Gifts of October's Closing Moon

We each have a web of life we have co-created with the Source of our being.
Our web of life holds our dreams.
As we Work with Truth in our life, our love, desire and our efforts manifest our dreams in our life.
As we Walk in Truth, we are taking steps to share our life with others.
Our willingness to Share Truth in our life is the next essential step on the path of our Life.

Self Reflection:  I carry in my being stardust from the origin of the universe--the original big bang. Can I begin to imagine My Truth as big as that? What an origin!
I am connected to all of creation.  This is the Truth I am willing to Share in my work and my walk as I live my life.





 

Waking our Creative Spirit

The spirit of the artist lives within us all.
We are all creators, whether we own this essential part of our being or not.
To see our work in life as a creative act is a choice, regardless of what that work is.
If we walk in our life with an intention to create more love, peace, prosperity, balance..
        we walk as embodied artists for the Creator.
This is the path to Work and Walk in/with/for Truth.

Self Reflection:  How well do I know the spirit of my inner artist.  How would she express herself if I let her work in my life, walk in my life?

Saying Yes to Creating Self

We are coming to the close the the Truth Cycle to Work and Walk in, with, for Truth.  In the final days of this cycle our unexpressed longings may feel more urgent.  Our inner artist/co-creator longs to be expressed in her fullness. Our longings are the seedbeds for creating ourselves.

Truth: you already have what you need to be who you are.  

It is there in the longing.

There is still time to say "Yes!" to growing to our full being.  

There is always time to say "Yes!"  

"Yes!" is the creative nudge.  

"Yes!" must be said everyday, even if some days it is just "yes!".

Self Reflection:  As a living breathing being I am saying "yes!" in some way to my inner-creative self every day. I am, whether I am conscious of my "yes" or not.  How am I saying "yes" to my inner creative self? How do I want to say "yes"?

Guiding Words for Working with the Waning Moon

What we have to move us through the work for the waning moon:

Our Vision
Our Energy
Our Effort
Our Spirit

All must be in balance one with the other.
In this way, we Incarnate  to the fullness of who we are.

Vision, Energy, Effort and Spirit manifest in our Work in the world.
Vision, Energy, Effort and Spirit inform how we Walk in the world.
When each is in balance, our life can be balanced, regardless of the events of the world around us.

When Vision directs the show, looking to far to the future, we become dissociated from the 'now'.
With too little Vision, we forget our direction.
With too much Energy, we are manic and life is chaotic.
When depleted of Energy, we sink into hopelessness.
Exerting effort without regard for the capacity of body, mind or emotions, they become diseased.
Lethargy, the lack of intention for Effort, breeds entitlement and poverty of Spirit.
Spirit connected to Self and to Source, supports our life, our well-being.
Spirit, with no connection to Self and Source, distorts the Truth in our work and our walk.
Disconnected from Spirit, there is no life in our work and our walk.


Self Reflection: As this waning moon moves toward closure, I reflect on awareness of my vision, how I use my energy, my right use of effort, My connection to Spirit.

Working and Walking Truth in Present TIme

"A secure future depends on walking in balance every living moment".  Thirteen Original Clan Mothers  (Pg. 198)

Perhaps part of the problem is I have held on to and not shared what I have been given in wisdom and awareness in a path of healing (with others).  And so, there is no space for what I long for (abundance, relationship, health etc) in my life. What does all this 'holding on' or 'coming up short' represent in me?  What part of me am I holding on to that prevents my True Self, my authentic, real self from being present?  What of my True Self am I holding at bay, denying, hiding from myself and from others?

Self Reflection: To get where I am going, I must BE where I am.

Practices for Learning to Let Go

When we have carried a belief, habit or fear around for a long enough time, it begins to feel as if it is part of who we are. It becomes a part of our identity.  Just the idea of letting go of something that has become our blanket of security, or our 'go to' comfort, increases our anxiety.  Anxiety further shrinks our ability to see the potential for our life.  For many people this becomes an ever deepening rut of  repeat limiting, self-destructive behaviors.

