In last week's blog, I recounted the major highlights of my first conscious experience of aligning with Nature's Yearly Cycle, during the 2001-2002 cycle, to illustrate how life flows when one consciously decides to align their personal evolutionary/spiritual cycle with the natural evolutionary cycle that happens for all form on our planet. I thought I would continue with this theme of giving examples from my personal experience and pick of the story from where I left off last week. Hopefully, you'll get a stronger sense of the rhythm of how this cycle works! So here goes . . .

As the 2001-2002 cycle peaked during summer of 2002 and as we moved into the new year's cycle in the Fall of 2002, I was busy actively explored several options for new directions for my life, asking, "What did I want to give myself to as my life's work?"

Having been interested in food and cooking since I was in my teens, I seriously considered some kind of food business, either a local food restaurant or catering business. But when I looked at that option square in the face and saw what a total life commitment it involved, I knew that that was not the lifestyle for me. I love to cook, but I didn’t want that to be whole of my life and I could see that cooking professionally probably would have taken the fun out it for me!

After that decision was made, I reexamined my academic training and skills. Richard and I were driving home from getting groceries listening to some story on public radio and I started to argue with the point of view being presented! Richard looked at me square in the face and said, "You should just go back to school, get your Ph.D. and be a professor and write papers and give lectures!" And I said, "Hey, you're probably right! I'm obviously good at this intellectual business and feel a lot of passion for my points of view!" And so, in typical type 3 fashion (that's my dominant energy type, though I didn't know it at the time) I right away got serious about finding the right program so I could get my doctorate degree, even though I’d sworn 10 years prior when I finished my masters degree that I was DONE with school!!

Yet I could see I had real skill in this world and so I thought I’d go for it. My interests were in exploring the meaning of stewardship of the Earth as partners rather than as overlords, in light of the shifting from Piscean relationship dynamics to those of the newly emerging Aquarian age. I now know that, at one level, this could have been a very rewarding and interesting path for me, one that would have been built upon and accentuated my intellectual and academic skills.

What I became clearer and clearer about during the Winter, Spring & Summer of 2003 -- during which time I applied for and was accepted into 2 different doctoral programs -- was that I had changed quite dramatically over the 10 years since I’d received my master's degree. I now found that I operated much more from my heart than from my head and that the rigors of academic life really no longer suited me nor appealed to me.

Here’s how that realization came to me in early September of 2003. Remember, this is the wind-down time for the year’s cycle. This can often be a time when one feels a lot of internal push, like it’s time to make a decision, time to make a choice, because those choices will then influence the upcoming, new cycle!

The other factor at play in all this was that by the time I was considering going back to get my Ph.D., I had been studying Christa Healing for about 5 years. Although I’d been fairly serious about doing all the steps -- I had done all three energy attunements during the first 6 months after I learned about it! -- my immediate motivation was to be able to do healings for myself and my husband and any friends or family who might be open. And so, even though when I stumbled upon Christa Healing I had been sensing that I was supposed to be doing some kind of healing work in a professional capacity, I had not yet reached the place where I felt I could say “Yes!” to being a “professional practitioner of the Christa Healing Method®.”

And yet, as I was gearing up to enter graduate school, facing the reality of having to study things that really were no longer of interest to me, my innards started speaking to me loud and clear! I still remember the Sunday morning I got up early because I could not sleep and went to the living room to tune into my High Self and Guides for guidance. In my core, I knew that I just couldn’t do the academic theology/religious studies path anymore. (My bachelor and master degrees were in theology; the doctoral program would have been in religious studies.) That Sunday morning, I saw very clearly that 1) my understanding of myself as a spiritual being and 2) my operational paradigm of reality had expanded too far beyond the frameworks of traditional Christianity and the dominant paradigms of western culture upon which traditional Christianity is based.

Now, a practical, spiritually unawake person might have said that I’d just wasted an entire year of my life! (Or maybe that’s just my judging ego-self talking!) But I knew something big happened with my decision not to get my Ph.D. and to drop out of the program into which I'd been accepted.

And although in some ways I felt relief, in other ways I was terrified! Holy S_ _ T! NOW WHAT DO I DO?!? Does this really mean God wants me to do this Christa Healing work instead?!

I remember feeling a lot of turmoil during the first and second phases of that year’s cycle! But by the time phase three approached in March of 2004, I said, “Okay God. I’ll consider this!” And of course the first advanced training seminar I attended that Spring was on removing dark force interferences! Nothing like jumping into the deep end right away! Thankfully the other advanced trainings I took that Spring were not so intense. In fact, that’s when I received the training to do the Level One Christa Energy Attunement for others, something I thoroughly love to do.

So by the Summer of 2004, I was officially an “Advanced Practitioner of the Christa Healing Method®.” It was also during this summer that I learned that the State of Nebraska requires a “license to touch” of anyone who does any kind of hands-on healing work in a professional capacity (that is, they charge money!). And so, if even a Reiki Practitioner had to have a license to touch, I probably did too.

Although it is not an absolute necessity to touch the physical body during an in-person Christa Healing, it is a desirable piece at the end of the healing session when bringing in restorative energies and “recircuiting” the chakras. And so, I thought, if I’m going to be serious about doing this work for others as my primary vocation, then I’d better comply with the law of the state in which I’m residing!

For me, the most logical route was to get a massage therapy license, which meant a 9-month, 1000 hour training program. (Nurses training or medical school just didn’t seem practical nor appropriate!!) So, again in typical type 3 fashion (my dominant energy type) I plunged ahead. Within about three weeks time I went from just finding out about the requirement to starting the necessary training by the 28th of September.

As you can see, I was really getting the hang of flowing with Nature’s Yearly Cycle by now!

Now the interesting thing about my decision to go to massage therapy school is that it was not really, at least theoretically, my only option! I could have chosen to MOVE to a state that didn’t have these kinds of requirements! And/or, quite easily and for free I could have become an ordained minister of a non-denominational church, such as the Universal Life Church, which also would have allowed me to legally do hands on healing work (and funerals and weddings!). The funny part -- at least looking back now that my Nebraska Stage is coming to a close -- is that I didn’t even consider the first option of moving out of Nebraska! Nor I was comfortable with the second choice, becoming an ordained minister, at that time.

So off to massage therapy school I went as Nature’s Yearly Cycle of 2004-2005 began. And with that new year's cycle, although I had no clue of it at the time, I entered into the heart of the Nebraska Stage of my life’s journey. But that’s another story, with which I will continue next time!

Many blessings to us all!

Julia