Meet Fancy Jasper sourced from all dry continents of the Earth. It looks like a palette of the desert sands. It is smooth chalcedony and quartz, nice to hold for meditations. It brings in a connection to Earth Based Wisdoms for recall and journeys of old lineages of the land.
Fancy Jasper aligns the Root Chakra to the Higher Chakras. Opens up energy of stability and peacefulness, to a place, situation and safety. Creates a sense of belonging to practices of ritual and ceremony, to being at one with the land around you, from gardening to homemaking and settling in.
My prayer for the year ahead is to meet my edge with more grace. In times of chaos, challenge or conflict help me stand strong and walk towards my boundary, my edge.
Help me be curious and walk towards my uncomfortable feelings with love and an open heart.
In times of mistrust or division help me raise my head, my lungs and breathe in a stride towards that tension.
May I lean towards my limits with a new learned sense of familiarity. Let this become a place I know and a space of recognisable wisdom.
Let my body and spirit know my edge as much as I know my centre. And may the retraction inward be a soft walk back to myself with compassion in tow.
I pray I walk within my self with affirmation of safety. That I being to recognise this boundary as a recognisable place which is part of my whole. So my edge is a place I grow to know as much as my resting repose.
Slow walking this week is teaching me to be present to all that is around me and within me. I can feel the tension in my body and where the tightness lies. I feel every part of my foot on the ground when I walk slow. I can sense where I am out of balance, overstepping, trampling or avoiding. Mindfulness walking helps me read my steps, my tension, my needs, inside and outside my body. And then there are the birds that fly towards me, reminding me to go even more lightly on this path. The sounds of the wind come closer to remind me of the things I hear that can be overwhelming, or soft and charming to my releasing breath. There is music that sings inside me and a voice I hardly use. And the warmth of the sun soothes some of the tension at my back, telling me that there is also warmth behind me not just regret. Some of that warmth can be helpful as I contine to walk my path, always forwards, always slow, and always with every feeling rising up from my feet upon this earth. #thewalkofanempath
It’s been a while since I posted spirit drawings. This is the most recent, inspired by journey meditation through the path of time, when travel was across more land than sea.
February always seems to be a bit of a slow path to spring, with some glimpses of blue skies and sunshine on still days. I look to my Irises and watch how they are so resilient to the morning frost, the low temperatures and strive towards the yellow streaming light at noon. Each day I check they are making it through. We are forecast icy rain and snow again, I have many things I seem to worry about, but these flowers just soak up the light. They spread their petals fully open without a bit of concern.
I pray today for new ways of walk this earthly reality with my feet firmly planted in each and every moment.
May my feet connect to the one place, one time, one love. May my feet anchor me sturdy and strong. May my feet feel the pulse of Mother Earth, the temperature of present awareness.
May my feet be open to pull in all the valleys, alleys and avenues of choices, considerations here present. May my feet be able to spread my weight evenly with equanimity as my teacher.
May my footsteps be met with desired movement. May forward action be with a tender greeting of all the elements playing a symphony of encouragement and guidance through All the paths and passages of life.
This path to death is the death walk that disrobes us from our layers of injustice, inadequate circumstances that degrades and contains. The path towards death releases the chains and ties that has held us with the imaginal trapped inside a world that looks for love instead of being Love.
The walk is for the ones who can let down the terms and conditions and surrender to the promises of nothing, but receives everything from one act of turning. And sees the path behind and allows it to remain as it is, without revisiting, without another step towards it.
The path of death is seeing death in life, amongst the living, and feeling the dissolution of ties to the heart fall away, to allow the doors of death to appear. These doors are not the end , they hold at first a grief, for what has been, but they are now the destination.
The destination of death is the future. The future of what can be, which feels empty, but this is a life that is the differences to still be filled. It lies currently with spaciousness of sky, expanse of earth, and relationships to be desired and loved. In this one in breath death appears like an hourglass. The above is still full, the below is foundation and the point in-between is the present. And the present is spiralling. Spiralling into current existence. Here we are, here we stand and the path towards death is full.
As we face the spiral life is still falling into the face of our existence. Life is flowing into you right now and in each, present, moment. The sand beneath our feet is just the foundation that constantly holds us up higher towards the life that is to come, of infinite moments.
Do you remember a time when you were absolutely raging. Like you completed hit boiling point and a full on deluge poured and a bit of spit came out of your mouth?
Now imagine that boiling point in front of the folk that your Mam knows, the neighbours and family of all ages, including your peers from work and your friends next door. Imagine that amount of visibility.
