Unscathed by a National Disaster

Last week the part of Colorado where I live experienced horrendous flooding. The water made all of the mountain streams flash flood into the cities and farming communities below. Hundreds of people lost their homes. Several thousand were evacuated. The damage was extensive. Entire towns were taken out and no longer exist at all. It will take years to rebuild bridges, roads, houses and other structures, as well as businesses. The storm was called a National Emergency Disaster fairly soon after the flooding started and the National Guard and people who had helped with hurricane Katrina came to rescue people and help with the devastation.

Everyone was on alert. My phone announced every few hours for a number of days that flash flooding was a possibility. Day and night the phone would ring or vibrate. Many roads were closed because of water covering them or bridges that were washed out. This made travel nearly impossible. People were advised stay at home unless absolutely necessary so that emergency vehicles could get through.

Blessedly, my home was spared. There was a drainage ditch nearby but it did not overflow—although all the people in the area kept close watch on it. The rain was torrential and steady for days. My parking lot was constantly covered by several inches of water all through the weekend.

I will be forever grateful that I didn’t have to deal with losing my belongings or have to wade through mud to recover them, as many have had to do. Even though I didn’t encounter physical harm or disaster I can’t minimize my experience of the disaster.

Emotionally the flood was frazzling. Fear was the overriding feeling that accompanied the rain and the flooding. My anxiety level was through the roof! I couldn’t relax and the rain just kept falling and pounding. I couldn’t leave and go anywhere and that created a trapped feeling, one of my all-time most challenging feelings. It took all the energy I had just to maintain a sense of equilibrium.

Many people lost electricity. I did not. That didn’t take away the anxiety that it might go out and I might be without my phone—communication with the outer world. I had plenty of food and found myself eating just to calm myself.

I am certain that many people were affected with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from the ordeal. I know all week even after the sun came out and everyone started assessing the damage, I was tired and emotionally wasted. I had to be particularly gentle with myself. I required less activity and more sleep. It was definitely a healing process that I was encountering and I am just now beginning to feel like myself again.

Being in a National Disaster but being on the outside is an interesting experience. It reminded me of growing up in Kansas when tornados would whirl through and we would huddle in a root cellar or in the basement until it passed. This time, though it went on for days. The flood of 2013 will go down in history as the worst in recorded history. I can’t believe it happened all around me and I was not directly affected by it like many people. I feel deep gratitude, as I don’t know how well I would have handled losing everything or being displaced.

No. I don’t feel like Noah. I don’t feel like the end of the world is coming, either. Mother Nature has always charted her own course with the weather. It’s just that now people are living in the way of her path. We will all come together and find our way out of this horrible catastrophe but it will take a long, long time.

Facing Challenging Times

This week, listening to All Things Considered, I got the feeling society was running amok. The energetic changes that have been percolating for several decades and have more recently been presenting themselves in the form of loss of our comfortable way of thinking, has left us feeling fatigued and full of fear and confusion.

It is difficult to keep in mind how our efforts began in the higher vibrations of the realm of Spirit and have moved down through the lower vibrations of emotions and thought and have finally reached the realm of the physical. This is why we are so weary. It is sometimes easier to want to walk away from what is happening because things have gotten too difficult and challenging on the physical plane.

It is easy to go into doubt now and become overcome by fear. There are many people who are seeking a return to old times and old ways. It is easy to want to seek the comfort of the way it used to be. As the times and things seem "heavier", matters and events take on weightier importance. It is normal to feel this and doubt it will ever change.

What we may have forgotten is the role of Spirit. It is important to ask ourselves during this time when our attention in being drawn toward the physical and our deepest basic survival issues are up for examination: what place does Spirit still have in my life?

When the desire for the safety of the old arises inside or outside us, it is important to remind ourselves that there is no need for a system of beliefs where Spirit is concerned. We couldn't structure Spirit if we wanted to. Why not approach life with open eyes and acceptance of what is? Why not remember that we are manifesting beings and that we have chosen this time and its difficulties, and have all the resources we need?

It is important to get some perspective on the changes around us. As difficult as some aspects of life are, remember those things that are easier now than they were before. Things like communication and computers connecting us globally are examples of the progress that has been made.

It is good to recognize that we have the ability to join with these gravitational energies that are approaching us now and to prepare for a different way of life. This outlook can only be achieved by looking at the situation from the vantage point of Spirit, letting loose of the old ways and ideas and continuing to reach ahead with our emotions and thoughts.

We need, more than ever, to imagine peace and harmony. Our ability and willingness to imagine these things is vital. It is easy to get hung up on the details and explanations. Don't you get the feeling, though, that the future will be far different from what you can imagine anyway?

From the perspective of Spirit, we are deep in the waves of energy of a movement toward harmony and balance. The achievement of these is accomplished through the action of love for one another--whether you agree with each other or not. It is also reached through those feelings that grow from graditude and awareness.

