Nathan Prince, Anchorage, Alaska September, 2005

White Raven Center brings a tool to the universe by touching each body, mind and soul. That tool is love…
Have you ever thought to your self, “Why doesn’t anybody see me?”, “I am so lonely.”, “If I were just taller.”, “If I were just thinner.”, “If I were just better, than they might love me.”, then this is a story for you to read. It is mine to tell…

Love is a powerful tool. Love is a powerful teacher. Love is a powerful healer. Love is….what brought me here to White Raven Center this first weekend. I met Marianne and Floyd about a year before my first process at my first weekend intensive workshop. I had heard they were these amazing healers that were married and had this neat spiritual center from one of my Massage Therapist co workers. I thought to myself, “I’m a healer, Cool! I love to be in the presence of other healers.” Boy was I off! I was so uncomfortable in meeting them it took me an entire year to make it to the workshop. I would even hide from them when they came into the clinic for bodywork! I thought to myself, “Man, their energy is weird? It doesn’t resonate with me?” Meanwhile my life was unraveling into truth. Truth about love. What I thought love was verses what love is?

The love of my life, my soulmate, my wife, my best friend said to me, “Nathan, you are out of control. You are so insecure-you have to get help. You are so jealous. You are stifling us.” I thought to myself, “You are right…I am small, I am little, I am worthless, I am nothing, I don’t deserve you, I am not worthy, I am not lovable. I am not loved.” Determined to be loved I called the next day to White Raven Centerand spoke with Marianne and was at the workshop the following month.

I arrived at the house ready to work. Greeted everyone and we started with intro’s and prayers and then an exercise. I had just realized that I was sitting next to Floyd in the circle and now we had to partner up. Of course he was my partner and I had to tell this AMAZING SPIRITUAL GURU that I was the beloved! “What!” I said to myself, “I am not even worthy! What is the beloved? I’m not beloved, I can’t even have a relationship go right, plus he’s gonna look me in the eyes and say that he is the beloved…I can’t even look him in the eyes!” Well, now that the exercise was over I was ready to process! I was being “triggered” and my emotions were running high and the cool thing is that I was being allowed to feel those emotions for the first time in the presence of people without being judged.

As I lay down on the mat with my blindfold on, I started to breath and the more I breathed the deeper I felt and the more I started to cry. The more my crying became “wailing” and wailing is powerful love. I was mourning the loss of my male identity as a child. My first memory of “not being seen”, my first experience of “not being loved”, but not just “not being loved”, “not being loved for who I am”, this whole process was grieving for the oppression of me as a boy.

I felt 5 years old in my first process. I could see in my head me in a dress holding my little sister, who was only 6 months old. We were sitting in a chair and Mom was taking our picture. I was trying to tell her that I didn’t want to wear that dress. I was a boy and did not want to look pretty. I wanted to be handsome. At this time in my process after the whaling had stopped, my facilitators told me that it was time for me to bring a soul part back into my body. They used a pillow, but to me it felt like holding my self as that 5 year old and as I breathed him in, he felt like pure love. This was a feeling I had never encountered, but I thought I knew what love was? After breathing him in, my facilitators told me to just lay there and allow him to integrate into my cellular structure (my body, my mind, my soul) and feel that balance within. It was purely divine. It was white light. It was healing on a level that even to me as a bodyworker, who has experienced many different levels of healing, was like none other. It was joy. It was peacefulness. It was love. I remember connecting with the facilitators and peers that held space for me that day and seeing for the first time in their eyes that they were seeing me, because for the first time in my life, I was seeing me. I was able to be more present in my skin, my looks, my body. I remember sitting in circle and seeing those humps on my chest and being able to feel for the first time in my life the strength to pursue my balance, my congruency in BodyMindSoul knowing that I am worthy of love and I am the beloved. This was my very first process and I knew at that time that this was a road of recovery that I needed to travel and that processing was a tool I wanted to participate in for my own personal healing and to teach to others so their healing can begin.

I left that workshop on Sunday afternoon looking at life differently; the way the trees looked, the grass, flowers, sky-all so alive, so living, so present in nature, so beautiful, so brilliant, so bold and so beloved. I looked at my family differently too. I was learning what it was like to love, to love me, what love feels like and that I was worthy of love. I thought of the love of my life, my wife, my soulmate, my best friend and realized out loud driving home, “I did not know love when we met, but I am learning what it means to love my self and to have love for others. And I love you, Bria.” As Marianne and Floyd say, “Love is pure and simple. No matter where you are, if the love is there, there is love.” I remembered my first thoughts of Marianne and Floyd and chuckled to my self, “Their not weird, their energy is not off! They are not AMAZING SPIRITUAL GURUS. They are two people with beautiful gifts for the world and full of lots and lots of love. They are the beloved and they are my friends.” And then I realized that I had been blocking my self from love all my life because that is all I knew. And now I know. I have a tool and that tool is love.