Jennifer Posada

Ecstasy and Desperation

The travel journal begins…

Saturday, April 18th, 2008 ~ Luxor, Egypt

Travel, for me, is like life concentrated. It is like a strong espresso or a stiff liquor. It hits hard, and you pay for it later sometimes, but it also takes you to incredible heights. It is like injecting something straight into the vein, and though I am glad I am not as addicted as I could be, I am afraid I started young and will probably never really get it out of my system. I make up for this by hiding out and going almost nowhere when I am at home. And then I take a big leap and find myself in Africa. In a different kind of home, both familiar and foreign, every time. But travel itself, as uncomfortable as it usually is, becomes a sort of companion whose endless change and total mutability is a strange reprieve from a life of what is often false security anyway. Travel pushes me…sometimes onto my knees…but deep and hard into myself, and out of myself. And I am glad to say it is the only, thank the universe, semi-abusive relationship that I have never been able to let go of.

It is hard, and soft. It is labor, it is birth. It is a miracle, and a suffering. It is something brilliant, and it makes me fearless. There is suddenly no “great world” out there, but I am in that great world…it is all around me…I am it. The world becomes small and reaches out a hand to touch me, and I am everywhere.

All the while my body is stretched beyond its capacity, and somehow it always makes the stretch. After the first ten-hour flight to Paris I actually felt quite good. I was so proud of myself. This is going to be a smooth trip, I thought. After five hours in the Paris airport, having been up all night I was still feeling good. Though the walls were beginning to move and delerium was setting in, I ate a designer sandwich and felt alright. The five hour flight to Cairo is when it started to hit me. By then we had traveled all day and night, and the four-hour wait at the Cairo airport was a limbo-land someplace outside of my physical form. My stomach ached from the airline food I always have to resort to when my healthy food bars don’t cut it. I willed my legs to keep moving (and even to run when we found out our luggage wasn’t going to come with us to Luxor…but to no avail).

So by the time we made the one-hour flight to Luxor, arriving at midnight, and tried to file a report to get our luggage, we were exhausted. Two days later we still don’t have our luggage, but you know there is something very simple about wearing the same clothes every day and using lotion to condition your hair. And travel does make you grateful for the simple things…the kindness of strangers when you find it, someone who speaks your language enough to understand what the hell you are talking about, a decent meal…and then there is the arrival…

The moment when you realize you have made it to the place you made all that effort to reach…the moment you see the nile again stretching out before you, and the palms waving at you accross it. The moment you feel the presence of the beings you hold so dear reaching into you from deep in the earth…welcoming you. The moment you see the temples rising straight up out of the ancient past and filling your broken body with absolute and total bliss. And it suddenly doesn’t matter if you are starving or aching…you will something beyond your body to set you free and you move on pure prana…and as long as you can still stand upright you are alright for a while.

I wonder sometimes if everyone travels like me or not. I wonder if some people take simple trips, or have a different endurance level. I wonder if some take it softer…water down their stiff drinks. I know there must be a wisdom in that, and yet I am already ruined for that kind of travel…or that kind of life really. I have learned to enjoy it slowly when needed, but never to water it down.

It is good to know how to go with the flow when traveling, especially in Egypt. Apparently our conference was flagged as unfavorable in some way (threatening perhaps?) and blackballed. No hotel in Luxor, or Egypt for that matter, is allowed to give us space to hold this metaphysical conference. (Don’t try to understand why…it would make you dizzy with its irrational circles.) But this has forced the facilitators to split the group into parts and take them to the temples for three days. In the temples we are allowed to lead our meditations and talks, which I think is extraordinary and thrills me to no end. Instead of teaching in a conference room I will be toning in the temples. Like a dream come true.

In the meantime, before the conference starts tomorrow, I will be praying to the Goddess of Lost Luggage to help us with a miracle tonight. And I will go out now just in time to sit on the barge on the nile and watch the sun set with a flame inside my heart. I am nowhere somehow, and yet I wouldn’t be anywhere else right now. I am grateful, for everything my life has held, and for the chance to be in this homeland again.

I will hope you will all be with me in spirit in these next few days, as I tone, chant to the Egyptian Deities, and teach fellow oracles in the great temples…at the dawn of the Great Remembering.

My love to all of you…

Jennifer

Bliss in the Temples

Monday, April 23rd, 2008 ~ Luxor, Egypt

Dear Friends,

I am writing to you today with so much joy in my heart. The long travel to arrive was worth it in every way imaginable. For those of you who don’t know, I came to Egypt to teach at a conference called the Planetary Leadership Conference (you can read about it at www.spiritinluxor.com) and at the last minute the venue was forced to change, and by a miracle it was moved right into the ancient temples themselves. So for the last three days I have been teaching, toning and channeling inside the temples. It has truly been a dream come true.

