(photo of Roger Oney’s property in New Mexico)
If you’re on our TOTEM newsletter list, you should have seen a recent email titled, “The Goddess Gets Her Crown Back”. In this email, we outlined the key paradox around abundance. In our culture, success is synonymous with hard work: grit, suffering, effort, pushing through, accumulation, dominance, and aggression. But abundance is yin- not yang- requiring that we reframe our approach and mindset if we want to receive the things we’ve been working so hard to achieve.
The bottom line? Our addiction to doing is gumming up the works and fighting us in our push towards abundance. So, if we want to shift this dysfunctional dynamic, what do we do?
In short: we give the Goddess her crown back.
It’s an energetic metaphor for giving place of privilege to our divine yin energy and honoring the goddess- within and without.
In this series, I sit down with a variety of TOTEM collaborators and thought leaders to get their take on how we can all “Re-crown the Goddess” and bring our lives back into balance. We start this series with Roger Oney of Bending River Energy to dig into the tension between scarcity and self-authorship.
About Roger and Bending River Energy
Roger helps clients connect with their spiritual guidance in order to shift their energy.
His basic premise is that, when you realize that everything is energy - and that energy is neither created nor destroyed- one can focus on energy as the mechanism to allow more flow and consciously participate in the energy transformation processes.
Clients seek out Roger for a variety of reasons: they feel stuck, drained, anxious, or confused.
Regardless of the form it takes, the work Roger undertakes is the same: to tune in and listen deeply in order to help them shift their energy and get into greater flow. This is how Roger believes we open the channels for greater spiritual insight and guidance.
In Roger’s experience, life energy / love / chi / consciousness (whatever you want to call it) really just wants to flow freely through us and out into the world. And this is the very heart of yin energy.
And to add a bit of context- Roger has the thankless task of doing my remote energy work!
The Goddess and Roger
To Roger, there are two associations with Goddess energy that come to mind: the Earth itself- Gaia- and Quan Yin, an Ascended Master sometimes referred to as the Goddess of Mercy and Compassion.
Roger associates the earth with a connection to nature and feeling of safety. He points out that, like our own bodies, the Earth is mostly made of water. Water is a conduit for receiving spiritual information. Water is often symbolic of great emotion, and has obvious connections to feminine energy, representing “yin” in Eastern Traditions. The very name of his practice - Bending River Energy - embraces this divine feminine principle of learning how to flow with life, instead of the more yang approach to pushing and forcing our way through life.
Roger notes that Quan Yin’s name is short for Kuan Shih Yin (Guan Shi Yin) which means “Observing the Sounds of the World”. As the Bodhisattva of Compassion, she hears the cries of all beings.
“Our heart chakras are connected to our ears and the act of listening. Many people completely miss the profound healing power that comes from simply listening to someone who is hurting. All too often, the temptation is to fix the person, when in reality that need to fix is the very thing that cuts you off from hearing them- and healing them- in the first place.” -Roger Oney
Roger has incorporated the Goddess into his practice in a few specific ways:
1. Listening. For Roger, listening is the foundation of the work. This means far more than hearing the words spoken by his clients: it means listening for that which remains silent, such as the flow of energy. Just as with most people, the spirits most worth listening to are often the quietest ones in the room;) Meaningful energetic communication comes through the heart chakra, which means the mind must be quiet and at peace.
2. Earth energy. The Earth and nature are abundant sources for healing energy. When the mind is busy and a client has difficulty becoming present, Roger digs in to ground them into the energy of the earth. A grounding practice is one way to honor our integral connection with all things, all dimensions, and all of life.
3. Allowing vs. pushing. Roger has observed that so many problems come from pushing too hard, effectively trying to or try to manipulate situations or other people. The divine feminine principle of allowing is the energy that will restore balance. According to Roger, this is also very aligned with the concept of Wu Wei in Taoism. Action is important in life, yes, but the right actions at the right times are what really matter most.
