Out of the Underworld and Into the Light

If you know me, then you know I’ve always been a little dark, a little angsty, a bit strange and unusual. You know I have a big heart beating in my chest and an affinity for the weirder, shadowed corners of life. I’ve a cackle that rattles tree limbs, a dark humor that I can’t contain, and a perspective of the world that is difficult at times to describe- so it comes out in jumbled, cryptic words, allegories, and art works. If you’ve worked with me, you know my focus has been on shadow work, on the underworld, on traveling to the hidden spaces of the soul to excavate all the dust and bones and plant some light in that dark, ripe soil. What you might not know is that this affinity for the shadowed spaces is what I love, and hate, most about myself. I see it as both a strength and a weakness. A beautiful attribute and a fault. For so long, I’ve seen myself as a creature of the night, yearning to walk in the sunlight but not quite knowing how to. I’ve struggled with intense periods of depression (like, years of being in ‘the sad place’), unsure if I’d ever feel alive again, let alone happy or joyful. I’ve spent a lot of time in my own shadow realm, moving out density that is mine, density that belongs to others, and uncovering my soul’s true expression.

My fiance and I had a backpacking trip planned with some friends: around 30 miles over three days and two nights in the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park. In the weeks leading up to this trip, I was yanked down into a relatively intense underworld journey. Over the past three years, you see, I’d been battling off severe psychic attacks stemming from someone not only from my fiance’s past, but from my own soul’s history. For three years, I delved into past lifetimes spent with this person- tracking our interactions back through space and time, on and off planet. Healing wounds, clearing karma, dissolving contracts between myself and this person, all the while being viciously attacked in my dreams and often during my own meditations and waking life. I reached a point where I couldn’t take it anymore. I’d seen various healers to help with this- none of which could get to the bottom of it, but only confirm that I was, in fact, experiencing what I thought I was experiencing and that the attacks most certainly were coming from the person I thought. Two weeks before our backpacking trip, I completely broke down. I felt like I was going insane. I was blocking off my schedule because I couldn’t work with all of this going on. Everything felt hopeless. So I booked in a last-ditch-effort session with someone I quite admire and respect. Going into the session, I was nervous, doubtful that anything would actually be shifted- not because I doubted this healer’s abilities, but because I had tried literally everything leading up to this moment and was still plagued by this absolute insanity. Dropping into the session, everything started shifting. This healer was finally able to get to the past life that truly anchored in this sci-fi like horror tale and clear it- A past life I’d been able to circle around, but never fully, clearly see and transmute. Everything changed after that. I felt free, like a weight of a thousand lifetimes had been lifted from my shoulders (because it literally had). I felt joy. I felt inspired. I felt like life was finally possible. I finally, after three years, fell asleep without fear in my bones. I started to remember who I am: not only a massage therapist or energy healer, but an artist. A photographer, a painter, a dancer, a writer. I suddenly wanted to create again. I was explaining all of this to a dear friend the night before I left for the backpacking trip. The conversation wove and turned, landing on me sharing how I moved through the various dimensions- the underworld and lower astral realms, specifically. At one point I said to my friend ‘I spend too much time in the underworld, I’m too comfortable there. I need to come back, above, I just don’t know how.’

The next morning, I received a voice message from a past client / friend, who essentially said the same thing- that it’s time for me to move into the light, into the higher dimensions. It settled comfortably in my stomach, the truth of it radiating into my bones. So as we drove the six hours to Moab, I focused on my intention for the trip: to move out of the underworld and into the light. To move into the higher dimensions. To walk in the sun- not as a creature of the night, but as a world walker. As a being that can exist in multiple dimensions, that can hold it all, and that can feel alive and joyful. What I didn’t realize in this was how flat my perspective of ‘happiness’ and ‘joy’ and ‘light’ and ‘higher dimensions’ was. As I was plodding along with 40+ pounds on my back, I silently opened my Records. I called in my guides, my higher self, and I asked for help. Help in physically moving, help in energetically and etherically moving the density within me. I asked to be released from the underworld, to be ushered up into the higher realms, to see that dazzling light that I see and foster so often in session for my clients. The entire time I was simultaneously euphoric and in severe pain. I was oscillating back and forth between frustrated and at complete peace. I wanted an ascension-like experience. I had it so deeply ingrained in my head that the ‘higher realms’ were going to feel like some form of heaven that they talk about in church. That I was going to feel weightless and everything was going to be sparkly. (LOL, wtf Claire?) My inner-ghoul started whispering “You aren’t meant to experience the higher realms. You’re only meant for the underworld. You can only usher others out of the underworld and into the higher realms, but not yourself. This is where you will forever stay.” I got so fed up with it- with my negative inner dialogue, my inner-ghoul, the lack of faith in myself. I got fed up with myself. I was fucking annoyed. So I said fuck this shit, closed my records, and kept plodding along, bewildered by the beauty of the physical landscape around me.

