On Receiving the Gifts of Truth

Sit with the understanding the Cycles of Truth are Gifts we receive to support us in becoming the fullness of who we were created to be in this life.  Cycles: meaning to come around again and again, to have a regular rhythm and flow, a completion of a series.

Cycles have specific patterns and effects; familiar, yet each time we experience them, they bring something new.  Sometime the gift is wonderful, joyful, expansive.  Sometimes, until we have fully received the gift, we may feel it as a burden, or even a punishment.

To consciously receive the benefit of the Gifts of Truth we must give space and time for the fullness and depth of the gifts of Truth as they continue to come into our lives.  When confusion comes with the gift, as it often does, know that con-fusion is a sign that our old understandings are giving way to new and fuller knowing.  Eventually, this new and fuller knowing will give way to even fuller knowing, and the cycle will keep continuing. 

Prayer:  May I become a graceful receiver of all Your gifts of Truth.

What Does Love Truth Mean?

We come to the close of the waxing cycle for this Blue Moon with the Cycle of Love Truth.  Jamie Sams’ Clan Mother story relating to this Cycle of Truth is the tale of Loves All Things. It is the story of the intense pain and harm which comes from the misperception that Love is impermanent, cannot transcend time or space, and of the damage that we as human beings can do when we do not understand the true nature of Love. 

Love is the source of ALL creation.  What does it mean to Love Truth in all her forms and all her presentations? When we have opened ourselves to Learn Truth, to Honor Truth as we learn it, to Know and Accept Truth as it is revealed to us, we can then See and Hear Truth.  When we live with these qualities growing within us, are able to Love Truth as it comes to us, from us and through us.  We begin to understand that our loving others is another way Creator/Great Mystery/God loves all things.

Speak Truth: Requirements and a Fairy Tale

Can we ever fully comprehend the power held in our words?   Remember the phrase “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”? Words do hurt, they can damage the human spirit in ways that can never be mended; even bully and shame others to the point of suicide. Words can also inspire hope, open a heart to unconditional love, and bring healing to body, mind and spirit. 

To Speak Truth is so much more than the spoken word, especially in our post-modern world of technology and instant communication.  At minimum it requires:  

1) We know truth in ourselves and have done an honest appraisal of our intention and motivation for speaking.  

2) We have an honest sense of the possible impact and effect of our words on others. 

3) Our words are in alignment with the words of Creator/Great Mystery/God. 

Prayer:  Creator, I offer my voice to You, as a tool for speaking Your wisdom, Your Truth.

And a fairy tale for Speak Truth:  Toads and Diamonds.

Hear the Truth: Jumping Mouse's Lessons Continue

...And as for Jumping Mouse, his willingness to follow the wisdom he heard from those he met along the way, to leap as high as he could and risk it all to see the bigger Truth, made all the difference.  In this story we also find Mouse learned to discriminate what he heard as either Truth or fear.  For us too, as we follow the rhythms of the moon cycles and move along the paths of the Cycles of Truth our ability to discriminate the voice of Great Mystery/God/Creator from the voice of our own ego-based fear, or the fears of others will shift. We set our intention to listen with larger ears, to listen with the ears of our soul. To listen with our inner ears.

I am reminded of the Song of the Ancestors, from one of my Vision Quests: “I hear the voices of my ancestors calling me. 'Listen, listen', they say, 'listen Listen'…”  The voices of our ancestors speak to us through the sounds of nature. When we take time to listen to the sounds of nature, we hear wisdom coming to us.  The wisdom of those who have journeyed this path before us may be best spoken to us through Mother Earth’s creatures.  

When what we see and what we hear come into alignment, we are finally able to hear the voice of God/Great Mystery/Creator.  When we have surrendered all our other senses and preconceived experiences, finally we can Hear Truth.  

If you haven't heard JumpingMouse--Read On !

See Truth. How to See With Wiser Eyes

I take time to ‘see’. In this Cycle of Truth, my eyes and Creators Eyes become One.  I see my own world view through my eyes, yet my eyes are also the eyes through which Creator sees Creator’s Creation. Lee Nitsch shared with to hold the image of Eagle/Eagle’s eyes just above my own eyes.  If I take my intention and focus to see through the eyes of Eagle, how does my world view change?  Eagle sees minuscule detail as well as broad expanse.  Imagine flying as Eagle, soaring.  How does the world look from this perspective?  

