How Did I Miss All This Before?: Waking up to the Magic of Our Ordinary Lives

By Alexandra Kennedy

We tend to believe that waking up to our natural state of joyfulness comes with huge claps of thunder or miraculous events. Yet How Did I Miss All This Before? shows that lifes magic happens in the most ordinary of moments, if only we are willing to see with fresh eyes. The process of awakening asks us to be fully present to life as it is right now.

A psychotherapist for more than thirty years, author Alexandra Kennedy has written an intimate account of courageous transformation in the midst of lifes common challengestruly a womans path of awakening to the Divine. Alexandras three-decade quest begins with an unusual transcendent experience, unfolds through epiphanies at three sacred Earth sites, and culminates in the discovery that her yearning for union was always available to be fulfilled right here, in the most ordinary aspects of daily life.

Through the medium of a compelling, multilayered story that is both personal and accessible, How Did I Miss All This Before? offers a unique combination of rich prose, deep professional and personal experience, suggestions and questions for readers to explore, and a wealth of references from pioneers of both spirit and psychology. This book is for everyone wishing to find greater openness to life in each precious moment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 30, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450207997

Alexandra Kennedy

Alexandra Kennedy, M.A. (LMFCC), whose father died of cancer in 1998, is a psychotherapist, lecturer, and workshop leader. She maintains a private practice in Santa Cruz, California.

Book preview

How Did I Miss All This Before?

Waking Up to the Magic of Our Ordinary Lives

Copyright © 2010 by Alexandra Kennedy

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means,

graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any

information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher

except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views

of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Cover photo: Photo courtesy PDPhoto.org

Cover Design: Jon Kennedy

Author Photo: Paul Schraub

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ISBN: 978-1-4502-0798-0 (sc)

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2010922935

iUniverse rev. date: 3/23/2010

CONTENTS

Introduction

Part I

1

2

3

4

5

Part II

6

7

8

9

10

Part III

11

12

13

14

Part IV

15

16

17

18

Suggestions

Reflections

Waking Up In Paradise Retreat

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

For Jon

With boundless love

And deep gratitude

Also by Alexandra Kennedy

Losing a Parent

The Infinite Thread: Healing

Relationships Beyond Loss

Offerings at the Edge

How Did I Miss

All This Before?

Introduction

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We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring

will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

T.S. Eliot

I swim through aquamarine water, sunlight shimmering on the surface while below, clear empty space opens out like a vast blue heart. I’ve arrived on the Big Island of Hawaii just a few hours before and now it is late afternoon. My husband Jon and I are the only people swimming in this small bay nestled under cliffs near a black sand beach. Breathing rhythmically through my snorkel, I surrender to the fluidity of this water as it slips through my hands. With each stroke, this water flows over me as part of its cycle through the Earth—rising as mist, falling as rain, then finding its way home in this vast expanse of ocean. There is no gravity here, no walls to come against, nothing solid to hold on to. Here, there is a void stretching in all directions. How small and insignificant I am in this vastness. Out of this transparent emptiness a black manta ray magically appears, spotted wings undulating like an angel of the depths. We swim slowly together.

I hear my husband’s voice calling, The dolphins are here! And suddenly they are all around me, a welcoming committee of sleek silver bodies. I am laughing and crying all at once, my whole being dancing. One dolphin’s face appears, our eyes lock. The same essence that lives in me is meeting itself in this being of another species—the same deep silence, the same radiant presence, and the same mystery. Such an intimate look, as I drop into simple, full being. Heaven is right here in this moment as I gaze into the eyes of this dolphin; we feel linked in an ecstasy of belonging, bonded in sweet silence and unimaginable love.

Back home, I greet this same deep silence in a bright crimson maple leaf lying in our driveway. This and each moment is filled with the exquisite joy of connection, a deep yet simple truth: the seemingly mundane is as sacred and precious as any awakening accompanied by huge claps of thunder.

How did I miss all this before?

I was catapulted into a life-altering spiritual journey in 1977 at the age of twenty-eight by an other-worldly experience that came out of nowhere. At that time I had no spiritual practice, nor any interest in one; I had no way to understand what happened to me that spring morning. My first glimpse of Truth struck like an annunciation, dissolving the world as I had known it and reawakening in me a remembrance of my true home.

In the first years following that explosive opening, which I know now to have been a spontaneous activation of powerful kundalini energies in my body, I felt drawn away from the world into deeper and deeper states of meditation, totally consumed by a longing for union with the Divine. I spent hours in daily meditation, at first without the guidance or direction of teachers or spiritual practice. It was hard to imagine then that I would be content with anything else, certainly not anything of this world. The dramatic nature of that epiphany gave me the impression that my journey would be short and direct; I was mistaken.

