Just for today, I will let go of anger

Empowered living is a difficult concept when we live in a world that appears to require us to be disconnected & distracted from our authentic self. Driven by invisible and unrecognized longing, we feel this deep separation and abandonment. In order to heal this longing, we need to reweave our souls back into clarity, inner stillness and receptivity. These qualities provide us the opportunity to gaze upon our authentic inner landscape and reintegrate into the life we were born to live.

Blessed Imbulc everyone!

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Jan17

Preparing The Future Before We Get There

Near the beginning of the year, I talked about the importance of clearing out the energy of past before we move into the future. Today, I want to talk about the compliment to this exercise: clearing the road of the future of the debris that generally trips us up or leads us astray.  I dont want to talk about predictions for the future, or making demands upon the Divine Presence concerning the shape of thing to come. I only want to ask the God for some help with four areas where we have the tendency to turn a blessed experience into one of confusion or suffering.

The best way to begin this process is to sped a few moments making sure that we are approaching with an open heart/mind. If we have a build up of resentments or fears that are acting as our motivation, then this is unfortunately what the exercise will bring into our future. Remember the most powerful of spiritual axioms, “Garbage in = Garbage out”

If we find that we have these motivations and are having trouble moving past them, one thing we can do is a chanting round of Estafirullah, which mean “forgive me, God”. This can go a long way toward taking our human limitations out of the working so that we do not get in our way.

Ready? First, we get four pieces of paper, a pencil, and four tea light candles.

Label the papers with the following terms:

1. Protection from Fear

2. Protection from Confusion

3. Call for Abundance

4. Call for Peace

On the first piece of paper, we make a list of experiences where fear has prevented us from getting the best out of the situation. These might be memories from the past that are examples of what we don’t want to happen again. Similarly, these could be likely experiences from the future that we can see coming and need some divine intervention to protect us from fear coloring the perceptions of the experience. This list does not need to be complete or exhaustive, only referential. Remember that we are going to be be turning the control of the fear over to God. So, we need not make an itemized list here.

Page number two is for a list that is similar to list one save the topic is confusion or a lack of proper understanding. We use experience references from the past as well as particular experiences that are coming up in the future. Again, this list is a list of examples and does not need to be complete.

With page number three, we turn our attention from protection to a showering of Divine Quality upon our life. The call for abundance can be challenging for us, because many of us received a painful teaching as children that told us not to want anything.  An authority over us told us that wealth was only a corruptive influence and if we are to be Holy we should seek happiness in poverty. It is important to understand that while attachment to wealth is not healthy, poverty as a spiritual discipline is certainly not held by every faith tradition that God has given us. In fact, the view of poverty as Holy and wealth as Corruption is a minority among the faiths of our world. Many traditions hold that the things of the world are gifts from God and that we should have and enjoy them so long as we do not put them before our relationship with the Holy.

This said, I would like to offer the definition of abundance as that which protects us from the suffering of the world. For some, this means a particular amount of money, for others it means nutrition, for others it is a healthy community and so on. By asking for abundance, we are asking for that which brings us into the Love of God and of the natural world. Because God knows what this means, we can leave the meaning of this request in God’s hands.

Our list for page three should be some examples of abundance which we have seen in others or experiences in our life where the abundance helped ease suffering and bring individuals closer to God’s essence. Remember, this list is not exhaustive, only representative.

List number four is similar to list three but offers a quality clause: the actuation for this to take is in the form of peace. Peace is defined as that energy which is present when we are in a balanced relationship with God. For each of us this comes about by a different set of circumstance. What is the same of each of us is that we are at peace, we are able to see our own soul path and to walk it without resistance.

Once we have the four lists completed, we should light the four candles and set one at the top of each page. Next, we chant over the list. The chant I like to use is: Bismillah ir-Rachman ir-Rahim (Arabic: in the name of God who is difined as the source of Mercy and Compassion). For a short exercise, chant for five minutes. This can be made more complex by placing a hand on each page and chant for five minutes each. Finally, a longer for of this working would be to extend the chanting to a count of 300 per page. Each of these options can be performed daily for a week and then reflect on any changes that have risen in your life.