Here are two practices which can help us become willing, able and ready to let go of what keeps us from creating our dreams:

The first practice I call the 'god-box' practice. Write what it is you wish to release on a small piece of paper, fold it up so that the writing is folded inward.  An example:  "I ask for guidance and direction to let go of ___________________. "

If you have a personal altar you can place this request on your altar. I have a 'god-box' on my altar and use that to hold my requests and intentions. If you don't have an altar, to choose a small, special container to hold your requests and place it where you will see it regularly. There is nothing more you need do, except to keep your ears, your eyes and your heart alert for the guidance and direction you will begin to see as you move through your days.

This is not to say your letting go will be instantaneous or easy, though sometimes it is.  Often, our guidance comes in unexpected ways-someone shows up in our life who is able to guide us through an arduous letting go process.  Sometimes letting go comes in stages, by bits and pieces.  Sometimes, we find letting go just happens. Awareness and asking are the key ingredients to letting go over time. Letting go is an intentional request.  The willingness is ours to choose, the timing of when it actually happens, however, is not in our control.

The second practice for when you are not sure if you are yet willing or able to let go:
Write a prayer for the willingness to pray for the willingness to let go. An example:  "Creator, I pray for the willingness to become willing to ask for guidance and direction and inspiration to let go ________________.

Self Reflection: I read this prayer everyday, upon waking and before sleep.  Soon I find myself writing my request for guidance and direction.  Now, I am ready for the gifts of the 'god box'.

Living in the Mysrtery of Our Own Web of Life

There are ways our own web of life is known to us and ways in which it is still a mystery.
What is asked of us as we move in the space that is ours-to care for, to steward, to enjoy, to create?

Carolyn's personal share:  When I sit to write these blog posts, I sit in stillness asking for guidance, "What is helpful for me to hear, know, write for this day?"  As these posts are written day after day, I am aware the guidance is always there, yet I am frequently not able to hear or see it clearly.  Mental chatter, the static of conflicting needs and wants from other areas of my life result in impatience. I often feel pressure to get into my day (or to go to bed), or to meet another's want or need.  For me, this is the 'poison' that creates the distorted web Sara wrote about in her post on the weaving of one's web.

A Truth I  know as I stay committed to this path of living and being and serving is this:
My willingness to continue to ask for guidance helps me come back to a centered place where I am better able to hear and see guidance.
My willingness to have gratitude and appreciation for all that is in and around my life, regardless of how it currently appears/feels to me, clears a way for creativity.
When I can let go of 'my way', my time frame, my preconceived ideas and notions and prejudices, words and creativity flow.
All this is what allows my inner-artist to connect with Great Mystery to co-create my life (and these posts).  It is truly a wonderful experience and way of being. Knowing this, I wonder why I still leave this space so often?


Self Reflection:  What more is needed for me to trust I AM a gifted artist co-creating my life?

Gifts of the Cycles of Truth: The Pathway of Peace Meditation

This is a reading of the Pathway of Peace Meditation pages 95-97 in Honoring the Medicine by Kenneth Cohen

Pathway of Peace Meditation


Self Reflection:  Listen to the meditation, familiarizing yourself with the seven stepping stones and their gifts.  It is suggested you take 30 seconds to a minute (or more) at each of the steps to fully integrate the fullness of each stone along the path of the meditation.  This will require pausing the video and taking all the time you need/want before proceeding.  Alternately, over the course of a week, meditate with one of the pathway stones on each of the seven days.

Choosing A Walking Companion to Walk Truth

"You'll never walk alone"   1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein song from the musical Carousel 


It is True, I never walk alone.  Yet, I am often unconscious of just who my walking companions are.
When I walk with resentemt, the other companions at my side are inevitably, shame, blame, and expectation.  With this gang I can predict what my life is going to look like with pretty good accuracy-and it will be more of the same.  Like attracts like.
I don't  like walking around with resentment, shame, blame and expectation.

What if I made a different choice? What if I chose to walk with Truth?

While I am not sure what walking with Truth would look like,

I do know who would I choose to walk alongside me and Truth, at least for starters.

Today, I ask for wisdom, compassion and curiosity to walk with me and 'Truth'.

Tomorrow I can choose different companions as I continue my walk.  

Over time I will come to know Truth better. 

Self Reflection:  Who are my walking companions?  

