Some have suggested that one of the greatest longings of the human soul is to be seen – to be really and truly seen for who we are.
As one who has the ability to see, I have found the opposite to be true. Many (if not most) humans don’t really want to be seen because either a) they hate who they are, or b) they have something to hide. These are the folks who either run from my gaze or turn the shame of being seen back at me by making me their enemy. I become sad when people do this because while I can see deception, I also see potential. I see who people are as their most authentic selves if they would only allow themselves to be that. My purpose is only to support people in becoming their most authentic selves. Sadly, some simply don’t want this – as much as they might argue otherwise.
art by Catherine E. Case used with permission
Those who are comfortable enough with themselves such that they don’t mind being seen; or who have been chomping at the bit to be seen for who they truly are so they might be that more fully, are those who thrive in my presence. I see them and encourage them in their gifts while supporting them in identifying and healing those things that are preventing them from living those gifts more fully. When the going gets rough (which it will – all work of true transformation does) I am there simultaneously holding their feet to the fire while soothing the anxiety and terror that comes when we are allowing ourselves to break free of the chrysalis that formerly imprisoned us.
As the poet Rilke said:
My looking ripens things
and they come toward me, to meet, and be met.
(Book of Hours, I, 1)
Longing to be seen may indeed be one of our greatest desires, but few have the courage to truly be seen, and even fewer have the endurance to allow the seeing to ripen into being.
Lauri’s gifts as a mentor are centered in her ability to see. She sees your truth along with what might be hindering your ability to live that truth fully. By seeing clearly, Lauri can help guide you through the process of identifying, healing and transforming the wounds, fears, traumas and conditioning that keep you from living a life in which your purpose is fully embodied and your mission fulfilled.
Lauri provides this mentoring one-on-one and through her classes and training programs.
Priestess is a word that has been used to apply to a wide variety of meanings, experiences, and expressions. At the Temple of the Magdalene, Priestess means something quite specific and can apply to individuals of any gender.
Being a Priestess relates not to a specific role, but to a commitment to self-development, personal fulfillment, and service.
A Priestess:
Is self-aware and working toward self-actualization.
Is accountable to their inner wounds and is working to heal them.
Is sovereign unto themselves.
Is fulfilled within themselves.
Enjoys a life of meaning and purpose for the sake of their own fulfillment while serving the betterment of the world.
A Priestess lives out their own sovereignty in a way that is based on their own unique giftedness and Soul-calling.
A Priestess might live out that calling in any number of ways, (not limited to the leader of ritual which seems to be the most popular expression of the neo-priestess) including teacher, healer, strategist, advisor, artist, writer, musician, business professional, CEO, medical professional, tradesperson, etc, etc, etc,. The ways to live out one’s own sovereignty are limitless.
The Temple of the Magdalene supports the Priestess in that journey toward sovereignty by providing training programs, classes, and one-on-one mentoring for the purpose of inner personal development and transformation. The focus of our trainings is on supporting participants in identifying, healing and transforming the inner obstacles to living out their sovereignty to its fullest.
No matter how perfect and loving our parents might have been, no matter how well they provided for our well-being and supported us in our dreams, each one of us will experience woundedness from our parents. This woundedness may be no direct fault of their own, but simply comes forth because of what they were shown by their parents, the culture in which they were conditioned, what remains unhealed within them, and/or simply because they are human.
As we are human, so too are our parents. There is no shame in that. And yet, for many, the parental wounds become a significant obstacle to both their inner and outer freedom, as well as their ability to enter into healthy relationships and enact their own parenting. Unhealed parental wounds become stumbling blocks to our ability to become happy, healthy, and content in our lives and to find that which will provide meaning and purpose in our lives.
While reflecting specifically on the Father wound, I was provided with the following image of what the Father wound looks like (to me anyway):
As you gaze upon this image, what comes forward as your image of the Father wound?
For each individual, the Father wound will have its own color, size, shape, etc. It will also have its own unique make up. Of what is your Father wound made?
Fear?
Rejection?
Condemnation?
Criticism?
Expectations?
