Retro Revelations

I woke up yesterday morning feeling like I hadn’t slept in weeks. I blame it on the Mercury retrograde. I felt a staunch heaviness in my body and, while I could have just climbed back into bed, I wasn’t content with wasting my day. After getting up and moving around for a few hours I still hadn’t shaken the feeling. I had no coffee and I was just too lethargic to exercise it away, so I tried a different approach.

I had been engrossed in studying the ways of the Shaman for some time so I decided to try to clear my energy by performing a smudging ritual. I still had some white sage left from the little baggy I’d purchased at a novelty shop several months prior. I meditated for some time and called on Lord Ganesha to help clear my energy. “Ommm Gammm Ganapatayeee Namahaaa,” I chanted aloud. I sat, quiet and still and then I began to pray.
I had known about the energy of Mercury retrograde and the spookism that came along with it, but I had been asking Archangel Raphael (ruler of Mercury) to act on my behalf and help me to flow with the energy of the retrograde, as to not get caught up in its snare. It had been working well for me. Realizing that there are just some things that a person must endure, I asked that whatever needed to be released from me would be cast away and gone forever. Then I put the sage in my abalone shell and lit it afire.

The smell of the burning leaves lifted and wafted through the air around me. The smoke danced all around. I stood up and used my hand to fan the smoke onto my body, from the top of my head, to bottoms of my feet. I breathed in the sweet aroma and continued to recite the mantra to Lord Ganesha in my head. When I’d smudged my whole body I set the shell down and laid down flat on my back. I had a hunk of clear quartz crystal nearby and a large piece of amethyst around my neck. I placed the latter in the center of my forehead, in accordance with my 3rd eye chakra. I placed the first below my navel in order to use its energy to help me further clear my energy and stay grounded. I breathed in slowly from my diaphragm and out through my mouth until I was completely relaxed, and I just “let go”.

Any thoughts that passed through my mind I allowed to run their course. I thought briefly about the challenges I was facing with recalling childhood trauma while writing my first book. Still in a deep state of meditation, I sat up and began to cry. All of a sudden I was looking at myself as a baby. I looked at myself sitting there smiling, unaware of the situation I had been born into, but suffering the repercussions nonetheless. I cried for the child who had been given away and left behind by her mother.

Then I saw myself as a toddler. I was so lively and full of curiosity. Even so, I was full of rage and I was apt to break down and become very destructive. I didn’t know the details, but I knew there were things going on around me that were not right.

I saw my child self. Bright and adventurous, but also full of confusion and pain. I understood then that I had been given away by my mother and that she had perceivably better things to do than being my mommy. I couldn’t fight back when my aunt and grandmother abused me, and my daddy was always going to jail, so he couldn’t protect me. My foster mother was bonding with her new, natural born daughter and I began to feel like she didn’t have room for me in her heart anymore.

My teenage self looked at me directly. She was brash and full of herself – always right. She tried her best to do well and to do the right things, but it never seemed to be enough. She felt displaced and extremely misunderstood. She was angry that she didn’t fit in anywhere and she wished that she could connect with her biological family so she could find a place to blend in. She wanted her mother and she wanted to be the baby again. She was frustrated by feeling trapped and untrustworthy, even though she had never done anything to deserve being treated that way.

My late teen and early twenties self looked confused. She had big dreams and she was going to make it through college and be as big of a success as she wanted to be. She wasn’t going to screw up like she felt people expected her to. Then she started partying and messing around with guys. It made her feel good, at first. She felt appreciated and worthy, but then she realized she was just giving her body away and then she felt dirty. She felt like she deserved to be used and abused by her boyfriend. She went from partner to partner, looking for something that could not be found. She settled with one person and thought all her dreams would come true. She got pregnant and quit school. She put all her focus into motherhood, because she was going to be everything to her daughter that she felt was not extended to her by her two mothers. She overcompensated, and she broke down.

I saw myself just a few short years ago, still broken, but trying to mend. I saw myself looking at my life and being diligent about choosing something different. I saw myself endure. I saw myself make difficult choices and have the faith that what I had chosen would ultimately be for the highest and greatest good. I saw myself submit and be humbled to something greater. I saw my life change for the better.
Then I hurtled back into the present moment.

I cried the entire way through and when the vision faded, I began to say, “Thank you! Thank you!” over and over again. I thanked myself at all the different stages of my incarnation for being who and what they were at that time. For better or for worse, I wouldn’t be who I am today if it weren’t for the enduring spirit I carried at those various parts in my life. I remembered how they felt – unloved, unwanted, and displaced – and I began to speak aloud. “You were always loved, you were wanted, and you always had a place, even when you didn’t know it.” I had to heal them. As an adult I thought I had let go of the pain, and I had, but they still had not.

When I finally dried all the tears, I stood up, and I felt the weight that had been on me all morning raise and dissipate. I learned that I needed to be a compassionate, nurturing mother to my very own self in order to further heal and continue on my journey down my rightful path.

The energy of Mercury retrograde helped reveal a very necessary lesson to me, and it can do the same for you, if you engage it and put the request out into the universe. Healing on multiple levels of the innermost self is precisely what I needed, and I wouldn’t have been able to receive that healing had I succumbed to the paralyzing fear that is The Retrograde.
I hope that anyone who reads this is helped by it and that other inner children will be healed as well. Blessed Be.

By: Dava Greely

Here is her personal website!
http://davagreely.com/