As my quest unfolded over the next thirty years, it was full of surprises that did not fit my concepts of a spiritual path. I wanted to disappear into the vastness and transcend my ordinary life. (Actually, I was afraid of living fully.) Influenced by books and teachers, I bought into models of spirituality that pointed heavenward and emphasized transcendence—this is what I thought I wanted, this is what I thought would bring me home.

My life took another route to waking up. The path of the Divine Feminine is circular, inclusive, sensual, and earthy. She operates through our bodies, relationships, intuition, and hearts. As I was consumed with an intense meditation practice that took up hours of my day, the Divine Feminine was quietly but persistently drawing me down to the earth, down into my body, down into the often-messy challenges of ordinary daily life. She called out to me through the powerful flow of energy in my body, through vivid dreams, through emotional discussions with my husband, through encounters with the Black Madonnas of Europe, through the pain of childbirth and challenges of mothering, through larks singing their hearts out in Assisi and rocks glowing red in Sedona. She brought me face to face with the pain I was causing in my marriage and urged me to bring compassion, intimacy, and healing into that relationship. It was my humanness, with all my imperfections and wounds—not perfection itself—that the Sacred Feminine wanted me to embrace. Finally, beckoning me to embody spiritual insights and discoveries, She awakened in me a sheer, intoxicating joy of being alive.

Ironically, the elusive treasure I was seeking was to be found in the last places I thought to look, in places the Divine had been pointing to all along: in the ordinary moments of my life, hidden behind my eyes, hidden in this tree, in this stone. I am convinced that the Earth has much to teach us during these turbulent times: how to be present, how to rest in silence, how to trust the flow of life. I believe she is showing us in every moment who we are—the truth of our being. As such, certain powerfully energetic sites can trigger this remembering. I felt called to visit sacred sites where Earth’s teachings were more obvious than my immediate environment. At critical points in this transformational journey I was drawn to three of several places I felt were most powerfully saturated with life’s energy: Assisi, Sedona, and the Big Island of Hawaii. These are places where the deep silence of stones, craters, mountains, and trees works a magic that makes it possible to dissolve spiritual concepts and open our eyes to the simple truth of our being.

How Did I Miss All This Before? is structured around these three journeys. In Part I, I learned what Saint Francis discovered in this green countryside: that heaven is right here on Earth. Assisi started the process of healing all those parts of my life I had neglected, such as my marriage and my daily connection to the natural world. In Part II, walking the labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral in France offered me a visceral understanding of the circular, inclusive nature of the spiritual journey. The path might change direction many times, even seem to lead away from the center, but it will embrace more and more life experiences until every point of the circle is touched. Nothing can be excluded—not fears, doubts, unresolved family issues, or the most ordinary moments in daily life. In Part III, the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona, reflected a palpable presence of stillness. Any sense of inside and outside dissolved—the same essence within me was the same essence everywhere I looked. Then, in Part IV, the Big Island of Hawaii, land of molten lava and joy-filled dolphins, called out to be visited not just once but four times in a single year. This potent land challenged me to say Yes to what is. On the Big Island it felt as if the soft trade winds blew right through me and the sweet plumeria bloomed in my heart; I resonated with what Zen master Dogon called the intimacy with 10,000 things. An appendix offers thought-provoking questions and practical suggestions related to the material of each chapter to help you experience the same unfolding of insight into who we are. These exercises may be unsettling at times as they ask you to stretch both heart and mind to find more room for self-love.

Although my spiritual journey took me to these sacred sites, yours does not have to. The same life, the same silence, the same Presence exists everywhere, even in a blade of grass shooting up out of a crack in the sidewalk. Even a leaf can teach us the same lesson: to learn to trust the flow of life through us, just as it is right now in this moment. We are this silence, this deep stillness.

In recent years I have brought small groups of women to these sacred places to nurture the unfolding of inner truth in a loving community. We come together in silence, laughter, and openness, serving one another with tenderness while treasuring each woman’s uniqueness and special gifts. With each experience I marvel how the Earth is teaching them, as it taught me, how to deepen into silence and to open fully to life as it is. As the layers of old hurts, conditioning, tension, and fatigue peel away, radiance shines from each woman. To amplify this theme, the last chapter invites you to join twelve women on a week long silent retreat on the Big Island as they dive deeply into themselves, swim with wild dolphins, and explore what it feels like to live in silent presence—with the joy, creativity and freedom that arise out of it.

