The Model In Use
 

Teachings of Medicine Wheel and Four Directions from "Circle Works: Transforming Eurocentric Consciousness" by Fyre Jean Graveline - Metis feminist, anti-racist activist and scholar.

Building Our Community Connections

The Model In Use
 

Teachings of Medicine Wheel and Four Directions from "Circle Works: Transforming Eurocentric Consciousness" by Fyre Jean Graveline - Metis feminist, anti-racist activist and scholar.

The Northern Door

The Model In Use
 

Teachings of Medicine Wheel and Four Directions from "Circle Works: Transforming Eurocentric Consciousness" by Fyre Jean Graveline - Metis feminist, anti-racist activist and scholar.

Tending Our Inner Garden

Gardening, is a Soul-Feeding Activity
We nuture and care for our flowers,
Vegetables and trees by watering,
Weeding and feeding them.
Often we talk to them.

Photography Studies Demonstrate
Plants react
Spoken to in a soft soothing manner
Energy expands and brightens
Plants lean towards the speaker.
Threatened or spoken to harshly
Energy constricts and colors darken
Perciving threat it leans away.

What kind of gardener
Are we to our inner gardens?
Do we cultivate kindly?
Prune with patience?
Encourage and appreciate our flowering
Ability to bear fruit?
There is no other flower like us.
Unique and beautiful
Worthy of the finest care.
A compassionate inner environment
Allows us to bloom
More readily ... More exquisitely.

Gently allow
An image of a flower come to you
In your minds eye.
Imagine this flower is part of you
That is thirsty
For appreciation and care.
See yourself watering this flower
From a beautiful pitcher.
Imagine your flower
Lifting its head to accept
The refreshing sprinkle.
Feel its roots
Thankfully absorbing
The sustaining and empowering water.
Soak in the sensation of being nurtured
And encouraged to grow.

From A Woman's Book of Soul - Sue Patton Thoele

I have the urge to reread "Illusions"...

Inspired, rumages around in her boxes of book collections "hmm have it around here somewhere .. haven't read since probably my 20's" :)

"What the catapiller calls the end of the world, the Master calls the Butterfly!"
Illusions - Richard Bach

Let whosoever desires to travel to different parts to serve,
peruse over mountain, desert, land and sea this supplication.

O Great Spirit, Father!
Mighty and Powerful
I seek your strength.
See me,
I am weak, lowly and humble
Before All Thy Relations;
Let me trust in You
Let me arise and the path I walk
The voice I speak
Your teachings among the people,

O Spirit!
Before your might and majesty
I am a broken-winged bird
Yet, my spirit longs to soar
In Thy limitless space.
May your breath
That gives life to the world
Lift me up and guide me
To fly on the wings of Spirit
With grace.

O Spirit!
I seek your assistance
In my moments
of weakness and impotency.
May I aspire to be
Mindful of All Thy Relations
That live upon the Earth.

O Spirit!
As you have helped our Ancestors
May I find your confirmation.
Though I am a moth,
May I become as a royal falcon,
Though I am but a brook,
May I become as a sea.
By Thy bestowal and Thy mercy.
Through Thy great favor,
May I be as a star
That shines on the horizon of guidance,
May I be as a bird singing
In the rose gardens of immortality,
May I be as a lion
That roars in the forests of knowledge and wisdom,
May I be as a whale
That swims in the oceans of life.

O Spirit!
Make my spirit noble and mild
May I be compassionate and forgiving
That I may come to you without regret
Thankful for your blessings!



modified from a prayer by - ‘Abdu’l-Bahá

Attunement
 

Of late my life has had a lot of validation and positive messages abounding and in those moments blessed in joy I find my heart leaping and dancing, suffused in a buoyance of blissful happiness.

Yet I have discovered, that I have some pretty strong gremlins, that always seem to want to poke their heads out at these times, in their shrouded mocking with their echo ... that I don't deserve ... , that I don't deserve true happiness, its a haunting that lingers there, trying to drag me down into that place that they believe, because its all they have ever known.

Interesting enough, with all the meditation, prayer and reflection I have been doing, I decided to be patient with them, neither giving them energy, nor ignoring them, a first in many ways. Trusting that a clearing and the help I needed would come. And it did!

Last night I started in a book study group with some other woman, called Wisdom of the Heart, and the introduction just spoke to the day!

In the introduction she refers to another book she wrote on about how healing relationships can help you overcome a painful past. She talks about a process called 'attunement' and that "this process, which involves deeply focusing attention, concentrating, and getting 'in sync' with another person, those times when we feel deeply understood, supported, cared for, and can identify this feeling with something like the idea of another person 'tuning in" to us and our 'inner world'. Those times and feelings of being validated, or in other words to feel loved has a lasting positive impact on a person's life." Earliest childhood experiences and in particular the level of positive 'attunement' that a child receives from its parents, greatly affects ones relationship dynamics to themselves and others during the course of their life.