Avoidance?
Abandonment?
Cruelty?
Rage?
Co-Dependency (the need to seek his approval)?
Impatience?
Frustration?
Inaccessibility?
Disappointment?
Threats of violence?
Violence?
Abuse?
Jealousy?
Molestation?
Inappropriate or lack of boundaries?
Feeling unsafe?
Every individual carries their own unique experience of the Father wound which might be related to one, several, or all of the above. The first step in healing the Father wound is identifying of what that wound is made.
The second step is to enter into a transformational practice for healing and releasing that wound. Two practices I have found to be especially helpful in transforming parental wounds are Tonglen and the Ho’oponopono prayer.
Tonglen
is a Tibetan Buddhist mindfulness practice founded on the understanding that in order to heal our wounds, we need to move toward them. Instead of resisting, ignoring, or running away from our wounds, we allow ourselves to feel them. In allowing the feeling, we can transform the wound and release it from our bodies and our consciousness.
To heal the Father wound using Tonglen:
Identify the wound along with its feeling (what does rejection feel like?).
Allow yourself to feel the wound.
Identify where in your body you are feeling it.
While feeling the wound, breathe into the place in your body where you are feeling it.
Breathe out love. Give a visual image to that love if you find that helpful (bubbles, flowers, hearts).
Breathe into the wound while feeling it.
Breathe out love.
Continue with the breathing into the wound and breathing out love until you feel a shift. Perhaps you are feeling more peaceful, or the practice brings forth tears.
After the shift, you have completed the practice.
Return to the practice when you feel that wound triggered again, or set aside a daily practice to continue healing that experience of the Father wound.
Ho’oponopono
Ho’oponopono is a traditional Hawaiian prayer/ritual which is used to heal wounds within us that we may have experienced at another’s hand. The practice is simple and yet profoundly powerful. I have witnessed true miracles in the use of this practice.
Identify the wound.
Give it an image,
Become aware of where this wound is held in your body (where do you feel abandonment?)
Repeat the Ho’oponopono formula over and over and over to the place in your body where you feel that wound.
This is the formula:
I’m sorry.
Please forgive me.
I love you.
Thank you.
The key to Ho’oponopono is that you are saying the formula TO YOURSELF not to the one who caused the wound. You say it to yourself, and to the part of you that experienced the wound.
Both Tonglen and Ho’oponopono are powerful tools for healing our parental wounds. Admittedly, these practices may not be enough for many to fully heal from these wounds. It is for this reason that I also encourage additional support through a trained spiritual director (which I am) and/or a professional therapist, or better yet, a combination of the two. If you are finding yourself hindered by a parental wound, and are seeking for additional support, please see my information below.
Lauri provides sessions locally in Oshkosh, Wisconsin and remotely via ZOOM.
Lauri Ann Lumby, OM, OPM, OSF, MATS
is a trained Spiritual Director with a master’s degree in Transpersonal Psychology. She integrates sound psychological knowledge with proven spiritual and transformational practices to support you in being free of that which might otherwise hinder your longing for peace, contentment, meaning and fulfillment in your life.
To learn more or schedule an appointment, email lauri@lauriannlumby.com.
We live in a world of distractions. Sooooooo many things vying for our time and attention. Work. Family. Friends. Money. Possessions. The News. World Events. Social Media. Church. Responsibilities and conditioned obligations pulling at us and our heartstrings.
With every new distraction, responsibility, and perceived obligation, our anxiety rises, and our worries increase. Our energies, it seems, getting pulled in every direction except in the direction of that which gives us peace.
With so many distractions, do we even know what gives us peace?
Likely not. And yet, while the distractions are vying for our attention, our truest and deepest yearning is whispering from within the center of our being. It is the yearning for peace.
Peace is our natural and original state.
Peace is not what the world wants us to know. The world in which we are currently living wants our anxiety and our stress. It wants us to feel anxious and afraid. It wants us to be deprived of our peace so that we remained imprisoned by the fears that keep us working for that world. It further keeps us imprisoned with its false promises of wealth, status, fame, and success as that world has defined it. We have become the prisoners of and slaves to that world and we are imprisoned further by the time and attention we give to the distractions, perceived responsibilities, and conditioned obligations of that world.