I was able to chant to the goddess sekhmet at the feet of her statue at Karnak in that very special chapel so many of you have visited. I was able to chant for the divine feminine in the Hathor temples at Hatsepshut and Deir al Medina. Today, at the latter, I experienced a kind of full-body chanelling of sound unlike anything I have ever known. It was beyond exquisite. It was breathtaking.

To live in these times as an Oracle, and to still be able to return to homelands like this and to sing and to speak in the temples as we did thousands of years ago is a gift beyond explanation. It makes my heart so full that I am at a loss of words to describe it.

I am in love with life for bringing me here at this time in this way, and excited to visit Abydos and Dendara temples tomorrow, and then to carry on to Cairo and Greece. I will write again soon, and I have carried you all in my heart.

Love, Jennifer

The Flame of Remembering

Wednesday, April 24th, 2008 ~ Luxor, Egypt

No matter how esoteric my other loves may be, I must admit I have an incredible weakness for an empty computer room with coffee and plenty of time to write in a country far away from home. Such luxuries…

As wordless as most of my reality and perception as an Oracle may be, it is words, especially when written, that somehow integrate those ethereal worlds with this one for me. Words tie them together and make lovely bridges accross beautiful rivers inside of me. Rivers I might otherwise be swept away on so much of the time. So when you add travel to the most exotic places in the world, and coffee, it just gets that much better.

I am in a one-day window between my experiences in the temples around Luxor and leaving for Cairo tomorrow. Two days in Cairo will then lead to our leaving Egypt for Greece…for Delphi. It is all too incredible to do at once. And I know I have done this voyage before. In fact I think many Oracles did. Egypt became hostile to those ways when the real power struggles began, and Greece still welcomed them.

Something I love most about both travel and writing is the perspective they afford. They are each an altered state all their own. They take you to a perch on a mountain somewhere and allow you to look down at what you think your life is, and who you think you are. They allow you, like so many other creative acts and surrendered states, to see it all in a different light, and to have a great deal more vision about where you want to head next. It lets you see your path more clearly…and change what you would like to. It removes you from the surroundings you usually live and operate in and reminds you that you are writing your own story, and that you can change the way you feel about it and see it at any time. It reminds you that you are not bound by the things you think you are, or in the way you believe yourself to be. These things create space. They let you breathe more deeply again, and become new again.

Who knew I would lead such an amazing life? I did, I guess. Once, Egypt was a far-off dream…a memory from ages ago in my soul. Now the temples are familiar to me the way places I grew up are familiar. It’s how they speak to me that so moves me. It is how they fill me with an energy one feels who is truly loved. It is how I don’t even walk when that feeling comes…I float, as if the primordial ocean has rushed in and filled the rooms and I have become one with its waves. And I don’t have to create this space. It has already been created for me…thousands of years ago. The memory is there.

All places are sacred, but those that have been acknowledged, honored and celebrated as such carry that memory…that vibration…and transmit and amplify it, like crystals. We were the last ones to leave both Abydos and Dedera temples yesterday, as the other people were with groups and were led out ahead of us by their group leaders. In fact, at Dendera we were down in the crypt (an underground hall beneath the temple) when the “crypt-keeper” (who was very nice as it happens : ) came down to tell us that the whole caravan was leaving. Being down there alone I had been able to hear the silence. The beautiful, resonant silence that seemed to beckon to one to go even deeper, and deeper, and deeper…

Singing and toning in the temples, as I have been able to so much in the past few days, it has felt as though the thousands of years had never passed. No more were the priestesses and priests a thing of the past…times merged and the lost times weren’t lost anymore. Yes, my friends, they are coming back, and you and I are going to live to see it. I wrote that in my book when I wrote about the “Return of the Oracle,” and every day I see it coming to be more and more. Don’t be distracted or disuaded by the things which make it seem untrue. That is what they are here to do…to distract and disuade. Keep your eyes on whatever brings you joy and makes you feel that home might indeed be here on this earth for you still…that there might be something so grand happening on this planet that it would be big enough to encompass all of who you are.

Because who you are is so vast…and I know it has been hard to fit in a little body in an even tinier context sometimes. But let me promise you that this life, this earth, this embodiment has so much bliss to yet offer you that it might be hard to comprehend from the place of pain so many of us have known so well, and even still know.

