Three Lessons from the Summer Season: Visioning a New World

Posted on:  Jun 18, 2023 @ 10:00 Posted in:  Sabbats

There’s a powerful juxtaposing of realities going on right now. One is our human world stuck in a mindset of fear and scarcity that bears the fruits of poverty, social injustice, war, mass overconsumption and climate change. 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.

Imagine a world centered in Nature’s life-giving ways: where scarcity is met with abundance, fear with love, and there’s enough for everyone and everything.

Photo by Loudge on Unsplash

This isn’t a comfortable discussion to have. It asks you to show up to the toxic brew of sexism, homophobia, racism, violence, environmental destruction 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.

2. Life is good.

The powers of life are at a peak it the Summer, and the good things of the living world are on full display. The sun is hot. The sky is clear blue. Wild things are plump, healthy and busy tending their young. Ripe fruits weigh down branches. Gardens are overflowing with produce.

Sunshine caresses bare skin. Luscious flowers scent warm breezes. Wild music of birdsong and buzzing insects fills the airwaves. Flowers paint the landscape in bright colors and vibrant greens. Strawberries are soft and sweet. Life is very, very good.

Imagine living and sharing this same goodness inside of you by gifting others with your best qualities and nature.

Imagine a world in which Nature’s goodness is cherished, with its gifts and wonders received with gratitude and a debt of protecting these precious resources, and where people share their own goodness and best nature with others.

3. All life is beautiful and worthy.

Wild things don’t have self-worth or identity issues. A dung beetle doesn’t stop to measure its beauty and value against a butterfly. It goes about the business of being a dung beetle, in alignment with its unique dung beetle purpose and place in the great weaving of life.

Be it a dung beetle or butterfly, dandelion or rose, robin or turkey vulture, mouse or wild cat, no one is more beautiful or worthy than another. The summertime powers of light and life call every living being to blossom, flourish, and play their essential part in the balance and well-being of the whole.

Imagine honoring and claiming your beauty, gifts and sacred purpose, knowing that you’re truly beautiful and worthy, and that your contributions to life deeply matter.

Imagine living in a world where others do the same, where there is no better or worse than, just infinite configurations of beauty and gifts, all contributing to the balance and well-being of the whole.

As I share Nature’s lessons and these visions of a life-centered reality, I want to be clear that I’m neither naïve nor someone who believes that light and love can banish life’s evils. Nature isn’t always gracious and generous. Winter brings scarcity and death, and the wild world can deliver up devastation through earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires and other natural disasters. Yet Nature always returns to abundance, goodness and life.

In the same way, our personal lives and collective humanity are plagued by the natural ravages of illness, suffering and death, as well as the countless ills and horrors of our collective reality of fear and scarcity. Yet we can choose a vision for our lives and world based on a reality that always returns to abundance, goodness and life, no matter what challenges and hardships come our way.

This isn’t an easy choice to make. It’s hard sometimes to believe in abundance, goodness and life’s beauty in the face of the pain, suffering and horrors that weigh down our personal histories and shared humanity, and the terrible, terrible things we humans continue to do to each other and our Earth home.

Believe me I know, because I’ve traveled into the depths of my own personal horrors and those of our humanity, and come out the other side. I’ve come to understand that I/we can’t undo the harm that’s been done to us, and to the people and things we hold dear. What we can do is look life in the eye, see and speak truth, and choose accordingly.

We humans are capable of immense horror and great goodness. We can build a world based on an ethos of scarcity and fear, or abundance, goodness and beauty. We get to choose, each moment and each challenge, which of these two realities will be our guiding force. Yet, in the end, only a life-centered ethos, love and the best of our nature can mend our hearts, transform our life and take on the momentous task of creating a new, better world.

Nature shows us what we’ve forgotten. It teaches us that abundance, goodness and beauty are real and ever present. It reminds us that nothing is forever; from the depth of Winter, life always returns to and unfolds into the stunning plenitude of Summer. So too we can emerge from the long winter of soul of humanity, and a collective ethos of fear and scarcity, to return to a life-centered reality that can embrace and nourish us all.

