Resonance

A story of discovering that when we vibrate together, we can never truly be parted and also must obey the call to return.

Enjoy this special 13-minute story or let me read it to you via the link at the top of the webpage

Being hybrid creatures of earth and spirit means the things that matter resonate at multiple levels. A bird on a window sill can be just a bird and an invitation to play. A call from an old lover can be just testing the waters and a nudge to release old patterns of attachment. And a visit to an old home town can be just a wander through familiar neighborhoods and the integration of lifetimes.

After weeks of weighing the pros and cons of visiting Portland for the first time since leaving seven years ago, I had the chance to connect with a dear friend. We met in addiction recovery years ago and have recently found ourselves on parallel medicine journeys. I told her the facts of the proposed trip, my longings and doubts. She listened with her signature grounded warmth, and then dove straight to the core: “This is a continuation of your medicine.”

When you take a vow of transformation, ask to see clearly and receive guidance, things are no longer what they seem. I believed my life was my own and I lived it as if it was – taking full responsibility for its successes and failures. But I’m beginning to see how my life has never truly been mine. It’s always been a reckoning, a shedding, a solidification of what I’m just barely beginning to perceive I’ve wasted years misunderstanding and resisting.

If my intention is sincere, I must take every conflict, every cross-road, every ache and nudge as both an inner journey and an outer one – for I am a spirit in a physical body that must grow both imaginally and experientially. Mystery reveals itself to me through both contemplation and exploration. What I touch with my mind must be lived out through my life for it to solidify its truth.

On that call with my friend, what had felt like a parallel universe – another version of me in another time and place just beyond my reach – came into focus and laid itself over my physical reality as two paths became one. I had to follow this longing and trust whatever it had to show me. And the moment I committed in my heart, a drop of warm honey appeared in the center of my belly and spread outward in all directions.

The next day, I called the person at the top of my list of old Portland friends to visit. After months of suicidal ideation, she’s been diagnosed with stage 4 liver cancer and I was next on her list of people to call. She’s found herself wanting to live – despite nausea and pain and brain fog – to celebrate the life she’s built after years of opiate addiction. I would be able to see her condo, her workplace, her – all the things that made her proud and that I’ve loved and missed.

Five days later, I turned onto highway 101 north with a trunk full of supplies, snacks, and sacred items. I felt no fear or shame at facing my former life. It was time. I had a life to return to and I was ready to trust the nudge that put this trip into motion to continue to guide my direction each step of the way.

As I passed Mt Shasta, I got a nudge to pull off and visit a crystal shop. I found Soul Connections on the main drag and was directed to their massive crystal room by an older woman with light hair who seemed a little annoyed hadn’t already heard of it. I told her about my friend’s diagnosis and asked about a couple of crystals I’d read were good for cancer treatment.

“Those are fine,” she said, “but I’m sensing your friend needs rhodonite. It’s not specifically for cancer, but it is for compassion, for the heart, and that’s more of what she needs.” She showed me a display of stones cut in various shapes and sizes that appeared a counterintuitive mix of jet black and rosy pink. I selected one that seemed balanced and a few of the other stones I’d come for. At the counter, the woman remarked about the stone and said, “This is what rhodonite is supposed to look like.”

I carried the stones through Ashland – visiting Lithia Park and the bohemian Dobra Tea House, snacking on succulent gluten-free goodies from the co-op the woman at Soul Connections had recommended, and landing in Portland the following afternoon. All of the grief and angst I felt on her streets during my final years was gone. I felt nothing but delight seeing the old signs and shops, remembering one turn after another as if I’d never left. The gentrified neighborhoods that once broke my heart, now excited me with a mix of new and old. The newcomers who once annoyed me were outnumbered by all the quintessentially Portland outfits and phrases and pastimes all around me. Even the house I had lived in when I was married had found a newer owner who maintained and expanded on my vision for the garden. Nothing, it seemed, had been lost. It had merely waited – evolving as I had – for me to reclaim it when the time was right.

My week’s stay held harsh moments of reckoning with the patterns that continue to rupture my relationships. There were reunions with sacred patches of land that have – and will continue – to nurture and guide me. There were insights into why I was drawn where I was and why I moved on that liberated me from simplified beliefs in my fault and failure. There was the surprising discovery of my physical and emotional resilience, the steadiness of my presence through all the outward encounters. And there was the reunion with my friend who has cancer – and her friends – who have all shared in my emerging medicine path.

