Dear friends,
I write to you all with so much love and gratitude during this holiday season. I hope that you and your families are well with ample time to share festivities, food and accompanying merriment. I take this opportunity to write about my latest and maybe most profound shift of locale and consciousness. I find myself days into a new living situation, in a new city, and in a new country. Most of you already know this or know me well enough to not be surprised by this advent. Likewise, most of you also have been on this journey with me and know my pilgrimage began almost six years ago in Barcelona, Spain. Today, I find myself almost de-jet lagged staying with friends in the city of Jerusalem, Israel.
I write not only to say hello but because I have decided to begin a blog, something I have been very reticent to do. My general sense of blogging is at best one of shameless self promotion and at worst rabid narcissism. All in all, not a road I wanted to go down. I begin this process then not because I think my navel is particularly interesting, but for reasons which I will relay have made it almost impossible not to. I start then with the intention to share my experiences and in so doing I hope to say something larger than expressing my own myopic process.
The decision to write a blog coincides with my growing understanding that something significant is about to occur in the outer manifestations of my life. I have been on a arduous internal journey since that time in Barcelona. As most of you have witnessed, this process has seen me leave behind outgrown relationships, resign from a long held professional position, relocate to Santa Fe, sell all of my belongings and spend months at a time in Thailand, India and a Tibetan retreat center in Colorado. So many of you have been with me during the dark nights of the soul, where I learned to trust friendship and to live in the creative messy stew of the unknown. I sense (finally!) with my arrival in Jerusalem that the time has arrived for me to do that which I have been preparing for.
I more than suppose that the natural question one might ask is (and it is more than likely you have already asked me)… what exactly are you preparing for? To that question I answer most simply that I have learned to run a numerous types of psychic energies through my physical and spiritual body. Many of you are aware of the terms prana or chi (as in Tai Chi) and might also be aware of a type of alternative healing energy called Reiki. I offer similar energies to whomever might benefit, affecting spiritual self in what might be described as an awakening process. And to that you might rationally respond, is that for real!? In all honesty, who knows!? To that I can only offer that it certainly feels real, as real as my typing fingers are to me. I want to write, to share this process while I am in Jerusalem and beyond. I look forward to a forum in which to share the coming events as they unfold, (or don't unfold…in the case that I actually am having a extended peri-menopausal meltdown!)
The inner knowing that my outer life is shifting has made it clear that I am about to change my name. It is not that I do not identify with my Christened name, "Cynthia" which ironically means Goddess of the Moon in Greek, (which I admit I think is pretty cool). But, it is that in my concept of self I no longer feel like the person I once recognized as "Cynthia". I believe that our words matter, that what one calls something, someone or oneself is profoundly important. It is not insignificant that in the Gospel of John it is written, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." and the ancient Hindu Vedas read "In the beginning was Brahman with whom was the Word, and the Word is Brahman". In an attempt to grasp the nature of all this I have joined many fellow searchers interested in melding the realms of traditional psychotherapy, spiritual growth in East/West and indigenous religious traditions with the alternative metaphysical concepts. I find the somewhat Wu-Wu concept of the activation of our dormant (what main stream science unknowingly calls our "junk") DNA to be a very promising course of inquiry. Taking a step back from these mental constructs and a breath of air, (good idea) I have ultimately found an undramatic bottom line truth and have come to rest there. It is simply that people change…. that we, and specifically that I am capable of profound, life altering change. In my life that is very good news.
So, after all that…. What I am changing my name to? While in meditation I often heard the name Ammahnda, (pronounced Ah-mahn-da). The name has no root lineage that I am aware of. I simply kept hearing it and it feels like me. I am here in Jerusalem hosted for the holidays by my dear friends Batya and Goyo. They both coincidentally (?) have also changed their names, and thus are eager and thoughtful participants in giving me an initiatory time as Ammahnda. It is comforting to witness how naturally at ease I am when addressed as Ammahnda. It is this internal response, validating this time as the major turning point I have long anticipated.
For my dear friends who like to know where I will be sleeping and what I will be eating, (I so love you friends who are pragmatists!) while I am here in Jerusalem, I am working and living at a guest house affiliated with a church with in the walls of the Old City. I begin work on January 1st 2012, doing exactly what, I still do not know!
The blog is called not very creatively, (but none the less succinctly) "Ammahnda's Blog" and can be found at ammahnda.blogspot.com. I have yet to post as this letter to all was necessary before I began.
I thank you for your love and friendship. Happy, happy holidays.
Warmly, Ammahnda
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