Introducing the Burned Woman

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REMINDER from Mano:

Everyone has a Divine Plan. There are spirit beings assigned to guide, guard, and support you each step of your path.

REMARKS from Barbara:

I am deeply touched as I review the guidance and support I have received ever since I first said, “YES.”

REMEMBERING Mary Jane:

I always love reading Mary Jane’s beautiful use of language, and delight to bring her consciousness into today’s sharing.

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Introducing the Burned Woman

Blog #80

I am following Mano’s guidance to share with you that everyone has a Council and that we are never alone. He says it is time to introduce the Burned Woman’s Story before we can move on with the plans he wants to share in ‘His Blog’.  So much depends on our healing the enormous collective wound created by the Burning Times, and any fear we might have of speaking to a gnome or angel. I will start by sharing part of Mary Jane’s 5^th Blog and then more of my story at the end.

Not long ago I attended one of Barbara’s Healing Burned Woman workshops. Everyone talked about their initial reactions to the idea that our civilization is still recovering from the traumas incurred in Europe during the witch burnings of the 15^th to 18^th centuries, and that re-opening communications with nature spirits and angels can bring healing from those burning times.

The reaction of several participants to Barbara’s stories of communicating with elementals, and in particular with gnomes, reminded me of the discomfort, distaste, and dismissiveness most educated modern folk have for this vein of possibility. I am far enough into it that I rarely get the old twists in my stomach from the internal bickering between the voice of reason, dictated by western scientific principles, and my experiences with energies of a less solid sort.  And I am no longer willing to split myself, espousing one reality when I’m with certain people and opening to another when I’m with others. That may be because I am turning 70 very soon and must dedicate the rest of my time to becoming whole and reconciled. Nonetheless, it is my daily work to cultivate that space of lightness and acceptance of others—whatever their beliefs—and a playfulness that likes to jostle opinionated stiffness wherever it turns up (including in myself).

I got some practice doing this as a Waldorf teacher and administrator in Silicon Valley. The Waldorf curriculum honors the elemental world and fairy tales (a core feature of first grade). Parents, especially moms, are attracted to the school’s warm protectiveness, imaginative play, and cultivation of wonder, yet it can be difficult, from the perch of a high tech job, to go along with the idea of gnomes and fairies, when you don’t see the reality of that world and you live every day with the pressure to have precocious and high performing children.

So how have we come to be so squeamish about nature spirits and even angels, when they used to have such a palpable presence for people? Barbara feels that this antipathy is an inheritance from those earlier times: “So many were burned for their knowledge of nature and its healing ways. I believe this has created a shadow in human consciousness that has kept us ignorant of spirit’s ability and need to interact with the human world. I believe it has created a deep fear of nature, a fear of the non-physical worlds. There were 300 years of systematic killing of those who talked with angels and elementals, who were taught by nature spirits how to use plants for healing and were empowered with special healing abilities by the elementals.”

Barbara wonders if she was the burned woman of her story. “Maybe in some life I was burned,” she says. “Maybe in another life I was one of the persecutors. I don’t think it matters. The scar on human consciousness affects us all. What matters to me now is to live fully in the present, to forgive and to move on.”

Joining in with this desire to forgive and seek out a new, inclusive path, I’d like to champion the “both/and” approach rather than the “either/or”, which always seems too simplistic and boxed in. So I don’t believe that we have to give up the scientific paradigm and its perfectly necessary place in human development in order to swing back around and pick up the discarded elementals.

Rudolf Steiner, clairvoyant from childhood and trained as a scientist (also founder of Waldorf education), makes a case in his book Theosophy against “unfounded disbelief.” And unfounded disbelief links for me with one of Steiner’s basic exercises on open-mindedness. I must be willing to involve myself in the investigation of a phenomenon—like becoming acquainted with gnomes—before I harden myself into skepticism or disbelief. And even if my results aren’t definitive, I can still opt for a kind of expansive and flexible thinking that is merry and alert!

Picking up on Rudolph Steiner’s statement about ‘unfounded disbeliefs,’this is what Mano has presented to me as the fear held in the collective consciousness from the Burning Times.

Within the first year after moving to the mountain I woke up one night hearing the words, “There once was a time, a horrible time. There once was a time, a horrible time. There once was a time, a horrible time.” 

This went on and on and on. I finally said to myself, “Get up, Barbara. Something different is happening.” I got up and wrote those words into my computer. Then word by word the story emerged of a woman who lived in a small cottage at the edge of the forest and was burned by her community when they became overwhelmed with fear stimulated by the inquisition. She was different, she was not one of them. Even though she was the community healer and they all appreciated her gifts, she was different. She talked with the plant spirits. She had a gnome companion and spoke to angels. Caught in a frenzy of fear, they tied her to her favorite tree and burned her. As I wrote the story, I saw paintings I had painted around 30 years earlier that illustrated the story to perfection.   

Mano, my nature teacher, and Rama, my angel teacher, felt it was necessary to introduce this story early in my move to the mountain. It was necessary to let me see and deal with the fear that came up as I wrote the words of Burned Woman’s Story. I was surprised at the unfamiliar feelings that came to the surface. Fear of rejection and persecution emerged. I even had apologetic feelings for creating something that would make people uncomfortable. 

A couple of weeks before the story was given to me, I was talking on the phone with my friend Olivia. As we talked, I had an inner vision of a woman with dark skin walking toward me. As she got closer to me, I realized her skin had been burned and even though I didn’t know anything about the Burning Times, I knew she had been “burned at the stake.”  I told Olivia what was happening and went to the studio to paint the energies I was feeling. 

I painted two paintings of a woman’s face with flames coming around her. It felt like I was looking through her eyes. I made groaning sounds and had thoughts run through my mind like, “How can you do this to me? I am your friend.”

When I completed the paintings, I was stunned, amazed, and frightened. I hid the paintings at the back of my closet for over a year. Finally, I shared them and the story with two women who came for a weekend workshop in my studio, called Exploring Creativity. Their response was encouraging. “This is important Barbara. I think you need to do something with it.” 

My friend Olivia kept after me to do something with the story. She would not let me forget, she kept telling me, “Something big is happening here Barbara.”

My two spirit teachers, Mano and Rama, knew I had to face this unconscious fear and move through it so I could eventually move into being of service, to write a blog sharing Mano’s teachings, and to create a book of The Burned Woman’s story and a DVD, Healing Burned Woman.  They wanted me to create an easy way to offer workshops. The focus is to heal the burned woman in each of us.  

I live in constant amazement of how these two keep adding information to ever expand and give me a clear picture of my soul path and the Divine Plan for my life. Earlier this year Mano gave me a very simple statement that immediately brought my whole life in focus. And gave me permission to be who I am.  

Your Service
is to awaken consciousness 
to relating with 
the angelic and elemental
world of nature

Read The Burned Woman here.

Book and DVD available on Amazon, or from Barbara