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.

Walking with the Goddess: Four Ways to Weave the Sacred Feminine Into Your Daily Life

Posted on:  May 13, 2023 @ 10:00 Posted in:  Featured, Goddess

Consider for a moment that there are two versions of the everyday: the status quo where you live mostly on autopilot, following your regular routines and the outer dictates of family, work and culture; and the sacred feminine where you live from your deep, beautiful Self outward, connected to your soul-based needs and desires, the rhythms of the natural world and your body, and the self-chosen demands of your outer life.

The sacred feminine speaks to a life-centered practicality: your physical well-being, capacity for joy, the richness of your personal relationships, and the beauty of your connection to Nature.

Artist: Amanda Sage

If you’re like most people, the status quo version best reflects your everyday reality. You may get tastes of the sacred feminine through your spiritual beliefs and practice, and in special circumstances like a weekend retreat. But to live your day to day from this ethos may seem impossible given the hectic demands of the modern world where practicality, not soul, reigns supreme.

The sacred feminine is the feminine face of divinity. She is the Goddess, the love- and life-centered ethos that infuses all of creation, and the sacred matter of your human body and of the living Earth. How does this more esoteric understanding of the sacred feminine translate into your everyday life? And how can you access Her presence on a daily basis?

Though there are infinite answers to these questions, here are four concrete ways you can begin to weave the sacred feminine into your daily life.

1. Listen to and care for your body.

Your body is sacred. It’s the living expression of the sacred feminine and the home of your shining spirit. There is deep intelligence in your flesh and bones that can guide you in what you need to be healthy, present, joyful and connected to the patterns and energies of your inner landscape and the outer world.

Eat tasty, healthy food. Exercise. Get enough sleep. Make time for play, pleasure, quiet and repose.

Pay attention and respond when your body speaks. Discomfort, illness, pleasure and ease, these are the ways your body lets you know its needs. Love and welcome your body’s messages, no matter their form, and let them guide your healing and self-care.

2. Open to the beauty and rhythms of Nature.

Whether you live in a city or the country, every day and each season Nature gifts you with its beauty and bounty. Fresh air, sunshine, moonlight, rainstorms, snow-brushed landscapes, blossoms, green-growing things, birdsong — these things are food for your body and soul, anchoring your material connection to this Earth, your home.

Turn your awareness to what’s happening outside your doorstep in the natural realm. Spend time in your favorite green space. Breathe in the earthy scents. Feel the kiss of the elements on your skin. Look up at the sky. Bear witness to the wild things around you. Heed your responses. What ignites your wonder and joy? What nourishes you? What gives you delight and discomfort?

Practice gratitude. Honor the gifts and miracles of Nature by expressing your thanks in words and deeds. The best gift you can give back is to walk lightly on this Earth by bringing more consciousness to your environmental footprint and reducing what you consume.

3. Believe in yourself and the gifts you have to offer.

The sacred feminine is immanent. She is everywhere and in everything. You’re a part of Her living form and manifest beauty, a miraculous spark of creation, just as you are. With your struggles and faults, this may feel like a stretch to you. But even the hard, messy parts of your life are reflections of your beauty and true potential. Where you find your wounding, you also find your beauty; both are part of your journey of healing and personal growth.

Seek out your beauty and gifts. Turn your gaze inward to your soul-based desires and dreams. Heed the parts of your outer life that give you joy, satisfaction and a sense of achievement. Ask those closest to you what are you best qualities and skills. These are the markers of your beauty and gifts. Name and own them.

Commit yourself to self-love, self-acceptance and compassion. Your life, with its challenges and imperfections, is the vehicle of your evolution in this lifetime. Embrace your beauty and wounding, and let these things guide your pathwork of self-empowerment and wholeness.

4. Bring the very best of your love and goodness to your encounters with others.

Love, from a sacred feminine perspective, is an energetic, magnetic imperative rather than an emotional state; it is the primal desire of life to seek out, create and nurture life. In the face of the widespread negativity in our human society, both in the greater world and our personal lives, we hunger for goodness, compassion and kindness. These very things reflect the best of your human nature and the primal love at the core of your being.

Realize that love and goodness are always options in your encounters with others. When faced with a negative or challenging situation, or when your judgments and worst instincts arise, stop, breathe deep, and ask yourself: what else is true in this situation? Where are the places that draw out your compassion for the other person? How can you tap into your love and goodness to navigate these tricky interpersonal waters?

Practice simple acts of goodness. Goodness can be a smile, a word of acknowledgement, a gift, a dinner, a helping hand, or any kind act that fits the individual and the moment. Drink in your acts of goodness. Feel their impact on yourself and the other person. Let these encounters mend and expand your heart and your capacity for love.

