Monday, May 16, 2011
Day 31 of Hyperbaric DivePrima Materia VIII
Light of your light, Light of your darkness,
Dearly Beloved, let your moonlight shine in me.
In this Harrowing of Hell, hold your daughter close.
Here is the final unveiling.
In the dark night ahead,
Give me the strength to bring forth a new baby.
In the fullness of time, let the child
Live in my womb, my new spiritual womb.
May we live incarnation.
-Marion Woodman
Bone
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Day 32 of Hyperbaric Dive
Alchemical Gold VI
This new life is not like that which she had before.
It is a life in God. It is a perfect life.
She no longer lives or works of herself:
but God lives, acts and works in her,
and this grows little by little till she becomes
perfect with God’s perfection,
is rich with His riches,
and loves with His love.
-Madame Guyon
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Day 33 of Hyperbaric Dive
Alchemical Communion VIII
Two falling stars in the day sky.
Let no one know of our sublime beauty
As we hold hands with god
And burn
Into a sacred existence that defies--
That surpasses
Every description of ecstasy
And love.
-Hafiz
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Day 34 of Hyperbaric Dive
Life is messy. Birth is messy. And so is the healing process. In my usual propensity for cleanliness and order, I’d like to be able to cram all the loose ends of my recovering body and sensitive psyche into a box, and tie it up with a lovely bow as my Hyperbaric oxygen treatments come to an end next week. I’d like to be able to declare with bravado, “I’m done! I’m healed!”
Day 34 of Hyperbaric Dive
Alchemical Communion II
The time has come to turn your heart
into a temple of fire.
Your essence is gold hidden in dust.
To reveal its splendor
you need to burn in the fire of love.
-Rumi
Translated by Azima Melita Kolin and Maryam Mafi
Life is messy. Birth is messy. And so is the healing process. In my usual propensity for cleanliness and order, I’d like to be able to cram all the loose ends of my recovering body and sensitive psyche into a box, and tie it up with a lovely bow as my Hyperbaric oxygen treatments come to an end next week. I’d like to be able to declare with bravado, “I’m done! I’m healed!”
Yes, I have been feeling enormous improvement in the past 7 weeks of daily dives into the healing crucible. But my dreams tell me that I’m not done incubating. A few days ago, my sleep was rent with nightmarish images of a 4-year old girl in my care, skipping ahead of me as we leave a high-rise elevator, only to tumble down the elevator shaft to her certain death many floors below. My dream self is left at the precipice, stunned and in shock, mute with horror, gazing down into an unfathomable abyss. In another recent dream, I am kidnapped by a child-smuggling ring along the coast of a South American country. I see the crates of small children ready to be shipped off. I open one crate, and cradle a few of the small, dark children who emerge, but I am powerless to save them.
My psyche is unraveling, quietly clamoring for more support, and my body continues to need more rest and healing time, wanting only to be wrapped in fleece blankets and left in peace.
While the IV chelations for heavy metal toxicity are going well, far better than I had imagined, I’ve still got at least another 2 months of treatments to go. Dusha Popovic, the Chelation and IV therapy specialist at Marin Natural Medicine Clinic, explained that the full effects of the treatment will not be apparent until months after they are complete.
Lorenzo Alviso, one of the Certified Hyperbaric Technicians at Advanced Hyperbaric Recovery of Marin said much the same thing about the Hyperbaric Oxygen Treatments. Apparently it can take 1-2 months before the body is able to completely absorb all the oxygen it has received.
So, realistically, I’ll need to wait until the Fall the assess the final effects of these two intensive healing regimes. I need to ease the pressure off myself to be completely “well,” and engaged with life before I am ready. The outer world beckons and calls, with work projects unfinished, money to be earned, bills to be paid. This transition time is perhaps the trickiest of all, calling on a gentle awareness so that I don’t repeat the patterns of pushing my body and squandering the gains I have made in the past two months.
Every illness, I believe, requires a death, while every healing contains one. We are sometimes diminished, sometimes ennobled, but always transformed, for the Grim Reaper is also the harvester, who cuts back the growth of one year to feed the next.
-Kat Duff
The Alchemy of Illness
Friday, May 20, 2011
Day 35 of Hyperbaric Dive
Nigredo IV
The fire that is within us,
imitating the energy of divine fire,
destroys everything that is material…
purifies the things which are offered,
liberates them from the bonds of matter,
and renders them through purity of nature,
to the communion of the gods.
-Iamlichus
I’m sitting in silence at the IV Lounge at Marin Natural Medicine Clinic, where I’ve got a large bag of re-mineralizing solution slowing seeping into my veins. Dusha Popovic, the bright and attentive IV expert at the clinic, explains that the EDTA IV I received on Wednesday not only binds the heavy metals, but draws out all minerals from the body as well. With the depletion of magnesium, for example, she says I might have felt more anxious, and had difficulty sleeping after the treatment. That’s exactly what happened to me Wednesday night, leaving me feeling ill at ease for most of Thursday. Now with my body getting a generous dose of minerals and Vitamin C, I’m starting to feel relaxed again, peaceful.
