Give Yourself Permission!

Here's the altar awaiting our next circle.  Sea shells, beach stones, sea glass and oceanic calcite scattered around an orange bowl-- objects to honor our second chakra right to feel -- to let our emotions flow through us like waves upon the shore.

For many of us this natural impulse was thwarted in childhood.  Certain emotions earned us the disapproval of parents and other authorities (in my case, nuns!)  Our spiritual task is to give ourselves permission to allow our feelings to move through us.

As adults, we have the power to choose how to respond to our emotions.  When they're troubling  we engage our inner witness, viewing our unrest with compassion.  When they're joyful, we share with loved ones.

To have permission to feel our feelings!  Even those that were once forbidden!  Have you given yourself permission?

At our next gathering we'll settle into the low belly with the intention of releasing stuck emotions that may be locked in there like energetic sediment.  Plan to leave feeling lighter, liberated.

In the meantime, enjoy our altar in your sacred heart space.


All are welcome to join our circle.  Please click on the Workshops tab on our home page for details.

Moon Goddess Meditations

Join us!

Our meditation circle will resume on Monday evenings, January 27, 2014.  Click on Meditation Workshops above for details.

Happy Winter Solstice!

The Power of the Pause

On this high point of the wheel of the year, I feel connected to the ancients.  They built sacred sites all over the world -- stone circles and pyramids -- that frame the sunrise on this day that celebrates the return of the light.      

                                           

The winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, honors the incremental return of light as the days begin to lengthen. Solstice derives from Latin, sol (sun) and sistere (stand still).  Ancient star gazers studied the movement of heavenly bodies in relation to one another and knew that every year, on or around the 21st of December, the path of the sun (as it appears to us on Earth) stops before reversing direction.  The sun stands still.

Not only are we ending a seasonal cycle and welcoming winter, we're also ending an annual cycle and ushering in what I'm calling the Celestial New Year.  In my practice, in keeping with the rhythms of nature, the new year begins today.

Last year's winter solstice  marked the end of a 5, 125 year cycle -- the end of a world age, according to the Mayans.  AND (stay with me!) 12.21.12 also marked the end of a 26,000 year cycle called the precession of the equinoxes.  The Mayan calendar reflects these epochal cycles within cycles and makes us wonder how our ancestors tracked this knowledge over countless generations of sky watching.

What does all this mean to us?  Only five generations in the last 26,000 years have experienced the shift of world ages. We [are] the sixth!* 

Gives you pause, right?

Solstices have been ritually celebrated since time out of mind because we intuitively appreciate their potent energy. We feel the power of the pause. The choices we make when one cycle ends and another is poised to begin are charged with the momentum of the universe!

So on this sacred day let's follow the teaching of the sun.  Be still and reflect on your intentions for the coming year. Write them down, stating them clearly for all the forces at work today.  Why not infuse your dreams and desires with the sweeping momentum of the grand design unfolding around us?

• Where in your life do you wish to change direction? 
• What can you allow to go dormant? 
• What's germinating deep within? 
• What dark aspect of your life are you willing to let go? 
• What do you want to shine more light on? Devote more energy to? 

Attune to the tides of time -- the ebb of darkness and the flow of light.  When we do this, we slip into the wisdom-ways of our ancient ancestors. We encircle an inner fire, gaze at the stars, honor the waxing and waning of the moon.

We behold one another, and our place in the whole of Creation, in a new light.

Such is the power of the pause.


*spiritlibrary.com/greggbraden/what-does-2012-mean-for-us-today

Encountering Dementia and the Power of Now

Last Monday evening our meditation circle gathered once again.  Phyllis, who has returned from the beach, is warmly welcomed with a round of hugs. Soon we are settled.

We take a couple of moments to sit and breathe, initiating the transition from busy, everyday mind to meditative mind.  We listen to Eckhart Tolle, speaking with his soft German accent, as he introduces us to The Power Of Now.

The reading is sharply poignant after visiting my father-in-law last night.  This dear man appears to be succumbing to dementia.  In his mind, work-related pressures from many years ago are entangled with what he believes his deceased wife is doing to spite him. As his jumbled narrative unwinds, we strain to find a thread we can follow.  

