Overcome any bitterness because you were not

up to the magnitude of the pain entrusted to you.

Like the mother of the world you are carrying

the pain of the world in your heart.

…..Sufi

can you believe in the feral & beautiful nature of your soul?

If we all believed that we were by our very nature compassionate, gentle, and capable of being fully present, our task- living our soul’s longing for deep intimacy- would be a matter of finding and placing ourselves within the warmth of the internal and external ‘encouragement of light’ in our lives so we would open and open and open to all we are. I am not suggesting that this is easy, especially for those of us who have spent a lifetime surviving the sink-or-swim school of self-improvement. Often we don’t even know where these lights of encouragement are in our lives. I myself have been an advocate of the sink-or-swim school of learning. The teacher I chose, the medicine man with whom I apprenticed, was a real sink-or-swimmer if there ever was one. He’d been a US Marine. He gave me my medicine name, Mountain Dreamer, and told me it means one who always looks for and pushes the edge. But over time ‘the edge’ has changed. At some point it occurred to me that pushing the edge for some of us was not about doing more or trying harder or going further or faster but about doing less, trying easier. I have a very particular feeling in my body when I remember or imagine a graceful day. It is a day without rush, a day when I am not suffering over things not being any different than they are, a day when I take a breath and accept those things I cannot change. It’s a day when I rest easy in a mysterious knowing that there is enough- enough time and money and energy and heart in the world and in my life, a day when I know that I am enough…….Oriah Mountain Dreamer

re-entering the instinctual life beckons us to return to the wild wishes of our own unwritten fairy tales…..from there our kindred spirits find us, return us to our calling and indulge our planting time….we will need a long growing season, full of radiant blooms….the fiery light we spark shines through to our shrewd knowing….

The simple words ‘once upon a time’ still cast a magic spell, drawing children into the hushed intimacy of story time. Sometimes we must listen in order to discern the truth of a moment. We may simply sit, waiting and listening to whatever lies within. Certainly we have all strained to hear the voice of our own intuition- a faint murmur, all too easily drowned out. Thus we learn that we need a quiet space in which to listen, if we are to discern the intimations of our own souls. Finding the way to that quiet listening space is a part of many spiritual traditions- we may seek it through prayer, meditation or in communion with nature. And we may discover that it takes great courage and determination to listen and to wait for truth to emerge. Listening involves making a choice- right now, for just a moment- to stop dead in your tracks. As Madeleine L’Engle has said, ‘When I am constantly running, there is no time for being. When there is no time for being, there is no time for listening.’……Katrina Kenison

To myself I am only a child playing on the beach,

while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me.

….Isaac Newton