What’s In A Name?

November 17, 2009
by Katherine Ari

I was named Mary Katherine when I was born. Most of my life I have been called Kathy. I always preferred Mary to be pronounced Marie. A few years ago while doing a regression therapy, I came to recognize that not Marie but Ari was the name I was drawn too. What Ari means is another story.

Over the years I have read about the meanings of names. Certainly numerology is about your NAME more than your birthday like Astrology. I could see myself as Katherine, a renaissance person like the queen. I am a person of many talents and always independent. But the name Mary is the universal mother, the mother of God or Jesus, always the mother. I did not want to be Mary. I resisted the image of “Mother Earth” though often others tried to say that was how they saw me. “No, no, no! I don’t want to be that.” I would answer.

I didn’t marry until I was 29. For most of my twenties I didn’t have any desire to marry much less become a mother. My astrology teacher in my masters degree program taught us to do charts and in my fourth house I either would not have children or have no trouble with children. That was ironic in itself because by then I was married and pregnant with my first child. The spiritual action of marriage had also brought about the biological urge to have children – though even to this day I am not really a baby person. I went on to have three children and we have an unofficially adopted son making it four. I would have had another but Doug said no.

We had our children and made a life in an old house in Douglasville, GA. The house was surrounded by numerous kinds of oak trees, elms, sweet gums, pines, apples, cedars, a redbud and a dogwood, a mimosa, and we tried peaches. I have always loved trees. I spent my childhood having trees as my only friends along with my cat living in the country without any other children for neighbors. I felt a bond and communication with them even when I didn’t understand I was communicating with them and they with me. I do not deny that I have hugged many a tree, cried under many a tree and let them help me with my pain, danced with them, and heard them cry when they were damaged or cut down.

Years ago when the children were young, we were doing some work with a Native American teacher. He taught me that each area of the forest or even our yard has a head tree. There are grandmother and grandfather trees. He challenged me to go around in my yard and determine which was the head tree. The head tree is not necessarily the oldest or the biggest but I would discover that there are different kinds of leaders among the trees. Each tree in a yard has a function that forms a little sub-ecosystem. On my own I learned how to tell the feminine vs. the masculine trees.

I know you are asking, “What does this part of the story have to do with names?” Keep reading.
On one side of my house in the driveway is a water oak, a 110-year-old Grandfather Oak. At that time, there was a red oak, a 200 year old Great Grandmother Oak on the other side of the house, the west side. In the middle of the back yard was another Grandmother oak. The two oaks on each side of my house were guardians of the house and I felt that the red oak was the head tree. I went to the other grandmother oak in the yard and I looked at her. I said you just want to be the tree that provides shade and love. You don’t want to be the “mother” of the yard, the grand - mother. And I felt she agreed with me.

One morning in 1991, I went outside with my little Maltese dog. The sky was very unusual. There was a storm coming in from Birmingham but the sun had just come up from the east. The colors were vivid, strange. Spring flowers were coming up in an area that was garbage when we moved to the house in 1984. Everything looked so pretty. I spoke to the Great Grandmother, the mother tree of the yard where all the baby birds and squirrels lived. “Grand-mother, you are so wonderful and beautiful this morning. I love you so much. I hope you will be with us for another hundred years!”

As clear as if someone were standing right in front of me I heard a voice say, “I’m leaving soon.” A rush of fear passed over me. “Where did that voice come from?” I looked at her and I knew, KNEW it came from the tree. “Oh no, I hope not. We want you around for a long time. We love you so much and you are so important to us!”

“Soon, Granddaughter, very soon.” This internal voice coming to me was so real and sad. I felt tears well up in my eyes but then I went on about walking the dog and returning inside the house.

I went back toward the bedroom to get dressed. It was about 8:30 a.m. and Doug came running through the house. “This storm looks really bad. We should move to the hallway – quickly!” We got the kids up, grabbed the inside dog. The wind was loud and strong. Two tornados were passing over our house and we heard a large boom. The house shook and then we heard rain running into the house. The shaking was over and all we heard was loud rain. We got up to look where the rain was coming in. “Oh my God, the red oak was not there. She had gone down. But when she fell, she went north and wrapped around the back of the house. Twelve other trees went down on our property, all going towards the east, the direction of the tornado. But if she had done that, she would have fallen directly on the house, destroying the house and killing all of us.

