. It was an experience of great power, and I used the visions I received as archetype messengers. I felt that in just one music therapy session, I was able to access lifetimes of information that may not have come to my conscious mind otherwise.
Within a few days I knew that I was being called to do deep healing work with others. I didn't know exactly what form it would take. I had been through Reiki training and Healing Touch training, so I was aware of the power of human touch. But I felt like I was being initiated into a work using my voice as a medium for healing. I quickly applied to the next semester at the University of Hawaii at Hilo as a voice major. I had no idea why I was doing this, except that I felt it was the right thing to do. Being in school was wonderful, even though most of the students were young enough to be my children. During my previous experiences with academia, I had been a basket case. Either I got terrible grades, or I was completely stressed out trying to earn them. My new experience was completely different because I had a focus and purpose that was my energetic force. Joseph Campbell, famous author and renowned mythologist, once said, "Follow your bliss." Deepak Chopra in Ageless Body, Timeless Mind says, "Bliss is the tingling rush of love in action, the flow of Being as it reaches out to meet itself and curl back with delight in the contact."
I continued to immerse myself in music--all types of music. I sang classical, celtic, gospel, show tunes, folk, world ethnic, and sacred. Music became more powerful to me than I could have imagined. I remember singing the soprano solo in a performance of John Rutter's Requiem that spring with the 80-voice chorus singing behind me. The power and energy I felt coursing through me as I sang was ecstatic. I recall the elated feeling I had singing the Rachmaninov vocalise for my vocal jury, and not even really caring that it wasn't a perfect performance in front of my professors.
Music without words means leaving behind the mind. And leaving behind the mind is meditation.
Meditation returns you to the source. And the source of all is sound. — Kabir
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The garden (pictured at the left) became my canvas on which I would paint with color and sound. My days were spent with my toes in the dirt and my spirits in the heavens. The "work" was amazingly easy as I put all of my energy into receiving the life force from the earth. I communed with the spirits of the land and the plant spirits who made themselves known to me even before I planted one seed. I felt the nature spirits knew the best way for me to plant, and they came to me in my dreams with the idea for planting in an eleven-pointed 3300 square foot mandala pattern—sacred geometry on a very large scale. It took me several weeks just to draw the design to scale and then transfer the design to the garden patch. I felt guided to plant in the colors of the Chinese mystical octagon used in feng shui that incorporates the eight trigrams of the I Ching and the five element colors. It was fascinating and exciting to apply these principles to the land and watch it come alive. The Bagua wheel corresponds to the eight life fortunes, corresponding colors, the body and the directions.
The Hawaiian hawk called the "i'o" sat in the tree near the garden or circled overhead talking to me constantly. The Native Americans say the hawk is the messenger spirit who teaches us to be observant and to look at our surroundings. The hawk speaks of an initiation and the power of magic to be used in overcoming stressful or difficult situations, and the shrill cry calls for heightened awareness to receive a message. Hawk medicine is filled with responsibility and the ability to circle over life and look at it from a higher perspective.