Orchid of Fate

To the transformational power of suffering and all the plants, animals and humans who seek their gold in the eye of the hurricane.

Content Warning

Adult discretion is advised.

The author and editor disclaim any liability in connection with loss or expenses arising from the material.

Disclaimer:

Opinions expressed in this book are informational in nature.

This book is reconstructed from memory to the best of my ability.

Some names have been changed to protect identity.

Endorsements

Carleen has gifted us with a touching, heartfelt story of her healing journey. May her courage to dive deeply bring benefit and inspiration to many others.

Karuna Erickson, MSW, RYT

co-author with Andrew Harvey, Heart Yoga

director, Heart Yoga Center

Orchid of Fate is a beautiful and poetic expose on the journey into healing and how a woman’s health challenge leads to her awakening of the Self and her realization that the Self shines through every living thing. Through her memoir and personal mythology, Carleen illustrates the potency of the power of meditation.

Sarah McLean, bestselling author of Soul-Centered: Transform Your Life in 8 Weeks with Meditation

Carleen’s memoir of self-reflection becomes a Hero’s Journey of life-changing healing. Informed by a synthesis of Eastern and Western wisdom, Orchid of Fate, provides an engaging, cutting-edge guidance to catalyze mind/body/spirit transformation.

David Krueger, M.D.

CEO, MentorPath

Author, Engaging the Ineffable: Toward Mindfulness and Meaning (Paragon House)

Contents

Dedication

Content Warning

Endorsements

Foreword

Introduction

Prologue

Chapter 1

The Mountain

Chapter 2

The Sound of Listening

Chapter 3

The Migraines

Chapter 4

Approaching Agami

Chapter 5

The January Incident

Chapter 6

Dawn

Chapter 7

Staying Normal

Chapter 8

Parabda Speaks

Chapter 9

The Sound of Listening

Part 2

Where Once Upon a Time Begins

Early Memories

The Snow

The Gorge

A World of Adventure

Odd Times

The Big City

Sweet Summer Barbeque

Agami Plants Seeds

Chapter 10

Where Fate Lives

RJ

The Wringer Washer

The Other Aunt

The Last Supper

The Mean Troll

Chapter 11

Listening

Another Move

The Plastic Horse

Ice Holes

Chapter 12

Agami Breathes Hurricanes

Sunny Side Up

Magic Mushrooms

The Big River Lake

The End of Big River

Chapter 13

Guru Migraine

Back to the Big City

Day One

Mrs. Cowell

Mrs. Grae

Chapter 14

Don’t Wake the Baby

Halloween

Body Remembers

Chapter 15

The Hidden Gift

Another Friend

Chicken and Egg

Wade Appears

Chapter 16

The Still Point

Back to the Snow

Mom to Blame

Richardson Road

Chapter 17

Road Trip

Back on the Bus

Chapter 18

Fate Undone

The New School

Freedom

Chapter 19

Seeing

Squirrel

Meet the Neighbours

Chapter 20

Wade Dies

Chapter 21

The January Incident

Chapter 22

The Victim

Chapter 23

The End of a Hurricane

Chapter 24

Letting Go

Chapter 25

Fear and Love

Chapter 26

Love

Chapter 27

Sangita Sings

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Author References

About the Author

Foreword

I met Carleen in the summer of 2017 at a meditation conference in Alberta, Canada. Carleen felt like a kindred spirit as we were both working on our first books and had trained as meditation teachers with Sarah McLean, founder of the McLean Meditation Institute. At the time, I was writing to share a powerful story of awakening and transformation while Carleen was illuminating the patterns of Fate and Destiny in modern times. I was intrigued to learn more about her work and had a sense that our paths would continue to cross.

Through my coaching and meditation workshops, I hear from more and more people who are waking up to the deeper truths of their souls. There is a searching, a longing and a questioning; what are my heart’s desires? Who am I beyond all the roles and conditioning that has defined me?

I’ve been inspired not only by people’s personal accounts of transformation but also by the process of understanding and integrating these changes into everyday life. While Carleen experienced a huge personal transformation she describes as The January Incident, the real story she uncovers is what is revealed as the individual and collective suffering of our times. As she describes, Fate creates our suffering and we re-create our Fate through the stories we tell ourselves. In this way the patterns in our lives are repeated. Our awakening is triggered when we realize, often for the first time, that we are free to create a new life story.

I am fascinated by the sisters of Fate and using this mythology as a template for identifying the repeating patterns in our everyday lives. Carleen’s memoir allows for a blend of mystical curiosity with the ordinariness of being human and our inner desire for personal growth.

In many ways, our shared experience of the suffering that arises from our inherited patterns and conditioning provides the soil from which a powerful transformation sprouts. Through the power of pure presence, awareness and deep listening with an open heart, we can move into that numinous space of no-thing where the essence of our truest and most authentic self resides. It is from here, as Carleen so beautifully describes, that our Destiny is waiting and we will meet Sangita. She is the Orchid of Fate.