“She told me, Doug. She said she was leaving soon,” I told Doug as I cried. Wow, she told me. I heard her. She told me! I felt like I had lost someone dear.

I felt she was the leader of my yard and she was gone. There was a young oak that I thought would be the new leader of that side of the yard some day, but when she fell, he held her until the tree people could get her safely to the ground without hitting the house. He was damaged beyond repair and a few years later fell to another storm.

I was well settled into parenthood and home schooling my children. I loved being their parent and had even gotten to the point of liking other children. I was walking around the yard and I felt that the Grandmother Oak in the middle of the yard had changed. She was clearly the new feminine head tree in the yard. Feeling sure of myself and like I “knew” the truth I said, “Well, Grandmother, I see you have assumed the role of the mother of the yard now since the Great Grandmother is gone.”

With a gentle bit firm voice she spoke to me. “It was not me that was not ready to be the mother, granddaughter. I am now what I was then.” And as if she and I were saying it in unison, the next thought to come through my mind was, “It was me that was not ready to be the mother, the earth mother. And now I am ready. I am ready to embrace being Mary, the eternal mother. I WAS Mary. I am Mary – (but I am even more Ari). But that IS another story and the name means something different.

What does your name mean? Do you embrace it and live the full potential?

Chris

Chris

(mascara alert)

by Katherine Ari July 10, 2009

I had this really special lady in my life named Chris. She didn’t confide in me, but I knew something was going on with her breast for some time before she told everyone. She had breast cancer, but she had been trying alternative solutions. I really don’t know what she had been doing or for how long but in May, 2007 she had a diagnosis. The condition was in advanced stages and there was nothing the doctors could do.

People at the spiritual center were in little groups whispering and crying. Another friend of Chris and mine was talking to me. He said he was so upset about Chris. “What’s going on with Chris?” I said.

“She has (such and such number) phase breast cancer. She only has about a month or so to live.” He went on to say that he was really angry because she could have prevented it. He was angry at her and angry he was losing a good friend. She was going to die.

I could tell that the little huddled groups were her close friends and they were crying and talking about her condition too. Chris was going to die. Well, I know how sensitive and intuitive Chris was. Having all those people she was close to thinking and saying, “Chris is going to die” did NOT help her live, help her affirm a healthy life.

In July, we had a big celebration of her life while she was still living. It was wonderful but people still cried. The heaviness was there. As “enlightened” as we pretend to be, our own grief and sadness and projections were weighing us down.

I started going through my own stuff. When I get close to people I feel things. I am somewhat of an empath. I felt very in tuned to Chris. When she would have a bad day or night, I would feel her symptoms and discomfort. There would be heaviness in my chest and it was hard to breathe. When I would see her I would say, “Were you having a bad day on Monday?” She would always say yes.

I wanted to be near her. After all, everyone was talking about how sick she was and time was getting shorter. The more I was around her the more I “soaked” up. I don’t think I was helping her and it was making it hard for me to function. I pulled away. I avoided the groups discussing her. I mentally and physically withdrew from the energy around her.

But I still cared – deeply. I loved her very much. And I wanted to help her. I sent her a story I wrote. It was actually an account of a story journey I had with my spirit guides. The journey was about ascending up to the top of the Tree of Life to the land of Keter. I also was told by one of my spirit grandmothers that she would be with Chris instead of me until she was no longer needed. She did not say until she died – just until she was no longer needed.

I saw Chris one Wednesday night before I sent her the copy of the story. I told her about my grandmother guide being with her until, I paused, “you know, when it is time.” Chris was okay with what I said and how I said it, but a woman standing near-by had this horrific look on her face as if what I said was terrible.

I did a painting of T-cells lined up like soldiers going after the diseased cancer cells. My inner guides told me to leave it up on a table easel until they told me to take it down. “You will know when it is time to take it down,” they whispered to me. I would look at it especially when I felt her symptoms. It’s like I felt when she was weakest I needed to do the imaging for her. I would look at the painting and see T-cell soldiers fighting the battle. And her energy would come back up.