“How do you know what the right actions are? Or the right time? By listening deeply to the quiet voice within. By allowing spirit to guide you!”- Roger Oney
There is one aspect of the divine feminine and Goddess energy that Roger thinks many people in our society get wrong: that accepting and allowing are expressions of weakness. Forcefulness is not power- it’s actually a manifestation of fear and weakness.
“Power comes from within, from your Source. Nothing is greater than that.” – Roger Oney
In fact, Roger sees acceptance as a very high level of consciousness. Whenever a person is in a place of true acceptance, they are opening themselves up to receiving great power. To him, acceptance and allowing is a pathway to dissolving karma, healing self and others, and moving more and more into a state of grace and flow.
And this is how he “recrowns the goddess” in his life and practice.
Be the teller of your story
When Roger finds himself falling into the scarcity quicksand, he stops and reminds himself that he is the teller of his own story.
“I am the one energizing the material of this story - quite literally, I am energizing my body, which houses my physical senses - I take in information and then what? Do I want to run that data through whatever default systems have evolved over time? Or do I want to be conscious of how I interpret that data? Do I want to be present with it? Do I want to utilize that data in this here-and-now world? Or fall into holographic memory constructs where I can only attempt to heal past wounds?” -Roger Oney
This, in Roger’s words, is the hall of mirrors of everyday life. The world reflects back to us more of what we are on the inside than what it is on the outside.
This is how it works until we become clear. When we are energetically clear, we see the world clearly. When we are clear, our inner light can shine with the greatest reach, in the purest way possible.
The retreat to move forward
And all of this abundance, yin and goddess stuff is why Roger is living alone in the desert of New Mexico: to reflect, receive, and re-pattern his energy body to allow and accept. And he’s not staying at a four-star resort- he’s roughing it in an off-grid cabin, working on repairs and enhancements to ready the space for winter (and survival) literally every day.
Like most of us energy workers, healers and shamans, Roger had a challenging childhood marked with scarcity, inconsistency, and anxiety. This shit really sticks around in the energy body, regardless of how advanced or evolved one might be- even if the individual is a talented and experienced energy worker.
Scarcity trauma echoes in our energy body throughout time and space until we do the painful- and healing- work of retraumatizing and triggering ourselves to flip the script and tackle the issue in a new way. In this way, we can re-set the energetic bone that didn’t heal properly, permanently adjusting our energy body’s response to stimuli and enabling a receiving energy, ready to accept abundance in all of its forms. By moving to the desert, he’s setting the scene to shift a life-long paradigm.
Roger acknowledges that this work is not yang: there can be no real goal, no timeline, no concrete reward or payoff if it is to reveal what he needs to see, accept, and integrate. It is the path of Goddess work.
“There is divine feminine at work in my life right now. It is energizing the many new ways I am seeing my own life - with greater compassion and understanding. My sense is that this is a time that is, in a way, giving birth to a renewed version of who and what I am to be in the world.” -Roger Oney
While we all go through these phases of growth and expansion, Roger finds it interesting to observe how much more aware he is in real-time and how many more tools and practices he has at hand to support and maximize this process.
There is only so much Roger can control about his harsh environment and the equipment he’s using to survive the hot days and freezing nights. Instead, he can only control himself and his responses…and this is yin.
Either way, the key for him is to be really present, to allow himself to feel it all, to be in the fears or discomforts, and to observe as everything inevitably shifts and changes.
The alternative, of course, is to spin out in the mind and scramble to think up a myriad of solutions. The Tibetans call this state the “Hungry Ghost”: because you are energetically living in the past and are worried about the future, you don’t actually exist in the present…making you a ghost. You are hungry because you have an emptiness, one that you are hoping to fill with “stuff” and “circumstances” instead of simply accepting reality as it unfolds.
For Roger, this comes to the fore when he finds himself thinking about the good ol' days or he future hops to preferred destinations down the road. All are forms of escape. He’s not assigning these thoughts a “good” or “bad” value. Rather, he simply observes these thoughts and allows them to come and pass, learning about himself with every new revelation.
