Posted on: Jun 20, 2019 @ 10:00 Posted in: Sabbats
Your Summer Journey: Nature’s Transformative Magic of Beauty and Abundance
I reach out to you at the Summer Solstice with its peak in the powers of light and life, and the seasons turn to Summer, gifting us with Nature’s transformative magic of beauty, abundance and goodness.
I reach out to you as I struggle daily with the onslaught of bad and depressing news that relentlessly reinforces the worst of our humanity, the mess we’ve made of this world, and our seeming inability to alter our destructive ways.
I reach out to you knowing that I’m not alone in my angst. We all sense, deep down, that change is coming at us, hard and fast — change that profoundly matters to our personal lives, to those we hold close and dear, to our children and children’s children to come, to our Earth home, and to our very future as a species.
I reach out to you to offer a different voice, and a positive, empowering vision and path of change in the face of the noise and negativity of the daily news cycle that locks us in a mindset of scarcity, fear, and gross imbalances in power, wealth and wellbeing. This outer mindset is just one possibility and path for our human society, and another path, arising from the life-centered ways of the Goddess and Nature, is flourishing outside your doorstep at this very moment.
Walk With MeCome, take my hand, join me as I walk on a fine, sunny June day, following the same path that’s guided my questing feet for twenty years — down a secret forest trail on our land that leads to a tranquil, rural road surrounded by farmland.
Posted on: Jun 19, 2019 @ 10:00 Posted in: Featured, Sabbats
Three Lessons from the Summer Season: Visioning a New World
There’s a powerful juxtaposing of realities going on right now: one is the world as we know it, with an ethos of fear and scarcity, and an ugly underbelly that’s so evident in the daily deluge of horrific news; and the other is a life-centered ethos revealed in Nature’s emerging summertime landscape of stunning beauty and overflowing abundance.
Two realities, two ways of living and engaging the world around us, two different outcomes for our lives, human society and Earth home. At this moment, both these realities are turned on high, in our face, shaking us awake and asking us to choose.
This isn’t a comfortable discussion to have. It’s near impossible to take in the horror that’s become our daily news, without trying to hide from, deflect or rage against the toxic brew of sexism, homophobia, racism, violence and the myriad of other ills that pervade our human psyche and collective behaviors.
These terrible events and human ills aren’t isolated, disconnected aspects of our society. They’re symptoms or outcomes of a reality of fear and scarcity that rules our world, where there isn’t enough food, money, jobs, power, social status, and even love to go around. In a reality where the dominant, aggressive and greedy rise to the top of the pile, gathering life’s goodies to themselves, things are going to get nasty and ugly.
Here are three simple, potent lessons from Nature that can help you revision your life and our collective reality in alignment with the powers of life in Summer.
1. Abundance is real.
In the sun-bright days of Summer, abundance isn’t an illusion or utopian ideal. It’s real and substantive, woven of the raw elements of sun, earth, rain, soil and seed that, through the wondrous miracle of life, produce the foodstuff that feeds the hungry bellies of this world.
Nature’s abundance expresses itself in an ethos of generosity, of giving more rather than less, and taking only what is needed. Take a single cherry tree, not only does it offer up delicious fruits for humans and creatures alike year after year, but the pits of the fruit provide the seeds of future plants and harvests.
Imagine living in harmony with Nature’s ethos of generosity by giving more of yourself rather than less, and only taking what you truly need by walking lightly on this Earth.
Imagine conceiving this same abundance in our shared society, where a decent standard of living is a given, and power, worthiness, love, and other markers of personal satisfaction and social value are infinite and available for all, each in accordance with our deep, true needs.
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Posted on: Apr 20, 2019 @ 15:16 Posted in: Featured, Sabbats
Beltane: Making Love and Life with the Wild World
At Beltane, your journey of soul is all about embracing the delicious, transformative energies of the wild world. Now is the time to surrender to your innate, powerful desire to make love and make life, and to bud and flourish in the sunlit realm from the essence and beauty of your true, deep Self.
You need only look to Nature to awaken and fuel this sacred longing inside of you. The cold, death state of Winter has been long forgotten and the powers of life and light are turned on high.