Imagine that there’s a place and purpose in this world for every person and wild being, each beautiful, worthy and precious, and that we each bring our best gifts and qualities to the communal table of humanity to solve the problems we’ve created and build a better world together.

Then shift into this living state of abundance, goodness and beauty; stretch out your hands and send this vision outward, like a prayer, into the suffering hearts of our human world.

Bring these lessons and the life-centered ethos of the Summer into your life through the Path of She Guided Journey – Summer Journey: Thou Art Goddess .

The Summer Journey: Thou Art Goddess offering is part of a Guided Journey Series through the seasons to help you seek and source the transformative, life-centered teachings of the Goddess and Nature. The Summer Journey includes: a Guidebook (pdf ebook), Journal (pdf ebook), and Guided Meditation (mp3 audio)  that offer an integrated, seven lesson program with wisdom teachings, awareness practice and journaling exercises, and a guided meditation.

Learn More at: Summer Journey: Thou Art Goddess.

Buy Now at the Path Store.

Celebrating the Summer Solstice

Posted on:  Jun 12, 2022 @ 10:00 Posted in:  Featured, Sabbats

Excerpt from Path of She Book of Sabbats.

At the Summer Solstice, your journey of soul invites you to blossom, shining forth the true essence and beauty of your Deep Self into the sunlit world of your everyday life. Emulate Nature in this summer season of generosity and abundance by cultivating your soul-sourced authenticity and sharing your best gifts and qualities with others.

At the Summer Solstice, the Divine power that awaits you is your own Goddess Self who holds your remembrance of the ways and mysteries of the sacred feminine.

The Solstice marks the first day of Summer and a peak in the powers of light before the scales tip once more toward the dark. Nature grants us a heady display of its fully unfurled beauty and overflowing munificence. From the mighty oak tree with its vast, green canopy to the fledgling robin casting itself from the nest, what is inside, the unique, luminescent spark of Creation within each living being, seeks its destined place in the sunlit world.

Midsummer festivities are part of our ancestral heritage and are still celebrated around the world. Bonfires are lit, honoring the brilliance and fertility of the summer sun. Merriment, music, dancing and feasting abound, reminding us to take pleasure in the good things in life while the days are long and hot, and the natural realm shares its plentitude.

The life-centered ways of the Goddess and the sacred feminine are revealed in this plentitude. The Mother Earth holds us in Her loving, generous embrace, showering us with beauty and nourishment for our hungry bellies and souls.

The robin cannot help but embrace its powers of flight, navigating the air space on its outstretched wings. The oak cannot help but burst forth from the acorn, sending its brown roots earthward and its green arms skyward. We cannot help but reach for our place in the greater world, drawing on the essence and gifts of our Deep Self.  We may repress and truncate this primal soul imperative, yet our innate, unquenchable desire to flourish in our own unique way remains, ready to bloom outward, in all its brilliance, into a waiting world.

At the Summer Solstice, the Divine power that waits for you is your own Goddess Self who holds your remembrance of the ways and mysteries of the sacred feminine. She resides within the core of your being, connecting you with your inherent, indisputable beauty, worthiness and sacred purpose. She will show you the parts of your beauty and purpose that are ready to blossom, and will guide your journey of soul as you cultivate this blossoming in your everyday life.

When you offer your very best to the communal table of humanity, in a spirit of grace, goodness and generosity, you are making abundance a real, substantive part of your life and the greater environment of your family, workplace and community, and encouraging others to do the same. From these small and big changes, an ethos of abundance can take root and flourish in our human society where there is enough love and nourishment to feed, mend and transform our lives and our world.

Summer Solstice excerpt from The Path of She Book of Sabbats.  Available in paperback and e-book at Amazon. Click here to purchase.

Make your own transformative magic for the summer season with the Summer Journey: Thou Art Goddess. The Summer Journey guides you through seven, integrated lessons that take you into the depths of summer’s teachings about abundance, goodness, self-love and blossoming. 

Your Summer Journey includes: two pdf ebooks: the Summer Journey Guidebook and Summer Journey Journal, and the Summer Journey Guided Meditation (mp3 audio).

