Passion and Exuberance

One day as Barbara walked to the amphitheater, she heard Mano say,  “You were an exuberant child raised in a household of repressed adults.”

“Looking within,” she says, “I could see the truth I had never realized before. I wanted to be free to express that exuberance, that passion for life, the joy and delight in the mysteries Mano was revealing to me. It didn’t happen all at once. I had to deal with the fear of being ‘too much’ for people. This dilemma was solved when, talking with a friend, I realized: I have a good heart. I am not showing off or trying to impress people. Then an inner knowing floated to the surface saying, ‘I can totally trust the fullness of who I AM’.  With that new level of trust and freedom I have set my spirit free to respond to my intuitions, follow promptings, allow and totally enjoy my heart’s opening to wider vistas in both my inner and outer life.”

Barbara knows that the nature spirits welcome her passion, and she wonders: “How often are children’s passions and exuberance repressed and dampened by adults’ worries and teachings?”

This question lives with me, as well. I once had a shamanic reading in which the shaman returned with this story. She journeyed to my childhood home where I reluctantly opened the door and let her in, my parents in the background. She started to open a small door in the kitchen wall and I nervously asked her to keep away from it. When she opened it anyway, she found a tunnel going down, and at the bottom a cage with a little-girl me in it, guarded by a witch. When she distracted the witch enough to open the cage door, I bounded out and up the tunnel, delighted to be free. When she went to integrate this far wilder me back into my adult being, the young me was reluctant. She wasn’t sure I was ready to integrate her dancing, ecstatic energy. The shaman convinced her she would be able to thrive—but I sometimes wonder if I have done well by her and whether, even in my 70s, I have some new version of “running with the wolves” (or running with the elementals) to do.

Two friends from this little elementalist group I’m part of, Karen and Christina, went with me in early October to visit Barbara. Christina does lots of work with her little-girl selves, befriending them, singing to them, asking questions and listening to discover when certain self-restrictive patterns set in. She wanted to see what would happen if she spent the night in the amphitheater. When she woke up in the night, she could sense little beings around and see domes of light, but she didn’t perceive any nature spirits directly. In the early morning, with the sunlight filtering gently through redwood and madrone branches, she decided to do her regular morning meditation. Her two, four, and six-year-olds wanted to sit on her lap, and one said, “I want to dance with a gnome.” In her meditative being, Christina then watched the little girls and little gnomes dancing and whirling. In her spirit body she skipped around with them, and then she asked: “Mano, are you here?” She saw him standing in front of her and her three inner-girls, a pleased expression on his face. He bowed and was off. Christina feels that her inner children were an intermediary. She has worked with them enough to trust in their reality, so even though she didn’t have faith and trust that the gnomes would be there for her, they were there for the little girls, and she could share in their exuberant celebration

Barbara has received other teachings about passion and exuberance through the years. One foggy day, for example, she was told: “You need this moisture in the air, as it feeds the emotional and etheric bodies. To maintain balance and wholeness we want to connect with you through your feelings as well as through mental telepathy. The Hawaiian music you have been listening to nourishes the feelings. It has that lush warm misty energy that we need for you and from you. Some call it passion.”

“When passion is expressed solely within the mind it is called powerful and intense. When it comes from the heart and body it is nourishing and strengthening. We are asking you to bring this heart energy to the nature spirits on your land. Send love, say hello and speak to the nature spirits within each green and growing plant. In the beginning this nourishment, warmth, and interactive affection was always present between human and nature. Since the Burning Times* it has been missing. We need it now.”

Mano also shared that “Much is being asked of humans and of nature. Since the Christ energy has entered the heart of the planet and as we move into the next age, we are all receiving an enormous jolt of energy. When we work together and share our love it is much easier to carry this increased light frequency with balance and wholeness.”

* The Burning Times was a 300-year period during the Inquisition when healers, midwives, herbalists, among millions of others were  burned at the stake if suspected of interacting with angels and nature spirits in their healing practices.