“Should” is one of the fiercest weapons used by that world.
We should work hard to make money. We should spend time with family. We should want a bigger house, nicer car, designer clothes, etc. We should “dress for success.” We should look professional. We should be nice. We should go to church. We should attend that event. We should be networking. We should put up with workplace abuse. We should respect our elders. We should give our authority away. We should….we should…..we should……
It’s exhausting. And completely unnecessary. Our original nature is peace, and we were meant to experience that peace in our lived human experience. Yes, there are the natural constrictions that provide opportunities for learning and growth in our lives, but we were not meant to live in total and complete unrest, every minute of every day. Neither were we made to relentlessly seek outside of us for that which we cannot name – namely the peace and joy for which our hearts yearn.
The peace we are seeking cannot be found outside of us. It can only be found within.
We are the peace we are seeking. That peace dwells within us. That peace is infinite and ever-present. We just need to pull our attention away from the distractions long enough to discover that what we have been seeking, has been within us all along. In discovering and nurturing that peace, we become the sanctuary promised by the ancients. We discover that we are enlightenment. We are the promised land. We are the peaceable kingdom. We are the kingdom of God. We are nirvana. We are Presence. We are peace.
Who are you choosing to be? Stress and anxiety or Peace?
Lauri Ann Lumby
Provides resources and tools to assist you in finding and anchoring the peace that you seek and in becoming your own sanctuary. She does this through one-on-one mentoring, Reiki, online courses, her writings and books.
This morning while in meditation I was given a life-review. Many of these have shown themselves as part of my spiritual practice – some simply for the sake of remembering; others for the sake of seeing, healing, and releasing. This morning’s review might prove to be a little of both, but it’s too soon to tell. Right now, I’m just tired. Most recently I’m physically exhausted from being an empath and processing a world at war.
But beyond this, my soul is tired. I’m weary. Soul weary.
As an introvert and an empath, this world is sometimes (increasingly so it seems) just TOO MUCH. Too much noise. Too much activity. Too much stress. Too much chaos. Too much hatred. Too much violence. I’m a strong, courageous, and resilient woman but after a lifetime of TOO MUCH I’m tired. My bones are tired. My blood is tired. My skin hurts. My mind is exhausted. My soul is weary.
I know I’m not alone in this. I hear from friends and family members every day who are deeply soul weary. It seems this soul-weariness has come to a point for many where we no longer have the strength or interest to move through one more layer of wet concrete to get to what? Some level of success as defined by a system based in fear, oppression, and control? “Just do it,” Just doesn’t anymore. And there’s nothing to “get over” and “move on” from when we live in a disordered world.
Our world is sick, and it has made us all sick.
As I write these words, I find I’m too exhausted to even list all the ways in which our world has made us sick. If you don’t see the sickness, either you are in denial or you are part of the problem. Those who are suffering because of our world know the reasons all too well. In short, the systems that have been created and out of which we are expected to live are not sustainable for ourselves or our planet.
What comes to my mind is the canary in the coalmine. Perhaps we who have become sickened to the point of being soul-weary are the canaries in the coalmine of our world. As every good coalminer knows, if the canaries are becoming ill, it’s time to run, get the hell out of that mine because soon you will become sick and dying too. The canaries alert the miners to a lack of oxygen or poisonous gas. We are that alert.
Those of us who are soul weary are here to tell the world STOP what you’re doing because if you continue in this direction, soon we are all going to die.
The Universal Christ Live/online course, pierces through 2000 years of patriarchal privilege, political scheming, fear-based teachings, and control-driven dogma to uncover the real Jesus beyond the myth.
Jesus, who became Christ, was a Jewish mystic who spoke a message of union and love to a humanity who had lost its way. Today we stand as a humanity still lost, perhaps more in need of the original Jesus than the people to whom he originally spoke.
Join Lauri Ann Lumby in this 13-week journey of discovering the original Jesus while reclaiming the universal message of union and love that he taught and that we are so in need of in our world today.
