ASCENSION FIELD NOTES - FORTY YEAR CYCLE BY KATHY VIK 11-27-13

[Kathy Vik]

ASCENSION FIELD NOTES – FORTY YEAR CYCLE BY KATHY VIK 11-27-13

www.ascensionfieldnotes.wordpress.com

www.deeplyawake.tumblr.com

My cat Minky is draped over my right calf, me here on my bed, after what feels like a five minute nap. It also feels like Sunday, but it feels like Sunday, for me, most of the time anymore. I decided, spring of 2011, that I would no longer work on Sunday. I had found something at mile Hi Church of Religious Studies. I knew I had to be there.

I look at it now, and realize that doing so, just setting one day aside, with my son, in-between weeks, Sam and I created a good pattern, a rhythm to our weeks, months, and years ensued. It's the day we sat aside for treats, and rarely do we schedule family time on Sunday. It's not a time of darkness, of dissonance. Sunday has turned into a day of indulgence. It's the day I practice what I learned on my trip to Laughlin and Vegas last year. I dwelled in something, those few days I took for a trip, after not having taken a vacation in twelve years. It was good to be required to attend to myself, and to no one else, for those days. I settled into myself. I started having visions. I knew what I was to one day become.

That most days feel like Sunday, even last night at work (a rare Tuesday), this is a blessed turn of events.

I bring this up because being a rarely employed night nurse has had, built into it, time alone, in bed, half in and half out of sleep, in a trance, a lot of it, I think. I had permission, and it was in fact necessary, that I stop time, as a night nurse, and unplug, right when everyone else was out in the sun, pursuing goals that only make sense in company, all doing the same, goals the same, hours the same, patterns the same. The Monday through Friday bunch.

I think, with the way the economy has been allowed to rape the middle class, that more and more regular joes are now doing shift work, trying to make ends meet. There are hidden reasons for our troubles, I think. When more and more people, by necessity, need to break stiff patterns with time, a certain freedom enters the mind. The idea that time is a device, a construct we use, but not as rigid as once believed, this sort of thinking is introduced. It's not a bad thing.

I feel the same sort of certainty with my personal explanation for the high divorce rate and all the split parenting that is done anymore.

I believe it is because we have begun to split from the god-the-father paradigm, and the benefit of this is that more and more women, all over America, all over the industrialized world, have, for over a generation, have raised their children without a very strong male bond.

Sure, some folks live with dad instead of mom, and sure, some moms are just really crappy at it, but, think about it. Just think about it. Two generations of kids who see that mom is a fully functioning adult. Valid without a man, many of we single moms, we've chosen to walk alone, with our kids, until they are mature. I did. I don't think I'm the only one. I decided to disengage socially, to a very large degree, and one of the reasons was, I just didn't want my kid to have to deal with any more heartache. I left his daddy when Sam was three. That was enough interpersonal violence. It was time to heal, without supervision, without support, and without knowing where it would lead.

I preface this story by telling you that about a week ago, maybe less, I realized that on my birthday this year, I will have been in the nursing profession 40 years. I made the call to St. Anthony’s inquiring about their volunteer program, on my 13^th birthday. In February of 1974. On February 23, 2014, I will have been in this field forty years. I considered the symbology of this, and knew it to be a significant date. But I didn't have the details figured out, just what sort of significance, or what it might lead to. Seemed to me it was reminiscent of Moses int eh desert with all his wandering friends. Forty years.

Last night, I had a really bizarre shift. It was painful, from beginning to end. Honest to God. There was a pall cast over that place. It was awful. Dense. Angry. Unhappy. Everyone was in a foul mood. I had patients swearing at me and yelling, from the time I started until the time I left.

Now, I want it said, I have practiced, since my earliest days as an RN, with the idea that it's easier to have a good shift than a bad one. I learned, in psych, that how I use my self as a therapeutic tool, had an effect on the milieu. It was late in my practice that I figured out, really got it, that I can directly effect the mood and pace, feel and tempo, to some degree, of my shift work. Marge, my mentor taught me this. She told me, when we took over that broken nursing home, that we should be glad when someone resigns.

I was working with The Teachers at the time, and, honestly, some of the stuff The Teachers taught me, and what Marge taught me, it gets mixed up in my mind sometimes now. Marge practices at such a high level of mastery. She was there, I see now , to demonstrate The Teachers principles, a gift to me.

The Teachers taught me that vibrational resonance (my words, I forget how they languaged it) is a high art, a science. You set a tone, a vibration, an intent. And then, you emit it. And those who can function at that level will stay, and those who cannot will fall away. It was good to be in charge of a building and using such principles. It balanced things, and took the drama out of the most hysterical of employee reactions.