One day, I was feeling angry at my own body issues. I was fuming and feeling sorry for myself. I got really worked up. I suddenly realized that was what Chris was feeling. She was angry her body had not been able to be healthy, stay healthy, and get healthy. She felt it betrayed her. She had done everything she could do but she was losing the battle. We were both screaming, “It isn’t fair!”

I took out my watercolors and paper. I painted the angry sick body I – we – were angry at. It was a mess and the anger and disgust showed. I put it on the canvas and then sat a while. Anger is a normal feeling but it is important to not hold on to it, to move through it. The first painting dried enough that I could remove it from the block to do another.

I began a painting of a woman’s body surrounded with healing purple fires. I wanted to use the image of the purple flame to make our bodies whole and well. There are many healers who talk about the purple flame and call it to a situation to heal what needs healing. It’s no coincidence T-cells are mostly purple. Violet fire is a healing energy!

I had released the feelings when I painted them. I then painted a third. It was art therapy. I was going through a transition in my thinking and using art as a way to process it. The third painting I call the Goddess of Health. After the healing process, I saw the woman – me – as a mature healthy woman. (See Painting.)

I took pictures of the raw paintings and exported them to jpegs. I emailed them to Chris with a brief explanation because she didn’t always understand my abstracts. She said she got it, felt that way, and she thanked me.

In December her family moved her into hospice. I could not go see her. I wanted to. One time I went into my meditation state in my bed at home and took her hand to go up to the place of my meditation story. My spirit grandmother and other faint spirits appeared as I imagined the ascension. Yes, Chris could go to that “place” but I was not supposed to be there. I started choking and abruptly was no longer in the meditative state. She went up and was there a while, but she didn’t stay – not that time.

Around Christmas I got a simple command. “It’s time to take the T-cell painting down now.” Nothing else was said but I knew the battle was mostly over. I lay in bed close to midnight on January 1, almost January 2. I hadn’t talked to anyone for a few days about her. They said she was very weak and the morphine had been increased. As I lay in bed, I felt a heaviness and difficulty breathing. I had experienced that same feeling when my mother made her transition. She was in a small town hospital in Oklahoma. I was in a hotel in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Mother passed. I felt no breath, no movement. “Goodbye Mother,” I whispered and wept myself to sleep.

I started the walk up the spiritual path, the magical place with Chris. Halfway up you stop to receive a bundle that becomes your robe and then a white dress. I stopped there and Chris took the bundle. She continued alone though I could see my grandmother Oma and images of others with her. “Goodbye Chris. I love you and will miss you.” A couple of days later I learned Chris made her transition just after midnight on January 2, 2008.

Saying Goodbye - watch what you say

A few years ago, I was in class at my Spiritual Center.  The teacher announced that a woman most of us knew had made her transition.  If we didn’t know her, we knew her granddaughter, another minister that had spoken at our center.  The woman minister’s daughter is a friend of ours as well as a customer.  I hadn’t heard of her Great-Grandmother’s passing.  We took a break and I called her while I was in the bathroom.

 

She said, “You know how when people are anticipating a family member making their transition that the family sometimes tells the person it is okay to go?”

 

“Yes,” I answered.

 

“Well we were all standing around Granny who was 102.  We said to her that if she was ready to go, it was okay.  We were ready if she was ready.

Well, you know what happened? She did!– as soon as we said that she left, that very second.  We said, Wait a minute!  We didn’t mean right this minute! But she took our word for it and left and didn’t come back.  We were all pumped up trying to say the right metaphysical things, but we never expected her to go right then.  When it came down to the truth we really weren’t ready.  We were sad but we laughed at ourselves for not realizing that she would do it.”

 

I asked her for permissions to tell my class about how it all happened and she said yes.  We all had some good smiles.

 

I tried that one time.  The results were surprising.

 

My husband’s grandfather lived to the age of 96.  His grand mother was two years younger.  Grandpa Roy was always a rather cantankerous old man.  As he grew older he got meaner and harsher – until Alzheimer’s took over in the last few years.  When Grandma Eva was about 94 or 95 after Roy died, she took a bad spell.  She was confined to her bed and was staying with her younger son, Doug’s Uncle Dwayne, in Florida.  We were in Florida visiting other relatives and went by to see her on our way back to Georgia.

