I am slowly starting to feel better.  I threw up for what I hope is the last time just after 6am.  Yuck.

On Thursday I get the very clear directive to go on this pilgrimage, and by Saturday night I am flat out, throwing up, and feeling miserable.  It was all centered in my stomach.  What can I or am not willing to stomach?  And, as my friend, Sharon, pointed out on the phone this morning, stomach is the seat of action.  Where am I out of right relationship with action?  What actions have I been taking - or not taking - that are not aligned with my higher purpose and intentions?

I felt fine all day Friday and Saturday, physically anyway.  On Saturday morning, I talked with my wise friend, Ingrid, who also was a major catalyst in my going on the journey to reconnect with my taproot.  She played the catalyst role very powerfully again on Saturday morning.  When I shared with her what I was up to with this journey with Money, she challenged me.  Threw the gauntlet down and upset my neat package.

Gulp.  

Interesting that I just used the word "gulp."  A very descriptive word that uses the digestive system to swallow, and here I've been - throwing up everything I had swallowed and could not stomach.

There is most certainly truth to what Ingrid shared with me.  By the way, Ingrid has my permission to speak so directly to me, and what I typed here is the synopsis of our much longer conversation.  I trust her implicitly and know that she deeply loves and cares for me.  It is out of this trust and love that she knows she can cut through the chaff and go straight to the heart of the matter.  I just saw a great quote on Facebook:

What Ingrid said to me touched something very deep and repressed in me.  

I do not remember giving myself permission to be myself since I was a very young girl.  I quickly developed habits to look outside of myself to know what I wanted, what I should wear, how I should act, what I should do.  Somehow, I told myself it was not okay, I was not okay, to be truthful about my dreams, desires and feelings, and I developed a finely tuned, externally based system to figure out how I should look, act, feel and think.   I believe I said this somewhere before in my blog, but I gave away my connection to my core so that I would be loved, so that I could and would belong to my parent, my family, my friends, my peers, and now again, my immediate family.  I have a very strong will and have used it to make sure that I always do the "right" thing, or at least just enough of it to get by.

Truth is, I am terrified by what I want, what I long for, and who I am.  I am terrified because I have made up a very convincing story that if I honor who I am, be myself, be truthful about what I want, that I will be all alone, and nobody will love me or include me.  I will not belong anywhere or with anyone.  I will be all alone.  

So, to belong and to be loved, I have been willing to not be truthful with myself and to be my authentic self.  

And instead of taking responsibility for this, I have always found someone, or something else to blame - my mother, my upbringing, my environments, and yes, Money.

I have used Money as my scapegoat, bully and saboteur rather than confront this truth that was lovingly and directly reflected to me this past Saturday.  

I would rather have been "poor me" and the victim than take responsibility for my lies and deceit, and become the heroine of my own journey and my life.

Big deep breath.

Yuck.  As I write that, it feels like what I have been throwing up for the past 36 hours.  YUCK.

So what if what I have been projecting onto Money is actually the aspects of me that are the bully and the tormentor?

What if I take those words I wrote the other day and retrieve them, and own them for myself?

I feel like throwing up again.  My stomach hurts.  My throat is choking.  I feel sick to my stomach.  

So this is what I do…every time I have a desire, thought of my own - I judge it, and myself, very harshly. And I say these mean and horrible things to myself, and then I take that desire and put it through my "outer acceptability filter"  and rework and morph my desire until it becomes acceptable, until I become acceptable, and know that I will belong.

I am my own saboteur and bully.  And, I have projected all of this meanness, bullying, unlovingness onto Money, and made him wrong, bad, uncaring, unloving, and so of course, have not wanted it really.  Made just enough to still play victim, "poor me", I can't do what I really want, I'm stuck, I'm unsuccessful, I'm worthless, I am not enough.

And Money has accepted this, and allowed me to project all of this negativity onto him.  Because Money is Love.  Money was willing to play any role that I chose to project onto him, because ultimately, he - it - knew that I would recognize that despite all my best efforts to make him the bad guy, that he was always here for me, patiently waiting for me to take ownership of what I do to myself, so that he could show up in his essence and in his truth.  This is the ultimate of being in service, isn't it?  That we are willing to play the dark and maligned roles in someone's life so that they can actually come back full circle into the truth of love.  Because the truth always is Love.  