Bev Janisch MN, CMMI, author, Awakening a Woman’s Soul: The Power of Meditation and Mindfulness to Transform Your Life

Introduction

In 2007 I experienced a life altering transformation. I was trying to put an end to my migraines and unwittingly created a Kundalini crisis. Within days the stories that made up the normal me unraveled like a spool of thread. It was a terrifying experience that changed the whole course of my life and left me in the seat of my heart’s wisdom. I call it The January Incident.

After The January Incident I knew I was transformed but I didn’t know how. Orchid of Fate is about making sense of The January Incident and putting the pieces of my life back together with new consciousness. This process of re-visiting childhood memories, changing careers to become a yoga and meditation teacher and learning to follow the wisdom of my heart was THE transformation of my life. Like so many wise teachers have said, true change is a process not an event.

Seeing my life through new eyes has opened me to see all life through new eyes. I have become fascinated by the circumstances life delivers and how these fundamental experiences shape the stories we tell ourselves. These stories then shape our neurobiology and cause us to repeat circumstances, especially those we deny, repress or fear.

My biggest Self story was The Hurricane. Entangled with migraines, it was my story of suffering. The Hurricane affected all aspects of my life from how I chose to spend my time, to who I was with friends and family and even my career aspirations. It was a giant organizing system of thoughts, beliefs, emotions and body symptoms based on faulty Self statements and outdated stories.

Without awareness the power of a story eventually lives us. Fate delivers our biggest life circumstances, like who our parents are and what time period we are born into and we create the stories. Without a process of deep inner listening our stories, whether positive or negative, keep repeating the same message like a skipping record broken in time and we keep living the same patterns without any growth.

As a way to make sense of life circumstances and the power of story I wrote the prologue as a mythology about three ancient sisters of Fate. Agami, Parabda and Sangita. These names reference yogic texts of karma. Karma is the way actions repeat as patterns. In my mythology Agami owns all repeating patterns, especially those caused by force. Parabda owns the shadow realm and ways of seeing through story. Sangita owns the space beyond story. She is the power of pure presence and infinite potential; what I call Destiny. She is The Orchid of Fate.

I call the process of healing my Fate Love. It is a non-romantic form of energy that transforms the old outgrown patterns of my suffering into something magnificent and new. As I see it, Love is the only way to transform personal suffering and the suffering of our world.

I hope as you read my memoirs you will reflect on the circumstances of your own Fate and the stories and patterns that repeat because of them. The real miracles arrive when we see for the first time how we are the ones creating our stories and our suffering and we have the power to create something new. This is my story of transforming Fate into Destiny.

Prologue

One Mythology and the Sisters

There is a secret one inside us; the planets like galaxies

pass through its hands like beads.

Kabir

In the beginning, The Great One turned from the heavens towards the earth and blew. Gathering the Fates within the winds stirred the elements and life took shape. Soon there was a flower, a gazelle, a human. Every life blossomed into a story. Every story began with Once Upon a Time.

Before the beginning, at the time before time, The Great One met the wishes of three masterful sisters. Agami, the oldest of the Fates, spoke first. Oh Great One, she said with veiled humility, You have seen how I have ordered the stars and the heavens, rolling stillness into motion and motion into ceaseless patterns. Are you not pleased with the circling of the sun and the orbit of the moon?

The Great One, remaining motionless, was pleased and also not.

It is heard, she lowered her voice, that you will one day breathe new shape into the elements and call it life. Leaving her knowledge to linger in the deafening silence she bowed towards The Great One and continued, I know I speak for all the Fates when I say to you my will is to own the story; for to see again the chaos without order and the endless pandemonium, would surely undo my doing. There she paused, having said enough, and vanished into the eternal cosmos, leaving The Great One to contemplate her wishes.

The Great One knew life was an experiment. It was a fantastic experiment; an exploration of pure potential, but an experiment nonetheless. It was Its own longing for longing; a reflection in a mirror; a grander attempt at something beyond the repeating patterns, the order and beyond Chaos. Like Agami, life in the heavens was getting old. And yet, she was needed, that had clearly been proven already. When the time came, and life was in bloom, The Great One would grant Agami the story. No, rather, Agami would be granted Once Upon a Time, and all life’s stories of Fated repetition.

The middle sister, Parabda, used to moving in the shadows, felt the hushed tones of her older sister and The Great One speaking in confidence. She was so adept at noticing the subtlest of vibrations, to her, their whispered resonance reverberated through the whole universe like the strike from a great gong. As Parabda listened with her whole being she too revered the past and the mess made of Chaos and, like The Great One, also secretly desired something new: something beyond the forces of her oldest sister, something she’d never seen and couldn’t imagine a mystery yet to be revealed. The wait felt ominous and exciting, but when the moment arrived, she would be ready. For what, she didn’t know. But she knew it would be beyond Agami’s demanding order; that she promised herself for certain.