  

The Meaning of Walk Truth

October's Cycle of Truth is to Work and Walk Truth.  My relationship with Work Truth is in all the ways I express my creative pulse by and through Divine Direction.  Walk Truth is the process of expressing my work out in the world and to others.  I  Walk Truth when I walk with the understanding my work is 'More God than me'.  Walk Truth is meditation in action.
In Work Truth, I create with and through spirit. In Walk Truth, my walk in the world is a spiritual practice.  It is often as colorful and rowdy as it is soft and contemplative.

Self Reflection: How am I currently expressing my life's work our in the world and to others? Do I need support to express my life more truthfully?  If so, am I will to ask for this support? to receive it?

Trust in Your Choices and Your Dreams

Trust in your choices and your dreams.

Can I trust my choices? 

How often I second guess my decisions!

I second guess myself even when I'm going for something I have dreamed of, longed for, worked for.

By the process of exploring and experiencing each cycle what is Truth in my life as it is laid out in the Cycles of Truth, I have come to know more what is trustworthy in my body's reaction to things.  I have come to recognize when my thinking and emotions are truthful and in integrity, and when I am out of alignment with my Truth. This has been a slow process, and my awareness of changes I have made, are more an after the fact  'aha', than pre-choice awareness.

This past week I made a choice to spend a good chunk of money on something which has the potential to support the dream I have for my work and life.  After I made my decision, I waited for buyer's remorse to set in.  It didn't.  I didn't wake up in the middle of the night with an "oh s--t, what have I done".  I didn't wake up the next morning with my stomach in knots.   48 hours later, I still had a subtle hum of excitement, aware of the work ahead and was looking forward to beginning.  No regrets, no second-guessing.  A year later, opportunity 'successfully' completed. The big ah-ha for me was the outcome was not what I had envisioned.  Rather than going where I thought I wanted to end up, I found what I was going for was not the direction I was being turned toward. 

So, what is different now?  What has changed in me? I realized that in the past my choices and decisions have usually been from my need to be safe and create security in my world.  Of course, this frequently didn't work out the way I planned...hence always the 'buyer's remorse' response.  This time I made a decision from the space of giving myself and my work what is needed to flourish and grow.  I am flourishing and growing, and parts of myself that no longer serve me or others are falling way. I have less resistance. I have more willingness to say 'yes' without needing to know the outcome.  I also have found more willingness to say 'no' without fear of missing out. This space feels SO different!  I am coming to trust my choices and trust (and honor) my dreams. I am also as ease with my dreams being fluid and changing, growing. 

Self Reflection:   Am I willing to seek the support and guidance I need to make choices and go for my dreams with 'no regrets'?

Connecting Our Hearts to Our Visions

Carolyn writes:

One summer, I had the privilege of spending a weekend with Bob and Lee Nitsch, the son and daughter-in-law of the late Grandmother Twylah Nitsch.  Twylah was the Seneca Elder who shared the Seneca teachings of Cycles of Truth, a foundational part of the Moon Circle Journal, with all who would listen.  Bob and Lee carry on her work, and came to Philadelphia to lead a weekend seminar for contemplating and experiencing the meaning of the Cycles of Truth in our life.  Participants were invited to take contemplation time outside in the gardens surrounding our meeting place.  During one walking meditation, I came across this placard peeking out from among the flowers:

When I uploaded the pictures off my I-phone, the photo I snapped of Jung's quote was the one that 'just happened' to land in the front of the album. Jung's quote is fitting for the waxing moon phase for October's call to walk and work with/in Truth. I think about my difficulties having 'clarity of vision' and I reflect on Sara's intuitive interconnection of visions, dreams, goals and desires on the Waxing Moon journal page. I ask myself, "where inside myself, do I need to look (or sense) more fully, deeply, thoroughly to be more fully awake to my work and to the way I walk in my life? Am I willing to look there?"

Self reflection: Are they places I need to look within myself to be more fully awake to my vision for my life? Am I willing to look?

There Are Many Ways to Have a Vision for Your Life

Visions have always been difficult for me.
I sense an opening, rather than seeing a well laid out path;
a kaleidoscope of images, rather than a clear picture;
ways of feeling and being, rather than having and achieving.
Is this a tangible way of visioning?
Or, am I like a boat in the sea of possibility, without a rudder?