Over the weekend, as I was being with all that Ingrid and I had talked about, I wondered about the possibility of the words I had "heard" from Money and the condescending and unloving tone that I had imagined him to use.  What if I had turned and manipulated the tone of this voice to fit my story about being excluded, unloved and not belonging?  What if he actually said those same words but with a loving tone?  What if it was his way of reminding me that I am not here to belong to anyone else but myself?  I am going to take those same words and interject them with other words that I may have cut out with my own internal editing.  What if he was actually trying to tell me exactly the opposite of what I heard?

Because Money is Love. 

In Barbara Wilder's words from her book, Money is Love, 

I mentioned the work Financial Alchemy™ in a previous blog.  Financial Alchemy is a coaching process that has you get very clear about your relationship with money through personifying "who" money is for you, and to give you the opportunity to create a new relationship.  In my experience, the shortfall of this process is that once we identify our "Money Monster", we are told to just get rid of our it/him/her through breaking up with or firing him, and that just never worked for me.  The habitual monster bully just kept coming back into the picture, and reluctantly, that's who I've been in relationship with, despite all the inner work, the workshops, and positive affirmations.   That's like telling someone to breakup with an abusive partner and to now, just like that, get into relationship with someone who's truly loving and respectful without the inner work to make the changes.   Also, it missed the deeper piece of recognition and compassion that this negative being has actually served a very great purpose.  In my more enlightened moments, I can recognize that the even most challenging people or presences in my life are actually there to serve me and my spiritual and emotional growth and transformation.  Without them, I would have no grist for the mill, nothing to work with or push against.  In this instance, Money has deeply served me by allowing me to project the saboteur and bully onto him, knowing that ultimately, I would take responsibility and own these feelings and projections.  This then allows for the possibility for me to fully accept, and love myself.  Without Money, I wouldn't have some "one" to help me to recognize the beliefs, patterns and behaviors.  I actually feel much gratitude and compassion for money in its willingness to carry all of our fears, angers and greed.  What an enormous gift and generous role it has played for all of us for all of these thousands of years.  

In the work I have done in Financial Alchemy™, I created a new Money that resonated with my core and my purpose.  He is Green Man, the timeless archetype of the wild man who lives in the natural green and wooded world.  He is fully masculine, embodied, sensual and passionate.  He loves unconditionally and he is very rooted in the natural world, trusting in the abundance and beauty of Nature.   Trouble is, I have kept him at arms' length and have been unable to fully relate to him for these past five years.  I have known that he is there, waiting patiently for me to come around to the truth of who he is, rather that always relating to him as the monster perpetrator villain in my "woe is me" life story.  Even more, he is patiently waiting for me to come to the truth of WHO I AM.  I now feel ready to invite Green Man to walk with me.  

Green Man is the embodiment and expression of money that I want to walk with and journey with.  He is my mirror and my guide.  He is the bridge for me between the spiritual and material worlds.  He is who I walk with on this journey of coming to fully love and accept myself.  So why don't I just walk by myself, with my essence?  

If this journey is really about me and my self-worth, self-expression and self-esteem, why am I walking with Money?  

Because for whatever reasons, Money is the direct reflection of my willingness and capacity to love and accept myself, and to create my life from within, nourished by my gifts, dreams and desires, guided by my soul's purpose and path.  I am here to contribute and serve, and my willingness to step over the stile and fully onto my soul's path of contribution is the key to unlock the blocks and fears that stop the flow of financial prosperity.  As I allow myself to receive my Self, Money as Green Man shows up to guide me, call me forth, and support me to shine my brightest light.  

Today is St. Mary Magdalene's Feast Day - July 22nd.  And I am clear that I will not waste what I initiated and received from this journey I have walked by myself on the Mary Michael Pilgrims Way. Mary and St. Michael are within my heart, guiding, providing and protecting every step of the way - even now as I am home in the US, with my family and re-entering to integrate and receive all from my experience.  Today, I read a quote from a group that experienced St. Michael up on Brentor, which is on the Mary Michael Way in Dorset.  The quote from the Bible that was opened to this page at the St. Michael Church that day gave them a message about the following:

Just as St. Michael guides, provides and protects me along the path bearing his name, so too does Green Man.  Perhaps somehow they are connected and are reflections of each other.  More on that another time.  I trust him and know him to always reflect the truth to me.  As we journey together, we heal each other and serve to reconnect the material to the divine, and also the divine to the material, and to shine our lights brightly and boldly, and be the bridges to create Heaven on Earth.

Matter matters, the divine matters. It is all the same thing, just different sides of the same coin, after all.

Solvitur Ambulando!

I am beginning a new pilgrimage today.  This is perhaps the hardest one for me to walk, and the one that has been inviting me, beckoning me, calling me for my whole life.  This is the one that I have ignored, avoided, pretended to take, sort of taken, toyed with taking.  This path doesn't have a title, or a map, or a destination.  It doesn't even have a route, a path, yet it is the journey that has demanded that I take it, walk it, write it, NOW.  

I know, I just got back from my walking the Mary Michael Pilgrims Way, right?  How dare I take off on another journey as soon as I get back with my family? Yet it is my walking the Mary Michael Way and completing it at my spiritual home in Lostwithiel and Restormel that has given me the container for this next journey.  What do I mean by that?

Well, I walked the Mary Michael Way as a completion to my first leg of the Celtic Camino.  I needed to complete the journey from the root chakra in Santiago de Compostela, in Spain, to the sacral chakra in Toulouse, France.  I began this healing and transformational journey of the chakras in 2009, and walked from Santiago to St. Jean Pied de Port in 2010, and then from St. Jean to Auch, a sacred city eighty kilometers shy of Toulouse in 2012.  To complete this journey, I was guided not to walk from Auch to Toulouse, but to walk in the land of my ancestors, Cornwall, England, by myself.  

I have just completed this journey in June 2013.  I walked the thirty mile Saints Way from Padstow to Fowey with my cousin, Karen through the area where our grandparents and ancestors lived, worked, married, and had their children. Had our parents.  I then walked by myself the twelve mile "Cornish Camino", most commonly known as St. Michael's Way, across the narrowest part of Cornwall from Lelant to Penzance, in view of St. Michael's Mount.  I then walked, again alone, the first one hundred miles of the Mary Michael Pilgrims Way from Carn Les Boel, near Land's End, through Penzance to Lostwithiel and Restormel Castle. 

These pilgrimages have been very physical.  I walk on footpaths, roads, and coastal paths, along cliffs and through dark woods, through towns and villages, across fields and streams, and over hills and along verdant valleys.  I walk eight to twelve miles a day, or roughly twenty kilometers.  I carry a pack with twenty or so pounds of clothes, tents, sleeping bag, toiletries, food and water.  I use walking poles to assist me as I walk.  One step after another.  For hours each day.  And I love it.

These pilgrimages are also very internal, rich, deep and transformative.  With each step, with each thought, I experience all of who I am - my fears, my hopes and dreams, my concerns, my longings, my willingness to receive and be open - or not, my confidence, my connections, my aloneness, my belief in myself, my gifts, my path, my service and contributions, my life.  

To walk a pilgrimage is a commitment - to oneself, to the path, to a journey that will transform you in ways known and unknown, and catalyze changes wanted and unwanted.  It is to step into the unknown, and to invite transformation and change with every step.

So, here I am - back at my house with my family, my husband and children, my loved ones, my dog and my cats.  I notice that it is hard for me to say "I am home".  Yes, I am home with my family, but my soul's home is Restormel.  It makes no sense, I know.  Believe me, I know.  With as much clarity as I experienced in Lostwithiel, I come back and am with my family and I also experience a "being home" with them.  Actually, truthfully, I want to experience even more than I do.  I am also aware of experiencing a feeling of being on the outside, not quite as at home as I would like to feel.  Perhaps it is because I have been away for a month, but it is also that I am now more then ever connected to the core of me that is English and longs for extended family, rich, green verdant woods, old buildings, ancient history, funny signs that are so literal in their wording, driving on the left side of the road, cliffs, cloudy days, moist and colorful gardens full of flowers and soft green grass, cups of tea. I LOVE ENGLAND.  I do.  I do.  I do.  And my soul longs to be there more and more frequently.  I am nourished and fed by the land, the people, the accents, the architecture. the food, the ciders, the teas and coffees, clotted cream, cousins, aunts and uncles, family, old family friends, London, Lostwithiel, Bath, Box, Dorchester, ancients stones and stone circles, Celtic crosses, old stone churches and graveyards.

And yet, my family is here, and very, very American.  As my twelve year old daughter says, "I am a Nashville-ian", which she has declared after her trip to Nashville with Steve, her dad, aunt and cousin.  She loves it there. She loves it here in America.  All of my kids do.  Fortunately, my sixteen year old son, Michael, who joined me in England my last week there, certainly relates to England and the English within him, and has even declared that he wants to live there and go to university there.  So there's hope!  But I am also aware that what I long for, deeply desire, is diametrically opposite of what most of the members of my family want, and are connected to.  

What will it take to reconcile my deepest longings and connections with my connection with my children, my family, and being a part of me, and not excluding myself from, my family?

Quite a diversion from where I started.  Back to my next pilgrimage.

I have shared all of this because it creates the context and sets the stage for my next journey.  Well, almost.  One more piece to share from my Mary Michael pilgrimage.

As I mentioned, I walked this journey to complete the first stage of the Celtic Camino, and to heal my first chakra.

To heal my root chakra so that I would actually be able to hold and contain my creations, my wealth, my Self.  My experience has been that I leak out and lose all of this, so that while I may receive inspirations, have wonderful, creative ideas, receive money, I simultaneously leak it out, often times more quickly than I receive it.  I have felt like a sink whose plug has been pulled out.  The water may come into the sink, but it goes out and down the drain with a velocity that does not allow the level of the water to build or rise.  All of the beautiful, clean, clear water goes down the drain.  

My intention for this pilgrimage was to reconnect with my core taproot and literally, plug it back into my root chakra and create a cohesive and beautiful container, womb, from which to build, create and enjoy myself and my life.  

And given my experiences on the path, and especially at Restormel, and the confirmations I received, I know that I accomplished this.  Completely.

So, now that I am back at home with my family, what worked before, or perhaps more accurately, what I got by with, no longer works.  Period.  My coping mechanisms of leaking out energy, intention and integrity through avoidance, ignorance, disconnecting and armoring myself, are no longer permitted, no longer work and are actually now spilling over and coming back at me full force and actually creating waves of havoc, isolation, unhappiness, and poverty.

Like I wrote above, to walk a pilgrimage is a commitment - to oneself, to the path, to a journey that will transform you in ways known and unknown, and catalyze changes wanted and unwanted.  It is to step into the unknown, and to invite transformation and change with every step.

I am a pilgrim.  It's who I am.  It is one of my essential archetypes and an integral aspect of my soul's contract.  I move and grow, transform and welcome change through pilgrimage.  So instead of being a pilgrims only when I am walking a sacred pilgrimage path, I have invited and chosen to walk a pilgrim's path each and every day of my life.  I am a pilgrim even when I am "home", or perhaps especially when I am at home.  When I disconnect from my "pilgrim", I tend to become stagnant, lethargic, and complacent.    My pilgrim is the aspect of me that is committed to my soul's evolution in this human body.  She brings the two aspects together for me.  I have a habit of existing in the spiritual worlds and I am challenged by the physical, material world.  Walking and even more specifically, walking a sacred path, whether is a sacred path such as the Camino, Saints Path, St. Michael's Way, the Mary Michael Pilgrims Way, or a labyrinth in my back yard, actually serves as a bridge for me to be aware of walking on this beautiful planet, in the material physical world that can be both so beautiful, nurturing, and alive and at the same time, so challenging, demanding, hard and unfathomable.  I have been told that I am like a "blue light that hovers above the earth, above the material plane, that looks down and says 'it's awfully dense down there'."   So often, this is how it feels, and why I have chosen avoidance, ignorance, isolation and disconnection as my tools to survive a world I don't understand and don't necessarily want to be a part of.

Yet…yet.

My soul's insistence that I walk is actually serving to bring me down to Earth and to invite me to connect with abundance and joy of this material dimension. It is actually more insistent than an invitation. It is a command, an invitation that does not accept "no" as a response!  

No journey is a straight line.  You may think that you are going from point A to point B, yet the journey is a path of spirals, and twists and turns, that gift you with more than you can ever imagine, in ways that you never thought possible, all in its own good timing.  

So here I am, after four years of walking sacred pilgrimages, of walking with a group, three different partners at three different times, and by myself, and over one thousand kilometers of walking under my feet, and I feel as though I have just turned the first curve of the spiral and fully stepped into the core purpose and intention of my being a pilgrim.  

And to be able and willing to do this, I had to walk by myself and heal my root chakra, and plug into the core of myself, my tap root that is connected to the Earth, the Stars, and my authentic Self.  All of the miles before this were to get to me to this so that I can truly walk my soul's journey.  To do this, I have to tell the truth, confront my demons, acknowledge my secrets and shadows, all that I have previously avoided, and come out into the sunlight, and walk and to take the next step, one step at a time.

Matter matters.

This is the core of the next leg of my journey.

Matter matters.  My body matters.  Money matters.  The Earth matters.  Matter matters.

It may be dense.  It may be uncomfortable.  It may be demanding.  It may be ugly.  It may be beautiful.  It may be scary.  It may be mean and unloving.  Not the matter itself, but my experience of this dense realm with mankind's crazy and destructive ways of interacting with it, taking from it, having dominion over it.  My intention is to allow all of it, and to nourish and feed the beauty, joy, love that is here.

I get to contribute the beauty, joy and love that does exist in this material plane and nourish it so that it can expand and evolve, and that that "matter matters" becomes the dominant paradigm for every one everywhere.  

I get to be the bridge between the spiritual and the material.  Not only get to, but I AM the bridge.  

And to fully embody and embrace this, I am choosing to use the tool of MONEY.  What more of reviled, misunderstood, abused, manipulated aspect of matter could I ask for as my partner?  

I am choosing to partner with Money. Money that has been the bane, challenge, villain, bully of my existence.  Money that I have avoided, ignored, disconnected from, isolated from with all of my energy, willpower and very convincing, lofty, and spiritual arguments.

Money, will you partner with me on this pilgrimage?  Will you join me on this journey?  On this journey where I will want to push you off the bridge and do it all by myself?  On this journey where I am terrified of you joining me on it?  Where I would rather do anything but have you join me, but recognizing that doing it, actually anything without you, only gets me so far, and truthfully, only gets me in more debt and bondage?  

Somedays, I may walk with you by my side.  Other days, I may walk as far away from you as I can.  Most days, especially at the beginning, I may not even want you there.  But will you walk with me anyway? And will you walk with me out of an intention larger than me and you?  Will you walk with me out of our commitment to Global and Personal Prosperity - for each and every person on the planet, so that everyone knows - no matter where they live, who they are, what they "do" - that they can receive and experience financial freedom, empowerment, abundance, and the most loving, reciprocal, supportive, creative relationship?  

Will you walk with me, please?

I want to build and create with you.  I want to work with you.  I want to release my old programs around money and contribute to creating a new relationship and paradigm with you.  I want to experience, and know that You are Love, just as I am, and to know this in every cell and in the core of my being.  This is my intention.  And the way that I know to do this is to walk, to walk a pilgrimage with you, Money.  Pilgrimage is the way that I invite and embody change, transformation and evolution, and I invite you to join me.

Will you walk with me please?

What does this mean?

Every day, I write, share, expose, tell the total truth about my relationship with you, take full responsibility with it, and allow you to inform, relate, guide, connect with me. Everyday you walk with me, and guide, inform, relate with and partner with me, and you do not allow me to ignore, avoid or disconnect from you.

How do you do this?

That when I honor our relationship, you show up - physically for me, in the form of money - however you choose to do this.  

And to honor our relationship, I begin my day with you, writing, walking, and asking you what you want from me, for me to do that day. And I do it.  One day at a time.  One step at at time.  And I write and share it all every day.  No masks.  No hiding.  No making nice and presentable.  I share all of this journey - in open and complete vulnerability.

And that when I don't honor you, or our relationship - you don't show up.  Simple.  No money that day.

I walk through writing.  I write this Journey with Money everyday, and share the gifts, challenges, vulnerabilities, wins and successes, all of it.  I expose myself, my shadows, my fears, I break all of my rules around money, I expose all of my crazy behaviors and beliefs around money - all of the things I have kept hidden in the deep recesses of my being and not shared with anyone out of shame, blame, and fear.

With the intention to know that who you are is Love.  And just as I have reconnected with my taproot, of who I truly am as a deeply spiritual being who is also deeply rooted in this Earth, and that contact point for entering the Earth realm is Restormel, I also will contribute to your reconnecting with your taproot and your spiritual roots so that a paradigm shift occurs with the planet's and its peoples relationships with you.  That no longer can you just be a material entity with no heart and feelings, and be scapegoated as the villain.    That you get to be the Hero.

That together, we become the Heroine and the Hero of our own stories, lives and in embodying this, we literally turn the global relationship with you, Money, right side up.  Together.  We are FINANCIAL TRANSFORMATION AND EVOLUTION.  Together, we right what has been distorted and wronged for so many thousands of years, and reconnect you, and me, with our roots in the Earth and her sacred being, and once again, belong and be an integral part of what is sacred, right, beautiful, and joyous in this amazing world we live in, we live on, and are a part of.  

You in?

I am in.  You in?

I am in.  I am on this journey fully.  Two feet on the path of this pilgrimage with Money, Prosperity, Abundance, and Walking into Right Relationship with Money, Abundance and Financial Alchemy.