When I can see clearly the Truth surrounding my perceived struggles, I become my true self, just as did mouse, in the Native American story of  Jumping Mouse . I, too, must find my willingness to give up my limited point of view.   All the totem animals in the story of Jumping Mouse that come to support mouse  on his journey, (raccoon, frog, buffalo, wolf and eagle) have much wisdom for us as well…Read the story and find out.  Jumping Mouse 

I can learn to and must request to see with God’s Eyes.  I can learn to see (discrimination and discernment)  the tiny details of things. I can learn to see the MUCH BIGGER picture. I can learn to see the Whole and the detail all at once. What I see depends on my current consciousness, my willingness to suspend beliefs and surrender. Am I willing to see what part of  'me' gives me the most trouble? 

Prayer:  Open my eyes to see with Your Eyes…Open my ears to hear with Your Ears.

Our Senses as They Relate to Our Personal and Spiritual Growth

Experiencing our five senses as they manifest through or in the Cycles of Truth has the effect of helping us to take fully advantage of this gift that is our life.  We learn to be fully present to life in the moment and to become more fully aligned with Creator’s purpose for our individual life.  We learn to use our senses as tools for connecting to higher frequencies of awareness.  We are able to have our senses become more acute and sensitive so that we can respond more proactively, rather than from fear or anxiety.  We become more able to use our senses to wake up to the world around us and to our own unique path. 

Highly developed senses, while they may require our attention and cannot be easily ignored, can bring a sense of ease to our lives once we come to trust them and to use them wisely.  The increased awareness with our senses also awakens our intuition, often called the sixth sense, 

Knowing and Accepting Truth and Our Sense of Smell

I was first confused when I tried to understand the relationship between our olfactory sense and cycle of Know and Accept Truth.   As I sat in my morning contemplation, a visual image came to me like a video looping through my mind.  I first, saw one dog, running paces in a field.  It was then joined by two more dogs. They ran a systematic pattern across the field, sniffing intently one side to the next. I could see nothing out of the ordinary about the field, grass and prairie flowers, and a few trees at the edge. As I watched, I saw that the dogs kept going back to the same area and circling around.   Leaving and coming back again.

“Ah hah”, I thought.  We use our olfactory sense to sniff things out in our life. We have phrases we use that refer to finding out a truth, like ‘something smells fishy’.  Our sense of smell tells us if something is pleasing or repulsive.  It also influences how food tastes, even whether food has a taste at all.   The sense of smell is probably the second sense experienced by an infant after birth.  Indeed, most mammals and birds bond with their parent figures through their olfactory senses.  I began to understand how the deeper discriminating qualities of our olfactory sense can support us in our knowing and accepting of the Truth of our life.  

All I Really Need To Do Is Suspend My Limited Beliefs

Our next pause on the blue moon cycle path is the space of 'Know and Accept Truth'.  To know and accept truth requires mostly one thing: suspending our belief-about everything.   In our current place on the personal growth spectrum, our beliefs limit what is possible. As we continue to turn our face ever more to the light that is Truth, we can accept and be grateful that what we currently know as true is only a part, not the whole.

We contemplate these odd phrases (Learn Truth, Honor Truth, Know and Accept Truth, etc.). We come to understand them as invitations to different ways of relating to Truth--to Creator/Great Mystery/God.  We begin to experience something quite amazing in our being and our mind.  As we become willing to suspend what we think we know (our beliefs about most everything), we find they are replaced with a profound awareness of 'knowing'.  This sense of knowing seems to come from deep within as well as if from a Source far beyond our self.   This ‘knowing’ may feel quite uncomfortable as we become aware that with the acceptance of this new ‘knowing’ we will be changed in the way we live and manifest our life.  Even with the discomfort, holding gratitude for this larger Truth takes use step closer to Accepting Truth.

PRODIGAL GODDESS

To return home,

to walk as prodigal into our own life.

Will we feast on our fatted calf?

Or mete our own justice?

To know the light, we must learn darkness.

We value most, that which is nearly lost.

Treat yourself with kindness.

Turn

and upon turning back,

Welcome yourself with open arms.

Embrace the cycle.

Hug your Goddess.

Greet yourself,

perfect in your imperfection

Originally posted by Sara on cowgirlzen.com

Why Quest for Truth

It seems All of great spiritual teachers, mystics and holy ones were/are seekers of Truth.  All of them!  Go and read your favorites, and you will find this longing and searching very soon in their writing.  This seeking  is likely to show itself in one of the forms we experience in the Cycles of Truth, which is only another way of searching and knowing.  