The green world is in the midst of a love-fest, displaying its erotic, fertile impulses with brazen exuberance: the brilliant green of new foliage, the mating rituals of birds and beasts, and the profusion of airborne pollen.
May Day is the secular celebration of Beltane, with its traditional maypole dance. A tall pole is planted in the earth and decorated with flowers and long ribbons. Dancers, each holding a ribbon, circle the pole in opposite directions while interweaving their ribbons. This lovely and seemingly innocent custom has its roots in Beltane’s sexual, fecund energies. The maypole is a giant phallic symbol arising from the fertile earth, and the two weaving ribbons represent sexual union and the creation of new life.
With the veil between the worlds thin, the Green Man walks the land, leaving a trail of burgeoning life in His wake. His touch is a quickening magic that spreads like wildfire, igniting the hungry impulses of life to create new life. All living things, including humankind, are beholden to the Green Man’s powers.
When you step into the Green Man’s magic, you enter His dream of light, love and life-making. He embraces you as lover in the gorgeous, ever-unfolding dance of co-creation, with your outer existence arising from the well-spring of your unique essence.
Beltane, like Samhain, is an edgy Sabbat, stirring up primal forces that have long been denied and suppressed in our human psyche. As Samhain calls us to be wide open and raw in the face of death and endings, Beltane calls us to be naked and uninhibited in our lover’s embrace of life. Of the two Sabbats, Beltane can be the most challenging because it takes us up against our personal wounding and societal prohibitions that negate and distort our desires, sensuality and sexuality.
Let the Green Man and wild realm teach you about transformative change, where immense beauty and new growth naturally emerge from the old and stagnant to heal and renew your life and our world.
Excerpt from: Path of She Book of Sabbats. Available on Amazon.
If you would like to make a delicious, transformative journey yourself into the mysteries of Beltane, check out the Beltane Guided Meditation: Dancing with the Green Man.
On Sale for Beltane at the Path Store for only $9.99.
Photo Credit: Chris Greenhow on Unsplash
Posted on: Apr 19, 2019 @ 10:00 Posted in: Sabbats
Your Spiritual Evolution: Four Transformative Teachings for the Spring Season
Spring is a time of rebirth and new beginnings. Nature buds and blossoms as the seasons of light and life return, and the Goddess offers up Her mysteries of spiritual evolution to guide your journey of soul.
With a Goddess-based conception of spiritual evolution, your whole life — everything you are and everything you’ve experienced — is part of a greater journey that drives your personal growth and spiritual evolution. Your intention on this journey is to become a more whole, mature, powerful version of your Self.
This season’s offering in the Path of She Guided Journey Series, Spring Journey: Your Spiritual Evolution, is grounded in the Mother-Daughter tale of Persephone and Demeter that speaks to this Goddess-based conception of spiritual evolution.
In the Fall, Persephone begins Her journey as a maiden who leaves behind the sunlit realm of Her Mother Demeter. She descends into the Underworld, and spends the Winter months traveling its mysteries of darkness and death, and suffering its trials.
In Spring, Persephone returns to Her Mother Demeter’s realm of light and life as a Goddess reborn into a more mature, evolved version of Her Self. She is the Queen of the Underworld and Goddess of Spring Growth, with a wholeness and bigness of being that is wise, loving and powerful enough to bridge and balance the immense, opposing energies of the death-centered Underworld and the life-centered sunlit realm. Where Persephone walks the Earth, She leaves a trail of spring flowers in Her wake.
Through this mythic Goddess tale, you can embrace a new understanding of your Self, your life story, and your journey of spiritual evolution. Here are four transformative teachings offered by these Mother-Daughter Goddesses, Demeter and Persephone, in the spring season.
1. New growth and beginnings arise from darkness, death, suffering and wounding.
In many spiritual traditions, spiritual evolution is associated with a rarefied, higher state of consciousness: one becomes enlightened, ascends to a higher frequency, and transcends the human, material condition.