The sacred feminine teaches us that all aspects of existence are interdependent and interwoven. On a practical level, this means change in one area of your life will naturally infuse and affect other areas. So start small and simple, and see where it leads you.

Name the daily practice you’re ready to follow. Make a commitment to this change, knowing that developing a new mindset and habit can be challenging. Pay attention to what works and what doesn’t, and what arises from within and outside of you to support or resist your new behaviors. Do your best and be patient and compassionate with yourself.

In these ways, you’re doing the extraordinary work of walking with the Goddess and finding that sweet spot where the sacred feminine naturally informs and guides your everyday existence.

Check out Path of She book offerings in the Path Store.

The Silver Threads of the Great Mother: A New Weaving for These Times

Posted on:  May 7, 2023 @ 7:00 Posted in:  Goddess

Long ago, we worshipped the Great Goddess, the Creatrix and the Dark One, the giver and the taker of the breath and sustenance of our mortal existence. Her ever-present love and life-giving ways, like shining silver threads, wove the tapestry of our human society, threads that were passed down from the Great Mother, to the priestesses and women leaders, and to the daughters who were to inherit the red cloak of feminine power.

So it was, for generation after generation, the silver threads of the Mother’s ways continued, shining and undiminished.

We must begin again, collecting and weaving the silver threads of the Great Mother into a tapestry of Her life-giving ways, knowing that new times require a new weaving.

Yet nothing lasts forever and the seasons of humanity turn. As the sun overtakes the moon in the shifting of night into day, so the rule of men and their patriarchal Gods eclipsed the leadership of woman and the Great Goddess. Dominion and death overruled creation and the nurturance of life, and the silver threads of the Mother became tarnished and frayed.

Still, within this newer, distorted weaving, the silver threads remained visible for those with eyes to see and a heart to receive.

With each successive generation and in patriarchy’s quest for absolute rule and absolute suppression of the Mother’s ways, Her silver threads faded farther and farther from our human awareness. Fear and disdain replaced love and reverence.

There were no priestesses, no women leaders, and no daughters to pass on our sacred feminine lineage. Only the bravest of our ancestors, the witches and the healers and the wise women, dared to remember and speak of the remnants of the Mother’s silver threads, woven into the Old Religion of the Great Goddess. Then they too became a part of our disappearing herstory, tortured and murdered during the horrors of the Burning Times for the taint of association with She who must be purged from Her stubborn roots in the human psyche.

Yet nothing lasts forever and the seasons of humanity turn. The sun shares the sky with the moon, just as God shares this world with the Goddess, and a male ethos with that of the sacred feminine. One may eclipse the other for a time, but what was lost will be refound and balance will return.

We, the waking daughters and sons of the Great She, stir after lifetimes of a deadening sleep. Piece by broken piece, we remember Her in the shards of pottery, crumbled sanctuaries and fragments of sacred text that have weathered the ravages of time and persecution. Somehow these silver threads, though torn, tangled and disconnected from their original holy weaving, reach through the ages and whisper their secrets to our hungry hearts.

And all around us, Her silver threads shimmy and shine in the outpouring of life and splendor of this planet Earth, and in the mysteries that underlie our waking reality. While we banish Her to the shadowy recesses of our minds, still She walks among us, gifting us always with the abundance and beauty of the green-growing world. Still, we journey by Her side in our dreams and between-the-worlds magic, receiving Her teachings and guidance on our journey of soul.

In these turning times, we must begin again, collecting and weaving Her silver threads into a new tapestry of sacred texts and secular practices that return balance and Her goodness and love to our human psyche and society. While we mourn the destruction and desecration of the ancient weavings that were once the bedrock of our humanity, we must also remember that new times require a new weaving.

Each of us, individually and together, in our personal lives, families and communities, must collect and weave, collect and weave, the silver threads that are everywhere and in everything — in the laughter of children, the heat of our lover’s touch, the smile of a stranger, and the best impulses of our warm beating heart — in the crisp bite of an apple, the comforts of home and hearth in the dead of winter, the glorious scent of a summer rose, and the silver brush of moonlight on a sleeping landscape — in our dreams, intuitions, creative expression and spiritual gatherings, where the Mysteries congregate at our doorstep — and in our big and small choices and actions to right the injustices, environmental damage and human abuses of our troubled world.

In this essential work, we’re going to stir up the brittle, crusted-over places and twisted, tangled threads that hold our personal wounding, and the fears and nay-saying old stories that dig their heels into the status quo in resistance to our forward movement. We’ll come face to face with the worst of our collective, destructive impulses and the tumultuous, terrifying upheaval that mark the ending of one season of our humanity and the birth of the next. Yet we mustn’t waiver nor let these old stories and fears stand in the way of our sacred task of co-creating the new.

