How Hera Cured my Snake Phobia

I've had a snake phobia all my life. I don't know how to explain phobias, given their irrational nature. Phobias weren't meant to be rationalized, were they?  It makes perfect sense that a good number of the people on the planet at any given time are really, really scared of slithering, limbless reptiles that can move really, really fast and scare the hell out of me just like that with the whip of their tail. And most of them don't even give a  warning! In the reptilian world of Beauty Contests, the rattlesnake would snag the Miss Congeniality prize  everytime for the simple truth that she has the decency to let you know that she's THERE!

I'm curious about the demographics of snake phobia. On an evolutionary level it made sense to avoid them and like, not make your bed in a nest of them, but they are accustomed to lying, coiled and  immobile so as not to be detected.  Snakes are silent observers and it's not like they enjoy the company of humans, or any other species for that matter. Snakes are very solitary creatures that hang out in the sun trying to stay warm from what I can tell. 

Early on in my Virginia residency, I read an article of a girl in Chesapeake who was bitten on the neck by a snake with fangs of some sort. As I recall the story, which was published in the Virginian Pilot Ledger Star back in 80's, the girl was riding her bike and must have run over it, but by some freak accident the snake went flying in the air, landed around her neck and bit her. I'm not making this up! I wish to hell I was making it up because , THAT particular image is certainly the Mother of the Ophidiophobe Nightmare!

My fourteen year old, Jesse has been telling me about Hera, the 8th grade Biology teacher's ALBINO CORN SNAKE, since school started in Aug. I've always loved Biology teachers and have great respect for the women who have snakes as pets. My friend Marge, twenty years ago, had me work on my Ophidiophobia by hanging out in the same room with her boa, Squeeze, first with him IN his tank/home and finally, after any number of bong hits and who knows how much vodka, out of his tank. I'd be sitting on the sofa, look over at the rubber tree plant and there was a green boa, tongue darting and inching toward my ear. If you don't think that every muscle in my body was contracted, then you are out of your mind. Once, I even managed to hold that snake but NEVER did I feel safe or relaxed. I did learn though that it's true what they say:
Snakes are not wet, cold or slimy but soft, supple, warm and dry.

I was at Jesse's school the other day and the math teacher, Deb Miflin, took me into see Hera, the biology teacher's beloved albino Corn Snake. (I have come to appreciate constrictors...I like the green ones especially...the black and brown snakes? Not for me! and to people like me, Steve Irwin was just a big SNAKE HANDLING SHOW OFF! ) While Ms. Mifflin lifted Hera out of her tank, she told me how in assembly that morning, she was "wearing" Hera under her clothes because Hera's warming light had burned out overnight and she was cold. Hera, not Debbie. Debbie was trying to be cool and discreet in the assembly, keeping Hera inside her clothes so as not to freak out all the little Ophidiophobes in the room, but at one point Hera rose up out from behind Ms. Mifflin's head and oh my god, can you imagine the response? MS. MIFFLIN!!! THERE'S A SNAKE IN YOUR HAIR!!

So, Debbie, this amazing spirit of an angel-woman-math-teacher-extraordinaire, reaches into the tank and pulls Hera out and just offers her to me. I love Debbie because it didn't occur to her that holding a tame snake was something I wouldn't do for whatever irrational reason I might have. And I was proud of me for not getting into the drama of my phobia. Here I was being presented with an opportunity to GET OVER a fear I'd carried with me from the womb. So, I sat down, and reached out my hands to accept this gift that I was being given. I call it a gift because until recently, I wasn't always awake enough to hear the call of those fear based opportunities to be re-created into new realities.

Now, if you know anything about me, you should know that I am heart led on this spiritual path, so the next thing I know, I'm falling in love with this beautiful, mysterious animal who is wrapping herself around me, seeking my warmth and comfort; moving effortlessly, sliding, worming her way into my vest, out the armhole. Debbie and Hera have become such heroes to me! She was the perfect snake to experience without fear and Debbie knew that. There was nothing TO fear, for Hera is a gentle, living, breathing, silky smooth mass of cells, just like me: just warmth and firm muscle moving over my mass of skin cells, with all their millions of nerves that have never known the pleasurable touch, til now, of silky scales sliding, wrapping, enveloping and recreating a new version of a timeless, sacred sensation, a new version of communing with one of God's OTHER creatures.

Thank you Hera, Thank You Debbie!

For this I am very Grateful!

Connie

baby you can drive my car but

age is a state of mind and I ain't goin' through that particular territory.

SATCHIDANANDA WISDOM

“A Healthy Ego” “"Don't try to get rid of your ego. Without ego, there's no incentive. Even God has a super-ego, otherwise why would God create the universe? Just change your ego. Make it healthy. If you get rid of it, you will be useless. But if you purify it by changing 'I' to 'we' and 'mine' to 'our,' then you have gone to the root cause and transformed it. Then you can develop a strong, healthy ego. After all, what is ego? It's just the individual feeling, which eventually disappears in the universality of God. Until then, it is your ego that takes you toward God. Without that good ego, how could you do your sadhana or spiritual practice? To approach God, you need the ego. But as you get very close, you lose it.
“God bless you. Om Shanthi, Shanthi, Shanthi.”

Swami Satchidananda
http://swamisatchidananda.org/

dream journal

In my dream I've been in a play and cast members and I are headed to a party in my VW bug. I'm driving and the front seat passenger is directing me where to go. We head down a long dark road and he says to keep going. The road ends and we are at a cliff over the ocean. It is a stunningly beautiful view. The car does'nt t stop quite soon enough and we bump down to a little plateau and the brakes still don't work well enough to hold us in place and then we are in a nose dive down the side of the cliff. The ocean and rocks are hundreds of feet below but death is certain and I'm thinking, "I CAN'T BELIEVE I"M GOING TO DIE THIS WAY, but ok God, if this is how you want it, thank you for this life, thank you, thank you, thank you, and for all the non-believers in the car with me, bless them God, accept them, protect them."

And we keep heading slowly down the side of a cliff at a 90degree angle as though a large hand is holding onto the back of the bumper and slowly easing us down. And I just keep praying with gratitude for life.

And then we're not crashing, we're piling out of the car, passing under an overpass and into a open top cylindrical tank and it starts to rain and then big globs of white gook come flying down and I dodge out of the way quickly, to the shelter of the overpass and realize the other cast members are way up on the cliff throwing things at us and it's all a big joke.

DREAM Journal

Last night I dreamt of Marc Murray, a troubled young man from my 17-18th year back in Santa Cruz. So much information has been received over the years about just what I was dealing with. I was dealing with Karma, of course. In this dream as in Mike dreams, I pursue the animus; this time, in the form of Marc as a football player at UVA. The most important part of the dream for me, was, realizing that Jesse belonged at UVA. Marc said that the first three months of Physics class was memorizing one thousand dreams. When a student would share a dream with the class, the professor would announce: "This person is a Magical Thinker!".

U2 3D IMAX CONCERT

Shot at seven different shows during the Vertigo tour of 2006, this production employs the greatest number of 3-D cameras ever used for a single project. (Associated Press / January 21, 2008)


Holy Mother of God, if you have an opportunity to see this 3d film, by all means DO! The message is Loud and Clear for Human Rights now AND it will get your kundalini flowing!