EXPLORING CONSCIOUSNESS
An Interview With Michele Mayama and Chris Lafontaine
by Lynn S. La Froth
Lightsmith Weaves Light Into Matter
JOSEPH CAMPBELL (1904-1987) said that our journey on this planet was about transforming our consciousness; his work brought to light the value of myth and metaphor. He claimed that our culture suffers from the lack of a meaningful mythology -- myth, in his terms, being the connecting playground between humankind and the Divine.
Lightsmith -- Michele Mayama and Chris LaFontaine -- are a cocreative team whose work offers our world what Campbell says we lack. They have evolved an organic structure of healing wherein myth, metaphor, and consciousness is accessed to help us transform our lives so that we can find meaning and depth--so lacking in today's mechanistic society.
Mayama has worked for over 20 years helping people heal energetically and spiritually. As a gifted intuitive, she facilitates people to release their past traumas, old mental structures -- beliefs and perceptions -- and wounds from abuse or upbringing. She calls her work transformational healing.
"I'm able to enter consciousness in a direct way. I listen and, with love, go into The Mystery with every client. Their soul opens to me, revealing what has been overlooked or not clearly seen," said Mayama. "I can see how an individual has made adaptations from the reality of who they really are, and help them to process and shift those structures that keep them limited." She said that a person's soul is usually ready and prepared for the shift and needs only a little assistance to complete the work.
LaFontaine, her partner who assists with many of the technical aspects of her group work, said, "Michele's work is unique in that her focus is in the causal level of consciousness, and does not source from other modalities. She can move very efficiently to a level where healing is needed, and quickly get at the structures that need to change. Things are moving very fast now and the timing of this transformation requires that new ways of assisting the healing process come into being."
The Earth Mother -- the Divine Feminine -- plays a large part in Mayama's work. She describes her work as "very yin, very feminine." She said, "In 1995, the Earth Mother who is a 'conscious being', began to express through me. I learned a lot through her about bodies and life, and about how our connection or disconnection with her affects the vitality of organs and tissues and our ability to manifest. I began to be aware that our bodies and Earth have a very different perspective than our minds and we often don't listen to or hear them. There is so much information woven into everything -- and everything is conscious. If something is given form, there is a consciousness that creates and informs it. This includes organizations and businesses where it is possible to perceive and shift the consciousness of a group."
LaFontaine said, "to sit in the presence of the Feminine and let the miracle happen with someone who can facilitate in that mode must be experienced, it cannot be sufficiently expressed in words alone."
This reminds me of Campbell's work where he talks about our transformation coming not from the mind but rather from the body. He recounts how most indigenous cultures experience life with the belief that the earth is our mother and from the earth we are born. LaFontaine said, "This transformation of consciousness is something that's happening through the mind -- the mind is transforming, but the larger story is what's happening in the body. People are used to learning more stuff, and studying, and acquiring more information; the mind loves information. The mind does indeed get supported to change, but none of that is transformation. For example, I can teach you principles about how to ride a bike, but until you actually ride one you won't get it. You gain wisdom through the experience, and something deeper and more complex occurs. It's an immersion into something experiential; it's not about having more information."
Mayama's background played a part
"When I was six, my maternal grandfather, who I was very connected to, died quite suddenly. Soon after, I contracted a virus of unknown origin and began leaving my body and heading for him. I thought I was going to take his hand just like when we walked up-town, but he wouldn't take my hand," said Mayama describing her out-of-body, dreamlike, near-death experience. "When I woke up, I felt angry and strangely separate. I remember standing at the edge of the playground, feeling different at school -- not able to fully participate. Apparently, after my spirit journey, I didn't fully return because I continued to feel hooked up to Spirit. As a result, from the age of six or seven until high school I could talk to my saints and angels and sometimes they talked back to me. Since I grew up Catholic, and everyone had patron saints and angels, I assumed this happened to everyone."
Mayama explained family connections weren't strong, she had few friends, and so the angels filled in for friends and family. In her early teen years, she then experienced a series of profound visions. In one vision she was given the information that all of the threads of light that she was seeing were individual souls. She could see how the past was woven through each strand of conscious light and understood that souls never die but continuously weave consciousness, pulsing with aliveness and vibrancy.