The cost of this integrated Summer Journey package is available at the Path Store for $16.99.  Click here to purchase.

A Summer Solstice Meditation: Thou Art Goddess

Posted on:  Jun 18, 2021 @ 10:00 Posted in:  Featured, From The Book of Sabbats, Sabbats

Excerpt from: The Path of She Book of Sabbats

In the midday brilliance of the Summer Solstice, find a comfortable place in your home by an open window or a private space outside to do your meditation. Bring your attention to your center and imagine breathing in and out from your solar plexus. Feel your belly rise and fall with the movements of your breath. Slow your breathing down and track its reflexive, rhythmic cycle from fullness to emptiness, fullness to emptiness, over and over until your body is relaxed, your mind is empty, and your consciousness is deeply anchored in your inner core.

Within you is a luminescent spark of Creation that holds your unique gifts and sacred purpose. You are beautiful, worthy, powerful, Divine. Thou art Goddess.

With a soft-focused gaze, open to the signs of Summer in your part of the world: the dry heat, the sun-bright green edges of leaves, the fragrant smells of flowers and grass, and the infinite other ways Mother Earth is blossoming around you.

See what plant, bird or other wild thing catches your attention, and notice its beauty and behaviors. Know that this plant or creature is doing exactly what it is meant to do, in accordance with the blossoming instincts of its unique essence and purpose.

Close your eyes and use your breath to shift your awareness down through your flesh and bones, and into the depth of your inner landscape. Draw the enervating powers of sunlight deep inside of you and feel it spark your blossoming instincts.

Sense the soles of your feet against the contours of the earth and let the powerful presence of your Goddess Self lead you forward.

As you travel, take in the state of this path. Is it smooth and well-tended, in a state of neglect and disrepair, or somewhere in between? Is your way free and clear, or blocked by debris and brambles? Are you beleaguered by limiting thoughts, doubts and fears? Or are you in synch with the natural state of abundance and grace that underlies this path?

Take a deep, full breath and accept that, whatever its condition, this is your path and way forward to your beauty and blossoming.

Feel the rightness of your desire to reclaim your destined place in the greater weaving of Mother Earth. Open to your hungry longing to be reunited with your feminine wisdom and instincts that connect you with the mysteries of beauty, blossoming and sacred purpose. Listen for the beckoning voice of your Goddess Self. Try to catch Her scent on the wind. Surrender to Her magnetic power, and you will be drawn to Her side.

You will know when you have reached the threshold of your inner sanctum; something deep inside will tell you: yes, this is it, this is my most private, sacred space. Take a few minutes to center yourself and ensure you are completely present, for this is a powerful moment — a homecoming and reclaiming of your holy of holies.

Your Goddess Self may look like you, or have Her own unique appearance. Bask in Her beauty and radiant smile, absorbing the details of Her physical form and the up-close sensations of Her energetic presence. Open to your own energetic and emotional responses to this reunion and homecoming.

Reach out to your Goddess Self, clasping Her hands in yours. Gaze deep and long into each other’s eyes. Let the love and goodness that you are, and that infuses all things, flow between you. Settle into this rightness that is you — this worthiness that is you — this beauty that is you — this power, mystery and presence that are you.

Spend as long as you need with your Goddess Self to renew your bond and to receive Her guidance, insights and loving support. Follow Her into the deepest roots of your beauty, gifts and best qualities. Delve into the true essence and purpose of your Deep Self. See what parts of your beauty and purpose are ripe for blossoming, and what your emerging pathwork may look like. Explore together your shadow-side, fears and doubts that are also part of your pathwork.

Expand your shared awareness beyond your personal pathwork and story to your broader environment, including your family, workplace and community. Open to your Goddess Self’s knowing of the natural abundance of the sacred feminine and Mother Earth. Let Her reveal the beneficial impact you can have on your outer environment through your beauty and gifts, and how you can bring more grace, goodness and generosity to your life and to others.

If you are ready, say yes to your blossoming and the pathwork that has been revealed to you. If you not ready, share whatever changes and commitments are right for you at this time on your journey of soul.