Water seeks its own level, Marge always said. That and, her funny smirk, her knowing ease, her steady sense of humor, shaking her head and saying “What goes around comes around,” whenever anyone tried to lie to her or screw her over. I could never understand how anyone could be mean to her. I saw her filling up those hallways. She is a human angel, no doubt about it, I would say.

What a wonder, to realize now that each of us are, and always have been.

I am rambling, but it's to get here. On my bed, nuzzled by my cats, silence in the house, my net book whirring and my fingers clacking. But more, I am here, at the computer, because I have gone very far since my shift last night. I have learned and I feel better.

As nutty as it may seem, I write to you because I think doing so might give you hope. That kept coming through, again and again this afternoon. As nutty as it seems, I am thinking that this writing might give someone hope.

In the afternoon stillness which I punctuated, at perfect moments with music, or a recording, or journaling, I had a healing. I'd like to explore it. You can come along if you want to. That's how I roll. Switch it off if you want to, but I'll be over here talking to myself.

Last night, I worked with a lady whose need to control, to double check my work, to pick at me and degrade me by giving me the lion's share of work and never once giving me a smile, or anything other than suspicion and sort of a reluctant coldness, it was all just so in my face, I felt physical revulsion. Waves of hate. Derision. Resentment. Anger. Humiliation. Time and again, she questioned me work, gave me tasks with incomplete instructions, just so she could come up behind me and point out where I had done things wrong. I worked my ass off, and felt degraded every minute, all through the night.

As I was readying bedtime med,s I realized, it isn't me tonight. Something is in the air. I knew I'd be going someplace dark tonight, but I didn't know what it would look like. And here I am, and it's dark, and it sucks, and I am not, this time, I just know it's not me that is creating this. This isn't mine.

Of course, if it wasn’t mine, I wouldn't have reacted as I had, and I thought about that, as I did rounds, on every room, every half an hour, all through the night, without help, and without thanks.

This is not mine. I don't act like that lady acts. I was aware, though, that my reaction to this nonsense, this insanity, this distrust, was what was at issue, not the behavior.

I thought, all through the night, very lightly, but persistently, that this has been my life. Being amidst these sorts of colleagues, and these abusive, emotionally incontinent patients. Up until now, this has been my life. Trying to manage as a sensitive in an environment calibrated to push me to find a way to know peace. There was so little without. There was so little I allowed myself to feel within, at times.

I think on the shift and see the petty behavior, how I would sneer when once again dumped on, and by 3 in the morning, all the angst was getting sort of maudlin. Old, and not anything I wanted to keep feeling.

I took a smoke break and thought about it.

I realized a few things. I felt that this was some sort of test, had known it from my first rebuff, by a day shift nurse, who treated me like am incompetent because I wouldn't take an admit call, though I'd just come in, and was ten minutes early.

I knew something was up.

And I thought, as I smoked, that although this hurts a lot, and is not fun at all, it is purposeful, and there's a gift in it. This ancient pattern, being seen as incompetent by others, this has been a theme throughout my career. Can you imagine such a thing, a mind as brilliant as mine, and I am seen, very very often, as incompetent, not to be trusted, not one of the gang. Of course, this comes from being a shift worker, but I set that up when I worked Hospice, working weekend nights. I've had this experience now since getting out of management, but it has intensified since moving down to Denver with Sam, I the sole provider, and for all my management experience, all my knowledge, I have had, now, 10 years of this sort of stance form others.

Incompetence.

There have been many shifts, more now than ever before in my life, that have gone so smoothly it's eerie. I have had blessed shifts, as a rule, for MONTHS. Months. Hard to fathom.

And so, to have this experience my first night back in two weeks, in the same old trap, the same old energy that I usually encounter in the medical side, here it was in full bloom, being acted out by a psych nurse, someone I had, at one time, gotten along with. There's something wrong with her, she is very very sad, and she is so scared, it sort of radiates off her, but it's cloaked in great disdain for others. Story of my life, in the darker patches.

I decided I would let it ride, and start smiling. I decided I had been too harsh, and had maybe brought some of it on. If not that, then I didn't make it any better by making the face I seem to involuntarily make when someone asks me to do something and within the request, it is understood that I was going to be found a fuck up.

I decided that I was being mean, and it wasn't helping. I was being selfish, and I was being self centered, and I decided to stop anticipating bad things from this god awful woman. I decided, as I finished my smoke, that the best thing I could do for myself was to just not take it too seriously, and to try and make this woman feel less ashamed for how she'd been acting.

