I am a Priestess, a Healer and a Mother. I have three children, and a circle of spiritual people who lovingly refer to me as “Mother Mary”. I have studied Usui Reiki, Emotional Freedom Technique and Quantum Touch healing. I have led a spiritual Circle for nine years.
My mission is to help others uncover the Divine within themselves, to reconnect to their Soul’s wisdom, and to help them find their path.
It has been almost three years since I registered the domain “walkswithin.com”. I truly appreciate all of you who have joined me on this journey, and supported me as I have recorded my guided meditations old and new.
Those of you who have been with me for a while know that I have a tendency to procrastinate. Without a firm deadline, I will put things off, and put them off, and… You get the point. Well, I realized that the crown of procrastination has settled on my head once again.
I told you a month ago that I was planning a teleseminar about grounding. But I didn’t set a date. That was my mistake! I thought, “I’ll set a date once I have the material polished.” HA! I know better than that. I have to set myself the deadline, and then I will have the material ready for the deadline.
I’m taking the plunge, and setting a date!
Thursday, May 24th at 6:00 pm PDT, I will be hosting a free training call – Grounding for Personal Peace, Power and Productivity. In this call you will learn the basics of grounding, the benefits of consciously grounding your energy every day, and be led through an exclusive guided meditation to help you experience grounding for yourself, live on the call! There will also be time for questions and answers at the end of the session.
This will be my first time leading a conference call like this. I am very excited to be able to share with you!
Part of raising my consciousness and my vibration is giving attention to the environments I am in. From obvious things like being aware of how the clutter around me affects me, to not watching television, to what music I am listening to, everything can affect my state of mind.
I admit, there are times (most of the time, actually) when I have the radio on without really listening to it. It is on in the car, and sometimes at work. I’m starting to give more attention to those background noises though.
Part of it started last summer, when I really listened to the words of a very catchy song that I enjoyed – Pumped Up Kicks. The song is very upbeat, but it is about a school shooting. I was horrified, especially because it would get stuck in my head for hours at a time. That is definitely NOT the kind of energy I want to be calling toward me!
So I started to change the station when it, or other songs I didn’t like came on. Or listen to CD’s that have a higher vibration message.
I am blessed through my work to have the opportunity to meet and see different performers, some of whom may not be very well known. One that I met this year is Nathen Aswell. He describes himself as “conscious pop”, and his music has an easy-listening sound with very high vibration messages. Here is one of his songs, Choose Love, that he graciously has allowed me to share with you:
Other conscious musicians I recommend and enjoy are Paul Hoffman and Myles Bigleow. After a little research, there is an entire Conscious Music Movement out on the web, and there is even a Conscious Music Festival in Australia! If you go to the Featured Artist page, you can sample some other musicians there.
In our society today, being selfish is an extremely negative way to be. It is an insult, something that is totally frowned on. From very early on we are taught to share and take other people’s feelings into account when making a decision.
We are all selfish in some way, however. It really is in our nature to think of our own needs first. And that is as it should be. I am the center of my own Universe, just as you are the center of your own Universe. If I do not take care of my own needs first, I will not be able to give anything to anyone else. It is like the flight attendants say at the beginning of every flight – put your own oxygen mask on first before trying to help someone else with theirs. If you can’t breathe, you’re not going to be of use to anyone!
It is when that personal wants and desires are held to the exclusion of other people’s welfare that it becomes problematic. If I am always making decisions based on what I want without ever considering what my family wants, I am going to have a mutiny on my hands before long.
Artemis was definitely selfish. She asked her father for several very specific gifts at a young age, and received them. She knew exactly what she wanted and was committed to protecting her interests. And she definitely had the wherewithal to do so! She shot or cursed those who entered her realm without permission, or those who took advantage of her companions, or even those who insulted her mother.
But she also helped her mother deliver her twin brother. She rescued young women who were going to be sacrificed or married against their will. She protected the forests and wild places.
So the guidance I am receiving from Artemis right now is that it is ok to be selfish. I need to make sure that I take care of myself first. Protect my personal interests, and then protect the interests of those I care about. I can be a warrior for others, but only if I am a warrior for myself first.
And that is partly why this post is late this week. I was taking care of myself first.
I recently received a promotion within my church. I’ve been in a leadership position for a long time, and my efforts have been recognized.
And of course, with the higher position comes greater responsibility.
The responsibility as a spiritual leader isn’t always straightforward and clear cut. There is the visible piece of regular religious services, and the celebrations of the phases of life (birth, marriage, death, etc). And, of course, there is the administrative piece.