Just keep your little flame burning and know that the hardest moments where everything looks the darkest will pass. They always pass. Stay close to whatever brings back your faith and your joy. That is the only spiritual path worth taking. Draw near to whatever lights and feeds the glowing flame in your heart. Leave the rest behind. It is time…

I love you all and hope to write again soon…

Love, Jennifer

Cairo to Delphi

Saturday, April 26th, 2008 ~ Delphi, Greece

Like a dream…

I woke up this morning to the sounds of the streets of Giza and the most amazing view of the Sphinx and Pyramids, and will sleep tonight in sight of the most amazing valley from Delphi…surrounded by towering green mountains covered in red and yellow spring flowers, leading all the way to the Corinthian Gulf in the distance…

I am in the land of Oracles, and tomorrow I will wake up and walk down the road to the place where so many sat and spoke the words that would change the world, over and over again, through a veil of gases and smoke. Already the mountains are speaking…the springs and the stones have never lost the knowing.

We had such a wonderful time in Cairo with our dear friend Abdullah, and since we stayed at an apartment belonging to a family we know, we really got to feel the life of Giza (the part of Cairo at the edge of the Sahara where the pyramids are) and we had the most incredible view…the building is the closest to the Sphinx and our window looked directly out to its face, with the three pyramids spread out behind it.

Driving to Giza after we flew in to Cairo the pyramids appeared on the horizon and I stopped breathing for a moment. They have such an effect on me that they create an involuntary response in my body. They just dwarf all the development around them. They are literally like an apparition from the past, but solid.

By this morning we were dying for fresh food and clean air, and we got it, and the cost of leaving one of the most magnificent places on earth. However that was also buffered considerably by the fact that we were on our way to an equally magical place. I could hardly believe we were headed for Delphi…

Climbing the mountains to come here is like ascending to the heavens…like entering the celestial realms. You begin to feel it about thirty minutes away. Something shifts noticeably. It is this quality of energy, this pristine presence that made it so perfect for the Oracles to meet, and to give prophecy.

For me it is a return to a sacred vessel. A place that held the Oracles so perfectly that they could give themselves completely to the art of their souls…to remembering.

We checked-in to our hotel and went to a restaurant to eat our first meal of the day aside from bread and cheese, and had the most unbelievable greek salad. I have never tasted anything like it. Now we have strolled the streets in the chilly evening (weather so much like what we are used to at home) and enjoyed a greek coffee. Life is very, very good.

It only took two hours to fly from Cairo to Athens. It seems unreal, and yet unsurprising as well. I have come from the land where Isis reigns, to the place where Gaia speaks…and in both cases her sweet voice is just the same. And this, is just the beginning…

Love, Jennifer

Ancient Wind

Sunday, April 27th, 2008 ~ Delphi, Greece

Standing in an ancient site today here in Delphi, the wind picked up heavily and suddenly, and made the most beautiful whispers and wave sounds through the trees above me. I closed my eyes and listened with my heart. Being an Oracle is really that simple.

I knew why the Oracles at Dodona gave prophecy by listening to the wind as it moved through the sacred oak trees.

The beauty here leaves me without words, and almost without thoughts, which is a nice experience…but certainly, and never, without feeling.

This will be a short entry as it is late now, but I promise to write more and in greater detail soon.

Love, Jennifer

The Silent Spring

Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 ~ Delphi, Greece

Dear Friends,

Thank you for journeying along with me. Writing to everyone occasionally is such a special way of sharing my experience as it happens, and so often the amazing things that occur when we travel are too quickly left behind when we finally return home. Now you have all traveled with me in some way…somehow you are here in this internet cafe drinking the iced espresso with me (sounds good doesn’t it…) on a street in the small town of Delphi, built on the legacy of a site where women went into ecstatic trance and spoke to goddesses and gods. It is a place tens of thousands of people visit every year…maybe more…one of the most famous sites in all Greece. The energies in the sites and the land are alive and incredibly magical. One feels high just being here. All that is missing…are the Oracles.

I came here for these few days after Egypt to prepare for the workshop I will teach here in the fall. Originally I looked for a spiritual center to bring people to…some kind of meditation retreat space. I had no idea that no such place exists here. In fact the memory is silent here, just as the Oracle said of the “voice of the spring” in the last prophecy she made about 300 after Christ was born when the temple finally closed its doors forever. Now I know it has been silent all this time…or perhaps never silent, only unheard.

There were many springs here, but a couple of importance to the Oracles. The first Oracular site here actually was a spring itself, through which the nymphs would listen to the voice of the Mother…Gaia or Ge…and receive the prophecies in that way long before the temple of Apollo was built.

I have called this retreat I will teach here the “Return to Delphi” and only now do I realize how poignant and accurate a phrase that is…for that is what those of us who come here in the fall will truly be…Oracles returning to Delphi at the time of the Great Remembering. And we…we will hear the voice of the spring again.

We made a contact here, a lovely young woman, who when I told her about what I teach said, “That is nice! Even we don’t know about the ancient Oracles or intuition…we who live right here at the site!”