Through our dreams, our bodies, and our feelings, the messages are right there. Everything we need in order to live a fully awake and joyful life is right within us. Although this book is the story of a woman’s path—daughter, wife, and mother—it is not limited to what occurs in a female body. The deepest question, Who am I?, is for everyone. When we know who we are, our true essence, we know that we are at one with all life on Planet Earth. That connection is what gives meaning, joy, power, and richness to everyday life.

It is my hope that both my personal narrative and the process of guided inquiry will inspire you on your own spiritual journey and help illuminate the sacredness in the ordinary. Perhaps then you will discover that the spiritual journey is about aliveness, rather than reaching a specific goal. Vietnamese Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh tells us, The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on land. The miracle is to live our lives awake to the preciousness of each moment on this Earth, to say yes to—stop resisting—what is: to see with fresh eyes, to cultivate silence and an open, loving heart. We need to honor our own unique manifestation and expression of life; our journey won’t be like anyone else’s. When we live this way, we enter into a vital co-creative relationship with Earth, one in which we are no longer separate, one in which the Mystery keeps opening to itself. Ultimately there is not even a path: no goal, nothing to attain. Just to be fully alive.

A new world awaits. From this deep sense of homecoming within ourselves, we begin to embrace the adventure of feeling at home in the world. We find that we carry that feeling of wholeness with us everywhere we go. If we can hold ourselves with compassion, we can hold others with compassion. If we can let ourselves be as we are, we can allow others to be as they are. We can then begin to embrace life as it is in this moment and trust the flow of life as it unfolds. What a gift to ourselves, to our friends and family! What a gift to the world!

Part I

Heaven Can Be Found

Right Here on Earth

1

Remembering Our True Home

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Each of us carries within us a well of grief… But the greatest, deepest grief of all is the ache and the longing that we often cannot define—the longing for God, the Divine, Source, Truth. That morning I felt the flood of that grief as I recognized I had always unconsciously carried that homesickness in my heart—but only now did I know what I had been longing for.

April 4, 1977: it started as an ordinary day. I slipped out from under moss green blankets, my husband curled in a long crescent between two mounds of fur, one black and one white. The white mound stirred, and a green eye opened and then slowly shut again. The sun was already flooding into our bedroom, washing over the blankets and spilling onto the beige carpet. I yawned as my eyes traveled to the large-paned window above our bed. Another world stirred on the other side of that glass, already fully awake. Leaves quivered, birds chattered and beyond them a breathtaking expanse of blue. Turning, I stepped into the bathroom to perform my morning rituals, as I had performed them every morning for the past five years in this gray house on a small street in Santa Cruz, California, leading down to the Pacific Ocean.

My husband Jon and I had bought this house soon after our marriage six years earlier and moved in with our fifteen-pound cat, a chocolate brown sofa-bed that was a wedding gift from my parents, my grandmother's drop leaf oval dining table, an oak bureau, and boxes and boxes of books. Quickly we transformed the driveway that ran along the side of the house into our version of a Japanese garden: a lawn spreading over low mounds, a small pond, and two imposing granite rocks, a third of them buried in the loamy soil. The garage was converted a few months later into two offices that we used to see clients for therapy.

This sturdy little house with its spacious living room, sunny bedroom, long yellow kitchen and microscopic bathroom was soon to be an alchemical vessel, nurturing an unexpected transformation. I got out of bed that April morning and went about my routine, little suspecting that in just a few hours my life would be radically changed.

After a simple breakfast of coffee and English muffins on my grandmother's table, Jon left for a meeting two hours north in the San Francisco Bay Area. He would be gone until later in the afternoon, at least six hours. We were inseparable in those days, playing, working, and studying together. We had gone to the same university, studied the Japanese martial art Aikido together, worked at the same counseling clinic, attended graduate school together, and opened our private practices at the same time. While I cherished our time together, I also welcomed the opportunity to be alone. What stood out was that I had the day alone with no appointments. I felt intoxicated with the idea of just letting the day unfold on its own. However, anticipation led quickly to restlessness as I wandered from room to room, looking for something that would catch my interest. I stopped in front of the living room window, momentarily taking in a splash of green lawn, a burst of bright red bottlebrush, the flash of blue green hummingbirds. I considered working in the garden but before the idea could gel in my mind, the words of my mentor came to mind: Start meditating.

I had consulted Jack Schwarz, a nationally known psychic and healer, four months previously. I had been feeling restless then, too, wanting change in my life but not knowing how to start. My husband and I had played with the idea of selling our home and belongings and living aboard a sailboat, a drastic move for me, a woman who preferred solid land under her feet. Jack laughed with an impish grin. Start meditating, he said.