And then there is the part of serving your congregation. This piece takes on many forms: phone calls, in person guidance, sending prayers and healing energy to those who are unwell, counseling, coaching, encouraging, teaching, cooking, cleaning…
It is interesting the shift I have felt going on inside me. At the festival I attended a couple of weeks ago, my purpose was completely different than it has been in the past. I was there to serve and give back to my community. I worked in the kitchens, preparing snacks and goodies for people. I missed all the workshops and extra events, except for the two that I was participating in.
The most wonderful part is that I didn’t feel that I missed out on anything. I was right where I was needed, and what I was doing made the experience more positive for many people. Whether it was a sweet treat, a latte, or a smile, I know I helped to brighten someone’s day. That in itself was a huge reward for me.
I was also extremely grateful and pleased to be a part of the ceremony that installed a new leader in our church.
With that attitude of service in my heart, I want to know how I can help you. I’m starting to plan a group coaching session for this summer, starting in July. What challenges are you facing that you could use a little help with? Where are you struggling in your life? Where could you use a boost of energy?
Please leave your comments below. Your input is very much appreciated!
You know how when you’ve been away from something for a while, it’s not always easy to jump right back in? Well, I’ve been traveling on and off for the past two weeks, and settling back down into my daily, not to mention weekly, routine has been challenging.
My sleep schedule is all mixed up, I’m having trouble focusing at work, and I don’t want to write today. My creative muse is distracted with other projects at the moment.
So I will tease you with the idea that I am working on a group coaching program for this summer. What challenges are you working on in your life that you could use some assistance with? Please leave your comments below, and I will see if I can work them into the group coaching program.
Earlier evidence out of UCLA suggested that meditating for years thickens the brain (in a good way) and strengthens the connections between brain cells. Now a further report by UCLA researchers suggests yet another benefit.
Eileen Luders, an assistant professor at the UCLA Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, and colleagues, have found that long-term meditators have larger amounts of gyrification (“folding” of the cortex, which may allow the brain to process information faster) than people who do not meditate. Further, a direct correlation was found between the amount of gyrification and the number of meditation years, possibly providing further proof of the brain’s neuroplasticity, or ability to adapt to environmental changes.
This one is from ted.com. I have been a fan of Eddi Reader since a friend introduced me to her on my England adventure. Her voice is beautiful, and the words are very wise – great meditation inspiration!
More from ted.com - It’s hard to always show compassion — even to the people we love, but Robert Thurman asks that we develop compassion for our enemies. He prescribes a seven-step meditation exercise to extend compassion beyond our inner circle.
The Death of Religion and the Rebirth of Spirit: A Return to the Intelligence of the Heart took me a long time to get through. Don’t get me wrong, it is not because the book was not interesting. On the contrary, I find his writing fascinating. He includes a lot of actual science in with spirituality and metaphysics, and sometimes it takes me a bit to wrap my head around the concepts he introduces.
The Death of Religion and the Rebirth of Spirit expands the author’s theory of our next step of evolution that he began in The Biology of Transcendence. In the first book, he hypothesizes that all of the great spiritual teachers, for example, Jesus or Buddha or Mohammed, were sent here as examples of what we could become in our next stage of evolution. Instead of looking to them as an example, our societies have put them on a pedestal and said, “I could never do THAT!” And so it has become a self fulfilling prophecy.
In both books, he looks at the evolutions our species has come through so far, particularly the evolution of our brain. We start with the reptilian, which governs basic survival and action. Nature’s next phase added the “old mammalian” brain, which is associated with emotions and memory. Most recently, the “new mammalian” brain was added. It is associated with thinking and language, and it is the part of our brain that makes us human.
There is another part of the brain, however, the prefrontal cortex, about which less is understood. Pearce’s theory is that the development of the prefrontal cortex, and in particular, its connection to the neurons and electromagnetic field of the heart, are our next phase of evolution.
Each phase of our brain’s development has a specific window of opportunity. There is much overlapping between the levels of development. However, each level of development is dependent on the previous levels and on the right nurturing environment to reach its full potential.
Pearce explains that our very culture does not provide the correct nurturing environment for our brains to develop to their highest potential. As an example, one of my old tools: television.
TV is an excellent babysitter: a child won’t move his eyes – or body – away from the screen. His visual system is literally held there by an amygdala-survival brain interlock, immobilized by stimuli from such constant change that there can form no stable imagery to which structures of knowledge can relate. This television exposure results in the primary sensory patterns of our reptilian brain locking into a danger-alert mode in reaction to the underlying flicker of the screen and the rapidly shifting imagery that create such sensory confusion that they indicate possible threat. This old-brain startle effect keeps the high brain alert for emergency and entrained with the lower brain as the child stares at the screen. (p. 193)
While television may be bad, religion is one of the worst agents of culture, since it is from religion that most of us have received our moral code of dos and don’ts. It doesn’t matter if you are religious now or not. Chances are your grandparents were, and their grandparents were, and their habits have become your instinctual behaviors.
