Everything We Encounter Comes Through Touch

All our experiences, everything that comes to us through our senses, touches us.  Everything we learn in life comes to us through some form of touch.  We can taste the sweetness of a peach by the juices connecting with our taste buds.  We smell skunk because the acrid odor travels through the air touching our nasal passages as we breathe in and out. We hear the birdsong through sound-waves bouncing against our eardrums.  We have spent these two weeks of the waxing moon phase learning how touch is a primary informer for how we understand our life.
With the invitation to adopt (or be adopted by) a stone people companion, we receive a gift from Earth Mother’s first children, the stone people to practice staying conscious to being touched by the world outside of us, and to stay in connection with All Our Relations (all things).  In this way, we are learning to ‘talk’ with and to listen to what all manner of life can teach us about living our own life.

Self-Reflection:  In what ways have I been touched by the world around me in these past few weeks?  What learning of truth have I resisted receiving?  What learning of truth have a welcomed with an appreciative heart?

Being Reminded We ARE 'Talks WIth Relations'

Karin Shares: Early on a brisk 45 degree morning, my husband and I set out on one of the top 10 Texas trails (less than a mile away from our apt!) along the Barton Creek. The creek has burgeoned into a wide river from all the rain we've received, tinted with deep olives to Caribbean blue-green. At times it whooshes in white rapids over limestone boulders to still clear pools at the banks. I squat to rest my hands on small boulders upended and keeping watch at the water's edge. In a burst of energy, I run through sprinkling rain, knowing that a cold front is arriving, happy that the skies are clearing the cedar pollen. I am suddenly stopped by the sweet jit-jit of 3 tiny green and yellow birds with needle-like black beaks, flitting on branches laden with flood debris. They pay me no heed as they chatter to each other. I love this month of listening to and communing with the nature beings in Austin. 

Carolyn's Note: To me, Karin's sharing reflects her willingness to embody the January wisdom that Jamie Sams called "Talks With Relation'.  This wisdom is within each of us, we need only be willing to embrace it.


Self Reflection: I conciously embrace the wisdom of my own being.  How does this change the way I feel about my body?  

Cycles of Truth and the 5 Senses

We begin the experience of being human through our 5 senses.  The 5 senses are not instincts, but they inform our instincts, and also, the other way around.
We begin our learning about what it is to be human with our sense of 'touch'. We learn comfort and pain, hot and cold, hard,soft. Our first experience of being loved or rejected comes through our tactile experience during our birth.
In working with the Cycles of Truth, we begin with Learn Truth and the first of our five senses, touch.  This tactile sense is our first informer as to whether our world is a good and safe place to be. It is the first way we are in relationship with all of our world.
Reflecting on our early experience in the world gives us clues about where we need to update our sensory systems (quite literally).  Jamie Sams' experienced this first cycle of truth as 'Talks With Relations'.  Through the story she tells, she shows how our willingness to step into relationship with all of creation (not just people and our pets) is a tried and true way to Learn Truth AND to open our sense of touch to a higher level of sensitivity and frequency, which brings healing for us and for all we touch..

Learning Truth the Hard Way: Ignoring My Body's Message

Carolyn Shares: My sense of touch is overly sensitive today. My skin hurts with every touch, my muscles ache with every movement. Even my ears hurt, and I don't want to hear anything or anyone, My brain seems to hurt as well, and yet I fight against the calling of my body to go and rest for the remainder of the day.  I have my own agenda to complete and goals to move toward.  A 'sick day' interferes with 'my plans'.

Clearly, I am once again learning things the hard way!  This month I am searching through the wisdom teachings for messages about how we learn truth.  I am no longer surprised that in my readings across cultures and spiritual teachings the same themes surface at the same time across the different lineages.  This week it has been no different.  I read Richard Rohr's posting on learning the Truth about how the body and soul teach us when the body is hurting and the soul fearful.  And then a reading from Hafiz, and a psalm about resting in the Divine. Finally, I came across a reading from Talks With Relations, Jamie Sams name for the clan mother of the January Moon: ..."she must also learn the importance of resting when her body's rhythms are being pushed beyond their capacity to endure. It must be difficult for her, no longer in Spirit-form, and having to limit herself to the perceptions of a human body." (Blue Jay's commentary-pg. 39 in 13 Original Clan Mothers).

Self-Reflection: Learning through my sense of touch, and learning to communicate willingly with my body is my practice for this month's teaching.

Eternal Love - January New Moon Mandala from Lisa

Lisa Kay has been a member of our moon circle group since shortly after we began gathering. Lisa’s wisdom around the moon cycles includes her knowledge of the Celtic medicine wheel.  She is also a gifted artist and writer.  Over this year, Lisa will share the mandalas she creates as she contemplates the Cycles of Truth and rhythms of the moon.  We hope they inspire and bless you on your journey as well.

Here is Lisa's January New Moon Mandala:

The orange flame represents Eternal Love that the great spirit has placed in the heart (core) of every part of creation. Words from the chapter Clan Mother of the First Moon Cycle  and the last two lines of Jamie Sam's poem, Talks with Relations,  "Mother, I see you in the dewdrop, I hear you in the Eagle's call"  holds the circle together. In this mixed media new moon mandala, I layered prismacolor pencils and pastels and collaged dried rose petals and used matches from my morning meditation sessions.  Lisa 

January Dark Moon Musings by Carolyn

Just a few notes on my experience of dark moon approaching.  I heard my negative self talk pretty loudly this week. You know, that part that never runs out of self-doubt.  The tape is so familiar, I can recite it myself without any cue cards--and in fact I often do.  "STOP!" an old friend said as I whined on and on.  And this friend IS old.  Probably in his 80's though I don't ask.  He suggested I write an amends to myself for all that put-down talk; write an amends to the Carolyn that put so much time into studying and working for her degrees and her license, and years of practicing and honing her skills.  Write to the Carolyn that commits to her purpose of supporting others in their quests for growth and health. Write to the Carolyn who wakes up with visions for creating websites and books and paintings.  I fussed with him about the idea, but I listened and I did it.  I wrote pages--and pages. Then I read them out loud and I made my self listen. Well, I didn't make myself--after all that writing, I WANTED to listen.
I did the Gestalt two chair exercise--the one where one part of you sits in one chair and another part sits across in another chair, and the person talks to both parts of themselves by moving back and forth between chairs.  I sat in the negative self talker chair and I read my amends to my professional, creative and inspired self. I read that what was behind all my talk  was the need for staying small (so I could be safer) and not getting made fun of, or attacked, or shamed or making a mistake (does any of this sound familiar in your life??).  I read out loud  to the Carolyn in the other chair about recognizing how much all this had hurt the me that had worked hard and long and for years. I said I would do my best to stop the bad self talk habit (an addiction?).
That was a couple nights ago.  Something has shifted in me.  My willingness  to write an amends to my self gave me permission to hear the part of me that puts myself down and holds me back and shames me. She/I got to talk and I/Me listened from the heart.  My wise old friend, it seems, is a male incarnation of Talks With Relations. Since then, the negative voice is almost inaudible-just a little squeak now and then-I'm using it as a reminder to wake up and pay attention to myself-recenter and refocus on the moment. And, with less background noise I can hear (I) inspiration and (G)guidance much more clearly.  If it hadn't been so frigging cold up hear in the western suburbs of Chicago, I would have sat in my hot-tub under the dark moon to give thanks and allow the lesson to settle even deeper within.  But it's really still pretty darn cold, so instead, I'm taking this dark moon opportunity to share a blog-post.