I went in and honestly apologized to her for having been “a pill,” as my mother always called it. I told that nurse that I was sorry for my sour countenance (yes, I used those words together), and asked her to please forgive me.

I did the busy work that had to get done, but she started to ease.

With these sorts of situations, there's a weird sort of rabbit-hole energy to it. When someone just knows I am incompetent, or someone they can mess with, always, always, always, I make an error, or am found to be in the wrong for something.

The nurse came up to me just minutes before we were set to go and told me she had bad news and good news. I told her, after the morning I had had with these patients, she better hit be with the bad news first, because I can't take being happy and then being upset again. I'd just been called a fucker, and I was heightened. The nurse eased, and she said that the “error” had been stated to the doctor in such a way that the doctor told he was glad that the “error” had been made. She handed me this like a gift, and I was so moved. I touched her arm, and I was genuine, thank you for spinning it like that. Thank you for covering me, thank you for being so kind.

And one by one, before I left, I just couldn't believe the symmetry of it all, one by one, each of the patients who'd been just awful jerks to me, one by one they had one last interaction with me, and there was an easiness there that hadn't been, they let me apologize, they smiled, some of them, and they didn't swear at me anymore.

I drove home crying. Weeping, actually. The whole way home.

I said to them, to the all, I have been holding light in dark places for so long. That's what my life has been. This is all I have known. And I want to be release. Please release me. Please let me be among those who can love, who can give, who are unafraid. Please.

I wept and said that I want them to give me what comes next. Please please let me have what is next. Please release me form this service. I have done it so long. So long. So long. I don't want to do it anymore. I am tired and I am wanting ease. Light. Friends. I want this to end.

I told them, speak to me, show me, I don't wish to short circuit or limit my good by demanding an early manifestation, don't want to push the river, but release me. Let this cup from me, please. Please release me from this.

And I thought about my friend Jesus, remembered his Gethsemane, and how that turned out for him

I understood that I wouldn't have been called to do what I've done in my career if it hadn't been needed. And a life is a pattern, and the pattern is often obscured, made obscure, by fatigue, downheartedness, disappointment in people.

I told them to talk to me. I said,very forcefully, intimately, you know I will do as I am told. I always do as I am told. So talk to me. Tell me. Just tell me.

And then I thought about Jesus again.

I said to them, if there is no answer, you know I will continue. You know I will. I will not stop until you tell me to. You know this. Please talk to me. I will do as I am told. You know this.

I was exhausted by the time I got home. I laid down and went to sleep, set the alarm for five hours.

I woke up and looked at my watch. I was surprised to see how much time had passed. It was already 2:30.

I went to the bathroom and come back to bed, wanting to go back to sleep, but restless. Then the thoughts came. And then the heat. And then the need to write.

I was seeing numbers, lots of it, and it was part of a dictation.

What I was told is that, well, I need to refer to my notes. Hold on. I need coffee too.

“Woke up baking, ears ringing.

My 52^nd year is when most of these great puzzles, I can see, will have manifested outcome. 25, my big date is duality before changing. I see duality, creating the changes, catapulting or informing the changes. But 52, this is chance OF duality. This is changing duality. And my birthday, 2-23, this is from me to interpret myself differently, starting no, because I carry this message within me, but my 52^nd year, I see it is 2-2-3. 2-2 side by side represents duality recognizing itself, facing itself, and becoming balanced, level, square, true. It's a 4 – the harmonic of Gaia-based physicality, not duality-based physicality. Next to a 3, my catalytic self. Gaia catalyzed, duality catalyzed. Mastery. A seven. Always a seven.

On way home I wept, commanded, begged, cried, “DELIVER ME.” Tell me what to do and I'll do it. And if you need me in nursing, you know I'll do that too, I'll be obedient if I don't hear, if I am not guided. Deliver me from the desert. Deliver me from slavery. Deliver me.” I was SO complete with having been a light in utter darkness for so long. I realized my pain in nursing is from the pain of those around me, and my frustration, my core disappointment, is that the suffering ones continue to suffer.

Driving away that awful shift, a brand new thought. How about forgiving myself, letting me be “off,” not being able to see I'm helping anyone, people remaining hard and angry and mean.

I saw how I'd, through the night, not totally personalized the wobbliness. I saw my own resentful stance and the hardness it produced, but even in the moment, while seeing it, I couldn't flip it, couldn’t NOT express my frustration and anger and hurt. I had been BOVERWHELMINGLY DARK there last night.

I cried because there'd been no change in the dark.

This dream was the answer to my prayer, said driving and crying.

