Posts Tagged ‘collective’

Christmas is done, and I have this urge to take down all of the decorations and put the tree out for recycling.  I am interested in how many people I have heard express the same sentiment.  I am ready to move forward with my life!

2009 has been a banner year for hard lessons, hasn’t it?  Between relationships falling apart, health crises, job changes, geographical moves, and all of those INTERAL moves we’ve been making, 2009 was the year that rocked and rolled all night long.  Many of us woke up to a new reality within ourselves, and noticed that the world looked different.  It is amazing to look back and see all of the changes, and what a different land we live in now than just one year ago.

For me, this reflection is cause for celebration, and is done for the purpose of patting me on the back because I got through it (sometimes with grace, and sometimes NOT).  Another purpose of this reflection is to make sure I have given a respectful nod to the forces of the universe that were conspiring to help me learn something.

In ceremonial work we know it is important to thank what has been before letting it go, incorporating the lessons it has brought us…2009 has been a year FULL of learning opportunities for us.  It is kind and respectful to say thank you, just as we were taught in kindergarten.  You know how it feels to be properly thanked…it feels like acknowledgment.  This is a good practice, and one we frequently forget when we feel victim of some larger doing.  But the gift to us in remembering to thank even the hard stuff for what it brought to us is that it helps us incorporate the lessons into our psyche and breathe that hard-won wisdom into our lives.  

I am spending some time making a list this week of lessons I have learned; I think I will make some art about it, too.  My friend Elizabeth Barbour and I are also hosting a retreat on New Year’s Day to take some women on a journey to see what they are becoming, to honor what has passed and allow the new butterfly to emerge in 2010.  We’ll be making collages to ground our inner visions, and to hold those intentions for the entire year.  The larger energy is ripe for this self examination.  Can’t you feel it?  2010 is truly a year to begin again.

But if you can’t make the retreat, held in Tallahassee FL, you can still honor New Year’s Day intentionally and ceremonially.  Here are some suggestions:

Licia’s New Year’s Rituals:

• This week, sit quietly with your thoughts.  Ask yourself these questions, and journal about what you discover.

1. What were some life lessons taught to you this year?
2. Who/what were the teachers?
3. What wisdom have you gained?
4. Fully look these lessons in the eye…feel them stretch throughout your body and consciousness….breathe them through you.  These lessons are part of you, if you will let them be.  You can live a more authentic life because of them.
5. Fully acknowledge the teachers that brought these lessons to you…whether they be people, circumstances, spirits, elements of nature….whatever and whoever they were, they gave you a gift.  Thank them.

• On New Year’s Day, honor this new beginning by setting aside time to create something new to look forward into the year.  I meditate, journal and make a collage that I can display in my workspace.  Here are some questions I ask myself in order to make this time special and meaningful for the new cycle:

1. Who am I, really?  Who is the me that has been uncovered, scrubbed clean, by this past year’s events?  Who is the me that has emerged from the cocoon of my becoming?
2. What does my heart, my soul want to do, to say?
3. How will I live as the truth of who I am this year?  How will I live my life differently because of what I have learned?
4. What does my heart truly want to offer humanity?  How can I show up in this world that is experiencing so many changes in a way that supports the goodness in this world?

 I find these activities to be soooooo supportive to ending and beginning a cycle in a more intentional and loving way.  Taking the time to meaningfully take inventory and express my thanks as the old cycle ends helps me to welcome the new cycle in with fresh, eager and open arms.  I hope that you will give this gift to yourself as well!

I was prompted in my inner guidance time this morning to write about the immense amount of subconscious process that I am going through.  I asked, “What about it, any particular theme?”  I was told, “Just tell people that it’s happening.”

Well, okay….I am now going to tell you that I am undergoing deep subconscious work, but will spare you the details of it for now (that I find so interesting).  Maybe the details will come later.

It is happening below the surface, and feels way out and big, like soul kind of work.  I am going through the motions of my day, feeling my feelings, functioning, being present to what needs to get done (I am a mom and beloved and friend and volunteer and run a household and write and, and, and….after all), but I am also doing this deep inner work right now. 

I don’t know if I am that different from other people.  I believe that we are all undergoing deep, immense change right now, whether we are aware of it or not.  I believe that there is a larger collective experience of inner limits being challenged and that this is why I see so many beautiful “falling-apart” experiences.  Sure, it’s uncomfortable, even painful when your world unhinges and things you thought were real and concrete crumble before your eyes….but I feel this is a healthy thing.  I feel we are all being freed from our inner prisons, if we will but walk out of the open doors.

Maybe what makes me a little bit different from the majority of folks is that I am aware of these energy processes going on, within and without me, and attempt to describe them.  I feel I am creating a road map of long forgotten territory, and leaving breadcrumbs for others to follow, if they so desire.  I know a very few others that are doing this, too….we feel cycles and movement and process going on, and attempt to describe what we are seeing, feeling and experiencing to the rest of the world as a service and as self preservation. 

I think about this stuff a lot; well, all the time.  My inner life is very rich, and always has been.  I was told by my good friend Madelyn Aslan, a very gifted and well known psychic, that if I wrote every minute of every day for the rest of my life I would not be able to empty out all the thoughts and awarenesses in my mind.  This feels true to me; I’d better get on the ball. 

So, I’m going to describe the process I’m undergoing right now since I was guided to, as best I can.  Bear with me. 

I feel distinctly that I am here, in my life, doing what needs to be done, smiling at people (most of the time), being out in the world…..and at the same time there is another me, much, much bigger than the me that is driving the car or going to the grocery store or having intellectual debates on FaceBook, who is conducting a grand symphony, and yet I am also all the players in it.  Do you get that image? 