Both books also talk about the research done by the Institute of HeartMath. My favorite quotes from this book regarding the heart-brain connection:
Coherent heart frequencies arise from relationship, love ,joy, and other such positive emotions and can, in effect, propagate or grow in strength or be reinforced by other coherent waves, which can match them peak and trough on some regular enough basis to mutually stabilize and even increase.
Incoherent waves, occurring when we are fearful or in pain, may be picked up by someone quite close to us physically but do not radiate out very far because they cannot synchronize or cohere with other waves. They remain localized because they cannot, by simple physical law, extend into that realm of coherent frequencies. In this way, incoherent frequencies block our interactions with the higher heart frequencies, resulting in isolation, emotional deprivation, or spiritual void. (p. 144)
If our general state is incoherent, for whatever reason, no amount of sound and fury or effort on our part can inform some higher power of our plight. The cosmos, by its nature, is indifferent, and if we weep alone, we do so not because some stern judge in the clouds has not heard us or chooses to ignore us, but because the Vastness can’t register our weepy frequencies. (p.189)
Though the picture Pearce paints of the damage culture is doing to our evolution, the answer he proposes is relatively simple, if not easy. The answer is love. Love and allow the heart to lead the mind. It is definitely something I strive towards. Who knew the Beatles had it right all along – All We Need is Love.
If any of these ramblings have intrigued you, I highly recommend both books!
I went to see The Hunger Games movie last night. I want to make it clear that I read the entire series over a year ago, long before I knew anything about the movie, or saw anything of their social media campaign (which was pretty impressive). It struck me even more strongly in seeing the movie than in reading the book, that Katniss bears some resemblance to Artemis.
=
Both are strong, independent female characters, and both are archers. Both Katniss and Artemis were skilled hunters, and not much interested in the opposite sex. Those are the obvious similarities. Are there others?
When Katniss attacks Peeta after their interviews for saying he had a crush on her, it reminds me of the myth of Artemis and Acteon. Acteon was hunting with his dogs, and he happened upon a pool where Artemis and her companions were bathing. Enchanted, he stayed and watched a while. When Artemis saw him spying on her, she cursed him by changing him into a stag and set his own dogs upon him. Katniss wasn’t quite that severe with Peeta; she is human after all.
The Greeks enjoyed athletics and competition. They created the Olympic games. The Hunger Games is less like the Olympics and more like a gladiatorial arena. We associate gladiators with Roman times, though some scholars think that the gladiators may have a Greek origin, though the Greeks would have used them on a much smaller and less grandiose scale than the Romans. So there is a possible link there.
Katniss is very loyal to those that she chooses as her companions – first her little sister, Primrose; then Rue, and finally Peeta. Artemis is loyal to her companions that she chooses – she often made those of her devotees that she loved her immortal companions. Artemis saved Iphegenia from her father’s sacrifice, similar to Katniss saving her sister from becoming a tribute.
In looking back, I am quite amazed at the similarities. I wonder how conscious a choice this was on Suzanne Collins’ part, and how much was the archetype of Artemis seeking a voice in the modern world.
For the last three weeks in a row, Sunday afternoon/early evening has been my time to go out and sit in nature. I have found a wonderful spot to sit and watch the pond, and not be visible from the path at all. I have yet to see someone else on this particular path when I am out there, though I see the evidence that other people, and animals, travel that way from time to time.
Last week we had an incredible storm. Winds were blowing over 100 km per hour, with gusts over 135 km per hour. (Hurricane force winds are 120 km per hour, to give you some perspective). Lots of trees were blown down throughout and around the city, and school was cancelled on Monday. Our power was out for 28 hours (hence, no post last week!). I was extremely grateful for our wood stove, let me tell you! Not only did it keep us warm, I cooked our dinner on it!
Yesterday was my first visit back to my “sit spot” since the storm. It was amazing to see the trees that had fallen, and the sheer number of pine boughs that littered the path was stunning. Others who had travelled this way before me had cut through some of the fallen trees that crossed the path, though there was still one I had to climb over.
I feel so clumsy and loud walking through the forest. Branches snap and brush against my coat, my boots clump along, and I sometimes I stumble to keep my balance. Once I finally make my way to my sit spot, however, I feel peaceful and silent.