It is time. This I have always known. It is time to bring back the ancient knowledge. And not just the ancient knowledge that has been passed down for hundreds of years, some of it losing its meaning along the way, but the ancient knowledge that can only be found in the heart…the power of revelation that is the true spring within each of us. No matter where in the world we reawaken that memory we are powerful contributors to the Great Remembering. I want to thank you all…each of you…for hearing the voice of the sacred spring…it is more important than you may know. It is not always easy to hear that voice within, but it is a light beyond all lights.

Love, Jennifer

It Will Come…

Wednesday, April 30th, 2008 ~ Delphi, Greece

It will come…

That is what the young man I met today in a store, a kindred spirit, told me they say in Greek when they do the traditional ancient handshake. “It will come…”

And it always will. Even when it seems least likely, whatever you are waiting for, even if you feel you have been waiting forever for it, will come.

Being here in Delphi is like being in a constant energy bath…like the whole location is a temple itself. It is supremely intense…and changes you from the inside out. At first it felt too quiet though. It felt like the Oracles, Nymphs and Sibyls were gone from physical form. I knew they (we) were only waiting to return in full force, but I looked around at the stronghold of a different faith and a modern world and felt myself almost like a relic. But I waited…what else is there to do? Wait and hold faith…

And then everything shifted and opened…and now we have made friends here, in such a short time, and I so much see the hand of the universe having reached right in to connect us deeply here before we go. It is like a miracle. Tomorrow we will ride away from this place, but like Egypt, we won’t really be leaving.

We also made dear friends with the Greek co-presenters at the Egypt conference and we are going to meet them at our Athens hotel tomorrow and go to the Poseidon Temple at Cape Sounio, on May Day and the last day of our adventure. It’s like a dream, again.

And home…home sounds very, very good. New life is waiting, and I can’t wait to live it.

It will come.

Love, Jennifer

Back to One

Saturday, May 2nd, 2008 ~ Seattle, Washington

It’s hard to know how to find words in moments like these, but then knowing myself as I do I just wait a little longer and they always do come. Besides, now that I have coffee to drink a bit of the travel hangover will soften and leave more space in my achy head for poetry. Poetry for me isn’t just pretty verse…it is everything I see all around me all the time. It is the ongoing song of life as I experience it…one long poem.

Sometimes it is painful, but there is redemption in the fact that it is somehow still a poem.

As you can see from the entry I am back in Seattle, just as of a few strange between-the-worlds hours. I flew for 13 hours, starting my day at 4am in a hotel in Athens. Now it is the middle of the night for me after that long day…but here it is only the afternoon and I am trying to stay awake to get adjusted. And now you are helping me do it just by being “out there” for me to write to.

I am back where I started, and yet completely changed. It is always this way after travel for me. In fact we are changed in each moment…we just don’t always know it or feel free to rejoice in it and exercise it. We are surrounded by people, places and things which expect us to stay somewhat the same. That, and we ourselves sometimes hold back as not to lose whatever structure we have created around who we think we are. It is rare to find a person who really lives out the ever-changing work of art that they are…but I think it will become less and less rare.

I think anything that sets us free…anything that returns us to ourselves, is an amazing blessing. These blessings are more valuable than the most precious gold. I thought about this yesterday when our new friends came and picked us up at our hotel and took us to the ocean. It filled me up completely in one instant to see the it again, and the place they took us, to the Poseidon Temple at Cape Sounion was one of the most exquisite places I have ever been. The sheer rocks from the temple down to the vibrant blue and green Agean sea were magnificent, and I felt as though I was returned to myself. It isn’t that we ever leave ourselves, but certain special things remind us of this, and get us in touch with what we most connect with in our being.

Then there are the things that remind us who we are by making us forget. They offer us a fresh look by stripping away everything we thought we knew. Like travel, for instance. Anyone who knows me and saw me right now would probably say I wasn’t looking so good…exhausted and pretty delirious…but at the same time with some new light in my eyes and my skin. I have physical pain and soreness everywhere and my stomach feels like its full of stones from the foods I have been eating. I have a second-hand-smokers cough and will probably be ready for a good detox after all of this…and at the same time there is a different radiance coming from me. This is what happens when life breaks us…it puts us together more beautifully than before…more as we really are.

I can’t believe I am writing at this point, and since the letters are actually beginning to swim around a bit on the screen I think I had better stop for now. I will just say that I feel really good underneath. I feel that I have yet another chance to take a new step, and to make it anything I want to. We may break a lot of pots, but life never stops giving us new clay to work with. And I am ready to keep getting my hands dirty making shapes from the poetry of life. I hope this day, and those coming ahead in this very special month of May are filled with light, hope and new life for you. I hope the fires of Beltane light a flame in your heart that illuminates the next steps in your path with passionate joy.

Here is to new dreams…

Love, Jennifer

(this is a picture of Sebastian and I and our friends at the temple I wrote about in this post.)