Love Truth's Full Moon Fire Works

Independence Day and the Full Moon shared the fourth of July this year.

The teaching of this moon cycle for July is LOVE TRUTH. She seems to be calling out to us to love the TRUTH of our country, the United States of America. 

We need a comprehensive and unconditional Love to face the truth of our country's history.  Facing the truth in our country's history is the only way to manifest the vision for our country written by our imperfect founding fathers. 

Like most communities, our town did not have official fireworks this year, yet neighbors cobbled together their own informal shows.  I went outside to look at the full moon. A friend had texted me the moon was unusually large and exceptionally beautiful. A disorganized yet seeming unending barrage of flashes disrupted my intention of contemplating this deep yellow globe hanging just above the horizon. My feelings from earlier in the day flashed in my mind--I woke up feeling an ambiguous but deep grief.  I moved through my day, unsettled by feeling, but trying to focus on preparations for a social distanced barbeque.  When Alexa selected a patriotic play list, the identity of my grief made itself known: the meaning I held of this holiday had been torn away from me-not by the president, although he is the principle catalyst, but by the explosion of truth telling that is bursting forth upending every aspect of our lives. There was my grief; the meaning of 'independence day' has been shattered.  

I stood in the dark, watching. Fireworks flared and faded, sulfur smoked wafted thick and then drifted away. This July full moon, whose meaning for me is a reminder to LOVE TRUTH stayed steady and unaffected.  It is possible to love truth even when it is ugly and has caused deep and long harm.  Anyone who has recovered from an addiction with the help of the principles and tools of a twelve-step program has this experience.

Our country needs-we need, this kind of love of Truth that explodes the old myths and lies and nurtures the seeds of possibility and potential that the visionary authors of our 'declaration of indepence' compiled nearly 245 years ago.  We are a country in need of recovery, and we may not have another chance if we fail to embrace our truths yet again. 

 

Loves Truth Emerges from a Deep Dark Place

July's New Moon, Loves Truth, emerges from a deep dark Place. 

As seekers of Truth we now have an invitation to acknowldege and be willing to embrace our country's history which powerfully, traumatically, unrelentingly, burst forth. During the moon cycle of Speak Truth which just ended, the deep and concealed stories of our country's truths spilled out on the streets for all the world to witness.  

This new moon cycle has the ability to bring us solice, strength and the courage to continue to face these hard truths and embrace the courage to remedy the untruths the cycle of Speak Truth revealed. All that is required is our willingness to learn how to love truth in all her faces: 

To Love Truth is to fully embrace 

joy and sorrow

pain and pleasure

triumph and failure

history and vision

with a full and open heart!

A Prodigal Goddess Prepares to Serve Truth

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

Self Reflection:  My imperfection is my path of learning my perfection as a child of Creator.

The Willingness to Love Truth Offers a Gift of Peace

Carolyn Shares: The biggest awareness I have received in holding the idea, thought, feeling and experience of Love Truth over the course of this moon cycle is that as I practice (and often fail) to Love ALL Truth(s) I am developing the 'ability' to love in a different way.  This loving is difficult to describe. It feels like a gift-- loving in a way that is a gift to myself, to those close around me, and also out into the world.  By my willingness to embrace that the tiny truth I hold in my mind is NOT the whole truth, and may not even be accurate, I open a space in myself for awareness and courage to receive, even welcome, larger Truths.  This is a gift, and I experience this gift coming from the Creator.  I cannot make it happen, but I can show-up daily and and receive this gift.  To seek the ability to Love Truth IS an experience of deep and abiding Peace.  And this I can offer as a gift for others, just by moving through my daily life wearing the experience of this peace.

Self Reflection:  How have I experienced love this moon cycle? For myself? For Others? For this planet?

Love Truth is Letting Go of the Need for Perfection

What have I encountered on this journey to Love Truth?
I have encountered the Truth that to Love Truth is to let go of my idea of the need for perfection.
I could name this a journey 'love imperfection', 'love patience', 'love what is hard to love'.
In my imperfections I recognize I have caused harm to others.
To love the truth of my human fallibility, means I can send a prayer for the one I have harmed.  
I can open myself to receive the grace of self-forgiveness, and in doing so
Grace comes through me to amend for the suffering my own suffering has caused another.
In the truth of Love Truth, grace can come through me.
And I can offer comfort through me.

Self Reflection: What am I encountering on my journey to Love Truth.  I wonder what is yet to be revealed?