Carolyn writes:  I've always hated those vision exercises with instructions to write down clear visions for the future, or  business growth, or what my life will be like in 1, 5 10 years from now.  I rarely get 'clear' visions.  I get brief flashes of image and a lot of 'felt sense'/feelings that are more like a kaleidoscope of possibilities rather than a clearly defined path to the future. I realized today how much shame I have been carrying about not being able to create a clear vision. I was asked in an interview to share about my vision, embarrassment and shame were lumps in my throat as my mind flipped through my mental Rolodex  wanting to grasp something inspired, or at least acceptable.

But, the interviewer, in her wisdom, gave me a wonderful gift.  She gave me permission to have my vision my way, and she validated it, and most important, truly seemed to understand it.  Having a vision for how I want to feel and be in the future, rather than what I wanted to be doing and what my life looked like, isn't so odd after all.

Self Reflection: How do you create vision for your life, for living, working, walking your Truth?

Visions and Dreams; How to Avoid a Nightmare

There is a ancient Japanese Proverb:
Vision without action is a daydream.
Action without vision is a nightmare.

Sara's words for the waxing phase of the October moon create a pattern for working and walking Truth in our life.

There is a sense and order to how those four words words are laid out on the pages.
Our dreams and our desires enrich one another.
Our desires and our visions inform one another.
Our visions and our goals instruct one another.
Our goal and our dreams energize one another.

The places they intersect reveal and are the template for our calling, for our becoming.
When we honor the interplay of our dreams, desires, visions and goals, we can be sure we will walk and work in Truth.

Self Reflection: If I am willing to take time to come to know my dreams, desires, visions and goals, they will support me in who I am called to BE in my life.  Will I embrace my dreams, my desires, my visions. my goals?

Aligning your Dreams, Desires, Goals and Vision

Sara writes:  To be honest, when I sat down with the four circles of 'Dreams', 'Desires', 'Goals' and 'Vision' this morning, I wondered why on earth we had chosen four words that meant the same thing. Then I started writing:

• Desires-what my heart is calling for, that for which I feel a lack or emptiness 
• Dreams-what I would love to have in my life.  Again mostly what I don' have (yet)
• Goals-what I hope to accomplish, in specifics
• Vision-how I see myself manifesting in the world and how the Universe manifests around me

I remember a time, about 13-14 years ago when a similar exercise (in the middle of a corporate  retreat) nearly caused a complete emotional breakdown.  I was living my life trying to fulfill someone else's desires, reach goals that had been set by those who controlled my financial future, had room only for the dream of safety and didn't dare let myself look at a vision of how my life was manifesting.

When we are not in touch with our inner self, we lose the ability to weave a coherent web.  Those four apparently similar words end up disconnected when they do not spring from our own inner truth,  from our own core wisdom.  

Self Reflection: Are my Dreams, Desires, Goals and Vision in alignment?  Can they all be contained and supported by the web I am weaving with my choices and my life?

Connecting Our Hearts to Our Visions

Carolyn writes:

This past July, I had the privilege of spending a weekend with Bob and Lee Nitsch, the son and daughter-in-law of the late Grandmother Twylah Nitsch.  Twylah was the Seneca Elder who shared the Seneca teachings of Cycles of Truth, a foundational part of the Moon Circle Journal, with all who would listen.  Bob and Lee carry on her work, and came to Philadelphia to lead a weekend seminar for contemplating and experiencing the meaning of the Cycles of Truth in our life.  Participants were invited to take contemplation time outside in the gardens surrounding our meeting place.  During one walking meditation, I came across this placard peeking out from among the flowers:

When I uploaded the pictures off my I-phone last week the photo I snapped of Jung's quote was the one that 'just happened' to land in the front of the album. Jung's quote is fitting for the waxing moon phase for October's call to walk and work with/in Truth. I think about my difficulties having 'clarity of vision' and I reflect on Sara's intuitive interconnection of visions, dreams, goals and desires on the Waxing Moon journal page. I ask myself, "where inside me, do I need to look (or sense) more fully, deeply, thoroughly to be more fully awake to my work and to the way I walk in my life? Am I willing to look there?"

Self reflection: Are there places I need to look within myself to be more fully awake to my vision for my life? Am I willing to look?