A spring Meme

Here’s a Meme which came from Silly Buddha. I thought it looked like a fun thing to do.

Astrological Sign?
Cusp between Gemini and Cancer

Chinese Astrological Sign?
Dragon I believe

What are you currently setting your intention on or praying for?
A summer ceremony, A writing project, relationships, healing list

Who do you pray to?
Great Mystery

Do you believe God created humans or humans evolved from primordial goo?
I don’t know and I don’t think it really matters.

What is your mantra?
It is not a mantra, it is a wazaif: Ya Alim, Ya Wali, Ya Khabir It means “Clarity and mastery reveals to and through me.

Do you believe in Sin?
Sin is a Christian concept. I am not a Christian. Sin implies that every beautiful child born is inherently imperfect and carries the seed of evil and becomes responsible for that evil at some arbitrary age of awareness. I believe that each child is a part of the Great Mystery of all life, that we all carry the seed of the Divine and that this Mystery of Life is full of a balance of life and death as this is what is required for life to be sustained. Therefore, there is not such thing as sin…as we are all sparks of the Divine.

Do you believe in Evil?
I think that some can take their exploration of the dark a bit to far…and that they can get a taste and pleasure from it…yes.

What do you do when you see 11:11?
I don’t understand the question.

Do you believe in Angels?
Seen ‘em myself…so yup.

Do you believe in God? If so, what does God look like to you?
Yup. It is an amorphous energy that takes on a face only if you are too spiritually immature to relate to without one. I fully admit to enjoying a face, but I’m just as happy without one. What it does for me is identify the sort of energy and wisdom that is being shared with me more easily. I find that helpful frequently, so I’m happy when things are easily explained to me that way.

Is there an aspect of your religion/belief that you haven’t made up your mind about?
I am pretty content with the Lakota/Buddhist path that I have chosen for myself. I still have much to learn, but what I know so far is a gentle lovely way to live.

Is there a religion that you don’t follow, but deeply respect or admire?
Hinduism, and I am very curious about any indigenous shamanic culture’s traditions and rituals.

Who has inspired you the most on your spiritual path?
Wow…I couldn’t possibly name them all. How about just in the last month? M, my husband, my pipe’s spirit, my friend’s wife, Gillette, Paul…these folks spring to mind most readily.

In your opinion, what is the worst mistake we make, as a species?
Making the land, air and water unhealthy. We would never pick the food we take from our refrigerators and put poison in it, yet we do that to the soil it grows in and takes nourishment from. We would not put poison in our glass of water, yet we allow our waters to be poisoned by industry. We would not let our lungs be filled with poisonous gas if we could choose, yet we let industry and lifestyle choices poison all the air for every one.

Our other worst mistake is over population. We are making too many children for this planet to feed comfortably and at the rate that we are going with poisoning the places we can grow food from, that’s going to get very scary in the next few generations.

What is something you would like to believe, but don’t?
If I find something worthy to believe, then I just go ahead and believe. I don’t really understand that question…*smiles*

Do you believe in soul mates?
Yup.

Reincarnation or heaven?
Reincarnation

Best “ah ha!” moment/epiphany?
I love me.

Required spiritual reading?
There’s too many to name really. But if I had to pick just two right this minute. I would say Divine Light Invocation and Creative Visualization.

If you could pick, in your final moments, what would your last words be?
“See you soon. Love you.”

Advice for a lost soul?
Follow your peace.

A song that encapsulates your beliefs?
“I see the Beloved” Karen Druker

TAG! Your turn. Copy and paste - can’t wait to read.

Pickalily: Renewal

I very rarely speak of my shamanic experiences online. It feels to me that it just doesn’t belong here. Shamanic experience is about inner power and what has that really to do with blogging? Now I do read one or two blogs on the topic of shamanic experience. But generally, I just don’t think its something to talk about. It is a doing thing, an experiential thing, not a talking thing.

Now, fact is, much of my inner journey these past months that I’ve been so silent has been lots of shamanic stuff….and as I said, I don’t find that blogging fodder. Not to mention yet, that I am an inspired teacher when I’m in the midst of internal process; especially internal shamanic process. If I’m in that inner process, I feel entirely student-like in perspective. I am fully convinced that I’m not more than a student unless someone asks me for help. I often have the answer. Not always, but frequently enough that I’ve been recognized as a teacher in my community. It is also my training to lead by example, rather than to proselytize, so this form of teaching is frequently awkward for me. I find it easier to journal about my life and my thoughts and let the wisdom I’ve been graced with flow on to a page that is spoken simply from the perspective of hard won strength and perspective. For me, that’s also a comfortable learning style.

I am betwixt just now. I can see the deep need for words to begin to flow….because I need to complete tasks that are really important to me….and because I’ve been taking a day off for long enough in terms of shining my light with the focus I feel is required of me given my many gifts of grace. Yet I feel that sense of awkward in myself because I feel my normal process…to journal my life is too deeply immersed in shamanic experience for a blogging medium….so I feel a need to seek the thoughts of other teachers about this dilemma of teaching. Am I the only one who faces this?