In all these things and so much more, She is with us, gathering up our smaller weavings into the greater tapestry that is the template of a better, kinder, more sustainable and loving world. And in this tapestry, we’ll find Her shining ancient threads, the tarnished silver strands when we lost our connection to Her sacred ways, and the new golden threads of our remembering and reclaiming the love and goodness that are Her most precious gifts to us.

I reach out my hand to Her. I reach out my hand to you. We have work to do. Let us begin.

Related Post: Our Collecting and Weaving Task: A Tapestry of Love

Check out Path of She book offerings in the Path Store

Mastering Dreamwork: Four Telltale Markers of Daytime Dreams

Posted on:  Apr 10, 2023 @ 10:00 Posted in:  Pagan Dreamer

We don’t typically think of our everyday life as the stuff of dreams, yet the same mysteries, inner and outer, infuse and inform our waking and sleeping hours. Think of your unfolding life as one, overarching, soul-sourced dream that makes itself visible in your nighttime and daytime dreams.

Nighttime dreams are unbounded from the laws of the physical world. Daytime dreams are grounded in the concrete events and exchanges of your daily existence.

Nighttime dreams are fantastical and unbounded from the laws of the physical world. Daytime dreams are grounded in the concrete events, situations and exchanges that fill your day-to-day existence.

Daytime dreams can be just as potent and useful as nighttime dreams in revealing the soul-sourced roots and transformative potential of your life experiences. The trick to working with your daytime dreams is figuring out which parts of your busy life hold the treasures of insights, inspirations and experiences that can guide your pathwork of personal growth and evolution.

Here are four telltale markers of daytime dreams that can help you with this potent task.

1. Impactful Life Situations

The dream of your life is already unfolding. The things that are happening to you and around you are not random. They are the stuff of your personal growth and evolution.

To be a proficient daytime dreamer, you need to develop self-awareness of the impactful situations in your life.

What personal challenges and opportunities for growth are up for you right now? Is anything new or unusual happening in your outer life and interpersonal relationships? What are you excited or worried about?  Where are you feeling strong emotional reactions, positive or negative?

Bring this self-awareness to your daily existence. It will help you discern which life situations have the makings of a daytime dream that can inform and guide your pathwork

2. Related Nighttime Dreams

Your nighttime dreaming can offer a direct portal into the soul-sourced roots of your healing and personal growth.

The challenge with nighttime dreams is that they speak in the language of images and energy, and it may not be obvious what they are trying to tell you about your waking-world existence.

Yet if you open to your nighttime dreams, taking in their images and energies, and journaling their details, you are priming yourself to pick up on the daytime reflection of these dreams.

3. Unusual or Synchronistic Events

There is mystery afoot with daytime dreams. When an unusual or synchronistic event grabs your attention, be assured that you are in the presence of a powerful daytime dream.

We’ve all had these kinds of experiences, when we know something beyond the ordinary has crossed our path. Books fall open and deliver a message. Plans are waylaid, only to be replaced by the exact, right experience. Out-of-place objects appear before us. Strangers say something out of the blue. The variations are endless.

4. Reoccurring Themes or Messages

The soul-sourced dream of your unfolding life reveals itself in these multiple ways: the impactful situations in your everyday life, your nighttime dreams, and unusual and synchronistic events.

These are all clues that are trying to teach and guide you on a common theme or message. When you grasp this message, you have truly mined the treasure of your daytime dream.

Here is a personal example of how these four telltale markers work together.

There was a time, early in my spiritual journey, when information started to come to me about human spiritual anatomy. I attended a lecture on this subject, and the presenter only focused on mind and spirit. Halfway through the talk, another source of knowledge rose up from inside of me, and it said, “no, no, she is missing something. What about sacred matter? What about your body and the body of the Earth?”

My nighttime dreams spoke of the spiritual importance of the number three, and that humanity was the third thing that arose out of the sacred union of spirit and matter.

To make sure I totally got the point, while I was taking the elevator to my office one morning shortly after the lecture, a business man turned to another and said, seemingly out of nowhere, “Three is the magic number you know.”

All of these things spoke to one message: humanity is woven of the sacred trinity of mind, body and spirit.  Three is indeed the magic number.

This is how daytime dreaming works, sometimes delivering powerful spiritual lessons, as in the example above, and other times revealing the parts of your healing and personal growth that need your attention.

No matter the content, these four telltale markers can help you discern and engage your daytime dreams. Curiosity combined with practice and dedication beget increased self-awareness and dreamwork skill. Day by day, dream by dream, you can become a master of working with your daytime dreams.

Photo Credit: Steven Wei on Unsplash

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