As I follow the path of my longing to understand and live my life purpose ever more truth-fully, I find teachings on Truth popping up all over, and with synchronicity. This one came this morning:

 "...Does truth work in our lives?...Truth Heals the body, purifies the soul, reforms the sinner, solves difficulties, pacifies strife. There is no such thing as undemonstrated understanding. If you wish to know where you really stand spiritually, look about you at your environment, beginning with the body.  There can be nothing in the soul that is not demonstrated sooner or later in the outer, and there is nothing in the outer that does not find some correspondence in the inner." (pg 201)       From Emmet Fox, July 20, (1886-1951) , a pioneer of the New Thought movement, continues to inform many present day wisdom teachers and spiritual searchers.

Around the Year With Emmet Fox,

The Secret of Increasing Our Ability to Hear Divine Inspiration: Practice Gratitude and Appreciation

You might have noticed the label in the upper right-hand oval of the waxing and waning moon pages 'Appreciation'.  It's there for a REALLY NECESSARY REASON.

I've been told by a number of spiritual teachers and coaches, and read in a lot of self help books how helpful it is to keep a gratitude list.  Even Oprah has gratitude months, and there was a lovely young women (whose name now escapes me) who had a website devoted totally to gratitude.  Keeping a gratitude list is supposed to make us happier and lessen our depression and negativity.   When  I have been diligent about writing a daily gratitude list, I definitely have felt better, happier , more joy-filled.'  But, that practice is can be a challenge to maintain, which is one reason why we keep it on the journal pages month after month.

Keeping awareness of our gratitude and appreciations raises our energetic frequency, and we become able  to experience more joy.  This ability to raise our frequency out of negativity and into joy, is to a key ingredient to having a conversation with Creator/Great Mystery/God.  A wise teacher shared with me that the vibrational frequency of gratitude is joy, and joy is the frequency through which Great Mystery speaks.  Only in that frequency can we hear the direction of Creator clearly.  We then, will not mistake this voice for that of our trickster ego!

The Blue Moon Cycle and Learn Truth

The third day of the waxing moon.

Much of what we learn as Truth comes through our relationships with others and our experiences in the world.  Some of what we take in as Truth is false evidence appearing real.  This is the misunderstanding of the instinct of fear.  In the natural world, the instinct of fear is Creator's gift that tells all Creator's creatures to pay attention to what is coming.  That's it.  Just pay attention.  When we learn to pay attention to what is, then we can begin to discern with our all our physical senses, Truth from illusion.   Then we are able to also Learn Truth in our relationships and our experiences.  For this blue moon reflection what Truths have I learned; what untruths am I becoming aware of? 

Though Hidden as if in Shadow, We are Aways Whole

Through reflecting on the life we have lived so far, we go from hiding ourselves in the shadow, to coming to know we are already whole.  We have not allowed ourselves to see the Magnificent Wholeness of who we are.  We are manifestations of Creator/Creation.  We all have experience of the magnificence of nature; how can we not experience the magnificence of ourselves?

What is your most magnificent nature siting... the awe nature has shared with you? You are that magnificent, that awe-some.  We all are.  We can and will embrace this as Truth, by our willingness to travel fully in our humanness.

Waxing Moon: Our Vision is NOW; Not Some Time in the Distant Future

All the work and effort for this month will bring together these three 'parts' of ourselves: the person Great Mystery created us to be for this lifetime; the person we sense we are, in those brief, fleeting moments where we ARE fully present; and the person we dare dream we could be-if/when...

We are already who and what we were created to be.  Because our sense of self is not in alignment with our 'Divine Template' it only means that we must learn how to bring our vision back from the distance of 'someday' to the present moment.  

We already are the person we sense we are called to be.  We CAN and WILL learn to experience ourselves as this person! How?
We start by paying attention to the reaction of our senses in our daily lives.  We notice our preferences, likes, dislikes, prejudices, beliefs.  No judging, just notice.  No judging, just notice.

As we move through the days of becoming, filling and receiving which are represented by the waxing moon, we notice how our senses fill us, and with what.

A Thought for the Closing the Cycle of Love Truth and Moving to the Blue Moon Cycle 'Be Truth' and Wholeness

Lisa and I spent the this past weekend at a workshop and ceremony with the son and daughter-in-law of Twylah Nitsch, who inspires the way I set my intention to live, as well as the work I do.  Lisa found this quote by Carl Jung on a sign post outside the center where the workshop was being held.  Wisdom teacher come from many places, and their teachings ring familiar truths.

Meeting the Relatives of Twylah Nitsch

Today (and tomorrow) I will spend my day(s) with the son and daughter-in-law of Twylah Nitsch. Twylah is the Seneca Elder who has informed and inspired my moon cycle work and my quest to know and live ever more fully in Truth.  I never met this generous and giving elder while she was still living in her human body, but I have felt her presence with me many times in spirit.  So, I feel blessed to spend time with her children. I will listen carefully to what they share and pass on what I am able.