Posted by Shon in Meditation and Mindfulness, Self Empowerment, Shamanic Healing

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Jan14

But by the Grace of Divinity go I

Ever find yourself in deep anxiety or emotional pain? You find yourself feeling trapped, overwhelmed and looking for the escape hatch? Recently I found myself in this deep suffering over my relationship with some close friends of mine and I was wondering if the Goddess was going to change it for me, if she was going to offer any sort of relief or support.

 

My mind lead me down this winding garden path and I wondered how long this pain was going to last. My inner shrink weighed in and I began wondering if I was causing this pain myself, wrapping myself up in something that wasn’t necessary. I was antsy enough and felt displaced to such a point that I wondered if I was going to have trouble sleeping.

 

Then, I started feeling this nagging concern if I was going to be resentful if I prayed and the Goddess didn’t answer or cause any change. How would this lack of change after prayer affect my belief in prayer and my belief around whether the goddess answers prayers. This softer concern voiced a true concern which made my skin crawl: whether prayer worked and if I believed in it. It was at that stunning moment that I realized that not only had I not prayed and asked, but that I was afraid to for fear it wouldn’t be answered and I would be left holding the bag alone. After some deliberation, I stepped up to my inner prayer mat in a decision to choose to the best of my ability to allow the prayer to be answered any way that she saw fit and not try to control the outcome.

 

I moved into my soul, and very quietly, deeply and with intention started praying over myself and the situation. Through that offering to God, I began to see that I was asking for relief from pain. The spirits showed me that I needed grace as I went through something very difficult. I started perceiving grace as not a rescuing of myself from my pain, but instead more like a state of spiritual being that relieved me from having things attach to me, like lubing a pole before it went into a slot.

 

My prayers followed this flow, asking for grace to surround me and uphold me. And after my spirit had a good lube job, my inner eyes glanced to this energetic idea that was hovering over my spirit: that when I did prayers over something, that I was really hoping that God was going to be appeased enough that she or he would grant what I wanted. I was trying to BUY God with my prayers. I looked at that for a moment, felt a wave of remorse, relief and embarrassment. Good Lord, really?!!!! From there I began our traditions chant to offer remorse and then ask for it to be changed from that place of understanding or deep soul knowledge.

 

It’s strange how invasive it is that you want to buy or earn your way somewhere, as if your soul were for sale so we can obtain respect, care for or honor. We cannot earn the love or grace of God. The Universe’s love, relief or joy cannot bought and sold. Often we are seeking to “cure” something by prayers, chants or rituals instead of moving into presence with the holy and allowing it to impact or change our spirit. In reality, to cure is a misplaced goal because it is based on the assumption that something is broken or in error. In reality, we have no idea if this is true. Spiritual tools are like mechanic’s tools to work with our “soul bits” functioning to clear, clean, feed or uphold the soul. We have to be careful not to try use them to obtain love, grace or the respect of Divinity, because the tools do not function like that and then we will find our spirits feeling resentful, betrayed or abandoned!

The real medicine for our soul’s wound is to move close into the Goddess and allow her presence which is love to imprint our spirit. No child (young or grown) petitions or conjoles our Mother to *make* her make our owy better. Instead we love the Goddess, come closer to her and open ourselves to her as deeply as we can and like a mother who gets to see our owy, ask her to kiss it and make it better. She wants nothing more but to do this kindness for you, but our Goddess is a Lady and she won’t force you to open the place where the owy is to let her kiss it.

I had dreams about Cerriadwen’s cauldron all night. She was kind to me even as I struggled with this deep soul wound that I have to earn grace or love or compassion from the Universe. People often say that this work is unforgiving and brutal, and soul deep it is, but the Goddess loved me deeply that night. She spent the whole night standing in the deep place with me and as I changed, the inner sight that she is always standing there came open to me.

