Attorney on the Ganges – 20 Massages in 2 Months (Massage #6 continued)

Something else happened in massage #6 with Richard Oliver. The massage and cranial-sacral work on my neck revealed that the fear stored there had to do in part with a past life memory of driving off of a bridge and the choking feeling of drowning in icy water. 

On a brighter note, my inner-attorney, the one who’s been hanging out in my shoulder, the one who brings numbness to my arm whenever I sit down to write, the one who objects to all things spiritual – well, he and I came to a new understanding. 

During the massage Richard pressed his fingers firmly into the muscles at the inside of my right scapula and held them there.

“Now, release,” he said. 

I took a deep breath and let the muscles relax under his fingertips.

“Good. Again.”

Another breath.

“Excellent. Even outstanding!” he said. I tried to tell myself that his compliments were silly but in truth it felt great be told I was doing something well – even if I was just releasing tension from my body. 

“Whatever you’ve been holding in your shoulder,” he said, “it’s not good for you. You can just let it go.”

I said nothing but as Richard continued the massage I waged a protest of thought. “Of course I know that having a raging attorney – one who always has to be right, one who demands that I abandon the Divine, that which is to soul as air is to body – squatting inside my arm is not the way to true happiness! Do you think I don’t know that!”

And then, “I know that this attorney has been a subconscious influence - holding me back in ways I have not been able identify - the only clue to his existence the numbness in my arm! Now that he has surfaced, I know it’s time to let him go!”

Under the kneading action of Richard’s hands, my internal rant continued. “Knowing is not the problem! Do you think I want my arm to be numb! I don’t know what to do! I don’t know how!”

Then it occurred to me that Richard's comment was less of a criticism and more of a suggestion about how to get the letting go done. I could literally let go. It was an approach I had not tried. 

As Richard massaged, I focused into the energy in my shoulder. I found my frustrated, unshaven, intractable inner-attorney sitting at the end of a dirt road on his brief case in his brown suit. His arms were folded across his chest. He looked away from me and down at the ground. I took him by the arms and told him goodbye. I imagined myself opening my hands and the feeling of him falling away from my touch. 

Next thing I knew, in the middle of the massage, I had traveled to India. My attorney floated on his back down the Ganges River still wearing the brown suit. Pink lotus flowers were piled on his chest. There were crosses over his eyes like the ones on dead cartoon characters. I felt energy lift out of my shoulder. My outlook brightened. I saw that I had moved one more layer and that bit by bit I am moving forward.

And more than this I want to know: If and when the dead float down the Ganges River, are they ever allowed to wear their suits and if not, why?

The Bodies of Angels - 20 Massage in 2 Months (Massage #4 continued)

A smiling Tasha standing in front of the poster in massage room #6 at the Center for Well-Being

 I received massage #4 from Tasha. Tasha is an experienced massage therapist and energy worker.  I told Tasha that the numbness in my right arm goes away during each massage only to return promptly when I sit down to write, or as I have begun to notice, when I discuss or lately think about spiritual writing. I ask her to tell me any intuitive insights or messages that come to her.

Tasha started the massage by having me lie face up on the table. Fairly quickly into the massage she reached under my back and curled her fingers just under the edges of my right scapula to work the muscle and do cranial-sacral work. Her fingers were comfortable there and I felt the muscle release. Soon after this intense emotions begin to arise.

As I listened to these emotions, I heard once again the voice of my attorney self.  He articulated his case carefully, vehemently, as if to a court. His eyes were large and fearful. “You cannot trust God. You can only trust rationality. You can only trust logic. With logic nothing is hidden. Your mind can grasp it!”

As Tasha worked the muscle and I listened to this voice of mistrust, from deep within my gut a shard of terror flashed to the surface. I felt movement in the right side of my neck where normally, if I were touched, I would shrink away.

Soon Tasha asked me to flip over on the table and put my face in the face cradle. While she worked in deep strokes on my back I shared with her something that had occurred last week as, during the deepest most silent part of the night, I slept.

Becoming a spiritual healer has meant that I have more than my share of direct experiences with the spirit world and three nights ago was no exception. While sleeping on my stomach, face in my pillow, I woke to the feeling of a large hand clasped around the back of my neck. Another hand pressed a palm against the corner of my right scapula and third stretched my left arm and pulled it behind and away from my body. 10 years ago, I would have run screaming from my bedroom. Now, suspecting the spirits, I reached behind me to place my own hand over the back of my neck. Because spirits are ethereal, I expected to move through the hand and land on my own skin. Instead I felt a large physical mass, the curve of individual fingers, a field of small hairs like eyelashes set into the skin between knuckles and the warmth of fire within flesh. For a split second I became terrified. I did not know what was happening. Was I being attacked in my sleep by an intruder or healed by angels that for some reason I was able to experience as solid? I opened my eyes long enough to see that my bedroom was empty and I rolled back into sleep.

Tasha replied, “It’s interesting that they touched you in the parts of your body you are trying to heal.

Though I have grown more used to these occurrences over time, the next day after the visitation, I walked outside in newly fallen snow and listened to the soles of my boots scrap against the concrete of the sidewalk. I remembered the angelic hands with a sense fear and awe sufficient to distract me from the fact of the gift: they had apparently come to lay hands upon me.

I do not remember an attorney ever giving free healing to me in my sleep. This angelic gesture, though startling, gave me pause to consider the vastly different potentials of the two worlds between which I have been asked to choose.

20 Massages in 2 Months - Massage #3 (continued)

A photo of three fish in the tank at the Center for Well-Being on Hill Street in Monroe, WA. I couldn't get them to hold still for the photo - maybe they are shy like Rose.

Next Rose moved to my right shoulder. She cupped her hands over it. I had asked her to convey to me any intuitive messages that she picked up. After a moment of silence she spoke. 

"In the scapula there is guardedness. And on the shoulder near the collar bone it is as if there are soldiers guarding and protecting. You are waiting for proof or a sign. Whatever you are holding there is related to the spiritual work you are doing. Definately." 

She added, "When I looked at your shoulder I saw that your synapses were firing all over the place. Very intense brain activity. I thought, 'Hmmmm, she's a thinker' ...and you've got more than one conversation going on inside of you!"

This message of soldiers and doubt and brain activity and conflicting conversations was one more layer of the puzzle and a deeper revelation of what had already been concluded: I was having trouble letting go and my logical brain was working over time- like an attorney seeking a "stop work" order to prevent the demolition of a building - a demolition that in all likelihood was going forward anyway.

Now, as I write, I think of the soldiers and wonder, "am I, in ways I have not seen, at war with my own spiritual nature and therefore, the spiritual forces that guide me? Is this numbness a disability imposed by doubt, a confinement of the arm, that which is necessary for writing and communicating and which therefore prevents me from moving forward?"

Next, Rose did some very light work on my shoulder as if to coax release. Then she did some deeper work on my trapezius and scapula muscles. She addressed the conundrum of my aversion to having my neck touched.

"You might be more comfortable having work done on your neck if people let you know ahead of time when they are going to touch your neck and what their intentions are," she said. This was sound, practical advice I could implement.

Though Rose had for the most part done light tissue work I felt very calm and centered at the end of the massage. I worried out loud about falling asleep on the table when I was supposed to be getting dressed. “No worries,” she said, “there’s nobody right after you. Take your time.” She closed the door behind her.

In the last analysis Rose’s massage was not only educational it left me feeling great and relaxed in a way that I had not experienced before. I would definitely get a massage from Rose again!

Rose's messages inspired me to have a conversation with my right arm. That night I sat down and focused in into the numbness. An image appeared. It was me in my attorney self. I was dressed in a brown suit. As if to emphasize the male energy with which I worked, I took a male form. I wore a tie. Even better I was unshaven and sweaty from spending two days and two nights drafting at a feverish pitch the perfect legal argument which I was prepared to present to the court, or in this case, the spirit world. I stood in front of them holding a brief case, looking bleary-eyed and desperate. As I begin to speak they preempted my words. 

“This is not a negotiation," they said simply

“What?” My attorney mind was cloudy from days of nervous and tedious plotting of what was an admittedly difficult case. I was having trouble taking in what I was hearing.

“This is not a negotiation,” they repeated

This was news to me, for if it was not a chance to set the terms upon which I work, to convince them of the importance of my position, then what was it? And then again once more I said, "What?"

For the third time. “This is not a negotiation.”

A fourth time, with more vigor, as if to penetrate the lingering, sticky perplexity, "This is not a negotiation!"

I reflected on the soldiers and their implements of war. Since the awakening I see more. Though what I see is sometimes frightening it is just as often fascinating. I had no idea - until I looked - that a battle of this intensity, complete with spirits, guns, an army and a legal case upon which everything seemed to hinge, raged inside of me! And within the plain curve of my arm and shoulder! Had I, in a way I was just now becoming aware of, approached the spirit world as the enemy or opposing counsel, offering the terms of a hostile settlement in lieu of trust, cooperation and partnership? And if so, on what was my mistrust based?  I have a hunch that the answer dwells in the mysterious fear in my neck.