text: Opening Every Pandora's Box
  This wasn't my first time. I had done this before…many times in fact. I had stood, humbled at the feet of my boxes, digging deep for the courage to face them. I had even opened them, sometimes balking at their sheer heft. I had put things in new boxes, even tried to arrange them and let some go. I had buried some deeper without even knowing.
  There are two kinds of boxes in my life right now. The kind I have been hauling out of my closets, and the kinds I have been hauling out of my very heart.
  Both kinds I have faced before, like dragons in the night. Not dragons to fight, but dragons to embrace. It's everything else I have to fight in order to embrace the dragons, not the dragons themselves. It's the boxes around things sequestered. It's the things that will rot if they don't see light. It's really every moment I was frightened as a child, or even terrorized, mirroring every moment I was ever scared in a past life, all coming up for deeper healing than ever before. It is my whole soul journey spread out like a tapestry. And I found that I couldn't open all the boxes left in my heart, even the ones deep underground in my unconscious, without opening all the boxes in my closets.
  Like I said, I have done this before, with the best of intentions, but it wasn't until I came across a little book called The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, that I finally had the foothold I needed. I remember when I was 22, leaning against the wall in my red cowboy boots and cutoff shorts, taking a break from going through every paper and book I owned before what would be my last trip to college, wondering what would come next. That was one of the first of so many moments like that. Over the past seven years I have tried, every year or two, to take some time off in the deep winter and do that subterranean kind of clearing out that I kept putting on my desire lists. Less clutter, pare down, clear out, lighten up. And sometimes I tasted it, for a little while. But I never got that feeling of crystal clear waters flowing through everything that I yearned for and am starting to feel now.
  It's like I could never get down to the core. I tried, always, to keep only what brought me joy, but it wasn't until I had the other tips from that little book, which I followed faithfully, that I got down to the deep change. And the timing couldn't be better. Now my health depended on it too.
  If it sounds like I have a lot of stuff, don't get me wrong. I had tried my whole life to avoid accumulating too much. My grandmother's house was loaded with clutter. She was not quite a hoarder and many surfaces were clear, but every drawer and the space under most tables were packed to the brim, and it was enough to make a deep impact on my psyche. I decided I would never let things go that far. I treated storage like a hot stove. I used it carefully and not for very long. But I still, as you might not find surprising for an Oracle, found myself with the mighty combination of being a powerful record-keeper and heart-stoppingly sentimental. And so, one closet in particular was piled from floor to ceiling with boxes of papers, writings, journals, files and memorabilia. Much of it in the same boxes it had been in since I was a teenager.
  I thought that was cool. One box had label after label placed on it from moving around a lot for many years. I thought having my journals packed tightly into boxes that were stacked into a tower of my history and slipping each new one I finished into the top box surreptitiously, was good. Only now can I tell that it was just my way of still feeling that I had to hide them…to keep them safe from an unsafe environment that no longer existed. I envisioned myself in my eighties, always in my eighties, finally sitting down to read every journal and every note I saved passed under desks with every close friend I ever loved…none of whom I was able to keep. Perhaps I thought keeping the notes would buffer the loss of their friendships. I don't know yet…I haven't gotten to my letter box. But my journals are now free from boxes, open to the air and light.
  About eight years ago, though the episodes actually started when I was a child, I started struggling with my health. Being deeply intuitive with access to profound healing gifts, I went to my guides at that time who told me that this was a journey I was meant to take step by step. I wasn't meant to know ahead of time what I was facing or how to, "make it go away" by healing it instantly. I knew then that the healing was in the journey, and while I have sometimes sob-screamed in the night for it to stop, in my heart of hearts I have never wanted to rush through what I know is one of the greatest gifts of my life. So I took what I call, "The Blind Oracle's Path" through the Underworld.
  A year and a half ago I was finally diagnosed with Lyme Disease and over a dozen other co-infections and co-conditions spanning from detoxification issues to autoimmune activity. While I have paid the attention to those labels that has served in my healing, it is clear to me that this entire illness has simply been the impetus to get deep inside myself and open every Pandora's box. Sure, I thought I had done that. I thought I had pretty well processed and healed so much of the trauma from my childhood. But I had done mostly the conscious work, and what this pain and debilitation did was drive me deeper underground than I had ever been. Under the Underworld. The place where in the myths of the Goddess Innana, none return from. And that is because you do not return the person that you were. You return clean, dusted in earth, and whole. You return lighter, and freer, having lived through what some would call the fires of hell. They are simply purification. And because, as I teach, every pain in this life has a correlation with past life pains that are unresolved, by doing this work you are literally healing your entire soul journey. That is quite a page to turn, and so many of us on earth are ready to do just that.