In the black void of space, The Great One lamented the most clandestine of the Fates, the youngest sister, Sangita. Her content stillness reminded The Great One of the time before motion, before the elements were stirred into orbit, before the ever expansion and the great burst of light. She reminded The Great One of pure potential. In the time before the beginning, when there was only One. Sangita was like a rare Orchid in the desert; she was Love’s potential, the Orchid of Fate.

For a moment, The Great One imagined life without Agami, and then rumbled with humour, as all matter spun off the lone planet into the starry abyss. Though amusing, it was too much a reminder of Chaos. In her own way, The Great One knew, Agami was right. She needed to be a part of this experiment. She would provide the structure, the stability and the sameness, the hardened forces that remain. Agami’s will would make life more complex, more challenging and more compelling, because all life would have to transcend her to grow.

So when The Great One turned towards the earth and blew, the winds gathered into themselves the essence of the three sisters of Fate. As promised, Agami would rule repetition and all stories wound around Once Upon a Time. There would be a victim, a villain, a hero and heroine, a joker, a king and a queen, a merchant, a farmer, there would be an eternal child, an orphan, a great mother and father, an artist, a seer, a healer, a philosopher and so forth. Agami would see to the swirling patterns of repetition that live within bloom, beast and man. She would rule the stories of life and the orbits that defy change.

Parabda, gifted at evading her older sister, would own the shadow realm. The Great One imagined her poking holes in her sister’s iron-clad will to repeat and push on. Moving from the depths, she would create the unexpected, messing with the known and challenge her older sister from the darkest places. Parabda would reveal what isn’t seen; uncover the elements mingling beneath the log, in the mucky murk where life is thick and rich just beyond knowing. She would own the night sky and the sleeping realm where the visions of the deep come alive. The unhappy endings, the unforeseen surprise, the discoveries of chance and good fortune, the near misses, the synchronicities, the bad luck and the good, and all the places where swift action and right timing stick a cog in Agami’s spinning wheels. Parabda would orchestrate leaving life’s inherited story of Once Upon a Time. For the Great One knew that she, too, longed for something more.

The Great One saw that in the experiment, life would become a masterful meeting place; a cacophony of sound and sensation, impulse and action, an experience of outer and inner merging into an infinite dance of potentials. Life would always begin with Once Upon a Time: A flower meets the sun, the rain and the wind where the earth is dry, a beast is slain, a boy loses his parents. Only stories deeply revered could ever transcend Agami’s Fate. Only stories met with Love would ever become anything more.

Sangita would become everything more; everything beyond her sisters. Born of Love, she would hold the key to the sanctum that blossoms new life within the life; the bloom on a rose, that spark of mystery; the resonance of tone that brings healing to words, tears to the melody, flow into life and joy to the mundane. In her sacred realm she would harmonize the smallest elements, oscillate the subtle into perfect balance and gift life with her peaceful contentment. For Sangita flows without force, without patterns; she exists beautifully beyond chaos, gently beyond Agami’s power. Poised with her golden harp, strumming what is, into what could be. Yes, Sangita would entice life with her equanimity, her sanguine song and her blooms of destiny; she would become the centre of it all. There, in the centre of the circle of life, Sangita would own the space of pure potential, Love’s unclaimed gold; the great poem of life.

And so the winds of Fate reached the lone planet and life began with a story. Every story began with Once Upon a Time and every life became a story. Once Upon a Time there was a flower, a gazelle, a human. Every story had great forces working to ensure it stayed the same and great forces working to challenge it from the depths and to entice it towards Love. At the heart of every story was offered a poem, a place where The Great One still sits watching the meeting place unfold, the battles, the beauty and the weaving from within, where The Great One sits in the vibration of One. Like the time before time when there was only One. One stillness, One knowing, One being, One centre, One space.

Once Upon a Time there lived a poem within a story made up of memories. It whispered of Love and bloomed after a long time of waiting, like an Orchid in the desert, rare and beautiful; it lived in every living thing, delicate to behold, powerful beyond measure. This is The Orchid of Fate.

Chapter 1

The Mountain

When I look outside and see that I am nothing, that’s wisdom;

when I look outside and see that I’m everything that’s Love.

Between these two my life turns.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

I’m meditating before a great snow capped mountain in the heart of the British Columbia Kootneys. My eyes are soft, and the mountain’s beauty changes as spectrums of light and shadow dance across rock, streams and trees; so many trees, trees hundreds of feet tall that create the illusion of matchsticks. I struggle to translate my perception into reality as wispy clouds glide from abstract swirls into familiar forms and I notice that in the gap of my own inhale and exhale, in the pause between my thoughts and that elusive space of eternity hovering between heartbeats, there is no pain.

I’ve been consumed with a migraine for eight days. Relentless in its grasp of my brain, it stabs on and on, like an angry troll on autopilot, determined to destroy my innards, accompanied by nausea, exhaustion and intermittent bouts of low Self-compassion. What good am I to myself