 This summer I’ve gotten to sink into some great listening with a podcast club that I have been hosting. And one of the episodes that we listened to really has got me revisiting a story from Greek mythology – that of Pandora and her box!*
You know it I’m sure…the one where the Gods create the first mortal woman “Pandora” and send her to the world of men to stir shit up! Zeus gives her a box and tells her to take it with her but to never ever open the box. Well, she’s also been endowed with the entire force behind evolution…that great questing force of CURIOUSITY…and so she just can’t not open that box! What’s in the box? All of the “evils” of the world of course. She opens the box one bored day and out flies all of the various forms of suffering that would henceforth be inflicted upon humanity for all of the rest of time – war, plague, famine, despair, etc etc etc. But wouldn’t you know it, there at the very bottom of the box, one seeming gift – that of “hope”.
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With the passing of the Queen, arguably the last monarch to so clearly live as mascot for the entity that is Britain, all of us who descend from the people of Great Britain have the opportunity do our own piece of reconciling work with this nation that ultimately gave us life.
The ruler or leader of any field of belonging (e.g. a country, religion, business, etc) is like the center pole on a circus tent. Yes, there are other supports, but the leader is the central point upon which everything else is strung. When this pole is removed the entire field wobbles and in this instability there is most likely uncertainty, perhaps fear and loss, but there is also an opportunity for something new to enter a space that was previously so well secured and clearly defined that change was unlikely, or even impossible. Once upon a time Sarah went to a plant swap to exchange some of her own lovingly grown vegetable seedlings for others that she did not yet have in her greenhouse. There she met a pleasant young woman who offered her a fairy tale eggplant in exchange for one of her young zucchini plants. She looked down and smiled at the new little potted seedling in her hands, but when she looked back up to thank the young woman she was gone.
APRIL 3rd, 3-5pm. Join me by zoom for a celebration of Reiki! Free. Details and tickets https://humbooking.as.me/reiki-100-year-celebration
What started with one man’s incredible spiritual experience in March of 1922, has become a force for healing that is practiced by millions of people around the world. That in the 100 years since the establishment of the Reiki healing method its power has not been corrupted or lost is, I believe, due to the clarity of purpose of its founder, Mikao Usui, and the love and sacredness that was woven into its use right from the beginning. At equinox time, the balance of light and dark gives us all a chance to notice where our own imbalances are. This is good, as individuals we should always strive to have balance in our lives. However, as we move out of the very limiting story that has been passed on through our collective field since the dawning of the patriarchy – that of prioritizing individual gains at any cost to the collective – it can be increasingly difficult to separate where we feel light in our own lives from where so much darkness exists in places outside of ourselves. In these past few weeks I have lost track of the number of friends and clients that are feeling guilt as they confront their own privilege in the face of what unfolds in Ukraine. To live with so much ease and abundance while people elsewhere are either fleeing or fighting in an effort to survive can be hard to reconcile.
The Cailleach (pronounced Cal-ee-yuk) is a Goddess from Irish (and Scottish & English) mythology. She is most often associated as the Hag or Crone who brings winter. She is frequently portrayed as old and withered, but powerful and fearsome, without compassion or remorse. The bringer of darkness, cold and death. The stealer of warmth and light. In many stories she rules the 6 months of darkness, handing over the reins then to Brigit, the Goddess associated with spring, who takes charge of the 6 months of light.
We have been so focused on the physical poison that is COVID-19, that many of us have forgotten all about its medicine.
Without a doubt this virus is having many direct and indirect detrimental effects to our physical and mental wellbeing, some of them extreme. That people are losing their livelihoods, and in some cases their lives, is no small measure of the potentially deadly side-effects of COVID-19. But if we broaden our view and look to our global organism, does COVID-19 come as a messenger of life? Is there medicine for us and this broken system of ours, that scientists were already warning was threatening to collapse the entire biosphere? Scientists warn that humanity is driving our biosphere into imminent collapse (1). Yikes.
As I scientist, I believe in science, and it has been a struggle for me to accept the science that I know to be true, while staying true to the life path that I have chosen – that of supporting humans to awaken to their innate potential and to the possibility of contributing to planetary transformation. In the words of Pema Chodron “Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.”
If you are reading this, chances are that like me, there were many times over the past four years that you wished Donald Trump would just go away. Today, November 7th, with the election of new President of the US, I hope that we have learned what we needed to learn from him. Truly, he is the greatest mirror for the collective program of greed, separation, violence, and abhorrent misuse of power that we could have possibly asked for. |