The problem with this conception of spiritual evolution is that it’s elitist, granting spiritual superiority to the very few who can achieve this state of purity. It favors the path of the monk or ascetic who chooses to separate themselves from the complexities and messiness of everyday life. It negates the very substance of our human existence, that we are flesh and blood creatures, living in a material world. And, most importantly, it leaves out the vast majority of us traveling a sincere spiritual path of personal healing and growth in accordance with the dictates of our own soul and life story.
Nature and the Goddess illuminate a very different conception of spiritual evolution.
You don’t need to think of spiritual evolution as a rarefied state of enlightenment. Instead, you can understand and engage your spiritual evolution as a journey of new beginnings and growth that arise out of the darkness, trials, suffering and wounding of your life story. Rather than transcending these inescapable parts of your human experience, you can honor and embrace them as the very things that inform and nourish your journey of evolving into your full maturity and power.
2. Your life story is the vehicle of your spiritual evolution.
Persephone sets out on a journey of discovery and self-determination outside of the circle of Her Mother Demeter’s love and guiding presence. She has Her own, unique, personal experiences in the Underworld, separate from the ways of Her Mother and the sunlit realm She left behind.
This is Persephone’s story, not Her Mother’s, nor the story of any of the other Goddesses in the Greek pantheon. And it’s the full range of Her life story — with its beginning in the sunlit realm of Her maidenhood and innocence, travels into the depths of the mysteries and trials of the Underworld, and return to the sunlit realm, stepping into a new level of maturity, power and wholeness — that drives Persephone’s personal growth and spiritual evolution.
Like Persephone, you must consciously choose to set off on a journey of discovery and self-determination by stepping beyond the people and parts of your life that define and limit you, and descending into the mysteries and trials of your inner darkness. Here you’ll find everything you need — amongst the lost and repressed parts of your Self and life story that hold your beauty, wounding and dormant potential — to guide your new, spring-like beginnings of personal growth and transformation.
This isn’t the work of one season, but of a lifetime of descent into your inner darkness and personal trials, and return to the sunlit world of new beginnings and personal growth. The journey itself, drawing on the wellspring of your life story, is your spiritual evolution.
3. Equanimity is an essential skill on your journey of spiritual evolution.
Your spiritual evolution is driven by a special kind of transformative magic. Whenever diverse, opposing energies come together, and are held in a state of equanimity, something miraculous happens. Life is reborn in new, fresh ways that are only possible through the potent meeting and mixing of opposites.
Nature and the Goddess Persephone illustrate this transformative magic, and the essential role played by equanimity in the miracle of springtime rebirth.
In Spring, Nature reveals a living equanimity where the wild world is reborn through the balanced, harmonious interweaving of the primal, opposing forces of life and light, and darkness and death. When Persephone returns to Her Mother Demeter in Spring, She is reborn into a mature, evolved version of Her Self, whole and holy as the Queen of the Underworld and Goddess of Spring Growth. Persephone demonstrates Her equanimity through a bigness of being that is wise, powerful and loving enough to bridge and balance the divergent worlds of the death-centered Underworld and the life-centered sunlit realm.
This transformative magic equally applies to your spiritual pathwork. Whenever you consciously embrace and engage diverse, opposing parts of your Self and life story with equanimity, the miraculous happens. You heal, grow and evolve in powerful, new directions that can only arise out of the complexities and polarities of the wholeness that is your life.
4. Spiritual evolution is a journey toward wholeness.
In Her Underworld travels, Persephone reclaims the missing half of Her nature. Her maiden side lived in the realm of light and life, but She was incomplete without the part of Her that held the mysteries of the Underworld and Her experiences of death and suffering. Persephone isn’t one thing or another, but a wholeness that contains it all. In Spring, it’s Persephone’s wholeness, as the Queen of the Underworld and Goddess of Spring Growth, that reveal Her as a Goddess evolved into Her full maturity and powers.
Nature is this wholeness. It’s an ever-shifting balance and harmony of darkness and death with light and life. With the change of season, one state naturally steps into the foreground as the other recedes, but neither ever totally replaces the other, and both are absolutely essential and interdependent. It’s Nature’s wholeness that gives rise to springtime’s new, green growth.