Conversely she notes that early childhood traumas such as abandonment, neglect or abuse have an equally indelible negative impact.

Her first book shares the story of the healing of one of her clients in psychotherapy via the 'attunement' process. In one paragraph she writes:

Kim was not always easy to work with, Often, I was attuning to her and when was unable to reciprocate. Sometimes she acted out her emotional scars by doing self-destructive things, by being negative and threatening to give up, acting out, or being being angry and full of rage. At these times and other times, too she would ask, "Why do you put up with me? Aren't you tired of me yet? When are you going to see that I am not worth the effort?"

And there it was ... the echoing of my gremlins ... exactly what I think and feel about myself way to often.

The authors response: "Because I perceive you to be a wonderful woman. I can see within you all sorts of untapped potential that is just waiting to bloom. That is what I see when I look at you, that is what I pay attention to."

She concludes: "For some people with deep, emotional scars, happiness in this lifetime may seem completely impossible. But true and lasting happiness, spiritual joy, contentment, gratitude and love all are 'within' you, in a potential state, at all times and under all conditions. ... we need simply to 'attune' to the the healing spiritual energies of the universe and the availability of this energy to be accessed directly ... Our life on earth, is really a continuous process of finding our way 'home' to our spiritual core, where true happiness awaits us!"

:')

Wisdom in Silence
 

Wisdom and Intuition
Are birthed in silence.

Close your eyes
Relax into the hush of silence
Neither asking nor expecting
Anything of yourself,
Merely relax into the quietness.

It takes practice
To feel comfortable with silence.
Although all intuitively
Understand its value.
Only in silence can we hear
The feminine energy of our hearts.

If we listen closely
In the silence,
The Sacred Feminine
Will show us how
To lovingly intertwine
Soul-strands in our relationships
With others and with ourselves.
Our relationships can only hum
The songs of love
If they are filled with
The Sacred Feminine Voice
For she is the song of love.
She is the harp
Upon which the strings
Of compassion and connection quiver.
From the Sacred Feminine
Comes the sweet music
Composed by living complementary lives
With those we love.

"Silence is the language of the Divine,
It is also the language of the heart"
- philosopher, Dag Hammarskjold
The more faithfully
We move into the silence,
The more attuned
We will become
To the voice of Spirit.

Today, give yourself the gift
Of relaxing into the silence.
Softly, gently, lovingly,
Allow silence to immerse you in peace.
The music of wisdom and intuition
Will become clearer
And more harmonious!

Sue Patton Thoele - Woman's Book of Soul

Dancing With The Dead
 

Seemed appropriate for All Hallow's Eve

Dancing with the Dead

Native American Traditions
Believe that we dance
With our ancestors
Along the Milky Way
After we leave this life,
But we don't have to wait
To dance with those
Who have already departed.

Befriending death
Allows our spirits
Much freer reign in life.
Toward that end
Closer your eyes
Sink into a state
Of deep relaxation.
In your minds eye,
Transport yourself
To a beautiful wooded glen
Beside a small crystal-clear pool.
Gaze into the water and 'see'
Mirrored there,
A reflection of your spiritual face.
For a few moments
Give yourself permission
To leave the confines
Of your physical body,
Merge with the face in the pool,
And rise to dance
Along the Milky Way.
Feel the freedom.
Enjoy, Be in joy.
Give Thanks
Celebrate.
Though our bodies dies,
Our souls dance forever!

Anam Cara
 

Light is Generous

Out early in the morning
Before the dawn breaks
Notice the darkest time of night
Immediately before dawn.
Darkness deepens
Becomes more anonymous.

If you had never come to the world,
Never known what a day was,
You could not possibly imagine
How darkness breaks,
How the mystery
And color of a new day arrive.

Light is incredibly generous,
But also gentle.

The world rests in the night
Trees, mountains, fields, and faces
Released from the prison of shape
And the burdon of exposure.
Each thing creeps back
Into its own nature
within the shelter of the dark.
Darkness is the ancient womb,
Nightime is womb-time.
Our souls come out to play.

Darkness absolves everything,
The struggle for identity
And impression falls away.
We rest in the night.

Dawn is refreshing,
A time of possiblility and promise.
All elements of nature
Stones, fields, rivers, and animals
Suddenly anew
In the fresh dawn light.
Darkness brings rest and release,
Dawn brings awakening and renewal.

Attend to the way the dawn comes,
Learn how light can coax the dark.
The first fingers of light
Appear on the horizon,
Ever so deftly and gradually,
Pulling the mantle of darkness
Away from the world.

Quietly before you
Is the mystery
Of a new dawn,
The new day.

In mediocrity and distraction,
We forget ...
We are priviliged to live
In a wondrous universe.
Each day, dawn unveils
The mystery of this universe.
Dawn is the ultimate surprise,
Awakens us to the immense
'Thereness' of nature.

Wonderful, subtle
Color of the universe
Arises to clothe everything.
'Colors are the wounds of light' - William Blake
That bring out the depth
Of secret presence
At the heart of nature.

(poetically phrased from Anam Cara by John O'Donohue)


"Emerson said, 'No one suspects the days to be Gods," It is one of the tragedies of modern culture that we have lost touch with primal thresholds of nature. The urbanization of modern life has succeeded in exiling us from this fecund kinship with our mother earth. Fashioned from the earth, we are souls in clay form. We need to remain in rhythm with our inner clay voice and longing. Yet this voice is no longer audible in the modern world. We are not even aware of our loss, consequently, the pain of our spiritual exile is more intense in being largely unintelligible."

Quoted from - Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom - by John O'Donohue

Aman Cara
 

A Spirituality of Transfiguration

Spirituality is the art of transfiguration
We should not force ourselves
To change
By hammering our lives
Into any predetermined shape.
We do not need to operate
According to the idea
Of a predetermined program or plan
For our lives.

Rather, we need to practice
A new art of attention
To the inner rhythm
Of our days and lives.

Attention brings a new awareness
Of our own human
And divine presence.
It is far more creative to work
With the idea of mindfulness
Rather than with idea of will.
Too often people try to change their lives
By using will as a kind of hammer
To beat their life into proper shape.
The intellect identifies the goal of the program,
And the will accordingly
Forces the life
Into that shape.
This way of approaching the sacredness
Of one’s own presence
Is externalist
And violent.
It brings you falsely
Outside yourself,
And you can spend years lost
In the wildernesses
Of your own mechanical,
Spiritual programs.
You can perish
In a famine of your own making.

If you work with a different rhythem
You will come easily and naturally
Home to yourself.
Your soul knows
The geography
Of your destiny.
Your soul alone
Has the map
Of your future.
If you trust this indirect,
Oblique side of yourself,
It will take you
Where you need to go,
But more important
It will teach you
A kindness of rhythm
In your journey.

There is no general principles
For this art of being.
Yet the signature
Of this unique journey
Is inscribed
Deeply in each soul.
If you attend
To yourself
And seek
To come into your presence,
You will find exactly
The right rhythm
For your own life.

Quoted from - Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom - by John O'Donohue

Receiving Solace from the Moon

In plain view,
She readily displays her cycles
Of illumination and shadow,
Powerful enough
To influence vast oceans.
Steady, constant,
Incredibly beautiful,
She brings light
Into the darkness.
The moon icon,
Eternally feminine,
A celestial mentor,
Infusing us
With the recognition
Of our own oftentimes
Shadowy brilliance.

Balanced awareness
Emerging
Realizing that to be whole,
Holiness must naturally
Embrace all complimentary
Aspects of being.
Masculine and Feminine,
Darkness and Light,
Body and Spirit,
Thought and Feeling.

Women carry the essence
Of femininity
That is symbolized by Sister Moon
Within the cells
Of our bodies
And the fabric or our souls.
Intuitively
We recognize the significance
Of Luna, the Creator Goddess,
And we invite her
To resume her rightful place
As our teacher.
Once revered and called
By the sacred names:
“Mother of the Universe,”
“Old Woman Who Never Dies,”
“Eternal One.”
The moon can bring us solace
While inspiring us to learn
And respect all of our own
Natural cycles,
The ebbs and flows,
Ups and downs,
And the waxing and waning.

The moons special kinship,
A loving tender grandmother,
Cradling us in her gentle arms,
Waxing and waning
Bringing light into darkness
She smiles her blessing.

As daughters of the moon
We, too, are called
To bring light into darkness.
What tears can you dry today?
What gentle arms
Can you provide,
For yourself or another?

Sue Patton Thoele - Woman's Book of Soul

Anam Cara
 

Haven't walked my labyrinth in a while .. its rolled up right now, but i wanted to share this

A Blessing

May the light of your soul guide you.
May the light of your soul bless the work you do
with the secret love and warmth of your heart.
May you see in what you do the beauty of your own soul.
May the sacredness of your work bring healing, light and renewal
To those who work with you and to those who see and recieve your work.
May your work never weary you.
May it release within you wellsprings of refreshment,
inspiration and excitement.
May you be present in what you do.
May you never become lost in the bland absences.
May the day never burden.
May Dawn find you awake, alert, approaching you day
with dreams, possibilities, and promises.
May evening find you gracious and fulfilled.
May you go into the night blessed, sheltered, and protected.
May you soul calm, console, and renew you!

Quoted from Anam Cara - John O'Donohue