 

She mostly slept and her bed was placed in front of a bay window in the living room where she could watch the bird feeder and the squirrels in the front yard.  At that age we didn’t hold on to any expectations of a miracle recovery.  I sat in the room with her while she rested.  I thought I had it all figured out.  I would go into a meditation and let her know that it was okay if she was ready to go on, just have a little spirit chat.

I closed my eyes and settled myself into a nice peaceful state of mind.  I imagined talking to Eva. “Grandma Eva, we want you to know that if this is the time for you to leave us that it is okay.  We love you very much but we don’t want you to have to suffer.  The family won’t hold you here if it is time for you to go.  And Roy is waiting for you.  Do you see him there?”

 

In my meditation and images in my mind she turned toward me and said,

“No, I had to put up with that man for 72 years and I am not ready to be with him again.  I don’t want to go to him!”  I thought, Oh, I guess that was the wrong thing to suggest. And I kind of suddenly came out of my meditation.

 

Now the reader might think that was just my imagination and projecting my own feelings about having to live with someone like Roy.  Maybe I just had too much creative imagination.

 

But the things is that Eva, age 94½, did start getting better.  She had a dream after our visit that Uncle Dwayne told us about.  She was dreaming she was on a platform at the train station.  The train came but she decided after it stopped not to get on.  She opened her eyes and got up and went into her son’s bedroom. He woke up and found her sitting on the side of his bed.  “Why didn’t I get on the train that was leaving?” She asked him.  Grandma Eva felt better and went back to Kansas.  She lived in her own house until she was over 97 and died when she was 99 and 7 months.

I suppose the final message of this little story is if you are in that situation where you feel you need to tell your loved one that it is “okay” to move on to the next world or dimension, be very careful what you say and what you mean and mean what you say.  Don’t be surprised if the reaction isn’t exactly what you expect. 

SEVEN PAINTINGS - mascara alert

I want to warn you that this story is long and may bring up some emotions for you.

MASCARA ALERT!

SEVEN PAINTINGS by Katherine Ari

INTRODUCTION – the setting

In 1999, one month after my mother passed away, we began to attend a small start up spiritual community in Douglasville, a suburb of Atlanta, GA. We loved the teaching of the Science of Mind by Ernest Holmes and began classes. In August, 2002, let’s just say I had a personality conflict with the staff and we discontinued our membership there. We went forward, or so we thought, and had our own spiritual group for a short while. But we had no idea that we were headed for a life changing and challenging period.

The end of the year there was a big trauma and we closed our business. There was a lot of pain and sorrow. In January, we decided to give what was then called the Atlanta Church of Religious Science a try. We had attended various metaphysical thought centers and we knew it was a larger community. I walked in to the lobby in a state of tears and vulnerability. I met a lady named Nancy and she introduced me to the assistant minister, Chuck. It was a frequent occurrence for people in crisis to turn to the ACRS for help. Many people have turned away from traditional churches. But when the life events are hard, it isn’t unusual for seekers to turn to some sort of alternative way to get through the challenge. It didn’t take us long to decide we had a new spiritual home.

We joined a business support group and started going to classes. We attended faithfully every week and made a lot of new friends. They didn’t care what our issues or problems were that brought us there. They strive to practice being in the now and not judging anyone. There were no dogma rules and a lot of warm and loving people.

The year 2003 was the worst year of our lives. We saw two different psychologists and had some sessions with Chuck and the senior minister, Paul. In February, we lost Grandma Eva. I pride myself for my knowledge of my pets and other animal communications, but I miss interpreted what my little Sheltie, Joseph, was trying to tell me in May. He had a problem that could have been corrected if we had caught it two days sooner. When we finally discovered what was wrong, it was too late. We had to euthanize him. A Couple of weeks later, Doug had to “take care of” his sick pet chicken.