Take Time to Reflect on Your Path of Loving Truth

During the waning moon phase, our mind and heart come together to bring into focus what we most need to learn about loving what is true--in our own life, in the life of others who our life touches, in our communities, and our world. A commitment to love truth is not an easy path, but the pay off is worth the effort.  Inner peace comes with this commitment. We develop a deeper understanding of our and others' challenges and difficulties. There is a growing wisdom that comes from this practice. 

Self Reflection: How are the lessons of this cycle of Love Truth coming into play in my life? Where am I called to take action? What might I need to release to be able love a larger, deeper truth? What new awareness is uniting my mind and heart? 

Great Mystery's Truth Hides in the Shadows

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.  It is the same for all human beings. We must learn to see ourselves in the Magnificent Wholeness of who we are, and that includes our shadows.  Because we have not known the truth within our shadows, we have not been able to see the Truths of ourselves or the Truth of the world around us. This Truth: We are all magnificent manifestations of Creator/Creation.  We have the ability to learn, know, hear, see and accept this Truth.

One of the easiest, and least scary ways to begin a practice of  loving the truth present in life is through our experience of nature. This is especially evident when we choose to experience a place in nature which we would name unattractive or damaged. Choose an abandoned parking lot where the weeds are growing up in the cracks, or the far corner of your yard, which doesn't get any attention, or a dead tree. Choose one small spot and sit in front of it and just notice it. Look at the detail of the plants. Notice little bugs, or lichen, the detail in a stone. Really, see the colors present, the different textures.  If you look long enough, you will begin to see a miracle a creation in the new life insisting on making it's way, or in the process of decay giving way to what will come next. If we take time to experience the miracles within this little piece of Creation's process--a 'less than ideal' place in nature-- how can we not experience the magnificence of ourselves, even when we experience our self as 'less than ideal'?  We are all magnificent!  We can embrace and love this as Truth. We can come to love traveling even the shadowed paths of our life journey.

Self Reflection:  Make a commitment to sit in nature. In your nature sitting, what small magnificence showed itself to you... nature has shared with you? Find this magnificence in your own being and reflect it back. 

Spiritual Teachers Also Accompany Us on Our Journeys

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,

Self Reflection:  Who is/are the Spiritual Teacher(s) I connect to? 

Stepping Fully Into the Meaning of Love Truth in Our Life

We step fully into the waning phase of the Moon 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? Even those whose form we cannot begin to understand? We come to understand by reflecting on our journey through the moon cycles and through the cycles of truth as we have experienced them in our lives, so far.  Remembering our whole life is the journey, and we are in the midst of this journey. We will continue to grow and become.

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.

Self Reflection: Love is the Source of all creation.

Encouragement For Moving Through Times of Challenge

Karen Shares:
I carried this with me all day yesterday.  May I continue to look to my Inner Nature, that Font of Love, even during the uncertain, the unknown, the silent, even violent, times of darkness:

"In this time of outward activity,
Of Creation on the physical plane,
I ask to remember
That the Wheel is ever-turning.
And I am propelled by my Inner Nature
Even as I celebrate
My Outer Nature.
For in the fullness of light
Rest the seeds of night,
And in darkness the seeds of day."

--Essene Book of Meditations & Blessings

Self Reflection:  I look to my Inner Nature, where my love sprouts, to inform how I will live my life.

Forgiveness as an Instant Disolver of Anger

From Mary Z: Jamie Sams writes, “In her wisdom, Loves All Things teaches us that we can find the joys of physical life, without trying to escape our pain through becoming addicted to false pleasures or compulsive behavior patterns.”

I have a pattern of diffusing painful situations with humor or flattery only to succumb to internalizing the hard feelings I could not express to another.  Carolyn talked about forgiveness.  If forgiveness is for the self, how does one forgive when the feelings come from within one’s own self?

I only recently realized how angry I was at someone who had taken advantage of me a few months back.  I feel I cannot forgive him without him understanding how hurt I was.  Yet tonight I was finally able to express my feelings in writing.  A weight was lifted when I wrote down the words.  Is that the healing feeling of forgiveness?

I become overwhelmed trying to figure out where I took the wrong turns in life that leave me so unhappy so often in the present.  Focusing on a current emotion and doing something about it fostered a lightness I have not felt in a while.  Can past sins be forgiven by breaking a few patterns in the present?

Jamie Sams writes, “Forgiving the self for being human…usually dissolved the anger instantly