When I gave her the rhodonite, she was quiet for quite some time, holding it in her hands and gazing deeply. She later described herself as feeling “inconsolable”, more deeply moved than she had ever been by a gift, and by knowing a woman she had never met had seen exactly what she needed. In her vivid sunlight patio jammed with flowers she’s too fatigued to pot, I could see the cream and gold veins in the stone gathered to encircle a central point, an opening she felt herself drawn into as her heart thrumbed.

As our time drew to a close and I bonded and parted with each place and person I needed to honor, I felt an awkward nagging: to visit and honor the woman who had brought the rhodonite to my friend. As I drove back south, I thought of scenarios that all felt equally embarrassing and edgy, but the instruction was clear: find the woman and ask her what treats she wanted from the Ashland Co-Op she’d told me she loves.

I waited until I’d parked outside the co-op and called Soul Connections: “I’m looking for the light-haired woman who helped me pick out a rhodonite last week for my friend with cancer.” The woman on the other end of the line sounded skeptical and asked a question or two before admitting, “That was me. I’m Ursula.” I told her the story of how moved my friend was by the gift and her care, and she immediately softened. “Thank you so much for telling me!” she exclaimed with brimming gratitude. “I felt your friend, but I also felt you – your warmth and light.” I was moved and startled to know this woman – who seemed annoyed by my questions – had seen and valued me, and I wondered how many times I misjudge others.

“I’m at the Ashland Co-op,” I ventured shyly, “and wanted to know if there’s a treat I can bring you and your staff?” “Oh, that’s so sweet,” she gushed. “Surprise me!” By the time I gathered a collection of goodies, her shop would be closing within 10 minutes of my arrival in Mt Shasta. I struggled with whether to make the trip or spend some more time in Ashland and see them in the morning. Despite wanting to take it easy, something was pushing me to get on the road.

I crossed the Siskiyou plain right as the sun was setting on a halo of Mt Shasta’s famous UFO clouds and then ignited in bright pink. I delivered the treats to a grateful Ursula just before closing and asked her what she recommended I do while I was in town. “The 11:11 meditation tomorrow morning at Heart Light is incredible,” she said. “Don’t miss it.” I realized I’d been nudged to see her this evening so I could attend. She gave me a big hug and we parted for the evening.

The next day, I returned to Soul Connections to pick out some gifts for my coworkers. Ursala greeted me warmly. “That pecan brownie was amazing! Hey, Julie. Here’s the woman who brought us those treats.” She introduced me to everyone and then said, “I have a gift for you.” Me? I thought.

She placed a large citrine – my healing stone – into my hands and gestured for me to sit on the floor in front of a large gong. It was swirling gold and shimmering purple, with a large sign warning to “ask for assistance before playing.” “You’ll feel this start around your root,” Ursala explained, “and then make its way upward.” I closed my eyes and she rang the gong. At first it sounded like all the other gongs I’ve heard in temples and sound baths over the years, but after a few seconds it began to reverberate with the most unsettling, other-worldly sound. The boundary between my body and my surroundings became simply one vast vibration and I felt unhinged, disseminated. As it faded, I felt tears in my eyes and a hollow rupture in my chest.

“I need to finish my shopping later,” I managed as I staggered to my feet. “The 11:11 meditation is about to start.” Across the street at Heart Light was a room behind all the lavish crystal display cases with a more grand, diverse collection of exquisite citrine than I could have imagined, gathered under a pyramid structure lined with dozens of smaller crystal jars. I sat with them for an hour while several people spoke in tongues and gesticulated. The room vibrated with the energy of the mountain, of the ancients, of the celestial places. I rinsed my crystals in the headwaters. I lay them to dry in the sunlight of the mountainside. I carried them in my waistband on the long drive back to my old life, which has been irrevocably renewed.

Memories, desires, images can move us. The energies of a prayer, a mantra, a medicine can shake us. But there is something about the resonance of a place – palms on bark, eyes and arms embraced, spine on earth, scent and sound of bodies, their berries in our belly and our blood upon their leaves – that marks us, that inseminates us, that binds us beyond time and space. When we and they vibrate together like the gong, we know we can never truly be parted and also that we must obey the call to return.

This is one of the many mysteries of life I do not attempt to understand. Yet I’m coming to know I must honor it for my life to be anything beyond mundane survival. I trusted the call to return was both literal and metaphorical. I trusted the guidance to perform simple acts of kindness – no matter how seemingly insignificant, uncomfortable, or out of character. I received more profound redemption and reconciliation than I thought possible. I return with a greater sense of belonging to both a physical and metaphysical community, and finally ready – after seven years of seclusion and shedding – to build a new life. I observed, soften, and followed, and discovered that’s all that’s really needed me of.

Nancy