We were struggling financially and going through an incredible amount of personal growth while paying bills and raising 2 of our 3 children. The events of 2002 had more stuff in October and it was more sorrow. Then in November, when we were on the way to recovering again, a most unexpected tragedy occurred. Doug’s younger sister had a brain aneurism. Although, the surgeon was able to correct the blockage, a week later she started having strokes. The doctors determined that she was over 50% brain dead. They made the decision to take her off life supports the day before Thanksgiving. She was 48.

According to one of our psychologist, we had gone through what is considered major life events. What most people have is one at a time. We had six in one year. But we carried on. We considered the alternatives – keep on or die. We chose to live and find a better way to do that.

The classes as well as the friendships we had formed at the Spiritual Living Center of Atlanta (the named changed) had given us a new way to see things. I know I was stronger and so was the rest of my family. In May, one year after we lost our little Joseph, we knew we had to euthanize our dog George.

George came to us as a stray, a rescue. He was a red-orange, mixed breed of Chow Chow, Retriever, and maybe a little German Shepherd. He came to us with his own little stuffed monkey security toy and a world of personality. George developed skin allergies after a few years at our house. We had to keep an E-collar on him to keep him from itching himself bloody and feed him masses of Benadryl daily with a few cortisone shots. Several times we thought it was so bad that we needed to euthanize him, but he just kept saying, “Not yet.” In May, 2004, his condition worsened. It was time.

Perhaps because we had done everything we could to alleviate his problem it was a little more expected than Joseph’s death. But I was stronger and my consciousness had changed. It hurt and I cried a lot, but this time I didn’t have the guilt and regret. And somehow, the changes in me made it easier to cope with what had to be done. It hurt but it was okay.

SEVEN PAINTINGS - the story

Sometime in 2004 or 2005, I had this urge to paint one day. It was like a really strong inner push and it had to be done. I got out my watercolor block and paints and brushes. “What am I in the mood to do today?” I pondered as I sat down with brushes, pallet, and water in my hands.

Painting for me is usually inner directed. I just let whatever wants to come out go on the paper or canvas. Most of the time it is abstract and frequently I don’t know what or why I am painting.

I sat by our pond and watched the gold colored koi swimming around in the clear water. The one that is the most obvious is a big butterfly koi with a long flowing tail. They don’t hold still long enough to paint them as they are, and what captured my imagination was the end of his tail swimming away.

Now begins the symbolism and as the paintings emerged, the meanings and messages became more and more meaningful. Water is the symbolic seat of all emotions. A golden fish is a symbol of prosperity but in this case, it was more the movement away from me and the end of a particularly emotionally deep time in my life. There had been so much confusions, pain and sorrow – and growth. I began. I painted the first painting.

When I haven’t painted for a while, it usually takes me a couple of paintings to get the creativity flowing and to get the feel of the brush again. After I painted the simple koi fish in the water, I just cut loose. There was an explosion of color, of all sorts of chaotic emotions bursting through my hands. It was time to go deeper and I was ready to paint.

Then I heard a faint whisper inside my head. “Paint another.”

The sunrise on a hill with a tree emerged. First there was the green. Then there was all the yellow. I looked at it and saw the green was a tree swaying in the wind on the side of a hill. I had painted a sunrise of a new day of my life journey. The hill appeared because growth is an upward journey. The new energy was coming to me as if in the wind.

“Keep painting,” the inner voice whispered again. Okay, another picture is trying to emerge. I began to have a feeling for certain colors. There were ocean blues, a blue evergreen tree, and a blue sky that was more like the water in the bay in the Florida Keys. It wasn’t like I set out to paint an evergreen. It was that one appeared. Then a couple of shapes appeared in the sky part of the painting. One was shaped like a turtle and the other was shaped like a seashell. “A turtle, a shell and a beautiful shade of blue tree,” I said to myself as I looked at the almost finished watercolor. “What’s this one mean?” I knew and tears began to fill my eyes. My sister-in-law’s name was Deb. Her color was that brilliant shade of ocean blue. And her favorite thing to collect was turtles and she always had seashells around her house, inside and out. She lived in the Florida Keys surrounded by her colors and turtles and shells and fish. I thought, “This is about Deb.”

