Again and again some people in the crowd wake up. They have no ground in the crowd and they emerge according to broader laws. They carry strange customs with them, and demand room for bold gestures. The future speaks ruthlessly through them. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
It may feel that no one understands you, or what you’ve gone through, but remember the higher self in everyone you interact with is rooting for your awakening. But, will you stay awake or be lulled into sleepiness? You can’t unsee the glory that you’ve seen. You can’t unfeel the radiance you’ve felt. You can’t unlearn the higher truths now encoded within your soul. Though you may feel like a stranger in a strange land, it is up to you to stay alert and turn awakened moments into minutes, hours, days, and a way of life. This is how you become a bridge from the special world to the ordinary world, so that as many people as want to, can cross over.
Mantra :: All that I’ve learned forms a bridge from earth to heaven and back again.
Artwork by Rassouli
The Hero’s Journey dream oracle by Kelly Sullivan Walden
Beneath the illusions, pretty as they may seem, you know what is real. Beneath the lies, sweet though they may sound, you know what is worthwhile. All that is genuinely and truly essential for the heart to throb with life is worthwhile. Anything that dulls or suffocates its vibrant aliveness, must be questioned, challenged, and more than likely, cast aside, for the heart is our key to living an authentic life. What is there once that is compromised? Without its foundation of truth, we are to be forever lost in confusion, doubt and despair!
You are a sacred warrior – a defender of the heart. You have cried genuine tears of your own grief, and also the grief of the world. You have raged at injustice and oppression in your own life, and in the world. You have felt the need to protect the presence of love, for whilst it is exceptionally powerful, it can too easily be smothered under lies and fear. The sacred warrior must not heed the dangerous voices that say, “Oh, stop being so sensitive! Stop making such a big deal out of things!” Love is the biggest deal there is. What else is worth being so sensitive about? The sacred warrior is vigilant that the presence of love is not chipped away by fear, criticism, doubt or untruths. Even if others find the unflinching honesty of your feelings difficult to handle, even if those feelings are expressed with gentleness and compassion, the sacred warrior honors the task of being more faithful to love, than to anything else. This includes the fear of loss. Actually, it includes the fear of anything at all.
Honor even the smallest steps on your path. They are no less important than the more noticeable or dramatic actions on the path. One single misstep can begin a landslide of great devastation. Being vigilant with what is meaningful and what is truthful, even in the smallest and seemingly most insignificant ways, strengthens the sacred warrior and prevents darkness from gaining a stronghold from the inside. That darkness will be intelligent and sneaky. It will tell you that it doesn’t matter, that this one time you can forget what you promised, that you are just one person and that you can’t make a difference anyway. That darkness will lure you into sleepy ambivalence and dull your light, if you allow it to. The sacred warrior within will fight with love and honor to be true to what has meaning, and never, ever allow it to be cast aside – even if it seems easier in the moment. The sacred warrior finds joy and humor in life, to prevent the seriousness of the task from stifling the heart that just wants to live and be free. That joy brings strength to the warrior and an expanded, relaxed awareness that can sense the presence of fear (whether is is masked as anger, hate or doubt) and immediately respond to it with fierce compassion. The sacred warrior will not allow fear to gain a stronghold within the heart.
Stay strong and stand your ground. This might be in a big emotional journey that feels like the fight of your life. It may be in a matter that does not seem to hold much importance. Perhaps, for example, you are contemplating an idea that you feel could be something, but those around you declare it is nothing much, too impractical, too little or too much. However, what is happening or soon will be happening, is worthwhile. So, hold tight! Ask for help through the healing process below, stay true to the sacred warrior of love that you are and defend to the end all that is worthwhile.
Healing process :: Put your hand on your heart and say, “I call upon the sacred warriors of unconditional love. I ask for your support, protection, assistance and intervention on my behalf though unconditional love, that what is truly worthwhile for the light and life of the heart be protected and preserved, within me and in the world, for the greater good. Through my own free will, so be it.”
Repeat up to three times if you wish. This can be said once or twice daily during times when you feel that you are fighting to be heard, fighting to salvage your creative ideas from the critical voices of others, or fighting for your right to simply be yourself and live your truth in the world. You can also use it for any other purpose that feels worthwhile to your heart. These declarations have power. Use that power freely and with great joy.
