Abby Arnold, owner and director of Ananda Center for Conscious Living in Charlottesville Virginia, is a Master Reiki practitioner with advanced certification in a number of Reiki modalities, including traditional Usui, Sechem-Seichim, Karuna Ki and Lightarian Reiki. I have been involved with the metaphysical and conscious living movements for over 20 years, and for a number of years owned a New Age bookstore on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. I am also an experienced university professor. I have taught English literature, Writing and Women's Studies at the University of Virginia, The University of Richmond, UNC Greensboro, Rutgers College, Hunter College, the Princeton Adult School and Virginia Commonwealth University, among others. I am A.B.D. in English (almost a Ph.D, stopped caring about that dissertation and completely changed my life instead) and hold an M.F.A in Creative Writing from Bennington College, an M.A. in English and an M.S.W. from Virginia Commonwealth University. I am a member of the International Association of Reiki Professionals.
Those are my credentials that the world likes to see. My other credentials are: middle aged single divorced mother of two elementary aged children. I own a business in this economy and try to have a dating life. Plus family and friends and getting along with my kids' father and remembering to sign the school forms and get something for the bake sale (I usually forget).
I've been practicing, studying, running towards and running away from consciousness and Spirit since the early 1980s, when this was still called the New Age Movement. I read Shirley McLaine's book "Out On A Limb" on a car ride home from Florida my junior year in college and every single sentence felt like it was reminding me of something I already knew, waking me up to what and who I really was.
Those were the days, at least in Virginia, when yoga was still considered sketchy and much of the middle class thought meditation was only done by people in cults. To be fair, "New Agers" could be just as freaked out by this stuff, often abandoning jobs, families and responsibilities in a rush through spiritual hysteria they called 'being true to myself.' I knew I had to end my first New Age bookstore the day someone called to ask me how I was preparing for the three days the Earth journeyed through darkness to reach the Pleiadean solar system ("going to Honolulu to go surfing," was my response. "I don't believe it.").
I spent about 15 years teaching, studying, getting married, having kids, getting divorced, ignoring much of "this stuff." Then a series of events happened to call me back. Most profoundly, I learned Reiki, and in the space of about three months went from not having had a Reiki treatment since I left Hawaii to becoming a Reiki Master (not the way I recommend doing this, but sometimes something calls you so loud you must follow), quickly followed by becoming a Reiki Master in a few other traditions besides Usui, as well as Lightarian Healing work. I call this time in my life the seduction of Spirit: let's fill Abby up with all this amazing healing energy really quickly. It will feel great, she's going to feel connected and inspired and on her path and she won't know that this seduction is one of the classic openings to the Dark Night of the Soul, the healing journey the soul takes to return to God, during which all things that are out of alignment in someone get torn apart so they can be put back together closer to wholeness and Soul truth.
I watched my life expand and collapse at the same time ( a neat trick, but I don't recommend it to anyone), as I opened Ananda, quit my steady teaching job, the man I loved broke up with me, the economy collapsed, I was constantly broke and lonely, my mother and sister moved away from Charlottesville, I barely slept for months and months, cried so much I could alone have replenished that river of grief. That would be the life collapsing part.
The life expanding part was similarly intense. I met the most amazing, wonderful people through Ananda, who have enriched my life beyond measure. My healing gifts opened up and my intuition and clairvoyance, two things I never thought I had, came to life in profound ways. Friends helped me in astounding ways. I learned to ask for help. I learned to ask for help (let's keep repeating that). I accepted help when people gave it to me. If I keep repeating this theme, it's because until this moment, I firmly believed that I was alone, alone, alone. Not only that, I thought that if I didn't hold it together myself, relentlessly, without relief, the entire planet would collapse into a dark hole and the universe would fall apart. A slight exageration perhaps, but only slight.
I learned what I value in this world, and what I don't. I learned to find happiness in myself. As sappy as it sounds, I learned to love myself and to value myself and the things I want, instead of being pissed off or panicked all the time that I didn't have them, or begging others to give them to me. I learned many of the ways my mind traps me into worry and unhappiness, and how to release, ignore and swallow that up into a bigger awareness and more peace (this is still very much a work in progress). I learned to meditate. I learned to trust myself, my own intuition, my own values. I saw what a judgemental hardass I can be and I let go of a whole bunch of expectations and grievances against other people, against things that happened "to" me, against the circumstances of my life. Wish I could say I let go of all my judgements, but that would be a lie.
I learned there is no "there" that we arrive at, rather a continuous unfolding into Spirit and the truth of our own Self. Perfection is impossible.
I imagine I'm still in that experience of my life collapsing and expanding. Quite possibly we are always in it all the time.
The point of my blog and my business is to help others who are going through the same thing, who are looking to alternative spirituality for answers and would like help, companionship, guidance, a common sense, practical approach (always helpful when you are talking to angels, for example). I don't have your answers for you, but I do have information, resources and my own point of view.
