098: We are the Witches You Tried to Burn with Sahara Rose

Namaste, it's Sahara Rose. And welcome back to the Highest Self podcast, a place where we discuss what makes you your soul's highest evolvement. I was just in a bath, it's a Friday, and I decided to kapha myself up a little bit and I started running a bath. I put in some Epsom salts, I put in some dried flowers, which is something that I don't really do for myself that often, to be honest, because my life is crazy busy and I'm always on the go. But I've recently really been feeling this wave to just rest and recharge and nourish and get deep into my kapha space as I plant the seeds for this next book idea, this book that I'm currently writing right now, which I'm not going to tell you what it's about yet, but it's something that is really, really exciting and requires a lot of energy for me to chann through. So I've been really making an extra effort to rest and to get deeper into my kapha side, because even though I have a lot of kapha in my prakriti, my natural born constitution, it's the dosha that I'm least right now, especially in the mind, because I'm always doing, doing, doing, which really puts me in my pitta, and then also creating, which puts me in my vata. So oftentimes the rest and the nourishment gets the back burner. But moments like this, I'm reminded why it's so important because I get these ideas in that space of deep rest. And I was always sitting in the bath and I was seeing the dried flowers just move around me. And I started to do this, like, ritual that I was, like, lifting up the water into my hands and like, pouring it on my body and, you know, saying like, please, may I be blessed. And then I was like, pouring it over my shoulders and saying, let go of anything that is no longer serving me to be my highest self. And I was opening up the flowers and, like, doing all of these, like, rituals that, that I've never done before. And this thought came to me, we are the witches that you try to burn. And immediately I flashed back into this point in my childhood. I think I was around 10 or 11 years old, and I was in Florida, Sandpiper, Florida, at a Club Med with my family and some family friends. And on the beach, I found this dried coconut shell. And I guys, we have to do the coconut ritual. They're like, huh, what's that? I'm like, the coconut ritual. And I led my brother and these two other kids, my family friends, through this coconut ritual that ended up lasting for hours. And they actually got into it because I was just so passionate about it. And we were doing, we were circling the coconut shells and we were bringing these offerings to them. And we were like filling them up with water and putting them back into the ocean and like creating these, all of these like monuments for them. And I was like, what does the coconut mean to you? And having them all go around and say things. And I was like literally, literally leading a full on ceremony. And for a while we would like joke around and be like, oh my God, let's do the coconut ritual again. And it never came in my mind that this is a weird or not normal thing until probably two years later. And two years later I was in school, I think it was like fifth grade or something. And I was very into witchcraft and I didn't know deeply what witchcraft was, but I really resonated with it. And I grew up in Massachusetts and Salem was only like 14 years old, 45 minutes away from where I lived. And Salem is where all of the witch trials took place in the 1600s, 1700s, and it's where the whole witch hunt happened in the US and they still keep it as a very kind of spooky city with a lot of witch museums and a lot of Halloween festivities and haunted houses and metaphysical stores and that sort of thing. But a lot more in sort of the dark spooky side than like the crystal high vibe side. But I loved it. And I used to get these Wiccan books and me and three of my friends, we would be the witches of the north, south, east, west. And you know, during recess we would go like behind into the woods and we would like create with chalk this like cross and like sit in different directions and call upon the north, south, east, west to bring through their properties. And we would, you know, see these spirits everywhere. And I remember we were playing outside and there was like ice on the ground. And we were like, oh my God, there's a little boy stuck under the ice. And we were like every day trying to shatter the ice to bring out. And I remember seeing this boy, this soul under the ice and we needed to get him out. So we were into these sort of things and do spells on the weekends. And I would wear all black all the time and a lot of pagan symbols. And I remember I was walking on top of a hill and this boy looks at me and says, burn the witch at the Stake. And all the kids said, yeah, burn the witch. And they start clapping. And the boy had a cast on his foot because he had broke his foot. And it was like one of those casts that you can walk on. And he pushes me down the hill, and then he rolls over me, and we're rolling down this hill, and his cast hits my head, and I get really hurt. And they were all just laughing that, you know, I was hurt and dizzy and had to go to the nurse. And it was really traumatic. Really, really traumatic. And I realized that being a witch is not accepted. And I think at that moment, I sort of put away all of the spells. I started to become a lot more quiet about it. I realized that it wasn't safe for me to express myself in this spiritual way. And, you know, middle school starts, high school starts. The way witchcraft is taught is very much as, like, these crazy girls that were possessed by something they believed was the devil and how erratic it was, and it didn't have a good light. And even today, if you ask someone what a witch is, it obviously has a negative connotation. So I stopped identifying with my witch self, but my witch self did not stop identifying with me. We all have this witch side. To us, a witch is not an evil or dark person. A witch is someone that works with magic. A witch is someone that practices rituals and uses tools from the earth, like herbs and flowers, to create things. They are deeply spiritual beings. And just like everything, there is a light and a shadow side. You know, if you're giving an offering to a God, that is witchcraft. If you are giving flowers to someone for their healing, that is witchcraft. But we get so politicized when we use that word because of the negative connotation that the church has implanted in our minds. So during these years of the witch trials, which originated in Europe in the Middle Ages, there are estimated to be about 2 million people who were killed on the grounds of, quote, unquote, being a witch or practicing witchcraft. And it wasn't just women. If there was a man that was using herbal medicine, he was killed. If there was a mother who was chanting for her kids, she was killed. If there was just a young boy or girl who felt like they saw a spirit or were doing these rituals that just come so naturally to us humans, they were killed. But it is encoded in our DNA to perform these sacred rituals. The reason it comes so naturally to us is because for thousands of years, we have