From the moment that Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, I have been both deep in prayer and physically writhing from the effects of being an empath. I cannot help but feel the world in rapt and anxious attention to the conflict along with the grief, fear, and enormous courage of the Ukrainian citizens. Still in the throes of the excruciating pain of an empathic full-body migraine, I feel at the center of it all –
ENORMOUS HOPE.
As a species, we find ourselves at a potential turning point – one, through which, we might finally break free from the clutches of tyranny. An innocent nation is being attacked and the court of popular opinion leans on the side of Ukraine. Russians themselves decry the actions of their president and those who support him and are rising in protest. Members of the Russian military are beginning to question the orders they’ve been given along with the reasons why. In a recent phone call with a family member in Ukraine, a friend learned that many Russian soldiers are discussing the possibility of simply laying down their arms.
Russian soldiers laying down their arms? Imagine that!
Imagine that! Imagine the precedent this would set for the people of our world! In a world where recent wars have been created by men in power for the sake of other men in power. In world where economies and the bank accounts of the wealthiest in our world have become dependent on war. In a world where the innocent have no voice and the soldiers are simply doing what they are told. What would happen if those sent to fight another’s war simply lay down their arms and joined hands with those they’ve been told are their enemy? What would happen?
We would suddenly find ourselves living in a whole new world.
Mystic:
Lauri Ann Lumby was born with a deeply introverted (yet social) and contemplative spirit. She is gifted with seeing the truth beyond the illusion and because of this gift, has been called a mystic, a visionary, and a prophet. Lauri is also a catalyst, meaning that those things that are stuck or which need to come to an end begin to move, simply because of her presence. This reality has earned her the designation of “Priestess of Death” – a title she willingly embraces knowing that in every ending is the promise of new life.
Once upon a time, Lauri Ann Lumby was an enamored, mostly devout Catholic girl. I attended Catholic school for most of my 12 years of schooling, proudly wore my plaid uniform skirt with starched white blouse and embraced all that post-Vatican II Catholicism had to offer (it really was an exciting time in the Church!). I continued attending weekly mass during college and into adulthood. I heard my calling to active ministry somewhere around the age of 27, completed 7 years of training as a pastoral minister and spiritual director and worked in the Church for 10 full years.
Then it all went bad. The short version is that I dared to take Jesus’ teachings and commands seriously and stepped more and more fully into “doing what Jesus did.” The Church didn’t like that, and neither did the self-appointed inquisition who made it their job to make sure I was obedient to “only that which was handed down by the magisterium,” which I found hilarious because the history of the Catholic Church has always been practice before legislation.
Most likely the real issue was not the work I was doing, but the fact I am a woman and I dared to do what Jesus did – namely, be a source of healing for those who sought it.
That’s the short of my boring story….but what’s yours? I bet I can guess some of the primary reasons why you no longer go to Church and maybe have no interest in returning:
The Church’s hypocrisy – teaching one thing but living another. (#priestsexabusescandal)
You’ve been divorced, use birth control, or found yourself having to make the choice to terminate an unplanned pregnancy.
You’re LGTBQ.
You no longer, or never, resonated with the idea of a hellfire and brimstone God or the idea of hell in the first place.
Many of the Church teachings don’t make sense to you.
You have a sense that Jesus may have been a cool dude, but don’t resonate with the Church’s portrayal of him, or don’t believe Jesus is the ONLY WAY to “salvation.”
You’re not sure “salvation” is even anything to strive after.
You are a woman and wonder if you even have a place in a patriarchal/hierarchical/clerical institution.
You take issue with clericalism.
Ringing any bells? This is just a handful of the infinite number reasons I have heard from others for why they left the Church and have no plan of returning. Good for them. I agree with them. It is for this very reason that Authentic Freedom Academy and the Temple of the Magdalene came about in the first place. And here’s why:
I personally have no problem with Jesus. When we look beyond Church dogma and man’s interpretation of Jesus’ message, we only find a message of compassion and love. I think this is a good and timely message – one the world really needs!