Imagine a world so infused with bliss, love and wonder that you naturally and always feel as safe as a nourished, cherished baby in the arms of the universal mother. Life mothers us, with kindness, and sometimes when we need it to grow, through challenge as well. Accepting this mothering – in its gentle and fierce faces – can be difficult at times. Some are even part of her plan to help mother others so that they too can surrender fear and live more freely.
You are learning about mothering and being mothered. You might not do this in a typical way. It might be through bearing children, but it could also be through adopting children, raising children or otherwise taking care of children and loving them as if they were your own.
You might also be learning how to mother on a rather different scale, working with groups, communities, causes or purposes that need your devotion, your energy, your belief in their value, and your willingness to be the wild tigress or the supportive shoulder to lean upon, in order to bring those worthwhile groups to life.
You may also be an aspect of the universal mother on a spiritual level. Some people that do this are male, some are female. Some have children and some do not. Some are healers and some work in seemingly more ordinary professions. They have a mothering aspect in common and they love and respect life. They believe in life, are moved by compassion and are genuinly encouraging and respectful of people. Rather than taking perverse delight when someone stumbles, they want to help. They are ordinary people with an extraordinary, natural tendency to nurture life around them.
You are amongst the universal mothers special clan of nurturing spirits that help to honor life on this planet. Open yourself to receive more nurturing. You can do this for yourself. You can also choose to open up and allow others to nurture you. It might make you feel a little vulnerable at first, especially if you are not used to doing this, but you don’t have to worry. You will get used to valuing yourself enough to know that needing love and affection from another is an opportunity, not only for you to receive, but for someone else to give, which involves them being received too. If you are tired and have been taking care of everyone else, then take some time to shift the pattern and allow life to support you too. The universal mother helps the helpers so as they can keep helping. It works rather well, you see, for those that give so much to also receive abundantly.
If you have been asking life for a solution to a specific difficulty you have been having, a solution is in gestation right now. The situation is already being sorted out and the resolution will come to fruition very soon. Hold tight and wait for the imminent birth of that resolution.
If you are interested in working with children, the inner child, with art therapy for emotional healing or any sort of uninhibited creative expression that helps dislodge social conditioning and open up to more spontaneous, feeling-based existence – then yes, go ahead and do it. The universal mother is supporting you and you cannot get a more powerful ally.
You may find that you are loving, or soon will love, in a different way. You may worry about this love, given that it defies what you have known or been taught about love. Perhaps you are becoming able to love another tremendously, even though you don’t have much of a personal relationship with them. You might question if this love is real. It is real, it is just happening at a different level to the love and attachment you experience when you are involved in a personal relationship with someone. It is not more or less, it is just a different facet of love. It may be that you are opening up to love the planet and her creatures, including the animals, the ocean-dwelling life, your own body, the trees and so on, more than before. You may feel passionately purposeful about giving your time and energy to causes that protect and nurture the earth and her creatures. You are affirmed in this love too. The universal mother is operating through you to nurture life. She will support you in your work, so that you can continue to come from love and not become drained, depleted or lost in despair or fear or futility. Instead, you will be energized and expanded by your dedicated service to life.
If you are feeling lonely and in need of greater nurturing from others, stop, relax, center and settle into your body to feel your connection to life itself. The air in your lungs is the same air that moves the trees. The water in your blood is the same water that fills the oceans and is moved by the phases of the moon. The flesh of your body is the same substance as the body of the earth itself. The heat in your digestive system is the same fire and heat as that from the sun. Feel this connection, then do something nice for another without agenda. Make a donation, even just a small one, smile, say a prayer, send out a good thought or make a wish for another. That’s it. You have connected to life again and in doing so, life can connect with you. And so it shall.
Healing process :: Place your hand over your lower belly and say the following, “I now release from my body, mind and heart any negative mothering experiences that would prevent me from receiving the healing grace, love and support of the universal mother through the natural flow of life. May I be blessed and held in her loving embrace so that I may grow into allthat I am. So be it.”