been performing these rituals. It is only in the recent few hundred years that we have stopped. Now I've spoken to so many people, from super, super spiritual professional shamans to people who have no idea what that word means, and every single one of them has some type of ritual. I spoke to a woman I met, and I was telling her about Balinese water healing and how in Bali, there is a high priestess, Ida Resi, that you can visit, and she does healings with water, and she pours these buckets of water over your head and you really feel this deep release. And for some people, they scream, some people they cry. Some people, they're stomping their feet. It comes through differently for every. And she's someone I visited several times while living in Bali. So I told her about it, and instantly she's like, I've never told anyone this, but I have this weird ritual that I do that every time I wash my face. I have to splash my face with water a few times, and I always want to leave my head underwater. And that's how I meditate. And I was like, that's not weird. That's like, everyone. I feel like so many people feel so meditative and have particular rituals, especially when it comes to water or any element. But it's something that she thought was weird about her because she had never talked about it to anyone. So we all have these rituals, and there are many more that are implanted in our DNA that we have not yet allowed ourselves to perform. We are so busy doing, doing, doing, going, going, going, achieving, achieving, achieving, that we don't allow the space for these rituals to come through. Even a pause that is a second too long feels a little bit uncomfortable for us. Like, that might have just. But it is in these sacred pauses that we tap in. It is in between breaths that we go deeper. It is in between thoughts that the enlightenment comes through. It took me finally sitting in a bath to not think about what I'm gonna do tomorrow. Not think about, oh, should I take another Instagram photo? Not thinking about my to do list or reading a book or listening to a podcast, but just sitting and being for my being to remember the rituals that exist inside of me now. There are rituals that we can perform with anything, and you can Google rituals or read a book about rituals, but that loses the point because the rituals that you need to be doing are already within you. It just takes you getting to a still enough place for them to come through. So what can you do? Surround yourself by the elements. Go by fire, whether it is a candlelight or if it's a campfire, and just stare at that fire. Notice the embers and the flames and how they dance. Notice the shades of colors that layer over that fire, how it's deeply, deeply blue and moves into an orange surrounded by a gray, and how that dances and what it looks like when it's weak and what it looks like when it's strong. And let yourself become one with the fire. Go by water and notice how it moves up and down the shore and touches your feet and dances on its way back. Notice the freckles on the pond, which are the bugs that skeet over it, playing a game of skipping stones with their bodies. Notice the air and how it wraps around us and engulfing us in a cool sweater. How unpredictable and flowing that it is. Go by the leaves and notice how they swirl and move and twist into shapes and beings that seem like they're pure magic, but it's the air that is floating them through. Notice the flowers and how perfectly symmetrical they are and how the petals evolve one after another. And when you open them all up, exists this bulb that has even deeper petals and layers that are a little harder to open. Every element of nature is a ritual in practice. The flowers moving through the seasons are rituals. The ocean ebbing and flowing, its tides are rituals. The moon waxing and waning in its crescent shapes are rituals. The sun moving in its circadian rhythm, giving us life and giving us rest are rituals. When we become one with nature, we become this ritual, and we realize that we have ebbs and flows and seasons and shapes, and that's all a part of it. And we can put our hands into that bucket of water and let that be a spiritual practice. And we can walk our feet on this planet Earth and know that we are recoding our bodies to calibrate back with this planet. Everything that we do, connecting back with nature is inherently a ceremonial experience. So if you're super in your head, you have no idea what a spiritual practice looks like, and you've totally blocked away the memories that you have of you performing rituals when you were a child. And every single one of us has, especially if you're listening to this podcast. You must have been one of those kids that was whipping up potions and making things with their hands and doing spells. And maybe you loved Harry Potter and you had your own witch cloak and used to cast love spells for your crush to like you. Yes, we are those witches they tried to burn down at the stake, but they couldn't because we came back tenfold. So go back to nature. Go back to source. Notice the subtle vibrations of this planet. You know, I experienced an earthquake while I was standing in this exact spot that I'm standing in. I was recording a podcast with someone and the earth started tremoring beneath me and I could see everything on my table was moving. And I was deeply humbled by how we are just here temporarily living on this planet that has its own consciousness. And we don't imagine the earth to be this living thing until it moves beneath us and shakes up everything that man created. And since that began happening, now I am noticing earthquakes multiple times a day. And these are earthquakes that are so subtle that most humans cannot feel them. But here in Southern California especially, we experience multiple earthquakes a day. But most of us, we're not tuned in. But since I've had that experience and eat a plant based diet and deeply connect with the earth and elements and spend time outside every day. I can feel those little earthquakes and I notice them happening and it takes me into such a deeper relationship with our planet and this wisdom that we all have that comes from this planet and truly empowers me to become my highest self. So I encourage you to spend some time in nature. Go to the forest, the jungle, the beach, the woods, the mountains, let yourself listen and allow the rituals to reemerge back to life. Namaste. And if you loved this episode and you'd like a little gift for reviewing it, I would love to send you the first half of my unreleased book. It's called eat right for your mind body type. It is not available for sale anywhere, never will, because now it is Eat right for your mind body type 12 week guided program infusing Ayurveda with modern nutritional science. So as a free gift for reviewing this episode in the itunes store, you just head over to itunes, on your phone, on your computer, click write a review, write a nice review, take a screenshot of it and email it over to me before you hit submit. My email is Sahara S A H A R aatfeelfresh.com and I will send you back the first half of my unreleased book, Eat right for your mind body type. I hope you love this episode and I'll see you on the next one. Namaste.