As soon as I stopped trying, as soon as I got out of my head and just landed where my feet were, my entire universe opened up. The Earth, the Cedar Mesa Sandstone beneath my feet, started showing me so much. They showed me how everywhere I go, I’m pulling up dense energy from the Earth, transmuting it through my body, and cycling the pure life force energy back into the Earth. It was gold and blue and green and white and in that moment I felt all of it. I felt the distorted energy that had weaseled its way into the Earth’s crystalline energy grid moving through me, alchemizing, the dross being swept away by the sand and wind spirits, and the pure crystalline energy returning back into the Earth. I saw veins of gold and blue and green light spreading around me- across the tops of the canyons, through the spires, down into the shrub-filled meadows below. I was shook. I know, absolutely, that the Earth holds me. I’ve known, on some level, that I’m here to support the Earth. I’ve dropped in countless times, helping to release energy from the under-earth, to clear out the distorted energy within the Earth’s energetic system. I wasn’t aware, though, that it was just happening everywhere all the time. The Earth started laughing, I did too. No wonder I feel so heavy, so exhausted all of the time.

About 16 miles into our journey, we found ourselves in a slot canyon. I’m still struggling to fully understand what happened within that holy space, to put it into words. But I will try my best. Upon entering, I knew that we’d moved through a portal, into a completely different dimension. The energy was calm and soothing but buzzing all at the same time. The light that filtered through the small spaces far above was angelic- there’s no other way to describe it. I felt all of my angels, the light beings, my guides and my etheric team with me. I’d moved into a higher dimension as I dropped into the very bottom of this slot canyon. I started crying. I felt everything the rocks had ever witness. My entire physical and energetic body was activated. I felt a stream of codes pouring into my third eye as I pressed my forehead to the cool rock wall. I was weightless, I was energy, I was love and love and love. And, suddenly, I felt Hekate’s presence walking beside me. See, dear? It isn’t always what you think it will be. See the light carving through this place that should be only darkness? This is the work that you do. You carry the light. You are the light. You hold the higher realms within. I heard those words as though they’d been spoken directly into my ear. I heard the swishing of her skirts, the fluttering of angel wings. I felt the life in the streams of light moving through the slot canyon. As I cleared the tears from my eyes and looked ahead, I found myself staring at a crossroads made of light, glowing gold and beautiful against the cool-toned walls. And in that moment I understood. I understood it all. The higher realms are deep within. They aren’t somewhere above or beyond, or somewhere to ascend to. They are within and around. I realized I’m not locked in the underworld. I realized that the ‘higher realms’ aren’t necessarily glittery and weightless (though they often feel and look something like that when seeing them clairvoyantly). I realized that the higher realms can be visceral. They can be carrying a 40 pound pack on a 115 pound body through water-less, color-filled canyons in the desert. They can be found at the base of a slot canyon where the rock walls are so close together, if the Earth were to take a deep breath, you’d most certainly be crushed. They’re in the moments where you feel it all- the love, the fury, the pain and the euphoria of life. The are realms are being so fully alive- alive in your pain, alive in your weightlessness, alive in your embodiment, alive in meeting yourself in all that you are.

So, over the course of 78,000 steps, I released myself from the underworld. Because, through all that, I realized it was only me keeping me there. I’d broken the chains long ago. My own stubbornness, my own inner-ghoul, kept me in a spiral of believing I am only a creature of the night. That the higher realms were some perfect space, just out of reach for me. My own inner-ghoul kept me from seeing all the light I’d carried into the depths of the underworld and planted there, my inner-ghoul had kept me from seeing all that had grown from the seeds of light that I’d planted. It was in the visceral act of being present that I moved into the higher dimensions.

So now here I am. Back home in Denver, having just taken a journey that was far more than backpacking in the backcountry for three days. I am not the same person that walked into the desert on May 6, 2026. I’m more deeply connected to all that I am, to the light that I inherently carry, and the life that thrums through my veins, the veins of the Earth, of all that is. I don’t really know what to do with all of this quite yet. What do you do, when you go through such an immense amount of change and restructuring in such a short amount of time? What do you do when so much of your work is based in the etheric, but all you want to do is walk and walk and walk and listen to all the Earth has to tell you? I know my work is changing. I don’t know how, in what ways, in what form- but I know that it is. I know the way I approach life is changing. I’m more free, more vibrant, more alive than I was less than a week ago.

If you made it this far in my very long ramble, thank you. I’m sharing all of this because I simply can’t keep it inside. Though it is quiet and peaceful, it is also massive, the frequency dancing inside of me. I’m sharing this, too, because I don’t believe I’m the only person that has been looking for something that resides within and around, rather than above and beyond. I’m sharing this to remind you that you’ve probably done enough work, enough healing, received enough downloads and activations, and the heaven you’re searching for is inside of you. It’s the ground beneath your feet. It’s the breath in your lungs. It’s in your laughter and your tears. It’s in the sore muscles and the breeze that kisses your skin on a hot summer day. Remember who you are, remember all that you hold, and return to yourself.