  I mentioned that this decluttering I am doing was also crucial to my health, and while the level of energetic clearing it represents and creates, as well as the stress-reducing benefits are paramount, I had also started reacting on an immune level to the allergenic properties of old books, really old papers, and other types of strong fungal smells such as you find inside of antique drawers. Basically my stuff started speaking to me, through my nose and immune response, especially since my immune function is trying to be busily focused on the powerful treatment I am doing.
  Doing this level of decluttering while going through sometimes-debilitating treatment was like climbing a mountain with only your arms to get you there. I couldn't have done what I have already without my husband, who is also going through treatment but can still lift heavy things. I also needed to wear a filter mask to avoid over-exposing myself to the very elements in the old papers and books that were effecting me in the first place (which happened to a good degree anyway) and I had to move very, very slowly. To date I have cleared my clothes closet, gone through my books and let go of 167 of them, and finished my greatest feat yet: papers. I let go of seven brown bags packed full…thousands of items. I've got two categories to go, but I can already feel a deep difference in our home and my life.
  That, as I mentioned, is one kind of boxes. The ones deep under my Underworld are something else entirely. They are the real Pandora's boxes inside of me. And they aren't just energetic. They are in my biology. They are the imprint on my brain, nervous system, and genetic expression made by growing up feeling often very unsafe. These later health implications were simply a matter of time in coming until I reversed the impact of early trauma on my biology. And, thank the Goddess, it can indeed all be reversed. I think I am doing all of this so I can show others it is possible. You see, I may have Lyme and other issues, but they are simply what was able to take hold when years of deep and subtle overreaction to stressors in my nervous system created inflammation and decreased immune function. Consciously I lived the life of someone authentically self-loving, profoundly intuitive, and in touch with my true nature. Gifts that are still rare in this world, though that is changing as more Oracles continue to remember. But buried in my physiology were patterns that needed to be reversed. Genes that were turned off when I was little due to my brain developing in an unsafe environment needed to be turned on, and vice versa. Being ill brought me directly to those places.
  I have been mostly staying home and in my healing-process cocoon, and that has been wonderful for me. But when I do go out and someone asks me in the health food store how I am doing, it is hard to answer. There is no short reply. Upon much consideration my shortest answer would be the following:
  I feel like Frodo bearing the ring.
  I am in Mordor now and it is brutal beyond all description at times, but that is only because I am so close now to the end of a long journey of alchemy and healing. So close.
  Honestly, though sometimes I think I can't survive another moment of it, I am also in an amazing place that I don't take for granted. In fact, sometimes the natural gratitude that increasingly flows through my veins like rushing rivers is almost as hard to bear as the pain, because it is that beautiful and I have to make new room for it. And I have the strength to bear the ring, or it would never have been mine to bear. In truth I have known tremendous suffering, but I also live a life of tremendous bliss. I live the life of a soul awakened to the miracle of life and the miracle of love. I am honestly enraptured by life, and ablaze with the beauty of the universe. It isn't far-reaching or forced. It isn't just words. It is right inside of me and always has been. Even since I was so very little.
  Like the Sumerian Goddess Innana and a few other Goddesses who traveled to the underworld, I have done so by choice. I have done so not because I did not know my own divinity, but because I do.
  There was another girl who liked to open boxes too. They say she was the first woman and like Eve, her reputation is incredibly poor. As those of you who know my work are aware, I am here to re-tell those stories. Because beings like Eve and Pandora are heroes. Heroines. They were the most courageous of all. Not because they would fight, but because they were willing to face the serpent power within and the desires and true knowing it brought. Pandora may have opened the box that contained all evils, but she also freed the hope beneath them.
  And things like that aren't meant to be kept in boxes anyway. They are meant to be met. Like dragons in the night.
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  Rachel DuBois June 17, 2016 at 1:19 pm
  I'm KonMari-ing our house right now while dealing with as-yet undiagnosed autoimmune issues, so I can relate to your experience. I managed to KM my underwear drawer on the first day, and this is actually the fourth time I've KMed my clothes since I first read the book over a year ago. I've never finished the entire process, not quite getting all the way through the komono category. This time, I'm intent on doing it all in one go, like she says you have to in order for it to stick.
  I have to take it so much more slowly than I like, thanks to needing to stop and rest repeatedly, but I remind myself it's one step at a time.
  As for the emotional KMing, I found your site as part of the work I'm doing there. The Sacred Sexuality mini-course is a huge part of my inner world tidying. So thank you for helping me do that. Best wishes to you!
  Jennifer June 20, 2016 at 7:11 pm
  Oh, thank you so much Rachel! I am so happy the course has been helpful on the inner-world tidying and I am right there with you on staying committed to the outer-world tidying too! I know how brave it is to try to do it in the midst of illness and healing and here is to us making it all the way! Sending love! <3