Aurora Gatherings

Reliving and Releasing a Deep Trauma  
It seems that certain episodes in our lives come about so as to heal much more traumatic events that occurred in earlier lives that remained unresolved when we died. The energy of the trauma lies dormant and trapped, waiting to be released consciously in a safer, more harmonious way.
The following story is part of an on going process of reliving and releasing the Noah experience which was deeply traumatic for many of those who retain deep memories of it. A version of this experience of the Light being surrounded by the Dark and escaping in an Ark was recorded in the story of a man called Noah in the bible. Perhaps this story may resonate with you in some way and help you release some of your deep trauma that may be hidden in your own stories.

Lambing February 2018.  
Charlie Crisp is the main shepherd of the Hillhouse Farm flock.   He had been experiencing serious stomach pains on and off for many months. 14 days before lambing he went into hospital with suspected appendicitis.  While he was waiting for a diagnosis his appendix burst, so he was taken straight into theatre.  Under the influence of morphine he convinced himself that he would be back on his feet again within a day or so. He simply did not believe he would be out of action for the next four to five weeks, which meant the entire lambing season.   

Louisa and Geoff were facing doing all the lambing on their own, which neither had done before as regards the birthing.  The retreat needed much attention too to get it up and running for the new season. At the same time an unusual winter storm from Siberia “The Beast of the East” created by most unusual polar winds. The Beast brought lots of Siberian powder snow and severe sub-zero Easterly winds.
Charlie was due to leave his flat at the end of the week he went into hospital, fully re-decorated. No packing or cleaning had yet taken place.
This was a concoction of events we would never have consciously chosen. How could we possibly get everything done? In past years we would have panicked.  However a peaceful calm came over us as we set about the tasks that were ahead of us. We prepared the barns for lambing, and tried to keep the sheep in hay and water in the fields as the outside temperatures plummeted.  We began work on the retreat and empty out and re-decorate Charlie’s flat. We felt confident that we could ask for help and we would get it.

During the ewes next morning feed, just as Charlie was having his operation, Louisa spoke to all the lambs in the wombs of the ewes and explained the situation. She told them we could not manage the actual birthing ourselves, and Charlie was ill, so could they all please turn around and place their front paws and noses towards the birth canal, to make their birthings as easy as possible. We also asked if they could they arrange to come out at a pace and time that we could manage and we would do our best. 

Meanwhile, due to the intensely cold weather, the water troughs kept freezing over and the sheep became very hungry and thirsty. So eventually we had to bring the whole flock into the barns two days earlier than usual to protect them from the Siberian winds and dry powdery snow that blew up into wind carved sculptures.

The first of 83 births came early effortlessly. We had 11 lambs born before any reached their due date! All of them had listened to our instructions and came out head first. Louisa had been prompted to buy a new type of lick. We discovered later that this greatly lubricated the birth canal as the ewes gave birth and made the process a lot easier!

We were working long hours, starting the day around 6am and not finishing until between midnight and 2.30 am. Somehow the universe used the situation to teach us so many things. Our intuition was being refined so much that we found we were keeping on top of the work load in an unprecedented way.

Listening To Our Intuition Bears Fruit
There was an instance where Louisa woke up at 6am having dreamt that a brown ewe was giving birth to a black lamb followed by a white one. She had not been intending to get up for about 15 minutes but suddenly realized her intuition was telling her that she must. She shot out of bed and got into the barn just as the black lamb was being born. Geoff was hard on her heals and she called to him, “Lets get her in a pen, there’s a white one about to be born.” Sure enough the white one followed…. If she had not listened to her intuition the lambs might well have been trampled as there were so many ewes crammed in the barn.

One morning we came down to find three new white lambs loose in the barn and no apparent mum. However one old big ewe was licking one of the lambs so we thought she must have had her lambs two weeks early and that she must be the mum. We put them all in a pen together and then realized the real mum was baa-ing outside the pen with blood dripping from her behind. She was a first time mum and had not known how to look after her lambs. The older ewe had stepped in and done the job until we got there! We quickly swapped the ewes over. The old ewe was a bit upset but we told her how clever she was and thanked her profusely. The triplets would probably have died without her intervention. We knew we had all been very looked after.

We learned new ways of working with the sheep because we did not wish to use brute force. We gently guided each ewe into her birthing pen, just as she was about to give birth. Between us we simply blocked her from going where she wanted if she headed away from her birthing pen and then supported her movements towards her pen. This was a very difficult process as it was very crowded in the main barn because we had never intended having all our flock in the barn at once. The ewes had to trust us and we had to trust them.

One first time ewe was rushing about the barn as she went into labour. She was clearly in pain and didn’t know what was happening to her. A lamb started to dangle out of her back end and dropped out as she turned a corner. The lamb would have died in seconds had Louisa not been there, because it was inside the birthing sack and could not breathe. The mum had simply no idea she had given birth. We managed to slow her down and catch her and introduce her to her lamb which she eventually began to lick. She then had another lamb in the safety of her pen. The timing of our visits to the barn were so guided. One or other of us seemed to be in the right place at the right time, throughout the lambing process.

One night, at 1.30am a ewe had given birth to two lambs and was just learning to feed them on one side of the barn. Louisa was tending to another ewe who had just given birth on the other side of the barn. What made Louisa get up and cross the  barn when she did we can only put down to her listening to universal prompting because as she did so the first ewe gave birth to a third lamb. As Louisa reached the pen it was dropping into the water bucket and would have drowned in seconds, if she hadn’t caught it.

