Life is like school. We move through it learning many things, cloaking ourselves in environmental knowledge. You are on the warrior’s path toward enlightenment. You must one day peel away accumulated knowledge like layers of an onion and move back into the source of your power. When contemplating a Zen garden, you find that the source of your power is the essence of the Great Spirit. We come onto this earthwalk like a giant piece of smashed mirror, every one of us reflecting the light of our god. The experience of life is a process of piecing together these scrambled fragments into one great mandala, reflecting the source of all being. Like the center of a cyclone, we sit at the one point of stillness, the pandemonium of life circulating madly around us. Choose equilibrium, not frenzy. Live life from your center. The essence of you and the essence of the primal moving force of the universe are one.   (“Essence” card, The Power Deck, Cards of Wisdom)

Dear Friends,

Summer is a time for the blossoming of flowers across the land and the blossoming of your own magnificent spirit. For many years, we in the Sisterhood of the Shields have been speaking of the new dream, the time when the Great Dreamer awakens so that a new world can be born. That time is now, and this is the time for you to bring forth the foundation of your own dream for your life. What is it that this new world holds for you? Find it now and allow it to blossom within you as the mirrors of summer show you what you will need to learn and create to bring your dream fully into the world. (From Shakkai, Woman of the Sacred Garden)

As I was doing a walking meditation a few days ago, I stopped on a hilltop to feel the wind moving through me and around me. I was thinking about our essence, our true nature as individuals and one of the great teachers within each of us. I realized that often essence is best understood through our physical existence and our connection with nature, as this strengthens us. When I listen to the winds, I hear the silence within my own soul, and then I can hear the teacher that lives within me. If I listen to it, this inner teacher will guide me through whatever change is on my horizon. You, also, have a great teacher within you, waiting for you to listen.

Agnes once said to me, “There is no more fierce warrior than a woman who has learned to change the wind. For if she can change the wind, she has learned to change the direction of her own thoughts, or to still them altogether. This is a quiet, contemplative thing. The circumstances in her life lead her toward her own inward power. The alchemy of moving energy from outer to inner is the alchemy of enlightenment.”

Agnes Whistling Elk and I spoke often about the teachings of the wind, about my emotions and their kinship with the wind. She said, “All emotions have a kinship with the wind. You must let these emotions go through you and travel on their way. Otherwise, you magnetize bad energy, which is what you do by clutching your unresolved sadness.” (From Star Woman).

Stand now, within your imagination and imagine you are on a rocky knoll overlooking the deep blue of the Pacific Ocean. If you can, go outside and find a hilltop or knoll near you where you can stand in the silence, and do this exercise.

As you look out on the vast Ocean, you smell the salt from the sea on the air. The wind blows the scent of orchids over you. Allow the wind to catch your emotions.

What are you feeling at the moment that the wind catches your emotions? How do you experience these emotions in this moment? Are they benevolent and calm? Or do they carry you away, like the tornado carried away Dorothy’s house in the Wizard of Oz?

How do you see yourself in your true nature, in your essence? Is it often like being in the eye of a storm?

Now allow the wind to blow through you and carry your emotions away, all of them. What colors are your emotions as the wind frees them from you? Let the wind show you the colors of your finest emotions, your joy, your creativity, and whatever makes you happy.

Now, shift your focus and notice the wind. Has it changed after giving flight to your emotions, become more playful, perhaps? What does your wind ally tell you, has it shifted so that it is now blowing from a different direction?

You can learn to change your experience of the wind as you shift your emotions and your perceptions.

I encourage you to move into your deepest center throughout this month of August. Allow yourself to open to the beauty of the flowers, the trees, the bushes, all of the growing things in your area. Open to the beauty of the heat, the rainstorms, even the stillness that appears in the hottest part of the day when you can see the mirage of waves wafting up from the hot pavement.

Cool your emotions if they, too, are heated. Explore your dreams and your life stories and see how they weave in and out of the beauty of nature around you.

What comes up for you when you think of the wind? What does it do to your emotions? Your thoughts? Are you filled with scattered ‘winds’? Is it because you are trying to do too many things at one time, or are your mind and emotions racing? Focus on feeling your energy moving out from you in gentle spirals. This is a fabulous way to stay centered during your rounds of daily tasks.

Remember your true essence, which is Spirit. Believe in the Great Spirit. Believe in the integrity of your own soul. Remember that winds change the surface of the earth, just as spirit can change the surface of your mind and bring your emotions into balance. Listen to the wind, what is she teaching you today?

Great Spirit, let the guardians of our dreams stand as sentinels around our beings as we move into the silence, as we move into that place of stillness and quietude where spirit dwells.

Listen to the winds as they come out of the four directions. Name the winds that are your allies.

Listen to the birds and the language of nature and the breath of summer. You are each the reflections of the Great Spirit. The Great Spirit blesses you and comes when you are most silent

Let your silence be like a prayer in the night, soft and quiet, full of integrity. Let your bliss move up through your body from Mother Earth, up into your heart, opening your heart chakra, making you vulnerable to something new and radiant that wishes to become a part of you.

The first lesson of power is that we are alone. The last lesson of power is that we are all one.

Great Spirit, there is an enormous chasm between those two statements. Most of us spend lifetimes bridging that gap.

Silence of the mind, silence within the spirit, is a great bridge for the movement between body and spirit and aloneness, between loneliness and aloneness.

Great Spirit, let us feel your hand on our backs. May the wind caress us as the breath of your spirit as we move into the sacred silence, so that we can hear your words. Thank you, Mother Earth. Thank you, Great Spirit. Thank you, my ancestors, the four-leggeds and the winged ones, and all the sacred beings that surround me. Thank you, winds. Thank you for being with us now. HO!

