After an intense five-day recovery from open-heart surgery, I was eager to take a walk and reconnect with my land. I found myself yearning for the familiar comforts of home, the expansive 10 acres, the place I had been guided to after receiving a compelling message during meditation urging me to return.
I had traveled to Joshua Tree to continue writing Tragic Magic when I heard this call to move home. Each time I sat down to write, I would create a ritual and pray. On this fateful evening as I lit a candle I said aloud, “Sweet loving Spirit, angels of love and light, ancestors of the highest vibration and intention, my guides, Jesus and Mary Magdalene, I humbly ask for you to be with me. I intend to be an agent of the highest good. Please bring me the insights, the resources, and the people to manifest the highest good for myself and humanity at this time.”
I then connected to my heart, by focusing my inhales and exhales there, and I consciously activated a felt connection to love and gratitude. Creating this receptive presence I would then listen. And that’s when I heard the call to return home. “You must urgently move home.” Without hesitation, I immediately planned to fly to St. Louis to find where God wanted me to be. To most, this would seem highly irrational, maybe even a bit crazy. To me, I knew the rightness of it for this voice had never let me down. It was the voice, more than any other influence in my life that I learned I should trust.
The Journey Home
My new home in Washington, MO isn’t home per se; it is about 40 miles from where I grew up. Sitting on 10 acres, the land has presence; it feels holy to me. More than its beauty, it feels filled with wisdom and joy. When I first came to the property after scouring the MLS, I had just one reservation. Nothing in the property description mentioned it having its own water. After 20 years of California drought, I had lived the consequence of water scarcity; $400 monthly bills and a persistent insecure feeling that comes from an uncertain water future. Water matters. I proceeded anyway. My intuition compelled me to see it. When I arrived at the house, it was love at first sight. I exited the car to see a radiant man with a huge smile come up the driveway in a golf cart. I had not even said hello when he exclaimed, “Well hello young lady, I should mention we have a geothermal well here.” I knew in that moment I had found where God wanted me to be.
My husband supported the move with unconditional generosity. In just a few months we would be settling into our new home, leaving Santa Cruz, California where I had lived for 24 years. I began to plan the design of my yoga center from the bones of a 2,800 square foot garage that was part man cave, part park your tractors. I would begin offering a free yoga class on my expansive lawn. And I would continue my daily discipline of prayer and meditation.
Guided
Just two months after we arrived, I would be directed again. In the quiet of my meditation, I heard the trusted voice command, “Go to a doctor!” A few days later, I learned from a local doctor who simply listened to my heart, that something was terribly wrong. Within a month, after a battery of tests and deep, prayerful preparation I would be wheeled into open-heart surgery to replace my aortic valve. I seemed to be on a need-to-know basis with the Holy Spirit! Each call of action ultimately led me to Barnes Hospital in St. Louis. The hospital where I was born, where my oldest son was born, and where I tended to my ailing father as he recovered from lung cancer just happened to be one of the best places in the country for heart surgery.
Spirit knew and led me to save my life.
As I took my first steps on my land, renewed by the miracle of open-heart surgery, I felt immense gratitude for the gift of life. A gratitude that words cannot adequately describe. I greeted my land as I walked, feeling a powerful presence with each step. I felt surrounded by the love of God and the love of my mother. I paused and stood taking in the beauty of my land and the felt sense of the moment. Wanting to somehow capture the magnitude of what I was experiencing, I took out my iPhone and took a photo. This is what I captured:
There is magic everywhere. Our task is to create the inner conditions to sense it.