I heard a voice again. Deb in spirit form was there with me. “Don’t cry. You need not be sad. I’m okay. I’m here. Everything happened the way I expected it to happen.” I could feel her saying that the painting before me is where she is now. I knew it was the truth. I knew she was there with me talking to me. “Tell Mom and Dad not to worry. I am really happy. It is really pretty here. I love you all but I had to go. I wanted you to show them this place. It has everything I love. Tell JoAnn (she called her mom by her first name) to stop feeling guilty. It wasn’t her fault. She did all she could do.”

I sat there sobbing for what seemed like a long time until the tears began to dry up on my face. “So that’s why I had to paint today. Deb wanted to make an appearance. I had some unfinished grief to let out and it wanted to come out in the painting.” I sat quietly satisfied that I had done some needed healing work and with the messages to share with my in-laws.

“Keep painting!” There was that inner voice again and this time it was even stronger. “What, haven’t I done enough? Surely the painting where Deb is was enough.”

“You are not finished. Do another.” The inner voice answered determined for me to continue.

“Okay. What colors am I in the mood for this time?” The background was a neutral shade of light yellow – kind of like a golden light that surrounds something or someone that is just special. There were these pairs of shapes in different configurations. One shape was a combination of oranges and reds. The other was a mix of purples. At first, it didn’t seem to be anything but some of my favorite colors in a simple abstract painting.

I sat looking at it. Why did I have to paint this painting? It took a while meditating on it and feeling a little tired. Then I saw it. I thought I had cried out all my tears on the last painting, but I had only just begun.

The night before we carried George to the vet to receive “the shot”, he was suffering so much that I could take the E-collar off and he didn’t even have the energy to scratch. He lay outside our back door on the concrete having difficulty breathing. I put an exercise mat beside him and lay with him on the cold cement. He usually had so many sores that he didn’t get petted very much. We would touch his head but not his back and body. It was kind of yucky and probably a little painful for him as well. We had decided that we couldn’t put it off any longer.

I gently stroked his entire body. I felt tumors all over him. The vet and my husband said that they were cancer and had grown into his lungs. They had grown very rapidly, possibly because of the steroid shots and the allergy pills, having taken over his body in a short amount of time. He was lying still because he was having a hard time breathing. Tears fell down my face but I didn’t want to lie there with him to cry. It was just my way of saying goodbye. I knew it had to be done this time. I just gently massaged him to try to make him comfortable.

George was reddish orange when his hair was healthy. My favorite color has always been purple. These little shapes on the painting were the positions of my body and George’s that last night together. In most of them I was touching him in some way. But the last, we just lay side by side and I let him go. I had painted the last night. “Oh my, this is me and George!” I didn’t just sob this time. I cried and I cried hard. I am crying now as I type.

I had handled his transition very well. I didn’t’ have regrets or doubts. I missed him – still do – but there was no other choice. We had given him all the love we could give and all the medical attention we could find. We fed him and loved him dearly, so much that we could not make him suffer through a long dying process. But here was this inner urging to paint this little painting, to grieve, and to heal. There wasn’t any denying it. I had to grieve and remember George and my last night. “I love you George.”

I cried a while. I took a breath and sat there feeling drained. “That was quite an experience,” I told myself.

“You are not finished.” The inner voice again was urging me on.

“No! You have got to be kidding. I am tired. Haven’t I grieved enough today?

“You are not finished. Don’t think about it. Just paint. Just paint!”

I painted #6. I had no idea what I was painting – just painting. When I finished, I looked at it. What I saw was an adult shape in a fetal position surrounded by a green vine – signifying growth or new growth or a birth happening. I was going through a re-birth process. I felt the tragedy of several deaths, not just Deb and George, and was ready to emerge as a new person to new beginnings and fertility – green new growth.

The inner voice was probably about to tell me, but I didn’t wait. I was ready to finish this journey and take care of the every day business of living. I opened my hands and my heart to a rainbow of new life and new colors and painted one last picture that said, “This self-exploration is complete for today. It began with the end of an emotional pool of hard life experiences – the tail of the fish in the waters of emotion – and ended with open hands releasing energy in all the colors of the rainbow. I felt the vibrancy of the rainbow coming from my soul and going out to the world.

Katherine Ari