I also accept the truth present within every other world spiritual tradition. I have found in my own exploration that every tradition holds a piece of the truth – why not embrace them all?
I have to say the same about scripture. Scripture and sacred writings of all sorts hold kernels of the truth – we just have to find them. Dogma and doctrine get in the way. Let’s study the texts with naked eyes and an open heart.
In my experience working in the Church, the greatest thing I found missing were tools for authentic psycho-spiritual development. These tools are readily available in the Church, but the Church refuses to share them. I have studied, applied, practiced, and now share these tools with those who attend my classes and partake in the services I provide.
I also found the Church lacking in authentic empowerment. The Church begs for people to serve the betterment of the world but provides no formation that would support people in doing this. I provide that formation.
There is a place for women! Not only is there a place, Jesus’ closest disciple, the one to whom he revealed the resurrection and who he ordained to continue his mission was a woman herself – Mary, called Magdalene.
All are welcome!!!!!!!!! Authentic Freedom Academy and the Temple of the Magdalene welcome all people from all walks of life, orientation, beliefs, etc. The space we have created is big enough for all of it.
Salvation? Jesus never spoke of salvation being in a heaven light years away. Instead, he showed his disciples how to find peace, contentment, and joy in the midst of the human experience. This is what I teach, along with the tools for experiencing this.
Love. Only Love. Compassion and Love. That is all.
Authentic Freedom™ is Lauri Ann Lumby’s trademarked protocol for transforming the fears that keep you from knowing your true self and living that out freely. Authentic Freedom™ integrates specific tools and practices of Western Psychology with those of Western Spirituality, resulting in a powerful process through which YOU are supported in becoming self-actualized.
Self-actualized individuals know:
Who they are.
What their unique gifts are.
How they are called to use those gifts for the sake of their own fulfillment and in service to the betterment of the world.
Our online community is made up exclusively of women and men who have completed the Magdalene and/or Melchizedek Trainings, patrons of Authentic Freedom Academy and those who have joined through personal invite. Learn more and become a member HERE.
Yesterday I was reminded of the broad scope and reach of the work I do through Authentic Freedom Academy and the Temple of the Magdalene. This work is my service to the world born out of my own unique gifts and the calling I’ve been given to share these gifts in the world.
In yesterday’s encounters, I was reminded that most of the work I do is freely given and simply cannot be measured in financial terms. Additionally, I was reminded of the deep shadow/exorcism work I do for and on behalf of the world that cannot be monetized. Finally, I was reminded of all the people who come to me for spiritual counseling, emotional triage, personal guidance, and educational support who cannot pay due to the circumstances of their life or the state of their health. I offer these services to them either free of charge or at a greatly discounted price because it’s the right thing to do. I will never turn away those who are sincere and earnest in doing the inner work I prescribe for them – especially when they are struggling financially and are most in need of this support.
While I’m not a non-profit organization, I function as such. It is for this reason that I am reaching out to you with an invitation to sponsorship. Your sponsorship of $100.00, $50.00, or even $25.00 monthly helps to defray the overhead costs of providing these services – including rent, utilities, the cost of maintaining an online education platform and offering live/online courses and services – all on a “pay what you are able” basis. Any level of sponsorship that you can provide is greatly appreciated.
If you are interested in becoming a sponsor, simply click on the Paypal link below and select your sponsorship amount. Payments will be automatically deducted from your chosen account once per month until you decide otherwise. As a sponsor, I will enroll you in our community member portal where you can enjoy both past and new community offerings. There is no obligation to participate, it is simply my way of saying thank you.
Thank you for considering sponsorship of Authentic Freedom Academy and the Temple of the Magdalene. Your sponsorship is greatly appreciated, especially by those who will benefit from your generosity.
Our Pricing Policy: PAY WHAT YOU ARE ABLE. If you are feeling a strong pull toward my classes or services but are struggling financially, please reach out to me directly and together we will work out a financial arrangement that works for you. Payment plans, deferred payments, discounted fees and even full scholarships are possible depending on your unique situation.
Lauri Ann Lumby 