Several times in college I had made a short-lived commitment to start a meditation practice. I would light a candle and settle cross-legged on a pillow on the wooden floor. As instructed, I would focus my full attention on a candle flame. Or I would close my eyes and stare into darkness, searching for the subtle thread of my breath. Each time within just a few minutes of beginning my meditation, a deep and perturbing sadness welled up in me, shoving against my chest and spilling out my eyes. There was a yearning in this sadness that was strangely familiar, and yet the source of it was an utter mystery. I had felt this before at different, unexpected times, and the power of it made me uneasy and eager to suppress it. The times in college the feeling was so intense and startling that I quickly abandoned the meditations. I had been told that meditation fostered a sense of equanimity and peace; it certainly did not have this effect on me. And so I stopped experimenting.

But now years had passed since those early experiences. Jon and I had completed two years of a four-year training program at the Institute of Bioenergetic Analysis in Berkeley, California that included intensive monthly workshops, supervision, as well as one hundred hours of Bioenergetic Therapy. Its founder Alexander Lowen defines bioenergetics as a therapeutic technique to help a person get back together with his body and to help him enjoy to the fullest degree possible the life of the body. (Lowen 1975, 43)

As part of this training program, I had worked hard to loosen and release pockets of held feelings throughout my body. In the sessions with my therapist, I learned to ground myself, feeling the connection with the earth through my legs and feet. That grounding allowed me to experience more emotion and charges of energy without feeling overwhelmed. I learned to breathe deep into my chest and belly, surrendering to the currents of energy and the waves of deep emotion that surfaced. My hands had previously been cold most of the time, due to a blockage in my shoulders; after bioenergetics the energy could more easily flow into my hands and warm them.

There were sessions in which I sobbed, sometimes with an accompanying memory of a past event and sometimes without a clue as to the source. There were sessions in which my body shook and trembled as waves of energy pushed through chronic contractions and holdings. I learned to live in my body, to listen to it, and to trust its wisdom. As more and more old holdings were cleared away, the energy flow through my body grew stronger and subtler. I felt more alive and expressive. Now, I felt ready to try meditation again, feeling fairly certain that I would not be broadsided by that deep sadness and sense of yearning I had experienced in my first attempts.

Remembering My True Home

On that April morning, I turned off the phone and set my watch on a chair next to a small pillow on the ground. Silver hands stretched in opposition: 10:20. Deciding that I would meditate for just twenty minutes, I sank down to the pillow, crossing my legs and carefully placing my hands upturned on my thighs. Feeling confident that I had prepared myself for a good meditation, I closed my eyes.

Immediately a tide of power rose up from within my body, lifting my arms skyward. My head fell back as energy poured through my outstretched hands. I was overwhelmed and frightened but I did not resist these spontaneous movements. I had grown accustomed to the flow of energy in my body through both bioenergetics and Aikido, and I knew that there was far more danger resisting energy than in surrendering to it. However, I had never felt any force like this. My arms vibrated with energy over my head, without tiring. Then, in a slow sweep, my body curled into a fetal position.

I lay there, stunned. Everything was still, my body a substance wrought of silence. I opened my eyes, looking tenuously at familiar things around me: white walls, rust shag carpet, cane chair. Directing my fingers to move, I groped for my watch, curious about the time that had elapsed because it felt like hours. The firm metal in my hand was comforting and I was relieved that my world was once again solid. The hands on the dial stood motionless, holding a single moment in time on the black shiny face: 10:21!

My heart skipped a beat as I realized that the watch had stopped one minute after I had started meditating. My mind felt so scrambled, I didn't even want to think of the implications—that the energy moving through my body had somehow affected the mechanics of the watch, that the past few hours had never happened, that somehow I had traveled outside time. I had wound the watch earlier that morning and it had never stopped working like that. I reacted instinctively by pulling myself to a standing position, in a desperate attempt to ground myself on shaky legs. As soon as I changed my position, my body began to shake again. This time the waves of energy were even stronger. My hands again stretched upward, over my head, reaching toward heaven. Home.

All I wanted now was to return home. I remembered! I cried then as I had never cried before, my body wracked with sobs, my heart melting and bursting with an all encompassing joy and love. The grief poured out of me in torrents. I knew now what I had lost, and I wept out of gratefulness that I had finally remembered. I understood the source of the sadness, the yawning absence, the yearning that I had felt since I could remember. I had been imprisoned all my life; I had forgotten my true home—that source of all love, that vast spaciousness of our true nature. I had lived for this moment of remembering. In that instant of remembrance, I soared free.

Each of us carries within a well of grief. Feelings of being unloved, misunderstood. The loss of