Message from the bushes of my heart:

Emphasize the relationships in your life from which true loving springs

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Mood: Silent

Tea: Arizona + my medicinal mix tea

Munching: Nothing

Song: Stir it Up by Bob Marley

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Stuff on my mind this week:

This Video

A couple friendships that need to be contemplated and decisions made about

My marriage

My work

My writing

My pipe and my summer ceremony

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I’m Grateful For:

My husband

The lessons and loving that M brought me

Friendships

Art

The many answered prayers in my life

The beauty of my Earth Mother

The color Blue

The sound of the sea

Snoopy Dances

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This Week’s Card:

Here

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Friday’s Feast

AppetizerGiven the choice, would you prefer to live in the country or in the city?

I’m contrary…I want to live on the coast. I could care less how anyone else defines it so long as I can be naked in my yard and not listen to anyone else’s noise so I can hear the sea.

Soup

Who is the cutest kid you know?

Emma and Sabrina

Salad

Fill in the blank: I couldn’t believe it when I heard ___________.

Perhaps I am a bit cynical, but I am rarely surprised by anything I hear about. I am either delighted or disappointed instead.

Main Course

If you could star in a commercial for one of your favorite products, which one would you want to advertise?

Geez! This week’s feast is hard….I don’t have an answer to many of them that are straightforward. I could care less about most mainstream products because I can’t use most of them….but I suppose that I’d enjoy getting behind something that LL Bean sells. They are a pretty good company with pretty high ethical standards and a rather good product line.

Dessert

What type(s) of vitamins and/or supplements do you take on a regular basis?

I take an omega three oil suppliment that’s made from fish, flax seed and borage seed, a bcomplex, papaya enzyme, milk thistle, a multivitamin, cranberry, elder berry tincture, sacred basil tincture and some tea made with nettles, hibiscus, chamomile, oat straw, scullcap…and I can’t remember what else is in my medicinal mix. But I take those pretty much every day.

 

Examination of Consciousness

I posted this on Defining Spiritual Presence in 2007. I thought it belonged here also. Its a good post. I hope that you’ll consider these prompts for your journal time and for contemplative consideration.

Here are some questions that I occasionally ask myself and which I often share with others I teach:

Who/what is the essence of me?

What am I really good at?

What have I accomplished in my life that I’m proud of?

What would I like to accomplish still?

What am I attracted to in the people in my life?

What do they reflect about me?

What do I do to nurture myself?

How is my cup full?

What is my gift/legacy?

I also like to add in a suggestion to my students when I ask them to review their answers to these questions: Give away what you most want in your life.

There’s an Indigo Girls song with a line in it: “if we ever leave a legacy it’s that we loved each other well.”

I surely hope that’s my legacy.

I know a wonderful lady. She’s in her eighties and so beautiful. I think she’s still sexy and I hope that I’m half so beautiful when I’m her age. Her daughter is one of my dearest friends and I’m so fortunate that my friend shares her mother with me. I feel like I have a second Mom as a result…which feels like a real gift to me considering my own mother is gone now. Anyway, my adoptive Mother’s goal in life is to be venerable. I have always thought that this is such a worthy goal….and I think that she’s achieved it and easily. I hope to achieve that in my life as well.

Change

I posted this on my old blog, Defining Spiritual Presence in 2007. It seems to fit life right now…and its a lovely bit of writing, so I thought I’d share it here.

I woke today with bad dreams about a person in my life that hurt me deeply…and this was in my mind as I sat for my meditation…

My meditation did not linger on her….instead it lingered in the light and I found a sort of poem forming in me. Here it is:

Winter’s light is white and blue.
It tastes like cranberries…It feels like pine needles warmed in the sun.
It feels like the bite of the light off the snow that stings the eyes and makes them blind to anything else but the dazzle of what the cold can create.

Spring’s light is yellow and blue.
It feels like the color of crocus peeking through the snow.
It tastes like the starchy end of the winter’s squash mixed with maple syrup from the life of last year’s spring.
It smells like the mud warmed by the sun and saturated with the dazzle of the winter’s end.

Summer’s light is orange and blue.
It is the color of all the browned bodies soaking the sun.
It tastes like the sorrel that grows wild in my garden and the peaches that ripen near the end.
It feels like the glow of sunset on the water enchanting my eyes and heart and out of which flies the dragons eating mosquitoes.

Fall’s light is red and blue.
It is the color of sweet apple’s hue ripened by the waning life giving sun.
It feels like the cool breeze and the whispering trees and the touch of red from the syrupy tree that will next sweeten my squash.
The coin in the sky even takes a red hue to my eye and so to me fall is red and blue…

My meditation seemed to say to me…”This too shall pass. Seasons change.”

Friendship

Friendship is a difficult thing to navigate at times. For me, the most difficult thing about it is when I know someone wants something from me that I can’t give without loosing myself….and that if I don’t give it I will be walked away from. That is hard for me. Yet, I feel I must do what I need to do by taking care of myself. Sometimes I cannot give what others need….and those times are when I’ve become tapped out…when I’m lost in something that is overwhelming me too…

Or sometimes I am busy living and I just miss the details.

Or sometimes I am afraid of being engulfed in someone else’s difficulties and I don’t have the tools to take care of myself that day…and maybe the days when its like that string together over and over until it appears that I’m just not there anymore.

Which isn’t really true….but I cannot be palpable.

I can only love from a distance.

And I know that’s not enough at times.

Still…friendship is sweet…just as sweet as this song.

Holding a vision