It takes a solid three hours for the IV bag to drip its contents into my veins, and I when I leave the clinic and embrace the noonday sun, my arm is aching, but I notice how the sagging spirits of the past few days have blessedly abated. It’s amazing how much chemistry can affect our mood and disposition! Now everything feels right with the world again.
I search for a place in Larkspur to have lunch before my Hyperbaric treatment, settling on an Asian Chicken Salad at the Rustic Bakery Café. I overhear two polished, yet casually dressed Marin women discussing their upcoming travel plans for the summer. “Well, first we fly to Zurich, and then we take the train to Frankfurt, then on to Barcelona…”
“Wow,” I think to myself, “people are still going on ‘Let’s do Europe’ vacations!” It’s so far from the world in which I have been living for years, rarely journeying too far from my bed. I recall my own journey to Europe 21 years ago, traveling with my youngest sister Jacqueline and our German friend Arne, who had been an exchange student at our home six years earlier.
It is the summer of 1990, less than a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and we enter the city in the throes of a new and messy birth. We make our way to the infamous Wall, like thousands of other tourists that hot summer. Sections of the Wall have been dismantled, but much still remains, since over 100 miles of impenetrable concrete and barbed wire had been erected around the city of Berlin in 1961, and I guess it takes time to remove such a substantial barrier. Now, there are locals with spray paint and pickaxes, first covering sections of the Wall with colorful graffiti, then hacking away chunks of the concrete and selling them for souvenirs. Rather morbid, I suppose, but I succumb and buy a small chunk for myself, a jagged piece of concrete suffering, bearing purple and magenta spray paint.
I notice two life-sized holes carved out of the Wall adjacent to one another, and ask Jackie and Arne to each climb into a hole in the Wall, so I can take a photo of them. They are obviously bored, impatient for me to get it over with. We have been traveling together for 5 weeks at this point, and are not only tired, but tired of one another. I pull out my Leica M6 from my camera bag to compose the shot. I press my shutter and capture an image of Jackie looking a bit exasperated, her arms folded tightly against her chest, and gazing away from Arne, while Arne is looking away from Jackie and absorbed in smoking a cigarette. Not exactly the shot I was hoping for. I exclaim, “Hey, you two, KISS!” They both crack a smile and lean toward one another, each from their respective hole in the Berlin Wall. At the decisive moment before their lips meet, I click the shutter. I know I have the shot I want. Satisfied, I put my camera away, and the three of us continue on to the Checkpoint Charlie Museum.
Several months later, upon my return to New York, I entitle the photo “Reunification in Berlin,” and it wins an international Kodak Award for excellence in photography:
It’s been so many years since I’ve been well enough to traverse the globe, like I did in my twenties and thirties. My last big journey was to France five years ago, to help induct a new mystery school at Chartres Cathedral, but I was so frail at the time, I could only focus on my job for those two weeks, and then fly home to recover.
As I finish my Asian Chicken Salad at the Rustic Bakery Café, I wonder if I’ll have the energy and resources to travel again. I’ve always longed to visit Italy, and gorge myself on Florentine art and forbidden foods. For my 50th birthday next year, perhaps? There are glimmers of hope that a sustained vitality is returning to my body, a reunification of my body’s abilities with the longings of my heart and the callings of my soul. Who knows what life will bring now?
I get up from my empty salad bowl at the café, and climb back into my ancient Toyota 4-Runner for the short drive to Advanced Hyperbaric Recovery of Marin. Today marks the 35th dive into the hyperbaric oxygen chamber, the end of 7 weeks of treatments. I’m amazed at how quickly this journey has gone. Just one more week to go! Gone is the anxiety I felt a couple of days ago. I climb into the chamber with a smile on my face, so grateful to be imbibing the life-giving airs. After 90 minutes of breathing at full depth, Lorenzo opens the chamber door with a warm smile and his usual greeting, “Welcome back!” Indeed, I’m happy to be here. The Reluctant Incarnator has moved on to the next life.
“Prima Materia VIII,“ ”Alchemical Gold VI,” “Alchemical Communion VIII,” “Alchemical Communion VII,” and “Nigredo IV,” 4x6” collages on paper from The Oracle of Alchemy, ©2006-2011 by Colette de Gagnier. To order prints from this series, please visit Alchemy of the Divine and Colette's Visionary Art Gallery at MysticAlchemyDesign.com
To learn more about the IV Therapy and Chelation treatments at the Marin Natural Medicine Clinic, please visit http://www.marinnaturalmedicine.com
To learn more about Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy and the kind staff at Advanced Hyperbaric Recovery of Marin, please visit ImproveHealing.com