In love and spirit,
Lynn

Life is like school. We move through it learning many things, cloaking ourselves in environmental knowledge. You are on the warrior’s path toward enlightenment. You must one day peel away accumulated knowledge like layers of an onion and move back into the source of your power. When contemplating a Zen garden, you find that the source of your power is the essence of the Great Spirit. We come onto this earthwalk like a giant piece of smashed mirror, every one of us reflecting the light of our god. The experience of life is a process of piecing together these scrambled fragments into one great mandala, reflecting the source of all being. Like the center of a cyclone, we sit at the one point of stillness, the pandemonium of life circulating madly around us. Choose equilibrium, not frenzy. Live life from your center. The essence of you and the essence of the primal moving force of the universe are one.   (“Essence” card, The Power Deck, Cards of Wisdom)

Dear Friends,

Summer is a time for the blossoming of flowers across the land and the blossoming of your own magnificent spirit. For many years, we in the Sisterhood of the Shields have been speaking of the new dream, the time when the Great Dreamer awakens so that a new world can be born. That time is now, and this is the time for you to bring forth the foundation of your own dream for your life. What is it that this new world holds for you? Find it now and allow it to blossom within you as the mirrors of summer show you what you will need to learn and create to bring your dream fully into the world. (From Shakkai, Woman of the Sacred Garden)

As I was doing a walking meditation a few days ago, I stopped on a hilltop to feel the wind moving through me and around me. I was thinking about our essence, our true nature as individuals and one of the great teachers within each of us. I realized that often essence is best understood through our physical existence and our connection with nature, as this strengthens us. When I listen to the winds, I hear the silence within my own soul, and then I can hear the teacher that lives within me. If I listen to it, this inner teacher will guide me through whatever change is on my horizon. You, also, have a great teacher within you, waiting for you to listen.

Agnes once said to me, “There is no more fierce warrior than a woman who has learned to change the wind. For if she can change the wind, she has learned to change the direction of her own thoughts, or to still them altogether. This is a quiet, contemplative thing. The circumstances in her life lead her toward her own inward power. The alchemy of moving energy from outer to inner is the alchemy of enlightenment.”

Agnes Whistling Elk and I spoke often about the teachings of the wind, about my emotions and their kinship with the wind. She said, “All emotions have a kinship with the wind. You must let these emotions go through you and travel on their way. Otherwise, you magnetize bad energy, which is what you do by clutching your unresolved sadness.” (From Star Woman).

Stand now, within your imagination and imagine you are on a rocky knoll overlooking the deep blue of the Pacific Ocean. If you can, go outside and find a hilltop or knoll near you where you can stand in the silence, and do this exercise.

As you look out on the vast Ocean, you smell the salt from the sea on the air. The wind blows the scent of orchids over you. Allow the wind to catch your emotions.

What are you feeling at the moment that the wind catches your emotions? How do you experience these emotions in this moment? Are they benevolent and calm? Or do they carry you away, like the tornado carried away Dorothy’s house in the Wizard of Oz?

How do you see yourself in your true nature, in your essence? Is it often like being in the eye of a storm?

Now allow the wind to blow through you and carry your emotions away, all of them. What colors are your emotions as the wind frees them from you? Let the wind show you the colors of your finest emotions, your joy, your creativity, and whatever makes you happy.

Now, shift your focus and notice the wind. Has it changed after giving flight to your emotions, become more playful, perhaps? What does your wind ally tell you, has it shifted so that it is now blowing from a different direction?

You can learn to change your experience of the wind as you shift your emotions and your perceptions.

I encourage you to move into your deepest center throughout this month of August. Allow yourself to open to the beauty of the flowers, the trees, the bushes, all of the growing things in your area. Open to the beauty of the heat, the rainstorms, even the stillness that appears in the hottest part of the day when you can see the mirage of waves wafting up from the hot pavement.

Cool your emotions if they, too, are heated. Explore your dreams and your life stories and see how they weave in and out of the beauty of nature around you.

What comes up for you when you think of the wind? What does it do to your emotions? Your thoughts? Are you filled with scattered ‘winds’? Is it because you are trying to do too many things at one time, or are your mind and emotions racing? Focus on feeling your energy moving out from you in gentle spirals. This is a fabulous way to stay centered during your rounds of daily tasks.

Remember your true essence, which is Spirit. Believe in the Great Spirit. Believe in the integrity of your own soul. Remember that winds change the surface of the earth, just as spirit can change the surface of your mind and bring your emotions into balance. Listen to the wind, what is she teaching you today?

Great Spirit, let the guardians of our dreams stand as sentinels around our beings as we move into the silence, as we move into that place of stillness and quietude where spirit dwells.

Listen to the winds as they come out of the four directions. Name the winds that are your allies.

Listen to the birds and the language of nature and the breath of summer. You are each the reflections of the Great Spirit. The Great Spirit blesses you and comes when you are most silent

Let your silence be like a prayer in the night, soft and quiet, full of integrity. Let your bliss move up through your body from Mother Earth, up into your heart, opening your heart chakra, making you vulnerable to something new and radiant that wishes to become a part of you.

The first lesson of power is that we are alone. The last lesson of power is that we are all one.

Great Spirit, there is an enormous chasm between those two statements. Most of us spend lifetimes bridging that gap.

Silence of the mind, silence within the spirit, is a great bridge for the movement between body and spirit and aloneness, between loneliness and aloneness.

Great Spirit, let us feel your hand on our backs. May the wind caress us as the breath of your spirit as we move into the sacred silence, so that we can hear your words. Thank you, Mother Earth. Thank you, Great Spirit. Thank you, my ancestors, the four-leggeds and the winged ones, and all the sacred beings that surround me. Thank you, winds. Thank you for being with us now. HO!

In love and spirit,
Lynn