Great Mother Great Father, let me be open and guided by the highest and most noble inspirations and aspirations: You. Let my feet not stray from this path.

 

But by the Grace of Divinity go I.

Posted by Sophia in Meditation and Mindfulness

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Dec16

Looking back, before we move ahead

As we cross into the New Year, many of us turn to the horizon, looking for hope, renewal and an easing of the suffering of the previous year. There is nothing at all wrong with this tendency. It is how we function. When the clock strikes midnight, we close the door of what was and open the door of what is, or is coming.

In examining my own process around the new replacing the old, I got to thinking about how important it is for me to offer gratitude of the blessings I have, before I go forward into the future. This way, I have better chance for a clean start, rather than stumbling blindly head into a situation that is just a repeat of where I have already been.

This led me to identifying four areas of concern that can use some attention before I move on into 2012. They are: what am I grateful for, what do I need to be forgiven for, what hopes am I holding in resentment and what processes did I stop that I can resume.

The first area is pretty strait forward. Gratitude is an energy that I express to God when I have blessings in my life. This is not my way of saying that I was deserving or not deserving of the blessings, only that I see the blessings and I am grateful for them.

Next on the list is forgiveness. Again, this is between myself and God. It has to do with the ways that my limited self has interfered with the natural flow of thing or to say it another way, when I have created suffering where there would not otherwise be any. This includes the accidental occurrences, the times when I was apparently justified in my actions and the times where I am unaware of my influence or the suffering it caused. What is always hard for me to remember, and what I must remember, in order to effectively use forgiveness is that forgiveness is not linked to shame. I am asking God to step in and help to clear the pain that has come from my actions. This forgiveness is something that God has promised humanity and it does not come with the price of groveling or shaming myself as if I am something unworthy of God’s love. Every being in creation is entitled to this love and mistakes, which are part of life, do not limit this love. They do, however, cause suffering and God is willing to help with this, if I ask.

Number three on my list concerns hope and the energy of intention or of striving when it is unfulfilled. In these cases, I might be holding onto a cold and resentful energy that might be a prevention for future happiness.

Lastly, there is the area of stopped processes that might need to resume. I define these situations as those where I was in a healing or growth process but I had to stop because the needs of the moment did not leave me with enough energy to proceed. After the moment ended, I forgot to resume the progress.

Once I identified these four areas, I made up a simple ritual (or prayerful meditation, if you like) to help me to open these four areas and to clean them out so that, God willing, the path forward is clear and peaceful.
My style of ritual is to use focus words or mantras to go with each area and then to repeat the words as a meditation. For area number one, I used the word Evallah, (arabic: what God has given me is good) to offer up gratitude for the blessings that have come to me. For area number two, I used Estafirullah (arabic: forgive me God and heal me from my mistakes). I also used Estafirullah for the area of lingering or resentful hope, because these energies can also be healed by God’s forgiveness. In the last area, I used Inshallah (arabic: God willing) to indicate that if it is good for my path, I would like to resume the progress which I halted.

If you would like to use this ritual, I provided it below. Naturally, you can adapt it to your own practice and your own vocabulary.

Spend five minutes thinking or praying about each of these areas:
-What I am grateful for?
-Am I willing to ask God’s forgiveness for my mistakes: known and unknown?
-Do I hold residual energies from my unfulfilled hopes and intentions?
-Are there healing processes that I halted that I am ready to resume?

Chant using the length of your choice:

Evallah 33, 99, or 300 times
Estafirullah 33, 99, or 300 times
Estafirullah 33, 99, or 300 times
Inshallah 33, 99, or 300 times

Option: repeat this ritual once a day for 3, 11, or 33 days.

Posted by Shon in Meditation and Mindfulness, Self Empowerment

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