Breathe in and out. As you breathe in, imagine you are drawing in the healing love of the universal mother. As you breathe out, feel your body release negative energy. You don’t need to be conscious of exactly what is being released. You might sense the release as emotion or as a sludge leaving the body and then you might not sense anything at all. Whatever happens is your own process and is just right for you. Remember, if you cannot sense it consciously something is happening at a level below conscious awareness. You can still have confidence that the process is working for you in the best way.
Relax and when you feel ready, simply place your hands on your heart and send love for a moment. Then return to your day or evening.
Neuroplasticity happens when connections are made across the neural network in our brain. Essentially, our brain creates super-highways that it travels quickly in response to outside stimuli. Thought patterns that are repeated often create massive highways that the thought travels on. The more the thought occurs, the more it will occur.
One of the most effective ways to reprogram the mind, to reformat the consciousness, is through using affirmative statements. I share with you examples that you may find helpful should you wish to use them to assist in reformatting the thinking mind.
Truth speaks to us constantly, but not always in words. It may communicate through a feeling that is hard to put into words but brings an inexplicable sense of peace, trust and the knowledge that somehow everything is going to work out perfectly – even if there is little evidence of how it is all going to happen.
Listen for the truths beneath the words rather than the superficial message of the words themselves. This is especially true for the communications of those around you, the press, the newspapers and the mass media. You will begin to hear fear in the words and actions of those around you, even as they preach love. Listen deeper. Listen for truth.
You are hearing something that is not being said and what you are hearing is truthful. You may feel as though you are the only one that is really ready to hear or see it! Perhaps you have been working in a situation or loving in a relationship, where truth is constantly denied. We live in a world where truth is frequently avoided out of fear of what it might reveal. At the basis of such actions – consciously or not – is a deep sense of unhealed, toxic shame. If you or someone else, is fearful that the truth will expose rather than free and heal, then some personal healing is required. It is time for letting go of old wounds in favor of a greater sense of self-love and acceptance.
Love yourself enough to honor the truth, even if you feel you are the only one doing so. Truth keeps the energy of life flowing through a rebellious heart. Lies dampen the spirit of the sacred rebel. Even if those with less-awakened hearts fear the truth, you must not turn away from it. Don’t resent this state of affairs. Perhaps your job is to show the truth can be witnessed even when many want to hide from it. What others do is always their choice, but through your honorable deeds, done with integrity, you will be set free – no matter what the outcome.
You are a truth seeker. Never deny or try to quieten this down to make others comfortable. You are meant to be an agitator at times – even though you don’t have to confront people to do it. You don’t necessarily have to say a word, though sometimes you will. Often you will agitate in the most loving sense by unveiling truth simply through your knowings. Hold compassion for the truths you behold. Do not use them as knives to cut another or yourself with harshness, but as the clear insight that allows one to loosen the knots that bind, simply by knowing which thread to gently tug.
If you have been worn down and depressed by the lies, gossip, deceit or backstabbing going on around you, don’t fret. Get out in nature and spend some time communing with the infinite. Healing will come to you now. No matter how many times, in how many ways or by how many tongues untruth is spoken, you know what you know in your sacred, rebellious heart. That truth is your connection to the living truth of life itself. Don’t give up. Just open up to healing and know that the truth always, eventually, prevails.
Healing process :: Place your hand very lightly at the front and back of your throat and say, “I now release all vows of silence I have ever made, consciously or not. I now release all lies, deceptions and painful words, spoken or unspoken, that are affecting my ability to clearly know and speak my truth. I am held in unconditional love with protection and grace. So be it.”
You have finished your healing process. You might like to say something true just to anchor it. How about, “Within me, beyond all that rises and falls, only truth remains.”
Neuroplasticity happens when connections are made across the neural network in our brain. Essentially, our brain creates super-highways that it travels quickly in response to outside stimuli. Thought patterns that are repeated often create massive highways that the thought travels on. The more the thought occurs, the more it will occur.
One of the most effective ways to reprogram the mind, to reformat the consciousness, is through using affirmative statements. I share with you examples that you may find helpful should you wish to use them to assist in reformatting the thinking mind.