What was it Tolle said about being overtaken by our thoughts?

The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly.  If used wrongly, it becomes very destructive.  It's not so much that you use your mind wrongly; you usually don't use it at all, it  uses you.  The instrument has taken you over.  It's almost as if you are possessed without knowing it, and  so you take the possessing entity to be yourself.

He's not talking about our aging parents.  He's talking about us!

After listening, we don't have much to say.  Everyone seems to realize the extent to which we've been taken over by our run-away thoughts.  We chuckle when he says, "Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful condition, but since we all suffer from it, we think it's normal." (!)

After seeing my father-in-law, the humor sinks like a stone into a mucky-bottomed pond.  

So we practice engaging the witness. We imagine sitting on the shore, inviting familiar emotions to wash over us and noting our habitual response to say, sadness. We invite the feeling, noticing how it feels in our bodies. My sadness feels like a damp quilt pressing on my my heart, sodden.  A pull in my throat, presaging tears.

To our surprise we find we can handle the physical sensation!  Then, we witness the tendency of our minds to take it one step further -- to embellish with a (very engaging) story or to assign blame (that SOB!). We discover first-hand that it's our thoughts about the sadness that escalate anxiety.

We experiment -- allowing our feelings and observing what the mind wants to throw onto the ash heap in my throat.  The thinker wants to re-ignite the old grievance, the familiar story, the incessant (poor me) monologue.  We practice containing the sadness in the glowing orange bowl in our low bellies.   And then we let it roll out to sea on the next wave.

Ah, the witness offers relief.  Eckhart says,

The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not the possessing entity -- the thinker. Knowing this enables you to observe the entity.  The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated.  You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence.  You also realize that all the things that truly matter -- beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace -- arise from beyond the mind.  You begin to awaken.

My inner witness is smiling at how Spirit arranged my week.  Tolle's prescient words on Monday provide a context for my experience with my father in law on Wednesday.  I notice how my mind needs some frame of reference, someplace to categorize this new distress.

Out beyond the mind, beyond that need, in that vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, my larger self floats on a wave of compassion.  Faced once again with the great mystery of being, I choose trust.

All are welcome to join our meditation circle when we meet next on Monday, October 21, 2013.  The fee is $10.  Find details under Workshops above.

Harvest Moon Meditation

Lighting Your Inner Lantern

I sit this morning with a steaming mug of tea.  Must be Fall!

Our meditation circle reconvened this week after summer hiatus.  We are blessed with new faces. As I light the candles, I feel the warmth of being back together.

After getting re-acquainted, we lower the lights and play Marina Rayes' Liquid Silk, native flutes weaving through the sounds of nature.  It's perfect for conjuring the Spirit of the Earth.

We anchor ourselves to the warm womb of Mother Earth, progressively releasing accumulated tension. Allowing gravity to settle our bodies and minds. Drawing vitality up through our energetic roots, we inhabit our bodies with fresh awareness.

I feel a little rusty.  Did I forget this or that?  Is everyone comfortable?  How many of us are still struggling to get out of our heads, smile.

Soon my voice ceases and we are left with the music.

The woodwind flute, lending a voice to longing.

The echoing notes of the loon on a misty morning.

The call of the owl through the forest hush.

A stream splashing over stones.

So soothing for our (formerly frayed) nerves.

As we sink in more deeply, the roof seems to sail away into the moonlit sky, leaving us exposed to the late summer whispers of nightfall.  The trees cast long shadows, back-lit by the fat harvest moon.

The Great Mother herself  is weaving  us into communion.  Like winding yarn into a ball, she encircles us in strands of red, orange and yellow light -- over, around, and underneath us. 

The energy of the group, re-ignited.

Such is the way when we recede into silence.   Tethered to the ground of our being, our awareness opens, shining like the brilliant moonlight spilling across lawns and ledges.  May this inner lantern shine for us as the nights lengthen and the year wanes.


All are welcome to join us next Monday evening, September 23.  Details can be found under Workshops above.

Storm Rolling In

I find myself in solitude on the first evening of September.  Dusk gathers early.  Yellow leaves drift onto the lawn.  Melancholy nibbles at the edges of my awareness.