2-23-2014

7 7

14

5

The thing was, while I was jotting down the notes, I as convinced that my 52^nd year was in 2014. I didn't recognize that I am in my 52^nd year. I had been told, understood from the dream state, that my 52^nd year was the completion of my cycle. 2-23 is a 7, 25, it's a 7, and 52 is a 7, but they all feel so different. They are fractals of one another, informing my path.

I kept thinking,, being told, wait until your birthday. It begins on your birthday. It begins in 2014. So I made the conclusion, in my altered state, that I was turning 52 in 2014. Now that I am more linear, I know that's wrong... I'm 52 this year, not next.

So I need to reread those notes with this in mind, I guess. My 52^nd year ends in February.

And so, I was with these big thoughts, and this big gift I know I received, for some time.

I understood in this peace I'd been given, that an entire cycle was closing, that my 52^nd year was the one in which I had found mastery, or my definition of it, and things felt complete. So complete. So whole.

The anticipation I feel in me now is much different than before. Always a knowing, deep and something that is not appropriate to argue with, my knowing of myself, and what I would accomplish while physical. And now, I feel a knowing that makes that previous knowing seem fragile. I know what I know. I understand with a steadiness and a patience I have never encountered, that I don't have to worry. I remember reaching for my journal thinking, in very clear and definite terms, that I just need to hang on until February. Things change then. My work will be different after that. Everything settles in therm. I have a time table now, first time in my life.

Everyone has time tables, made up grids which they use to kid themselves they are moving forward. Just numbers, just squares on a calendar, usually. No significance, no identified pattern, just dates, just milestones, just obligations. This is different. This is me finally having a piece of the puzzle. I have been asking for the long view, to let the veil lift and relieve this damned amnesia. Let me see a little farther down the pike.

For the last several years, I have known far too much disappointment with my ability to manifest, so I had to, due to all the box canyons and seemingly wrong turns, suspend any shred of expectation. Through the desert years, I have become disappointed, and convinced things will never get better. That relief is a delusion, and this is all there is, working with horrible people, sometimes, feeling subjugated and mistrusted.

But the thing is, I had done most of this work when practicing at my last hospital. Lots of interpersonal scuffles and resultant aha's, and then, things just got so easy for me, shift to shift.

Ending Deeply Awake and writing Patrick broke something open in me.

I remember the last paragraph of my last essay, when I said that since writing this novel, the truth is that I am not entirely sure how I stayed sane as a nurse. I had always thought if I explored writing too far, I would lose my mind. How odd to realize that it was nursing, it was in expressing in an entirely different way, that held the greatest potential for madness. Denying that which was within, silencing this voice, doubting my self.

Whoo, burning up, heart doing weird things, feels like I could go away again, anytime. But I will push on.

I've been in a puddle of tears, on and off, since that ride home. Thinking on ISON made me weep, at one point this afternoon. I know this is big, ISON. I know this is big. I saw myself, then, in my mind's eye, on the little patch of grass outside our apartment building, and I was looking up into the sky, and I saw it, felt it, and I was flooded, then, with so much. I saw my body go to its knees, I saw me rocking and crying and so filled with divine love that the earth shook. Nothing could ever be the same, not after seeing it, now after this sort of proof, acknowledgment, gift. Nothing. So I layed on my side and cried about it.

Soon, I had a whim to know what the Gayatri was. I needed to hear, it, I decided, but I wanted to know what it meant. I went to Wikipedia, and I read the translations. I read about the yogis. I read about Vivekananda’s gift to humanity, that the Brahmin caste is not that which one is born into, but that which is earned. He taught the Gayatri, did ceremony and ritual with all caste members, using the Gayatri, giving it away. Then I got onto youtube and watched Deva Premal & Miten doing the Gayatri live, in concert, like I'd seen them with my friend Diane.

I know these words, know them, and sang them, and became them, while watching and weeping.

Afterward, I came back here, to my skin, to my week, to my life, but I am changed now, healed of something old and sad and beautiful and very hard to describe adequately.

I knew, going to sleep this morning, that the next time I worked, it would be on that unit, the one that chewed me up and spat me out last night. I wouldn't be going anywhere until that circuit was complete.

Within an hour, my rep called and told me that I have been booked, now, for Friday night. On the unit I worked last night.

I went, then, to my journal, and started to page through it, and was shocked at how much channeling I am doing there. I loved reading it. It gave context to things, and was good to review. I am meticulous about dating, and even timing, my journal entries. It's important to contextualize stuff, date stamp it, sort of.

I can't worry, and I am not going to. Not anymore.