At age 28 she was diagnosed with cancer and then, after praying for healing, synchronistically met a gifted intuitive channel who helped her recognize her own abilities. She started to evolve and strengthen her gifts and talents by working with individuals and groups. At this time, she has a private practice and teaches classes wherein she assists people and groups to "shift frequency," another way of saying she works to heal adaptations and wounds and helps us move into higher levels of consciousness.
New structure of consciousness being created
Mayama uses the word "matrix" in relation to consciousness. "I have been trained to see structures within consciousness and how they then manifest themselves in experience. I see the patterns as well as the essential foundation of reality or its matrix. The foundation of the consciousness that has outpictured itself in the current experience reality is duality. Duality splits everything into two, it separates and divides, self and other, and has a strong tendency to polarize which plays out in competition and wars," she said. "What's happening right now in consciousness is that there is a whole new foundation, or matrix, for creation being formed that is gradually gaining strength and fusing within our consciousness. The new structure is holographic, the structure itself is a wholeness wherein all the different parts come together and form something brand new. Some of our children today are being born directly into this new consciousness. Those of us who know we no longer want to give our lives and energy to the old dueling conflicts are choosing this new matrix. Then we enter a learning curve about how to be in it.
In order to 'log-in' to the new hologram, we must release or shift all those structures of consciousness that were created in duality. We were born into family patterns that were part of the dualistic matrix and we are the generation that agreed to process, transform, and release these structures. Many of us were wounded as children or felt alone as part of this agreement. Since survival needs were also woven into duality, fear surfaces as we get closer to letting go because that old matrix can feel both familiar and secure, even if painful. The new by nature is unfamiliar. But once reconnected to the Earth as Mother, most people begin to sense the love, vibrancy, and life in the new matrix and can then make a new choice. Bodies like this new matrix because they get to be whole and alive, and they can heal from the years of manifesting our remembrance of conflict, wounding, fear, and pain while in duality.
LaFontaine and Mayama are bringing forth in those they work with the new structure of consciousness that futurist and visionary Barbara Marx Hubbard has identified in her work on Conscious Evolution. She maintains that in order for humankind to survive in the years ahead we need to shift from the old structure of outer domination and control to dominion of the inner authentic self. From that shift of power from outer to inner, we can relate to others in a way to ensure our survival through cocreativity and collaborative initiatives. Mayama said, "People need to express and ground who they really are and who they are becoming, and then hook up with others who are doing the same to cocreate and collaborate and create structures of living light. We need to merge light into matter to create this new world and grow the new structures and ways to be here." Mayama, like Hubbard, visions that the new systems will be living, organic, ever-evolving and be like Nature wherein they are seeded, grow, mature, experience harvest, and then disintegrate when the need is no longer there. "We are moving into a very different configuration and if people can learn to listen to their own intuition and be receptive in the moment -- being more yin in outlook -- they'll be able to ease into this," she said. "The more yang aspect wants to nail things down and make everyone do it this way or that -- which can get rigid or crystallized. The yang aspect has its part, but only when it knows from within what and when to make it so!'"
LaFontaine further explained, "What's happening now is a movement of consciousness from lateral authority structures of competition and hierarchy -- looking outward for answers -- to vertical systems where people turn to their own higher selves, bring their authority down from above, their power upward from earth into their bodies, and then emanate from their cores outward. Michele has grown the abilities to teach about and facilitate the transformation from the old system to the new, both individually and collectively."
Willingness is necessary
"One of the things I've noticed in those who make shifts is their willingness to do it. A person must be willing to transform or change even if you don't understand what's happening, and then be willing to take responsibility for your experience. Once you understand the causal level of your own experience, then you can change it. Structures and patterns shift and you begin to have a new experience of yourself. Do not be afraid of change," said Mayama. "When we hold on to a certain way of being or an identity, and then the soul's natural growth process is activated, a growing unease rises in us. We have the choice to resist or to move with it. Some crisis is eventually created that cracks the egg; and sometimes trauma is involved. When a structure is outgrown it becomes necessary to move on; it's not a breakdown but a breakthrough. Life changes at that point."
Mayama points out that because change is happening so fast and so furious in our culture, the tendency is to become afraid and hang on and hold tight. She advises: Let go. "If it belongs to you, it'll still be there and won't leave. If it doesn't belong to you, even if it has come with many blessings, let it go. Something new will take its place."
For more information about LightSmith, Michele Mayama and Chris LaFontaine, visit http://www.LightSmith.com.
Source: http://www.tcwellness.com/article.php?id=689Click here to go to Part Two
