Back in my twenties I bought a book about feng shui. It wasn’t any other book about feng shui. This author described it as if it was a spirit, something alive in the home. She called it Wild Grace. The book treated home like a sacred space. Home and the name Grace became recurring themes in my life.
All my life I had a roof over my head. I was lucky. My parents not only had one house but two. I was lucky to have a choice growing up as a teenager. I was fortunate to have rent paid for during my college years—may it be for a dorm or a room in apartment. When I moved back with my folks, I had a lot of spare time because I was unemployed most of the time. Spending time at a café/bookstore called Booklover’s Haven was my home downtown. I hated to see my artist friend and former owner of Booklover’s Haven leave, but there was a new owner and Book Lover’s was under new management and more books were put in.
This is where I found that book. Wild Grace kept filling my head. And I kept searching for home even if I never had the threat of being “homeless.” I just felt nomadic, I felt rootless, because I was searching for a sense of belonging, community, a sense of home.
Do you remember the story “The Ugly Duckling”? Well, I can relate with that story. I used to harbor secret fantasies about being adopted because I didn’t feel like I belong with my family. I didn’t understand them, and they didn’t understand me. I just roam around my home town of Vallejo, not certain. The closest thing to home were the books I bought and perusing the library and the bookstore. I didn’t even like drinking coffee. But I would find something to buy in the café to have a legit reason for being there.
I remember being told by an astrologer that I have a split: Mars in Aries and Venus in Pisces. The most masculine planet in the most masculine sign and the most feminine planet in the most feminine sign. I remember approaching the City Hall steps on my way to the JFK Public Library. A mestizo man wore a Blackfeet baseball cap. I asked if that was a group, a gang, a band, or a clan. He smiled, and said it was his tribe. He was part Filipino and part Native American. I must’ve had a long face, looking like I was lost so he asked what was wrong. I told him about being confused and it might be because I have a “split.” He said, “Grace, do you ever meditate? No?! You should. A woman don’t leave her purse at home. You shouldn’t leave without meditating. You got a god and a goddess fighting inside of you.” I would see this guy and he would refer to me as “Grace.” I tried to correct him, but then I just stopped trying. I just let him say it like it was a nickname for me although he truly thought it was my real name.
Flash forward, years later, after my first lived-in girlfriend committed suicide on my birthday, after many transitions of neighbors, church friends, parents of best friends, and even a council member, I had to give my time to grief. I was spending more time exploring spiritual nature of things. But I wasn’t doing it in the typical religious route like the Christian or Catholic or Protestant ways. I was learning about metaphysical things. I got invited for angel sessions. A facilitator guided our women’s group through a visualization meditation exercise. Her melodic voice put me in a trance. I wasn’t following the imagery she gave us. I saw myself in a dark jungle, it was night, people were sitting on their haunches in rows on either side of me while I walked. I felt I was being initiated in something important. I was walking forward, passing these people who looked Polynesian or Pacific Islander. Later I was standing in a river facing a naked beautiful tropical woman I call Wild Grace. She stood before me in the same river. The full moon was directly above her. The moon beams hitting the water below. She held out her cupped hands as if to offer me a gift. Inside was a blue ball. It was a giant round gem. I knew the meaning right away back then. But now I cannot recall its meaning.
I had other occurrences with Wild Grace. One time I was having a guided visualization meditation with my spiritual teacher. He said to look at a sculpture. There she was—Wild Grace on a pedestal standing full length sculpture as naked as I first saw her. The material was either limestone or sandstone. Another time my life coach took me through a visualization meditation. He told me to cross a bridge. Of all bridges I imagined the one the scared me the most—it was a wooden plank bridge held by ropes and swinging above the canopy of a jungle. I arrived in this giant house. I went inside and it was filled with deep rich woods of Philippine mahogany. I sat in her living room. Wild Grace sat comfortably looking serene and quite noble. She offered me cookies. She wore a guazey looking flowing dress that flowed beyond her sandaled feet. We said nothing. But that silence said more than anything.
I haven’t had any more visits from Wild Grace in my meditations. But it has stuck. The symbols. I have a muse. I have a spirit guide. I have an archetype to dwell on. When I have a rush of inspiration I think Wild Grace wants to speak through me. Well, not literally, but in my imagination. It helps.
I used to be so Western and American in my thinking. I tried to navigate my world with linear, deductionistic thinking. I thought things can be rationalized away. But there are bigger mysteries. I learned that a person can know without having evidence based on quantifiable proof, without having other witnesses to claim the same.
I had one foot in this dimension and another foot in another dimension. I had an outpouring of images and symbols bombarding my reality and my experience and I could not differentiate if I were awake or asleep. The psychiatric world will call it psychosis. How can it just be that? I got out of it integrated and awakened and so much richer. I became empathetic and so much stronger emotionally, psychologically, mentally, spiritually, and physically. How can something that the conventional psychiatry wants so badly to suppress and stop be something integrating?
Those who know numerology will see that my lifepath number is 22, the master builder. I understood why it wasn’t enough to have the “American Dream.” I wanted to improve not only my life but the lives of others. I didn’t want the fancy big house or the expensive car or the typical family. I want “home,” “community,” a “sense of belonging,” a “sense of safety and security,” “freedom,” “truth,” “justice.” I didn’t think I was the only one. I saw a pandemic. A malaise. I saw people as the walking wounded without passion. To see it in the eyes and faces of young people was the hardest. The cynicism or the jadedness or the apathy or the self-entitlement and shallowness. It all stem from the same thing. I wanted to scream at everyone “WAKE UP!!” But I had to show empathy and compassion and wait. I had to use a different tactic and approach.
I begin to understand that while self-help talked about visualizing your dreams. I was about feeling, thinking and believing. The hardest thing for me to master are my feelings, thoughts, and beliefs. I can easily be despondent or look at my life or life in general disparagingly because I know what I am up against. They are huge systems. I can be disappointed at humanity and even my loved ones who may betray me or even hurt me unintentionally. I understand that agencies cannot be surrogates for community or family. I know that communities and families can be dysfunctional and dire need of healing.
I can only act as some form of Johnny Appleseed except I am some kind of character planting faith seeds the size of mustard seeds. I am planting new ideas. I am planting new visions. Our world is hurting because we have an ideology of separation and disconnection. We think that cynicism and being realistic will keep us from being or getting hurt or that cynicism or being realistic is cool. Well, dying inside is not cool. Being not human is not cool. It takes a more courageous person to be authentic. Anyone can slay a dragon, but facing our daily demons by acknowledging that we have them in the first place takes a true hero.
Wild Grace's Bridge 