Rose Longworth Counseling

About that Pilgrimage east ,

Visiting the Golden Temple of Amritsar in the early hours, and bowing and prostrating myself brought me to tears as I reached the top of the Temple, laying down the head and leaning into the heart. Listening to the beautiful broadcast prayers in song in a different language dragged me through my barriers into a different layer in myself. Taking off the shoes and eating in the communal hall fed my body and soul. Bathing in the waters, in the special area for women, was a baptism to consciously declare my intentions for the rest of my life. I felt the grace of being forgiven for my past, divergent, selfish self.

When we travelled on to Varanasi, into the Festival of Lights, I felt I had come to the healing river. We found our space in the open restaurant at the top of our building at 4.00 am and sang our prayers, and bent our bodies into prayer poses that moved us toward  being a better conduit of God’s spirit. Our place overlooked a large expanse of the Ganges. The dawn brought an understanding of all that is possible for me.

Running down to participate in the ritual bathing here was a precursor to time spent in silence on the steps down to the water, listening to others in prayer, their attention to little shrines in the walls. Less and less of Rose, more and more of God was my mantra.

I felt that visiting both these places were a call for me to move out of the crossroads into the next awareness of myself, the next steps on the gold and silver road to God. I know it will not be easy but the beginning of any journey starts with the first steps. I am so lucky they started with climbing up a stairs and in falling into holy waters.

I am very grateful for our host, Siri Amrita (pictured above) and her teaching of Kundalini Yoga, as we went on our traveling way, focusing on “This Little Light of Mine.” I am also very grateful for the care taken by BJ and Lauren of Insight Tours, who shepherded us and cared for us in every way possible. (Lauren with the pink scarf and BJ with the smile.)

Photo taken by my daughter Annabeth McNamara, styled by Rethreads Charlottesville.

I hear the whisper to get up and sing at church, and I think “not that song again. It is too high and too low.” Nevertheless I sing my own version “Healing River send down your water to wash me into the Promised Land. My land is parching, my land is thirsting, no seed is growing in my shadow lands. Oh healing river, send your waters down.”
Put a oneness into my backbone. A brightness, a flow of jade circulating both ways around my heart, giving strength, beauty and roundedness, protection. Touch my seeds of healing awaiting awakening, for me, for others, enlivened by the water, into the water of life. The heart laced, sprung in gold springs, ballooning, sending out love, those seeds.
Are you your own beloved, with that water of life that got beneath the feet of Jesus, and kept him up? The water that got him onto the cross, that got him resurrection, that had him say, “My God, My God, you have not forsaken me,” as he let go on the cross.
And me: – Seeds that brings me the dreams of being pinched as a child by a housemaid, that brings me the shaking of the brass bed that brought childish delight. The round brass nobs, shining on the outer rods, shaking, until they fell, onto the wooden floor. That brings me the dream of the laughing little black horse that shook the bed with me that shakes it up now again. That pops up a pinched neck pain in the here and now, asking for the healing water. Help me loosen out the bent and pinched neck in me, ready to let the flow of the will of God flow through that neck, 5th chakra, place. That replaces the will of Rose with the will of God, and seeking into knowing what that is for me now. A little more writing, a lot more love, a little more dreamy stuff.
Sending our a prayer for peace for me and for your. The inversion that gets the flow of loves flowing outward as well as inward.

My companion and I are laid out on the dark warm rocks like a pair of snakes soaking up the sunshine. A blue scarf, on the arm of a tree branch, blocks glare and heat and the shade from tree trunks keep safe our white haired heads. Playing some notes, drawing some dreams, banter. Coming toward the water fall, a canoe with a man and woman in the raft. She has her hand around the head of a baby. She lifts up slightly to see what is ahead and is going over the waterfall fast. The boat stalls out on the waterfall, and as it goes over it flips upside down.

A tall young man is pulling a child out of the water by the arm, coming up wet and flailing. The mother with the baby looses her footing. As she struggles back up against the flowing water, her baby gives a brief protest. Our arms reach out for the four year old who is now shivering all over. We fret over stripping him down as the father makes phone calls. The mother is now standing in the water with her baby asking for help but she is not the priority. She climbs out on the far side giving us permission to strip her child. I wrap him in my cashmere blue sweater and my scarf and chat to him about the water and his name. I call him little boy blue as the sun warms him and I keep rubbing his back in the sunshine. In that moment something descended on me, a love for the little one, a longing to have a grandchild of my very own. His name was Felix, the Latin for happiness. An ambulance came with warm blankets for him, leaving me alone on the bank, holding empty blue clothes and my own little visions of a flipping over canoe, and the family members crawling out on opposite banks.

I am in a canoe on the River of Life again. The unexpected happens and I am shocked to be immersed in the relationship water again, feeling tied and bound.

Turn out the old into the cold water and let it flow away. Soak up that swiftness, that light, that shining through, and the warmth to be had.

Save what is on both sides of the banks. Reaching out with united arms for the new, rescued out of the coldness, the drowning, and the bringing into blueness, warmth and love.

Stones falling off the outer casing of the heart – stones of teeth encased in the heart from holding on, being loosed. Stones falling out that paralyses the arms of love.

Stones falling out that stiffen the bones and block the blood.

Standing at the Alter, Banging on the Bowls, lighting the candles, incense burning the fingertips. Lord Lord Lord. Coming in daily for a purer heart – for the heart of God. To break up the heart of stone. Hacking away with the two-edged sword. Until a drip of blood comes out on it knowing that you have reached that blood heart, the heart of Christ held in. That one drip, that which can move mountains.

I have a dream of being disappointed, and having two ways to deal with the disappointments. One is to take it up with the management and the other is to put my heavy rucksack on my back and leave. Feelings of disappointments can show up as physical pain and may be stored in the body, rucksack work.  Disappointment is stored in the lower chakras and can trigger all sorts of old disappointments, unrealistic, rusty and left there. Taking it up with the management may be an option to arrange for the clean up crew.  Seeking a place of Baptism, where the light of Christ shines and where there is a washing away. Silence. Stepping into the water, avoiding the monster emotions, setting down the heavy rucksack, putting one foot on land and the other in the sea of it. Leaving the rational, the physical, for something as elusive as the Northern Lights, that something shimmering, full of movement, light. Not being afraid to face the disappointments, putting your hand into the the heart of the muck in your sewers to find jewels there, big and bright.