Retrace your passage along the pathway that led to your inner sanctum. With each step and breath feel yourself return to your physical body and everyday consciousness. Open your eyes and connect once more with the summer-bright world, basking in Nature’s generous gifts of sunlight, fresh air and green-growing things.

Put your hands on your solar plexus and savor this moment. There is no separation between you and your feminine wisdom, and there never was. Like the plants and creatures of the natural realm, you too have a luminescent spark of Creation in your core that holds the unique essence and sacred purpose of your Deep Self.

There is a place for you in the great weaving of life, just waiting for the shining outward of your deepest beauty and gifts. In this shining, and your spirit of grace, goodness and generosity, you naturally are a part of the munificence of the Mother Earth, and naturally help to create an ethos of abundance in our human society.

The Goddess is everywhere and in everything. Thou art Goddess.

Summer Journey: Nature’s Magic of Beauty and Abundance

Posted on:  Jul 10, 2020 @ 11:00 Posted in:  Sabbats

I reach out to you as Summer deepens into its powers of light and life, and Nature gifts us with its transformative magic of beauty, abundance and goodness.

Your Summer Journey is a revolution in the making, with Nature’s bounty of beauty and abundance as the counterforce to negative mindset of our daily newsfeed.

I reach out to you as I struggle daily with the onslaught of bad news that relentlessly reinforces the mess we’ve made of this world, and the horrors of 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 the oppressed and vulnerable in our midst, 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, offering 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.

Come, take my hand, join me as I walk on a fine, sunny July 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.

The fir trees and sword ferns greet me as I pass, brushing me lightly with their bright green, new-leaf finery. My heart swells at the cry of nesting eagles in the treetops, and I sniff hungrily as I pass the hedgerow of ocean spray. Just out of sight, gardens are in full bloom, with tasty, green produce and plump, sweet berries juicy ripe for the picking.

This Nature’s transformative magic, an antidote and counterforce to the negative onslaught of the daily news cycle, and the madness and stresses of our human society. I’m not hiding out or seeking solace in the natural realm. No, this is a conscious act, a walking transformation, and a revolution in the making, with Nature and the Goddess as my teachers and guides in their ways of life, abundance and goodness.

I reach out from my place on this path and invite you to experience a bit of this Nature magic I speak of. However my story resonates with you, breathe these energies into your body and soul. Let them awaken your own connections to the beauty and gifts of summertime Nature in your part of the world.

You don’t have to live in a rural setting like I do. You just need to step outside your door and Nature is there: in the sky overhead, the earth beneath your feet, the birdsong and insect buzz, and your favorite green space or tree or flower bed; in the fresh, local produce at your grocery store; and the way your body feels when brushed by the wind and caressed by sunshine.

This is no mundane exchange with Nature. Great teachings beckon to you from your sensual, summer encounters with green-growing things, fragrant flowers, melodic birds, fresh-picked berries, warm-wind caresses, and the life-giving promise of sunshine. Simple, powerful, life- and world-changing lessons — abundance is real; life is good; and every living being is beautiful, worthy and essential to the web of life that holds us all.

Imagine these lessons as the foundations of a new, life-centered vision for your life and our shared society: where scarcity is replaced by abundance, love heals our fear, and everyone and everything are valued and supported for their beauty and contribution to our collective wellbeing.

I’m not naive. I know that we can’t heal ourselves and fix what ails our humanity solely through Summer’s visions of beauty, abundance and goodness. Nature, like humanity, has many sides and seasons. Winter brings hardship, scarcity, death and darkness, just as our lives are marked by pain, wounding and the shadow side of our nature. There are potent, transformative mysteries in light and life, and in darkness and death, and our lives and world are a complex weaving of all of these things.

I reach out to you in this post, and in everything I write and offer from the Path of She, from a fierce love and determination that are fueled by hope not despair. I believe in you, in me, and in the countless others that are waking and choosing to do what is needed to mend our souls, reclaim our lives, and help create a wiser, saner, more just and loving human society.

