April 25, 2024

Dear Ones,

I realized a few days ago that I am already healed, I am walking the path of wholeness.

And yet I have experienced pain--old wounds, family wounds, ancestral and cultural wounds were stirred.

The season of dark has passed and is making way for light. Light's irrepressible, I wrote to a friend. Light will find its way, love will find its way--I am learning to allow that more and more into my being, soul, here and now. Darkness shimmers with the possibilities of new growth, new seeds, so much radiance that only new birth, re-birth can bring.

Who do I want to ask to walk with me in these moments, in this journey?

In the darkest of winter, I contacted therapy centers in the Bay Area. Today, I must decide whether or not to go ahead with these visits.

A part of me knows these spaces may not hold, exactly, the frequencies of all that I am experiencing: the shifts into a widening trust, truth, of who I am in relation to the immense gift of this world we walk in, our physical selves always pulsing with the vibration of love, of our ancestors and the light they carry of old, of old wise ones. Of how, incarnate, we are always pointed to the charmed center where we are always fully who we are.

When "I" is split and cannot leave behind the temptation of having a therapist human witness, she says, "But I need them as a mirror, they can be a mirror! A mirror to reflect back how absolutely deliciously lovable I am! To reflect back what amazing choices I am making!"

==They say/I say==

The thing with therapy is that you are relying on a human to provide the absolute, unconditional love and alignment and regard that only Source, only Mystery can hold, can em'body'. What is closest to that: Plants. Animals, in utter benign integrity with their own deep authentic wild nature.

It would take a remarkable human to hold unfailingly that vibration of flowing, sumptuous love, and it must be done on the ground | groundswell of spirit. We are all learning to be that. We are all becoming, growing into that radiance, growing into the deep, dark, fertile mysteries of our incredibly varied, beautiful, lusciously wild natures.

Instead of turning to the human, what if you turn to the nonhuman; instead of seeing only the physical, what if you see the nonphysical? Ask that and them to see you?

There is so much love for you in the universe. There is love pouring out of skies in the form of rain, love blending into warm sunsets as the gold, vibrant hues of our very hearts, love in every touch you reach that reaches you.

You are alive and you feel it. You will move towards healing because your psyche is attuned to wholeness. Because you come from wholeness and know that in your bones, as true as it is.

On a whim, a spur, I stop in the park on my way back home. This park that I have tended and loved over the years--I sense it wants to send something home so I may effect and create some of the traditions and magic we'd created last Yuletide.

I walk until I see an evergreen that speaks to me, and say, "But your branches are too high! I wish there was one I could reach!"

My attention goes to the left and, drawn, I walk towards 'it'. A second later, a bird alights on a fallen log next to the spot I am walking towards. I look, and see for the first time that he is perched right next to a fir bough!

Filled with gratitude and the wonder of it, I sing to the bird. I know him to be my father, and I sing him a song in Hindi, "Papa kehte hain...". Papa says. Smiling at the truth in the words, "Magar yeh toh koi na jaane, ki meri manzil hai kahaan...". Not one (human) knows where I'm headed, but I trust. I trust and I take the next step.

Complete, I stop and look at the bird. Someonesomething calls my attention and I look away and a moment later when I turn back, the bird has flown away.

I request a tree with red berries for a branch and two.

I want white flowers too, and my feet are pulled left. I'm tired by now, I have to go back, dress the house, mull the wine, bake cookies. I sight a shrub several feet away and tell myself I'll turn once I get there. I want white flowers, but I won't be attached, I tell myself. Right before I reach the shrub is a low bush, with little white flowers.

"You made a clootie tree,"

Lillie tells me. I remember how women (and other genders) in India tie cotton threads and cloths around the trunks and branches of trees. We've done this. My ancestresses and ancestors know the secret that connects us with trees. Trees carry our prayers into the deep trunk where memory slips like the sound of water heard from far. Noiseless. Trees carry our prayers into the skies where clouds shaped like tears, like hearts grained in trees, like the very tops of trees signal arrival from distant lands.

With that, this is

yours,

मोनिका \Monica

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Monica Mody is a writer, diviner, ritual-maker, and dancer. She blends West African Dagara-inspired ways with the teachings of wisdom keepers and elders from earth-honoring traditions, including the old religion/goddess traditions of her ancestors from India. Her work engages with radical decolonizing paradigms of co-creation.

For more information, visit www.artofdivinations.com | www.modymonica.com