There were countless times when we knew we were being given so much help. Somehow we were coping with a constant life and death situation and we were succeeding. Ewes were being taught to feed their lambs, lambs were learning that they could feed. Sometimes it took endless patience and sometimes it just happened. But they were all surviving!! They were somehow kept warm enough and dry enough despite the bitterly cold weather. And somehow we were surviving it too.

Charlie had to learn to let go more and more as since whenever he tried to help us it caused him great pain. His whole body was needing to sleep and rest and he was realising he had to obey his body if he wanted to get better. He guided us from his bed but was unable to do much.

However, on the last day he was well enough to help with the last 3 birthings. Louisa was lying in bed at 6am and somehow intuitively knew she did not have to get up. This was odd and a first. But she obeyed and had half an hour lie in. When she finally got up she found to her surprise that Charlie was already in the barn. This was the first time he had got up so early in a month. He said he had known intuitively that he had to get up!! And strangely, the last three ewes were giving birth and the lambs were all tangled up inside their mums and could not have been born naturally. He dug inside and untangled them and all were alive and kicking happily before long. Just how the universe worked all this out for us we don’t know, but we were so grateful.

Bottle feeding became a massive opportunity to learn from the lambs. The decision to take a lamb away from its mother is not an easy one, it is a life and death decision. Will the lambs and mother suffer more or less if one is taken away from her? A newborn lamb needs to feed every two hours otherwise it loses the strength even to feed again and will die. No pressure there then. We discovered that feeding from the bottle is totally different for the lamb than feeding from its mother. It needs to learn to use new muscles to suck. They also may not like the taste of the strange rubber teat. The more we tried or got anxious the more nervous the lamb became and would turn its head away and simply refuse to feed.

Now when you are as tired as we were, with umpteen things to do, this was not an easy situation to overcome. We discovered the power of imaging we had all the time in the world to explore what sensations relaxed this particular lamb. We soon discovered that what worked for one lamb did not work for another. We had to learn all over again how to feed each particular lamb. Geoff got the knack after a day or two and Louisa took a week to get it! But we both got it in the end and it changed our whole experience for the better. Suddenly we stopped dreading the process of bottle feeding and the lambs got a much better deal too.

While all this was going on, progress was also being made on preparing the Retreat for the new season.  A ceiling had to be re-plastered, a major blocked drain down at the lodge was dug out and relaid. The whole retreat needed cleaning from top to bottom after the long winter.
After the first long spell of bitterly cold weather we discovered  7 or 8 leaks in the retreat. Subsequently, two or three rooms needed redecorating, again.

Keeping track of 150 lambs and ewes, and keeping them and ourselves fed through the storms was totally absorbing, let alone coping with the retreat affairs and Charlie’s illness and move.

Parallels With The Noah Story
Yet throughout these events we were also beginning to realise that we were reliving the traumatic events of the story of Noah and re-writing them by replacing the terror and fear the first time round with trust that we would be helped whenever we asked.
 
We vividly relived the scenes in our minds eye of the noise, the stench and desperation present in the cramped ark which were overwhelming and therefore we were very mindful ( at times almost fanatic) about keeping all the sheep clean, fed, watered and warm enough in the barns with just the right amount of fresh air to prevent disease from getting a grip.  We knew that as long as we did our best we need not feel responsible for the lives of the frail lambs as they gained strength. Instead, we trusted that all would be well. In the Ark, the first time around, we felt individually responsible and to blame for each injury or loss of life, for each look of despair and bewilderment. We did not trust. We judged ourselves and our actions. What had we done, loading so many animals into such a confined space? They don’t deserve this!  We had followed our intuition and loaded the Ark, but it had created such squalor and suffering.  How could this be right?

Every step of the lambing process seemed to mirror what had happened on the ark so long ago. Every emotion that came up for us in our massively trying lambing experience was traced back to the ark and healed. If we had stayed relaxed and trusted on the ark, how much better we would all have coped. Instead we lost the view of the bigger picture.  We lost ourselves in fear and the animals and ourselves suffered greatly. Through this lambing experience the Ark story was reversing, each element was being brought up and healed. Mr and Mrs Noah were being given an opportunity to ask forgiveness for anything that was recalled from ark times and were able to put it right through this new experience. Charlie was given the opportunity to recall how he had refused to come on the ark all those years ago and was left behind to drown and how he was fully on board with us this time, despite his illness. We all reversed history and as lambing came to a close, fully realised the gift we had been given. If Charlie had not been ill, if the weather had not been so inclement, if it had not been necessary to reverse the ark experience – all this hardship would never have happened.

Beautiful as this is, even more beautiful is the fact that not one lamb died throughout the lambing process. This had never happened before. We had been given absolute proof that our trusting that we could ask for help would be answered.

We had done our “bit” to clear the traumatic ancient Ark event when those who were overtaken by fear and a profound sense of separation threatened to overwhelm the remainder who tried to keep connected to a sense of oneness so aptly captured in the story of Noah.

Now, there may well be others re-living similar experiences in this life consciously releasing other aspects of this hugely traumatic event in humanity’s past, we don’t know who they are, nor do we need know.

At the level of the soul all healing is done for everyone anyway, because at the level of the soul, there is no separation.

Louisa Crisp & Geoff Napier