I’ve had glimpses lately of what it must feel like to be the Source of All Things.  I feel myself being inclusive of so many perspectives and so many life experiences…. And understanding them.  I have felt that I was big enough to hold all of the world’s diverse life forms and their instincts, their beliefs, their habits.  Recognizing my own “Source-ness” has made me wonder if that is what we are all being challenged to do right no…to open up, to surrender our little tiny boxes that we put around us to make us feel safe, so that we can live bigger, more fulfilling, more loving lives.

Back in 2000 when my spiritual journey took a strong upturn in intensity, I had the very profound experience over a couple of years of feeling that I was unearthing something that had been buried in the earth for many thousands of years.  I had dreams of a language of light that I read in great tomes, and my voice wanted to sing languages I did not know.  My belly felt like a great black cauldron inside that was very full and wanted to express through my throat and voice and sound.  Once, I leaned against a very old oak tree on our property, and while I did I experienced making contact with the tree’s essence.  I felt it awaken underneath me, and we recognized each other…then suddenly, I saw in my mind’s eye that the tree was transmitting symbols from the ground up, in the same language of light that I had seen in my dreams.  Somehow, my being willing to be open to this was what opened the door for this information to move upward, into the light.  This was a somewhat new experience at the time for me, to be awake to a larger collective and psychic process so clearly.

A couple of years ago I had a taste of this feeling of deep subconscious process going on…it was in January of 2007 that it started, when I was first in touch with an biological Aunt that I had not been in touch with for many years.  Being in her presence initiated a cascade of what I can only describe as inner avalanches, and I tumbled down, down, down with the debris that was dislodged, settling eventually down at the bottom of the sea.

I was under this inner sea for many months…I had the distinct feeling that I was swimming at the bottom of a great ocean, exploring caves and communing with the sea creatures, many of whom became my helpers in retrieving gems buried in the sand.  The collage above is the one I made to describe that experience.  But I was living and breathing in the Upper World, the one where the sun is shining, and I was talking to people, and going about my day…..this was all occurring at the same time that a deep inner process was going on.  It reminds me of the desert, a vast dry hot and seemingly barren place, which was once a vast sea teeming with life.  What is apparent is not always what is truly going on.

My current process here at the end of 2009 feels a little different…I don’t quite have the visceral experience of being under a great sea…I feel more like I am under the earth, in some great caverns miles below the surface.  I feel the pressure of the ground above me.  It is so quiet and so still there….and dark, yes, sometimes.  I am feeling my way.  It feels like I am down here (there) moving forward with my hands outstretched, occasionally stumbling over rocks or rises in the cavern floors.  But then I will see a mysterious light around the corner or at the end of some tunnel, and it calls me, and it is my soul telling me that all is well, to rest, to trust.  I arrive into a room that is lit by a fantastic purple series of cascading lights, falling like stars, except that it doesn’t end.  The trails from these purple stars create a matrix, a kind of grid, which makes me think very much of the Great Web of life.  What does this all mean?  I am not certain, but it is a fascinating journey. 

And so, my mind wonders why I was guided to tell you all about this subterranean process happening for me.  Is it perhaps because you are wondering if you are losing your mind because you feel something happening to you too?  Because you feel the slippery slope of your old world crumbling away and you think you are alone in this experience?  Is it because you feel something deeper happening within you but don’t know what to name it?  Is it just to give you a piece of information to consider?  Is it because I am able to put some words around something that is very hard to explain?  Or is it because there are others in the world who are experiencing this thing that I am, and that I need the reassurance that I am not alone?

Greetings Everyone,

It has been three weeks since my last confession….I mean BLOG entry….and I can’t believe it has been so long since I posted anything!  it certainly isn’t because there has been a shortage of happenings with us Berries in the Berry Patch!

We left Monterey after Thanksgiving and camped back in San Luis Obispo, which we have decided is our new homeplace.  We just love it in SLO…the energy there is a GREAT match for us and where we want to go in our lives.  We are so very grateful to have found our new location, and so easily and quickly!  Now we have the task of manifesting actually living here!

We considered traveling around some more, but none of us want to, so we are stationed in SLO for the forseeable future.  We are looking for a long-ish term solution to camp in the RV, perhaps a spot of private land someone would rent to us where we can plug in and live until we sell the Colorado properties and/or manifest other miracles!  If you know of a possible solution or have a creative idea, please be in touch!

Today we are celebrating Solstice (Winter in this hemisphere).  We find the Solstice to be much more where our hearts resonate during the whole holiday hoopla.  For me, it is because the Solstice is not a man-made event chosen on some arbitrary day, but a celestial one, one that is way beyond our control as human beings to mis-interpret or twist to our agenda.  It is very simple….it is the end of the long dark and the coming of the light.  Good reason to celebrate in my view!       

I have felt since the election that we have all been very tired….bone tired, in fact, as though lots of us have been in labor pains for many, many years, and that we finally succeeded in birthing this new era, symbolized by the election of Obama.  I am weary from the effort, me thinks!  But this is just the beginning…this baby is brand new and it will take a firm, wise and compassionate hand to raise it!

It feels so perfect to me that the Winter Solstice is following so closely after the election….I think of Solstice as a wonderful time to reflect on what I have learned in the last year, and to thank the Whole of Creation for all that it has brought to me…..and then to dream about the new cycle that is coming, the fresh year ahead.  What do I desire?  What are the next steps in my growth and understanding?  How can I be the best Divine Human that I can be and be of service to the Whole?   What is so very dear to my heart?  These are all wonderful things to reflect on this day.

And tomorrow, we will have our version of the gift giving that occurs in other holidays…the day after Solstice feels like a day of abundance and celebration to me, an ushering in of the new energy that we are choosing to align ourselves with.

May you have a peaceful and fulfilling Solstice, and blessings to you and yours!

xoxoxo

Licia and da Berry Boys