There’s a passage written that speaks to that amount of breaking. Here I wish to speak into that description, of that scene, but with volume. I want you to imagine the sound. Imagine the inner crumbling of the contained composure in a very public, the most public place possible, the sacred place within the heart, the mind and the entire shaking and trembling body parts. The heart would be pounding, sight distorted, and sweat would be stinking over the back, as well as pouring over the face to further intoxicate, from the top of the head to the feet below. The outer world would be ablaze with a piercing din. The atmospheric pitch would be ringing throughout the place from the shattering volume of pottery and metal smashing on the stone floor. The high ringing would ricochet off the walls and back and forth disorientating the inner ears time after time after time, in a never ending dissonance and then the roar from the people in disarray. Human voices adding into the overwhelm of discord, aggression and shock of what is a crucial breakdown of order, and decorum.
My thoughts here are to provide a description of the noise, the internal and external breaking open to bring forth a sacred No. When boundaries have been crossed into the personal, the sacred inner temple of ones heart, when Love has been trampled on, repeatedly, we have this internal roar that can not be melted away but is brought forth to crack us open. This sacred moment, is as ugly and sullied as it sounds. It brings a clear and creative moment that unblocks the clenching emotions to the ignorant to reform the imposed and repressed moment.
Sometimes the thundering clatter of a Holy No is necessary. Because the edge of our being can not be crossed over and over to the detriment of our hearts, our minds, spirit and biology, yes our biology!
When I consider my boundaries are just like the cells inside of me, the membrane that has the most wonderful, discernible boundary that is at work day and night, I remember my physiology is the most sacred thing I can have here on earth. My humanness is showing me since the day I was conceived, my boundaries are charged with a sacred no and a sacred yes. This inner working has the most helpful insights. When I say yes and when I exercise a worthy No, my body responds, my mind responds, if the boundary is broken, repeatedly, the most sacred act I can do for myself is to sound louder and louder until it is heard.
Memories of last years snowy visits to my Fathers bedside are arising. This time of year is a reminiscing of those dark nights in heavy white snowflakes and the determination to get to him no matter what.
The car got left at the roadside at the foot of a hill too slippy to climb. We had our faces dipped down and hoods tightly pulled in.
The ground was fresh and crisp and cars that normally litter the carpark where nowhere to be seen. Just clean inches of snowfall outside the hospital entrance.
I sat that night too worried to hold his hand with my freezing fingers. Instead I kept them wrapped around the rosary beads. Pattering through the Pater beads and stringing along my Hail full of Grace. The beads are still in my bag from last year and maybe it is time to give them a new purpose, with winter walks. Once upon a time I wouldn’t have dared to walk about with the prayers pacing aloud but now it feels more necessary. These prayers bring me to the awareness of the nature around me and to my Father. His love of the Robin tweeting, the leaves still orange and the pink skies a 4pm.
For me it also reminds me of the support and nurturing around me. Of the prayers offer to me in my hour of need by a circle of friendship. That night as I said the prayers I knew my friends, they call them rosebuds, where saying them also and thinking of me. Prayers hold us up, set us down and hear our grief even in our silence.
My prayers this year are allowing me to release these body shivers and somatic sparks of electricity as I remember Him. I still sit in circle with those who held me so near from so far across the globe. Our prayers transverse continents and encircle us when we need it the most.
Thank you Rosebuds. You are always in my heart and in my walks of prayers.
It has been a long time since I wrote about my 50 something life. This last year I have been navigating the loss of a parent and the grief that arrives and stays as the other parent tries to pick up pieces of the day to day after 60 years in a partnership. Their companion has departed and the one left behind is struggling with night time anxiety. As well as days to fill in a quiet house once filled with noise in abundance.
The year has passed me by with scheduling and rescheduling of appointments and it feels like there has been no space between the loss of a loved one, no silent breath, no pause to reflect.
Today I am sitting waiting for the instalation of an emergency call device while I am greatly aware of the first year anniversary of the death of my Father. All this feels like pivotal moment but it is more like watching leaves fall to the ground. I have sense of time passing and grief that does not change but everything has change from last years fall.
I wonder moment by moment as I try to remain unnerved but my body remembers my state of anxiousness. I wonder if a tree remembers the leaves from last year or if the release is complete each year?
Will I be able to release my grief entirely to the ground this fall. Maybe winter is teaching me to go bare into the darkness and let it all go….