This spiritual pathwork of seeking and reclaiming will naturally change and evolve you, deepening your spiritual maturity and power, and granting you a sense of peace and rightness as you live in accordance with the rich, complex wholeness that is your innate, true, beautiful nature.
Further explore these transformative teachings through the Spring Journey: Your Spiritual Evolution. The Spring Journey guides you through seven, integrated lessons that take you into the depths of your springtime personal growth and spiritual evolution. Each lesson is complimented with an awareness practice and journaling task to help you experience the teaching for yourself, and apply it to your journey of soul and everyday life.
Your Spring Journey includes: two pdf ebooks: the Spring Journey Guidebook and Spring Journey Journal, and the Spring Journey Guided Meditation (mp3 audio). The cost of this integrated Spring Journey package is $16.99.
Spring Journey – Your Spiritual Evolution: Embracing Your Life Story
Seek Out New Beginnings ~ Embrace Your Wholeness
~ Evolve Into Your Deep, Beautiful Self
Your Spring Journey awaits you!
Posted on: Mar 29, 2019 @ 23:21 Posted in: Sabbats
Spring Journey: Living Your Spiritual Evolution
In Spring, it’s easy to think that the season is all about the powers of light and life. With Nature putting on such a glorious display with warm, sun-bright days, a burgeoning, green landscape, the swell of birdsong, and the enticing scents of chartreuse buds and pastel blossoms, it’s hard to detect the presence of the primal energies of darkness and death.
life take center stage in springtime, darkness and death are also present and
equally essential. Together these opposing, elemental forces find a new
balance, harmony and wholeness that give rise to the rebirth of the
green-growing world in Spring.
In the Goddess tale of Demeter and Persephone, the springtime reunion of Persephone and Her Mother Demeter can be understood as a mythic explanation of the spring season as the return of the Goddess’s life-giving powers to the world.
if you engage the deeper level of this ancient myth, this is a story about
Persephone’s journey of spiritual
evolution.
Persephone evolves into Her full maturity and powers by bridging and balancing the immense, opposing energies of the death-centered Underworld and the life-centered sunlit realm of Her Mother Demeter. It’s this wholeness and bigness of being, honed through Persephone’s trials and travels in the Underworld, that transform Persephone from a maiden to a Queen, Goddess and equal to Her Mother Demeter.
Goddess reveal the spiritual, evolutionary mysteries of Spring where rebirth
and new beginnings emerge from the complex, potent convergence of opposing
energies, held in a state of balance, harmony and wholeness.
To live your spiritual evolution is to step into a new way of understanding and engaging your Self and life story, in alignment with Spring’s spiritual, evolutionary mysteries. With this new understanding, your whole life — everything you are and everything you’ve experienced — is part of a greater journey that drives your personal growth and spiritual evolution.
When you live your spiritual evolution in these ways, the miraculous happens: you grow and evolve in powerful, new directions that can only arise out of the messy, potent, divergent wholeness that is your life. Your spiritual evolution is the journey itself, made up of these miraculous, transformative moments which both change and evolve you and your outer life.
The Spring Journey: Your Spiritual Evolution provides you with the knowledge, inspiration and skills you need to explore and embrace these powerful teachings and make them your own. Through integrated writings, pathwork, journaling tasks and a guided meditation, the Spring Journey takes you into the depths of the season’s mysteries of spiritual evolution, and helps you discover the new beginning and personal growth that are emerging for you at this time.
The Spring Journey includes:
Spring Journey Guidebook (pdf ebook): Seven lessons, each with an integrated wisdom teaching, awareness practice and journaling task to help you explore and experience the teaching, and apply it to your spiritual pathwork and everyday life.
Spring Journey Journal (pdf ebook): For each lesson, there are journaling prompts and questions to deepen your self-awareness and exploration of the Spring Journey teachings.
Spring Journey Guided Meditation (audio mp3): A 26 minute meditation that connects you with the potent energies of the spring season as you travel to the sunlit realm of the Mother Goddess in search of the parts of your Self and life story that are the makings of your springtime new beginnings and personal growth.
The cost of this integrated Spring Journey package is $16.99.
Give yourself the springtime gift of new beginnings.
Your Spring Journey awaits you!
Photo Credit: Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash