Spring Journey: Living Your Spiritual Evolution

Posted on:  Feb 26, 2023 @ 10:01 Posted in:  Featured, Sabbats

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.

To live your spiritual evolution is to step into a new way of engaging your Self and life story, in alignment with Spring’s spiritual, evolutionary mysteries.

Yet if you widen your awareness, you can see that the natural realm is sustained and nourished by a complex, interwoven wholeness of all these primal powers.

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.

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.

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.

Spring Journey: Your Spiritual Evolution

Embrace the Goddess’s mysteries that guide your spiritual evolution.

Give yourself the springtime gift of new beginnings.

Your Spring Journey awaits you!

 

Artwork by Catrin Weltz-Stein

Your Spiritual Evolution: Four Transformative Teachings for the Spring Season

Posted on:  Feb 26, 2023 @ 10:01 Posted in:  Sabbats

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.

Everything you are and you’ve experienced are part of a greater journey that drives your spiritual evolution of becoming a more whole, 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!

Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash

A Message from Demeter at the Spring Equinox

Posted on:  Mar 14, 2022 @ 10:00 Posted in:  Featured, Sabbats

Excerpt from The Path of She Book of Sabbats

As the seasons of the Earth turn, so do the seasons of humanity. Many powers are converging, within and without, to wake humanity from its long winter of soul. Spring is in the air; Persephone walks the land above; and here you are, by my side, reaching for the ways of the Great Mother once more.

Let your suffering be compost that feeds your new growth, and let your joy draw your heart upward to embrace life. Trust yourself. Trust each other. Begin again.

In this awakening and Great Turning, Persephone is your teacher. She sought out Her wholeness in the belly of the Underworld, willingly suffering its trials and lessons to test and come to know Herself in the fullness of Her being. By these travels, Her power and selfhood were honed, and She returned to me maiden no longer, but Goddess and Queen in Her own right.

So too humankind has lived the full range of its nature, both the shadow and light, and horror and beauty. As you individually and collectively emerge from your travels in the Underworld of humanity’s shadow-side, you can follow Persephone’s example. You can become powerful and wise enough to embrace the full breadth of your human nature, ancestral heritage and life experiences — the good with the bad, and the shadow with the light — and in doing so, you become a child no more, but a person honed and matured by your trials and lessons.

Whatever pain you feel or burden you carry from your personal and ancestral stories have brought you to this evolutionary cusp. You need not be trapped by a past that no longer serves you; instead you can use its trials and lessons to fuel your journey of soul, and help you step out of this old tale and your own old story, and into a fresh new beginning.

It is time for we ancient ones to find our rest. Humanity’s long winter of soul is ending. The ancestors’ stories are done. They have served their purpose of bringing you to this evolutionary, awakening moment of choosing the Great Mother’s life-centered ethos once more, from a place of power and wisdom. We pass this blessed world on to you. What comes next will be of your choosing and making.

Let your suffering be the compost that feeds your new growth, and let your joy draw your hungry limbs upward to embrace life. Trust yourself. Trust each other. Begin again.

Celebrate Spring Equinox

with the Path of She Book of Sabbats.

Buy now at the Path Store.

Artwork by Natalie Shau

A Spring Equinox Meditation With Demeter

Posted on:  Mar 14, 2022 @ 10:00 Posted in:  Sabbats

Spring has arrived and Demeter awaits you, just as She has waited for Her daughter Persephone since times immemorial. Let Her guide you in this season of equal light and dark, life and death, and joy and sorrow.

On the day of the Spring Equinox, settle yourself in a private place in your home where you won’t be disturbed. Open the window to let in the fresh spring air. Close your eyes and consciously use your breath to loosen and relax your body. When you are done, return your focus and breath to the center of your body, anchoring in your core and emptying your mind of any remaining thoughts or stress.

Imagine Demeter waiting for you, just as She awaits Persephone every Spring Equinox. She has come to guide your transition to the other side of your story.

In whatever way this resonates with you, and where you are on your journey of soul, feel the power of this moment, inside of you, outside of you, and in the listening, waiting Cosmos.

Now imagine Demeter waiting for you, just as She has waited for Her daughter Persephone. See Her as Goddess and Earth Mother, in Her immense power, strength and queenly beauty. Let Her enfold you in a motherly embrace, knowing that you are Her beloved child, returned to Her side after your long journey of trials and sorrows. Draw in Her living-earth scents, life-affirming energies and Her infinite love. Share whatever words of connection and reunion arise between you.

Clasp Demeter’s hand and join your consciousness with Hers as She takes you far, far upward — past the swaying treetops and the deep-blue sky — beyond the outer limits of our atmosphere — into the cosmic dance of Earth, moon and sun. Witness this wondrous dance, with its perfect balance of night and day, and dark and light, taking just a tiny drop of its vastness inside of you.

Ride these mighty influences back down to the Earth’s surface, where the kiss of sunlight coaxes seedlings to cast off their winter rest and send out their tender shoots of new growth. Dive into the dark underside of the soil, where beetles, worms and microbes mix the compost of decomposing matter that nourishes the living land. Sense the lingering clutch of Winter in the deep digging roots of the trees. Again, take a tiny drop of this vast complexity inside of you.

Then follow Demeter’s awareness as it enters your inner landscape, revealing these same mysteries and complexities within you.

Sense the energetic tug of Earth, moon and sun on your flesh. Feel the equal presence of day and night, and light and dark on your psyche and core body patterns. Take in the quickening pulse of Spring coursing through your veins, enticing you with the thrill of new possibilities. Open to your own dark underside that holds your losses and suffering, and imagine it as rich compost that nourishes and guides the new growth emerging from within you. Feel the cold, wounded places inside of you that don’t want to let go and seek to cleave you to their long winter of soul.

This bigness of being is equanimity in motion. And it is this state that can take you to the other side of your story and the spiritual evolution that awaits you there.

Breathe this experience of equanimity and balance into the core of your being. Let it shift and rearrange your current state of mind to help you feel more self-acceptance and peace with the complexities and polarities of your own life story and pathwork at this moment on your journey of soul. Take your time, and lots of deep breaths, until you find your inner state of equanimity and balance.

Then gently separate your consciousness from Demeter’s. Use your breath to sink back into your personal center and field of awareness.

Demeter turns to face you. Gaze into each other’s eyes. See yourself through Her loving heart and presence. Know that She bears witness to your struggles, your strength and the hard work you have faced to come to this transformative moment. Drink in Her trust and belief in you. Take all of this mother love inside of you, and trust and believe in yourself. Express your deep gratitude for Her guidance and say goodbye. And then, in a heartbeat, She is gone.

It is time to return to the waking world, bringing this vast experience of equanimity and balance with you. Use your breath to anchor your awareness in your physical body. When you feel yourself fully returned to the sunlit reality of your everyday life, settle inside yourself and notice that something has changed. You are on the other side of your own story, with the powers of life compelling you forward into the spring of a wondrous new beginning.

Celebrate the Spring Equinox

with the Path of She Book of Sabbats

Buy now at the Path Store

Artist: Unknown

A Spring Equinox Mystery: Demeter and Our Spiritual Evolution

Posted on:  Mar 19, 2019 @ 12:00 Posted in:  Sabbats

At the portal where the Underworld opens to the sunlit realm, the Goddess Demeter waits for you, just as She has waited for Persephone from time immemorial. She is queenly in bearing and stature, clothed in a flowing gown of warm browns and soft greens, the colors of the good green earth. Her raven-hued tresses, faintly streaked with silver grey, smell fresh and fragrant, like rain-washed wildflowers. Though She smiles warmly in welcome, Her eyes, the blue black of a stormy sea, hold a great sorrow in their depth, and a great love.

“Here, in the sweet-scented land of Spring,” Demeter says, “I have celebrated my daughter Persephone’s return from the depth of the Underworld. "

One of your feet is still upon the cold, stone stairway that descends into the dark below, and the other touches the downy, green surface of Spring’s first grass. Both places lay claim to you: the Underworld with its mysteries and trials of darkness, sorrow and death, and the sunlit realm with its life-giving energies of light, joy and new growth.

Demeter reaches out a hand and pulls you upward into a mother’s embrace, tight and loving, with no separation between your two beating hearts. Then She takes your face between Her warm palms, gazing deep into your eyes and unearthing what you are made of and how you have changed since the last time She beheld your soul.

“Come, there are mysteries I would share with you so you will know the import of this turning point on your journey of soul, and in this Great Turning in the spiritual unfolding of humankind.”

Demeter leads you away from the biting drafts that reach upward from the belly of the Underworld and draws you deeper into the sunlit meadow, enlivened with bright clusters of spring flowers and the sounds of insects, birds and other wild things. You sit beside each other, with the green earth beneath you, the blue sky above, and the winds blowing fresh and balmy.

“When the world was young, there was no separation between humanity and the Great Mother,” Demeter begins, “Your primal ancestors lived at one with Her life-centered ways, just as Persephone stayed close by my side, and I protected and cared for Her, keeping Her out of harm’s way.

“Yet there comes a time when children must leave the circle of their mother’s love and find their way in the world on their own terms. Persephone left me to descend into the Underworld realm of darkness and death, and your ancestors turned away from the Great Mother and descended into a grievous period of your history. And so a long, cold Winter came to the Earth, where dominion and death overruled the creation and nurturance of life as the bedrock of your human society, and I mourned the loss of my daughter and the immense suffering of the Great Mother’s children.”

As Demeter speaks, you walk beside Her in Her remembrances, witnessing this long winter through Her tear-filled eyes and sorrowful heart. Long She wandered the world searching for Her daughter, and long She beheld the atrocities committed by humanity against each other and the living Earth. And as you walk with Demeter, the restless ancestors gather round you, victim and perpetrator alike, caught in the web of destruction and despair of this old tale, woven of our worst instincts of fear, greed, hatred and will to power.

“Yet as the seasons of the Earth turn, so do the seasons of humanity,” Demeter continues, “Many powers are converging, within and without, to wake humanity from its long winter of soul. Spring is in the air; Persephone walks the land above; and here you are, by my side, reaching for the ways of the Great Mother once more.

“In this awakening and Great Turning, Persephone is your teacher. She sought out Her wholeness in the belly of the Underworld, willingly suffering its trials and lessons to test and come to know Herself in the fullness of Her being. By these travels, Her power and selfhood were honed, and She returned to me maiden no longer, but Goddess and Queen in Her own right.

“So too humankind has lived the full range of its nature, both the shadow and light, and horror and beauty. As you individually and collectively emerge from your travels in the Underworld of humanity’s shadow-side, you can follow Persephone’s example. You can become powerful and wise enough to embrace the full breadth of your human nature, ancestral heritage and life experiences — the good with the bad, and the shadow with the light — and in doing so, you become a child no more, but a person honed and matured by your trials and lessons.”

In the warm circle of Demeter’s mother love and wise words, the cold grip of Her remembrances and the lingering despair of the ancestors begin to fade, calling you back to the springtime brilliance of the surrounding meadow.  Whatever pain you feel or burden you carry from your personal and ancestral stories have brought you to this evolutionary cusp. You need not be trapped by a past that no longer serves you; instead you can use its trials and lessons to fuel your journey of soul, and help you step out of this old tale and your own old story, and into a fresh new beginning.

“It is time for we ancient ones to find our rest,” Demeter says, “Humanity’s long winter of soul is ending. The ancestors’ stories are done. They have served their purpose of bringing you to this evolutionary, awakening moment of choosing the Great Mother’s life-centered ethos once more, from a place of power and wisdom. We pass this blessed world on to you. What comes next will be of your choosing and making.

Demeter smiles and runs a single finger along the contours of your face, as if to memorize its cherished details. Then She fades into the green meadow and clear blue, cloudless sky. Bird song fills the air. The tips of nearby branches sport the brownish-green of new-formed buds. The air is still, warm and sweet.

Freshly emerged from the Underworld into the sunlit realm, you bridge the divide between what was and what can be. Fill yourself with Demeter’s wise words and Persephone’s powerful teachings; know that this is truly a turning moment in your spiritual evolution and that of our human species. Then give yourself over to the primal promptings of Spring. Turn your face back to the life-affirming ways of the Great Mother. Commit to cultivate the change that will help new growth emerge from the rich compost that is your life and ancestral heritage.

Don’t disappoint Demeter. She has left this precious world in your trembling hands.

Photo Credit: Banter Snaps on Unsplash