I put aside what I'm doing and decide to do the work,  as Byron Katie calls it,  on the disintegration of what was once a cherished sisterhood.   I pull out her book, Loving What Is, open up a word document, and sink in ... to my bruised heart.

That's when the inner storm starts brewing.

My discontent spills out, sprawling across the screen like a swollen stream overrunning it's edges. As my fingers fly over the keyboard, anger rumbles like distant thunder.  A decidedly cool front moves in, a rush that rips dying attachments from their moorings and tosses them in a tumult.  Relief comes in the outpouring. It blows through, and in it's wake there's a quiet sense of calm. 

Next morning, as I step out for my walk, the metallic sky portends rain.  I smile at the familiar synchronicity of as within so without.  Before long, I've found the rhythm that opens the pathways to other realms.  I become a bridge for the Spirits of Earth and Sky to traverse and heal. It's a two way exchange, where I offer my healing gifts to them and they graciously return the favor.

As this connection takes hold, a geyser, a surging fountain of energy, swirls up through my being, dislodging energetic debris.  I yield to the flow, the up-welling of cleansing and clearing.  All the stuff I hide from myself -- anger, sadness, frustration, the dreaded judgment, excuses, procrastination, laziness, failure, self sabotage and vulnerability -- wheel out into the spacious open sky of awareness, like Dorothy's house uprooted from the plains of Kansas.

Why hide all this?  It's my humanity. Shared with everyone else on the planet.

A fresh perspective from the  eye of the storm.

Rumbling thunder brings me back to earth.   A literal storm is upon us!

Needles of rain slant across the sidewalk. I pick up the pace, feeling exponentially lighter.

I stop at the dock, snug under my umbrella, only vaguely concerned that it's spider-like skeleton is aluminum. The pond is eerily deserted.

Scanning the shore, I spot her -- a beautiful lone heron. The bare branch she stands on extends low over the water like a graceful arm, whose open hand offers her footing. A tableau of balance and ease.

My husband calls to check on my whereabouts.  I don't tell him that I'm on the dock in the rain, taking lessons from this heron.

She's poised over the pond, upon the open hand of God. While her watery reflection wavers, the great blue heron waits out the storm.

Holy Trinities?

Everything seems to be happening in threes.

Recently I came across a basket of stones collected from here and there -- beaches, river banks, the edge of a stream. One is triangular, it stands up on it's own.  So I placed in on an end table with some other treasures.

Then my daughter and her love go to visit my parents in the Adirondacks.  I ask her to bring some stones if they hike up to the falls.  I have a photo of the last time we climbed there, years ago -- my mother, my two daughters, my sister, and her two girls.  Three generations of women with the falls cascading behind us.

So Meredith returns with, yes -- another triangle.  It's a larger wedge; it also stands up on one side.

Now I encounter a trio on my morning walk.  As I approach the pond, a heron takes flight.  Off she goes across the water, out of sight beyond the rushes. Seeing this, another heron alights as well.  They are both the same color as the pond -- gray green -- and would be indiscernable from their surroundings if not for the movement of their wings.

Then these two beauties reappear, with a third  in tow.  This one is smaller.  All three flying low over the pond, each set of wingtips seeming to touch it's reflection on the water.

Pondering all these threes, I realize  this has  happened in the window of the recent Star of David planetary alignment. Astrological charts of the constellation reveal the intersecting triangles. The downward-pointing triangle, shaped like a chalice, represents the feminine, while it's upward-pointing opposite, shaped like a blade, represents the masculine.
   

So what's up with all these triangles?

Might they portend a new paradigm? A new holy trinity?

Instead of the Father, Son and ephemeral Holy Ghost, perhaps the alignment of stars in the heavens invites us to resurrect the feminine principle -- the Goddess -- and restore her to her rightful place in the creation energies.

Father, mother, child.  Hasn't it always been so?

The potent union of these two life-giving aspects of creation yields wholeness, integration and balance.  We find our power when we blend masculine strength and feminine wisdom. Thus a new consciousness is born -- one that embraces the gifts of both halves of our divine inheritance.

Don't you feel her stirring, the Goddess?

Arranging triangles beneath our feet and across the heavens, inviting us to mine the meaning of threes upon threes.