“And the more I follow this guidance, the more I can simply be present - the more I perceive myself in my space, in my spirit, in my realm, so to speak.” – Roger Oney
This is Roger’s current abundance lens: looking at how life energy flows endlessly into this world and supports us all. Seeing more and more that all we have to do to make the most of it is let go and let it do its thing. Let it support us. Let it guide us. Allow its many gifts to flow into the stream of our life experiences.
Practical magic
The best advice Roger can offer around scarcity energy and an addiction to doing is simple: be really honest with yourself.
If you're like most people (hint: you are) - you probably read those words and think to yourself "check, I'm totally honest with myself".
But, as Roger astutely points out, this whole landscape is in a constant state of flow and flux. Developing the discipline needed to be really honest with yourself - over and over and over again and at each juncture of change- can provide so many wonderful benefits.
In Roger’s experience, this is a practice that allows you to:
1. Become aware of where your fears are coming from as they bubble up. A great trick is to journal about these fears in real time.
2. Recognize that your fears stem from your beliefs; try to objectively assess these beliefs.
3. When you get to what you really believe, you can start to document how these beliefs drive your life choices. Are they coming from fear? From pain or trauma? From religion? From your parents? From your friends? Which beliefs are truly yours?
A simple exercise
Roger suggests finding a quiet, peaceful place and turn off all of your devices. Get comfortable. Consider the idea that you are not really a human being. In this thought exercise, try to consider yourself as a spiritual being having a human experience. Have you heard this line of thinking before? Sounds nice, doesn't it?
Now imagine what that would look like in real life. If someone truly believed this in their heart of hearts, how might they behave in life? What sorts of choices might they make? What emotions do you imagine they might feel?
Would you tend more towards courageousness than fearfulness? Would you show up in the world as empowered, fearless, kind, confident, generous, and loving?
This exercise is not about judging anyone- including yourself- but is designed to demonstrate the difference between holding a belief in the mind vs. tackling the actual experience. Ultimately, this exercise can connect you with what is really is going on deeper in your energy body.
If you deep down believe that you are fundamentally a bio-machine, nothing more than a vulnerable bag of decaying, dying flesh being tossed about in a chaotic world, separate from everything else, how much abundance do you think you will ultimately allow to flow to and through you in this lifetime?
Be honest with yourself. This is how you create the space to shift, receive and integrate.
To conclude the exercise, consider closing your eyes, directing your will and say out loud: "I accept myself fully and completely."
And watch what happens.
Take the first steps…
According to Roger, choosing to live with integrity is the antidote to dis-integration. Being integrated is the antidote to scarcity and an addiction to doing.
Which kind of person can channel the most abundance energy? Someone with a lot of integrity? Or someone who is fractured and false and all over the place energetically?
“Remember, most feelings of scarcity come from a lack of trust. You may distrust yourself, others, life, God, your parents... you name it, there's enough mistrust to go around. A real abundance of it, you might say!” – Roger Oney
The antidote to mistrust is trust, acceptance, and allowing. Accept the world for what it is, then you can engage with it honestly. From a place of wholeness. With integrity.
You see, the same deep truth is revealed over and over again: you are energy.
…and stay playful
Roger sees us all as spiritual beings projecting ourselves into this limiting constrained physical world.
When you first encounter this notion, you might ask yourself “why”? Why would an unlimited being put itself into a place like this with so many limitations and constraints?
Roger suggests asking yourself this question: how much fun would you really have if you sat down to play a game of Monopoly with a group of friends and, at the outset, you handed out all of the cash in the bank. You could say each piece of paper is worth trillions of dollars- there are no limits! You're all rich and can buy everything and build it up immediately.
How much fun would that be? May sound fun at first, but play it out a little in your mind.
BORING. LAME. What’s the point?
Next time you find yourself dealing with scarcity energy, revisit this exercise and ask yourself - in what ways might your soul be setting you up for a very exciting game?
And this playfulness, curiosity, and flow are how Roger gives the Goddess her crown back. And, when the Goddess is honored, we in turn honor ourselves.
So, get at it!