And I like that I was able to, even though it was challenging, I did not personalize the nonsense all that much. I mean, I reacted to it, certainly, and sometimes quite poorly, but it feels so good to let myself off the hook for my reactions, for not doing it “perfectly,” which, I guess, I had come to interpret as me being able to lie down with the lion each and every time I encounter it. But sometimes the lion just wants to roar and slink around, looking menacing. Sometimes the lion doesn't want to lie down. And I'm finally ok with that. It's not my fault. I can only do my best.

I have placed myself in positions of supplication to others, and have been pleased with crumbs when a feast has been waiting for me. It is fine with me to have gone so long feeling hungry. I have not starved. I'm just hungry, that's all. And the feast day is around the corner.

The more I remembered my waking moments, that I journaled and included above, the more I thought about my friend. My best friend and I were born exactly one week apart, in the same city, 1,200 miles away from here. We both live out here, both Minnesota transplants. She is my sister, my teacher, and my other half, in many ways. We are twins, sort of.

Anyway, she has always said that birthdays are our true new year. That celebrating on one day, all of us, that's fine, but it's an echo of what we really should be doing, and that is honoring our birth days as the start of our personal new year.

I thought about her a lot today, once the numerology came up and I had understood so vividly that I have been traveling extensively, year to year, gaining momentum, experience, desire, and this culminates, comes to fruition in February. Plain as the nose on my face. Cleat as a bell.

I will celebrate the holidays differently this year, and will write about this next, in something I will be calling, “Christmas.” But it is the year to year gates we open, on our birth days that hold hidden codes, revelation, even, if we are open.

I am forever grateful, and I mean that quite literally, for you having read along with me, and want to thank you for being willing to listen to me. I have some to see this life as so beautiful, so potent, so big.

I know I did not get here by myself. I know that this is a group effort. This is a choice we have all made, and some of us can feel it, can live it, incorporating these odd and quite ancient ways of looking at things. But there is such a new feel to things.

I understood, while listening to Kryon this afternoon, drifting off for one last little nap, I understood, could see, what it is we are doing, now that 2012 has past. We gave permission for it, and now, here we are, and I saw us sort of burning off layers and layers of darkness, and glowing. I realized this is a descension, an acknowledgment of integration, a willingness to dwell within higher mind, higher self, soul, whatever the kids call it these days. I saw us all burning off what looked like clothing, but was our physical. And yet remaining physical. It was quite a sight.

I feel such gratitude now.

I'll end on this note. The Gayatri, I know, is special to me. In those moments of bliss, suspended as I was after hearing Deva Premal and Miten, I wanted to sent out this great love. I posted it to facebook, and when I reviewed my post, I realized that I had not explained anything about the song. The name of it isn't anywhere on the link.

I thought about that, and decided that's just fine. It's how things work. The first time I heard that mantra, I knew I was one with it. The words came to me easily, and the meaning deepens into an innate solidity I cannot describe or completely fathom. Sacred Hindu chants, the mantras, they transport me. From that first “Om,” I was home.

I sent this great prayer to my friends, and thought, hmm, some may like it, and they maybe won't know what it was even. And then, they may find themselves at a yoga event or kirtan or on Wikipedia, and they will be nudged just a little further, the name of the mantra will be given, maybe. And then, maybe time will pass, and they may never learn more about it, but some will find out what it means. And those are the ones who will know how very much I love them. I sent it out with a namaste and with love. And only some, and maybe no one, will know just what it was that I told them I know about them. How divine, how perfect, and how much love there is here, for all of us, all of us, all of us.

I will think now only fondly about my tormentors, as I do with all of them, eventually. I engage in the torment, and I forgave myself, finally. It feels good to have completed so many circuits today.

My cats are still on my bed, lined up, about a foot apart. Minky is now nuzzling my arm, purring fast , as she does, at times. Sunshine, my sweet Sunshine, the cat I would be if I could be a cat, good god, I love that little animal. And Rosie, alone but with us, my protector, my friend since college, taking different bodies, to always be with me. This entity was my horse, in a lifetime that I don't have full access to, but I do know that little Rosie was my Motorhead, and before that, my cat Sammy. My protector. My friend.

That I like to think this way is irrelevant at this point. It is no longer something I am ashamed of, and I think talking like this might help another. Maybe it helped you.

I send this out as I sent out the Gayatri. Some will understand. Some will be mildly interested. And some will turn from it, calling it names, and me, by extension. It matters not. This is who I am, and it is all well with my soul. I am well with my soul. God indwells me and is well pleased.

God indwells you and is well pleased, my friend, my love, my reader. I am just one angel out of seven billion. Just one. Do you know what this makes you? I do. And I love you for it, and I love myself for being able to see you as I do this evening.