In the pursuit of harmony, there is no one element that is more important that another. All the elements act together to create harmony. Through the eyes of Spirit, the element we have chosen is the action of peace.

Striving for the old ways dissipates the energy of peace. Now is the time to practice our Spiritual awareness and visualize peace whenever possible. It is important to begin the creation of peace within your own life and believe in the power of it now.

Whenever I sense society being out of control and it triggers my own fears, it is comforting to know I have something I can do that will bring me balance and peace. It could even potentially help hold the new energy steady for humanity. I do not believe this is an egocentric illusion. I feel it is a Spiritual practice that can build, one person at a time.

I'm Afraid Of Desert Critters

I am not a native of Arizona. I am not even sure I am a courageous enough person to live in the desert among the creepy crawlies who enjoy their environment and habitat here. There are many things about the desert that are redeeming and many people, including me, love it. I just wish it felt safer.

When I first arrived it was November. That is the time of year when all the critters go underground and wait to come out when it gets hot again. I had heard tales of them but as yet had not encountered any.

I put my fears in the back of my mind and enjoyed the winter without the tons of snow and overcast skies I had been accustomed. I put my boxes of warm clothes and sweaters away and dealt with the cool evenings by throwing on a light jacket that I only needed sometimes. It was pleasant and I forgot totally about what was coming.

In April I began thinking about the critters after my neighbor reminded me to pay attention where I was walking. That was not a comfortable suggestion, but I took it seriously and walked carefully back to my house.

Several weeks lapsed and I saw nothing scary. I began to get my confidence back again. Not that I stopped looking where I planted my feet, just that I hadn’t seen anything unusual.

Then one day I had a complete turnaround that knocked me for a loop. The first thing that happened was I opened my friend’s gate and started to step through and saw a rattlesnake coiled and sleeping next to the gate. I quickly shut the gate and ran out back to get some help. When we came back the snake was gone. That was extremely disconcerting. Now my fears were real and no longer a myth. Now I understood about watching the ground.

I went into my friend’s house and sat down in the living room for a chat. As we sat there drinking ice tea I saw something crawling up the wall. It was pinkish-clear and shaped like the pictures I’d seen of a scorpion. I tried to be casual in asking what it was, and to my horror, it was indeed a scorpion. My neighbor killed it with her shoe and sat back down and continued the conversation as if nothing had happened.

I was shaking inside but did not want to show my cowaderdness. A little while later, I got up to go to the bathroom and as I went around the corner of the kitchen I stopped in my tracks. On the wall was a huge hairy spiderish looking thing on the wall. It did not look real until I saw it move. “What is this?” I called out. “Oh, that’s just a tarantula”, she said calmly as she grabbed an envelope, scooped it up and put it down outside the door.

I had been initiated all in one day. I was beside myself. Like all initiations, my world was turned upside down. I made my way home, knowing that I could never live where there were so many scary things that were part of a normal day in the desert.

Soon after that, a dog in the neighborhood licked a Colorado River Toad while I was there and went into convulsions. She had to be practically drowned with water rushing down her throat before she could come back to normal. It affected her neurological system and for a while she could barely walk, even after the water treatment and she foamed at the mouth for several hours.

That experience made me what I am today: an ax murderer. I was thinking about that just this week when I put my dogs out into a side yard before going to bed. Just as I put them out, a huge toad moved right in front of them. Now, I don’t know if you have ever seen one of these creatures, but they are gigantic, ugly, and strongly resemble “Java the Hut”. I whisked my dogs back into the house and went for the ax.

These toads are not fast and tend to get themselves into corners to get away from you. Because I saw that dog almost die a few years ago, I have no mercy for these poisonous toads. A strong protective urge comes over me that out weighs my fear. I held the ax high over my head and came down hard on the creature over and over until I knew it was dead.

Just the day before, as I was sitting on the porch of my house enjoying the breeze against the backdrop of a very hot day, I saw my two cats carefully moving in the same direction toward a ladder that was against the house. Then I heard the distinct rattle of a rattlesnake. I yelled at the cats to stay away, which did nothing. I started throwing rocks in between the cats and the snake. I got the cats to move away and hastely picked them up and put them in the house. The snake coiled itself up and went to sleep.

I sat watching the snake feeling totally helpless and thinking about all the times I had not been protected or not been able to protect myself, my son, or others. I did not know what to do. I felt paralyzed. I knew I could not kill the snake because I was too scared of it. After about a half hour the snake woke up and slithered across the yard in the opposite direction from where I was sitting and disappeared.

Now you may be wondering why I am still living in a place that on such a continuous basis scares the bejebees out of me? That is a question I ask myself many times a day from April until November every year. I have never lived in a place where I have been aware of so much danger. My innocence and naivety shock me and I yearn for the safety that I previously enjoyed.

It is all very clear to me now. I am not a native of the desert and honestly don’t believe I’m cut out for it. The desert is beautiful but foreign to my being. Oh, did I tell you about the gila monster?