From my own intense, many-years, many-seasons journey of soul, and in my Path of She work with others, there’s one thing I know for sure: that everything we need to accomplish these mighty, daunting, exhilarating, transformative tasks is already here, within us and all around us, if we but learn to seek and source the teachings of the Goddess and Nature in new, powerful ways.

I have created the Summer Journey: Thou Art Goddess offering as part of a Guided Journey Series through the seasons to help you seek and source the transformative, life-centered teachings of the Goddess and Nature. The Summer Journey includes: a Guidebook (pdf ebook), Journal (pdf ebook), and Guided Meditation (mp3 audio)  that offer an integrated, seven lesson program with wisdom teachings, awareness practice and journaling exercises, and a guided meditation.

I hope this blog post will inspire you to dive deep into your Summer Journey with Nature, whether through your own self-directed pathwork or the Summer Journey: Thou Art Goddess offering.

During these COVID-19 times, when many of us are struggling and in need of spiritual inspiration, I’m offering my Summer Journey at sliding scale prices.

The full price is $16.99.  Use this coupon: summerdiscount to pay 50% of the purchase price. Use this coupon: summergift to download the Summer Journey package for free.

I ask you to pay what you can and to take what you need in support of your spiritual pathwork at this time.

Click here to go to the Path Store.  Add the Summer Journey to your cart, then enter the coupon on the checkout page.

Artwork by: Vincent van Gough

A Summer Solstice Teaching: Nature’s Vision of Abundance

Posted on:  Jun 17, 2020 @ 10:00 Posted in:  Featured, Sabbats

Our human world is stuck in a mindset of fear and scarcity. There’s not enough food, water, wealth, power, status, beauty or love to go around. An ethos of scarcity breeds a reality of scarcity, with a grab what you can social order with little regard for our impact on each other or our Earth home. From this miserly place, our scarcity ethos bears the fruit of poverty, social injustice, war, environmental destruction, and the countless greedy, fearful ways we wreak havoc on our world.

The natural realm offers a simple, glorious, counter-ethos: abundance. The wondrous thing is that this abundance exists now; we’re already living within its loving, generous embrace. At no time is this truth more evident than at the Summer Solstice when the Mother Earth lavishes us with goodness and beauty for our hungry bellies and souls.

Abundance is real and solid, woven of the raw elements of sun, soil, rain and seed. It springs from a natural generosity of giving more rather than less.

Bees are busy making honey from the sweet nectar of flowers. Flowers are scenting the air with their stunning blooms. Fruits are dripping from the branches, ripening in the heat of the summer sun.  Farm stalls are overloaded with fresh-picked produce. These things are the gifts of the Earth, given with an overflowing, life-centered munificence.

A little seed blossoms into a whole plant, or a bush, or a tree that proffers a plethora of food stuff and the seeds of future plants and harvests. The pit of a single plum grows into a tree that year after year offers up its fruits for our tables.

Imagine conceiving this same abundance in our human world, where power, worthiness, love, joy and other markers of personal satisfaction and social value are infinite and available for all.

Imagine embracing the notion that we each have gifts to offer, seeds of our best qualities and nature. And that we bring these gifts to the collective table of our humanity in a spirit of generosity and giving more, and only taking what we need in return.

Know that an ethos of abundance breeds a reality of abundance. Though we cannot make these choices and changes for others, we can begin to live this vision of abundance with ourselves, and within our family and communities.  Through our little seeds offering up their fruits of generosity, kindness and abundance for all, change can spread outward, inspiring others to act in kind. And in this way, our little seeds can be the making of a vision of abundance that can heal and transform our world.

Excerpt from: Path of She Book of Sabbats, available in paperback and e-book at Amazon.  Click here to purchase.

Make your own transformative magic for the summer season with the Summer Journey:  Thou Art Goddess. The Summer Journey guides you through seven, integrated lessons that take you into the depths of summer’s teachings of abundance, goodness, self-love and blossoming.

Your Summer Journey includes: two pdf ebooks: the Summer Journey Guidebook and Summer Journey Journal, and the Summer Journey Guided Meditation (mp3 audio).  The cost of this integrated Summer Journey package is $16.99.  Click here to purchase.

Photo Art by June Ferrol