Sometimes I wonder what little signs I would send to myself from the World of Souls to guide me down the right track in this lifetime, if I were ever in doubt…
If I could plan for small serendipities, coincidences and curiosities that I knew would catch my attention, before even coming into this lifetime, they would probably be to do with words, symbols and images, since I am highly attuned to all of those.
On the way to Slovenia 10 days ago, there was such a stream of “Right Track” signs that it was almost comical. I would hear a broadcast on the radio while driving to the airport and it would be about the precise esoteric subject I had been reading about that morning. On the plane, a lady in the row behind me would exclaim something about an earthquake to her friend, and the word “earthquake” would be right in front of my eyes in the book I was reading. The passenger beside me would wish out loud how she hoped to find honey in Slovenia, and the word “honey” jumped out at me from the in-flight magazine I was flicking through, and not just any honey — but honey in Slovenia!
I was on the way to do a series of regression hypnotherapy sessions with a group of actors and their friends, which both excited and scared me a bit, as I had never booked in so many regression sessions on sequential days before. However, the effort I had invested in making this happen was almost nil. It was a whole new experience of effortless flow for me, with clients recruiting themselves, inviting me to come to their country, and offering me a place to work from there. All I had to do was turn up.
So all of this was going swimmingly well, with my Soul self sitting on high, in the World of Souls, encouraging my little incarnated self on… into new adventures, completely aligned with my mission to serve and heal, as the plane took me through the skies.
And that is exactly when I realised that I had forgotten my wallet at home.
This had never happened to me before — not that this fact was of any use to me at that moment. The mantra “Tickets, Money, Passport!” usually runs through my mind before I let the front door fully close behind me. This time, however, it did not matter how many times I patted myself down, or rifled through my bag, my wallet was still where I had left it: at home, stubbornly refusing to teleport through space to where I had more use for it.
The trip to Slovenia instantly took on a whole new dimension. I would need to earn every single Euro that I needed to pay for any excursions, not to mention my lodgings and meals. It took a few deep breaths before the implications of this hand-to-mouth lifestyle moved from Very Scary to Rather Exciting on my emotional scale. This was clearly a lesson in effortless flow, and opening myself to receive!
And so I landed, and the proper adventure — planned by my Soul self with a warm chuckle,
no doubt — began in earnest.
Luckily, my first client session was already booked for the next morning, so even if I had to starve till then, I knew I would have cash in my pocket after that. Thankfully there was no need to starve, as a fellow graduate from the Barbara Brennan School of Healing collected me from the airport, fed me a home-cooked four-course meal and then took me sightseeing around the beautiful Bled Lake. I was already back in flow, and feeling so much gratitude for all the kindness I was being shown, kindness that would not have landed in the same way if my wallet were safely and self-sufficiently in my pocket…
Over the next 6 days, I journeyed into past life experiences and the World of Souls with clients every single day, and sometimes twice a day with back-to-back sessions for these actors keen to make contact with their souls. The boundaries between this world and the other became very blurred, soft, and almost permeable to me, as I wandered through the countryside around Lake Cerknica before and after every session.
The lake is, perhaps, a perfect example of this thinning of the veil-between-worlds I was experiencing. When Cerknica Lake is full in autumn, it is the largest lake in Slovenia. In springtime, it disappears through limestone sinkholes into caves that pervade the underground landscape of the Karst region, and becomes a plain that farmers use to plant crops. It both is and is not, and you both can and cannot walk over it.
In this July summertime, I managed to go partway across the plain before I met mud, then ankle-deep water, and finally thigh-high water that left only swimming as an option, unless I turned back.
This was my experience in the many regressions with my clients through what we call Time. Coming and going, wading in deep, and then coming back to known shores, while still wondering how much further I could venture next time. Would I ever lose my direction, forget solid land, and venture so far beyond that I would remember a different truth — outside of time?
Down in the caves of Krisna, close to Cerknica Lake, time also played tricks, twisted itself in loops and became a gradient into nothingness. I went on an expedition underground, funded by cash from the previous day’s regression session, and led by the son of the farmers whose organic small-holding I was staying on. We had proper hard hats with lights, wellies and waterproof overalls, all of which were necessary as we climbed and waded from one inflatable dinghy to the next in the many lakes in this system of caverns.
Close to the entrance, there were pieces of pottery from over 10,000 years ago — traces of human families who had taken shelter in Krisna Jama. Further down, the rocks were polished to a dark shine along their edges, where bears had squeezed past innumerable times in the pitch black, on their way to hibernate on ledges where the temperature would be a constant 8 degrees Celsius all through winter. Still deeper down in the cave system, old signatures from early scientific expeditions whispered dates of 1846 and earlier, painted by firelight with charcoal and red minerals from the rocks.
As we reached the tenth lake, after three hours of speleological acrobatics, intricate stalactite and stalacmite sculptures in majestic cathedral-like caverns appeared. Built, drip by mineral-infused drip, over centuries. We turned off our head torches, and listened to the soft sounds of water in the silence… and the unfathomable darkness.
Several times on this journey, the thought occurred to me: if the farm-boy guide disappeared right now, what would become of me?
How long would my head torch work? Would I be able to find my way back to the sunlight? Could I feel my way through all these lakes, ledges, streams of running waters, by touch alone?
Or would I just sit myself down, like a hibernating bear… and wait? For the end of time? Or at least the time this generous physical body would support my soul’s explorations in this life?
I recently experienced a poignant feeling of despair, nowhere near a cave, but with a sense of deep gloom around me nonetheless, and it occurred to me to ask for spiritual guidance on how to be with the fear, terror and darkness that are reflected in people and the world around me.
Within moments, the answer came: I was “told” to open my heart.
That is something I know how to do, and it felt like a good, though slightly obvious, reminder.
Then the message came: “See the Darkness there, too.”
Now that did not sit so easily in me.
Allowing and accepting myself as light AND darkness is a journey in its own right. It leads down to deep caves inside myself, which I have no answers about, through the veil of light that I like to shroud myself in.
The Incan Cycles of Lives mythology about the underworld, and the snake of wisdom that lives there, fleets into my consciousness. Darkness is not bad. It is simply the other side of light.
Down in these caves, light and shadows dance and flicker across moving waters when lamps are brought down to illuminate them. And when there is no light, I cannot imagine the darkness down here judging itself in the slightest. Why should it? It is simply darkness, with extraordinary treasures waiting to be revealed to those who dare come down into its depths.
As it happened, the Krisna Cave guide did not drop dead or leave me there, so a couple of days later, my journey could lead me to the capital of Slovenia, Ljubljana, for the final regression sessions of the trip, in a city overflowing with ice cream, riverside cafés, clean air and blueberry liquor… a world away from the darkness of the cave depths.
And yet, the pitch black of Krisna Jama is still there, below ground, waiting. As is, no doubt, the darkness in my own heart that I was asked to see. That will be a whole other adventure to uncover — and thankfully, with the string of secret signs that led me here, I know I am on the right track!
How are you with the idea of inner darkness?