Neuroplasticity happens when connections are made across the neural network in our brain. Essentially, our brain creates super-highways that it travels quickly in response to outside stimuli. Thought patterns that are repeated often create massive highways that the thought travels on. The more the thought occurs, the more it will occur.
One of the most effective ways to reprogram the mind, to reformat the consciousness, is through using affirmative statements. I share with you examples that you may find helpful should you wish to use them to assist in reformatting the thinking mind.
In every creative process, in every birth, in every opening of a new cycle of life, there is a time of vulnerability. This vulnerability is natural and appropriate. It is the foal learning to become steady on its legs. Those legs will become remarkably powerful in time, but the process of growth and maturity has to take place, and that requires some wobbly first attempts. It cannot be any other way.
Within you, perhaps even below the level of your conscious awareness, there is a fresh new life emerging like a vibrant green shoot rising up from the earth. This new life is in need of your attention and your care. This could be a new relationship that needs tending with interest and kindness. It could be a new idea that you need to nurture into fulness, because it is going to hold special purpose for your life path. It might be something within you – a new behavior, a new way of looking at yourself or a new way of being in the world – that you need to tend to until it becomes more natural for you to embody.
The idea that you are currently nurturing, or soon will, is of great importance to your life path.
You must pay attention to the new life emerging for you now, or that you will soon sense. You must not be careless and think it doesn’t matter. It matters greatly. Being careless now is akin to killing off the idea before it has a chance to grow strong enough to withstand the criticism, jealousy or sabotage by dark consciousness in others or yourself. We don’t have to be frightened of destructive energy – it exists in nature and in us, and is part of life. We do however need to be intelligent to its potential power and stay centered in our heart and in our wisdom to avoid its ill effect upon that which we are nurturing into life.
You will not always need to cloak that which is young. Soon enough it will be able to stand up for itself, but for now, your vigilance and care is most certainly required. Hug your ideas to yourself as though they were a new lover you cannot bear to share with another. In time the world will be the lover receiving the love of your idea. For now, it is for you to love, for you to hold and for you to observe. Only allow those proven trustworthy to support you in this – those who can handle the frequency or vibration of what you are seeking to nurture. Some may love you but be frightened of what you are creating. Stay true to yourself and your creative power and be wise as to whom you invite into your inner sanctum to witness this new life emerging.
Keep your inner sanctuary pure. This may be your room, a sacred place you visit, or your own body, into which you retreat in relaxation or meditation. Sometimes you will find that others have taken up residence in your sanctuary. Perhaps an argument that you cannot let go of, has another living in your head. A suffering that has not been acknowledged and released can feel like a big, old dirty suitcase of emotional baggage cluttering up the temple space of your heart. It is time to focus on the purity, light, love and compassion that dwells within you. Everything else will come and go, and that is just fine. But the purity within your sanctuary is eternal. You can come back to it to refresh your spirit and gain resources to help you deal with the rest of the world and even your own darker moments, anew. It will give you the peace and spaciousness of mind you need to recognize the new life, and to compassionately, but firmly, denounce any intrusion upon that new life by doubt, fear or sabotage.
Healing process ::
Close your eyes and relax. Focus on your breath for several moments. Imagine the external world fading away and allow yourself to step into your heart, as though within you there is a silent, vast, open space. That space within is peaceful.
Sense, see or feel that deep within that space, a tender young shoot is rising out of the earth. With tremendous courage and focus, it has summoned the energy to crack through the seed that once contained its life force, and it is reaching directly up towards the light, boldly determined to become a full, mature plant.
Imagine that you are joyfully, lovingly and consciously standing guard over that shoot. From a loving, aware, and strong space you firmly move on any big muddy boots that would step on it, or any devouring insects that look rather interested in that tasty young morsel. You do this easily and effectively, whilst remaining centered in your heart.
Around you and the shoot are many beings of unconditional love. These may be ancestors, spiritual guides, beings of light, or angelic beings.
You may sense darkness rise and fall around you and the circle of light created by your love and the beings supporting you to protect this tender young shoot. You can notice that rise and fall of darkness whilst remaining calm, centered and detached in your heart as you focus your love on the young plant. Watch it respond and grow strong. All is well. You may whisper to it, “You are safe and you will grow strong and thrive! Through unconditional love, so be it!”
In your own time, just open your eyes and you have completed your healing process. At any time you can return to repeat this process, especially if you ever feel anxiety or fear about your new life being able to sustain itself and become strong. There is no need for worry, just treat such feelings as an intuitive sign that this healing process will be helpful for you and repeat it. You can do it daily for a few weeks if you are going through a particularly vulnerable period in your life. It will never do you any harm, it will only ever support you.
Feel the thrill of the winds of change blowing through your hair. Smell the new blessings whispering from around the next corner. Sense that you are being summoned to level up to something magnificent. You don’t have to do anything rash like giving notice at your job, leave your relationship, or vacate your residence. This might just mean it’s time to get curious about an improved version of yourself. Meditate on how you can best align with the higher levels of wisdom, blessings, gifts, energy now emerging through you, and infuse that awareness into your here and now.
Mantra :: I release all that no longer serves me, so a better version of me can emerge.
Artwork by Rassouli
The Hero’s Journey dream oracle, by Kelly Sullivan Walden
You might have been taught that creativity is something you have to work hard to access, or that finding your life purpose is so difficult that you must search high and low for it. Yet what you are is within you and wants to come out at every available opportunity! You don’t have to struggle so much. It is more about allowing space for it to manifest and let the energy flow. The real struggle is not in finding something. It is more about letting go of the idea that you need to search for your path in the first place. You see, the process of activating your life path is a natural one. The effort is in getting out of the way, not in making something happen.
As for being yourself, that is the foundation from which your true life path will reveal itself. Being yourself becomes easier when you give yourself permission to love, honor and accept yourself in all circumstances, especially the ones where you might be more tempted to reject and judge. Give the sacred rebel within the opportunity to decide your values – irrespective of whether they meet with general social acceptance.
What you are dreaming of or seeking to do, create, live or manifest, is actually very natural for you. That is why you want to do it.
If you experienced controlling or manipulative forces as you were growing up, you could have found it hard to access your natural state at the time. You would have been too busy trying to adapt and get through the trials of childhood.
When you finished navigating childhood and started to let go of who you were taught to be in order to become who you really are, you may have found your life path was not easily accessible. That is simply because your true and natural self was covered by layers of shame from the early conditioning that you had to be other than you are in order to win love or be acceptable.
However, the natural self hasn’t gone anywhere. It is still there within you. Now it is just chipping away at the walls of shame, perhaps with a defiant, “Who the hell cares, I am here and I am going to love myself anyway.” This allows you to risk bearing the feeling of any shame that arises as you release old emotional wounds and break away from any restraints to unconditional self love. The scared rebel within can empower you to love yourself no matter what, simply because you want to. You might decide to declare, “I am still loveable – so put that in your pipe and smoke it!” This will send an energetic message to whoever shamed you in the first place, whether they meant to or not. You can be freed to realize that the shame is just an emotion, not a truth, and you can defy any hold it has ever had on you and your ability to love yourself.
You are now powerful enough to break the cycle. It is time to stop the shame and claim yourself with love instead.
What you want to write, sing, dance or become, is you. It is natural. Drop your defenses, get into the grit and confront the power that any old shaming has had over you. It’s finished now. It is time for you to be naked with yourself, acknowledge how gorgeous you are and get on with your work. What you want to create, wants to be created. The world wants to be written. You just need to let go of any remnants of the past that have been in your way. Step firmly over them and on to your path.
Healing process :: Say aloud, “I now choose to forgive and release any person, situation or circumstance that has ever been a source of shame or shaming for me, whether conscious or unconscious. I now release this from my body, mind and heart, through unconditional love. I choose to claim myself instead. I love, accept and claim all of me under the loving protection and wisdom of life. I choose to live as myself. Now. I call on the unconditionally loving assistance that life wishes to send me for this journey now. I honor my creative power and my innate worth. So be it.”
Be kind to yourself. Say this every day for the next few days or however long it takes for you to believe it. You are worth the effort.
opensenseme 