I was looking forward to seeing what waterfowl would be on the pond today. The insects were flying and skimming the water, and the fish were jumping up to catch their dinner, but no birds were in sight. I heard an eagle, and a raven, and robins and other song birds, but they all hid from my eye. Instead, I challenged myself to pick out the changes the storm had wrought on this now familiar place.
Then I asked Artemis what she had to teach me today. She told me that it was all well and good to be comfortable just being in the woods. Followers of Artemis must also have a sense of adventure. “Explore!” she told me.
I’ve been wondering for a while what the view looked like from the other side of the pond, and how I would get there. After one more scan for any birds, I got up and made my way further up the stream that feeds the pond, repeating, “Explore!” over and over in my mind. I wasn’t so worried about what noise I made this time.
View from across the pond
I tried crossing over one fallen log, but it didn’t go all the way across. I continued up the stream, and came to another log that did cross the stream, with a small break in the middle. With my mantra to encourage me, I made it across the stream, and back to the far side of the pond. It was neat to confirm the fallen trees I had seen from the other side of the pond.
I knew that if I continued on to the East/north east, I would eventually come to the main path that we walk through the woods. So I set off in the general direction that I thought the path was in, making my way through the ferns, and undergrowth and fallen branches. I saw lots of deer scat, which I took as a good sign.
There was a lighter area ahead of me that I made for, thinking that was where the path would be. When I reached it, however, it was just a marshy area with fewer trees. I began to get a little discouraged. “Explore, she tells me! Whose idea was this anyway?” The eagle called over my head. I looked, and still could not see it. I hopped and jumped from high ground to high ground in the marshy wetland, and at one point picked up a branch to use as a walking stick and to help me vault across a larger area of water.
After a while, the eagle called again. I had been “lost” in the woods for over half an hour. I told the eagle to stop laughing at me. And then I stopped, took a breath, and said to it, “I know. You’re not laughing at me. You’re encouraging me.” I continued on, and very soon after I came to the path. The eagle called again, and I thanked it for its encouragement.
The wild didn’t entirely let me go unscathed. As I was climbing over the last fallen branch on my way to the path, I banged and scraped my knee. I have a small wound to remind me of my adventure!
I sometimes take longer than I expect, but I do keep my commitments. I finally made it out to sit in the woods!
I am so blessed to have a wooded area near my home with plenty of streams running through it. There is a wide path, perhaps an old logging road, that we often walk through. On Sunday, after a couple of very late nights, I decided to cancel my other plans, and go sit in the woods.
I decided to take an off-shoot path that I don’t often take. Going down the old road makes a nice circuit, I enter the woods in one part of my neighborhood, come out in another, and I can walk back through the streets to get home. It’s about a 30 minute walk at a leisurely pace. The off-shoots don’t necessarily make a loop like that. I have to retrace my steps to get back home, and I usually prefer to continue going forward, instead of turning back.
However, the main “road” is often used by recreational vehicles – dirt bikes and quads. I wanted something a little more secluded, more wild. Hence, the path less traveled.
Less traveled also means more obstacles. I live in a temperate rainforest climate, so there were lots of large puddles to circumnavigate. I was rewarded with quiet, and not far down the path, I could tell that it had been many days since vehicles or people had been through this way.
I tried to walk as quietly as I could, though the protective rain pants I was wearing made that a little challenging! Before long, I found the pond I remembered, and found a spot next to a huge tree stump to sit and listen to the water rushing through a natural dam. I noticed a few flying insects, and I could just pick out a bird chirping over the sound of the water.
I grounded and meditated for a while, and then I heard an unusual noise. I think it was a dog howling, quite a ways off in the distance. But my mind went into protection mode, and I started thinking about cougars. As much as I told myself I was safe, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched.
So I got up, and was about to start back down the path, when I felt called to go just a little deeper into the woods.
I carefully picked my way through the marshy ground, and as I came around a curve, I saw some waterfowl resting in the upper part of the pond. As quietly and as slowly as I could, I made my way closer and sat on the bank to watch them. As I was moving to sit, a pair of mallard ducks that I had not noticed lifted off from the pond and flew away.
I sat for at least a half hour watching the three other birds. (I looked them up in my bird book when I got home; I am pretty sure they were common mergansers.) There was a male, a female, and a smaller bird. The male and female were calmly floating on the surface. The male was preening every once in a while. The smaller bird kept diving under the surface. I’m not sure if it was the same kind of bird, but it reminded me of my children – in constant motion!
It was so peaceful sitting on the bank of the pond, listening to the rain falling gently on the water, and not DOING anything. I simply was. I didn’t have a book, or technology to distract me. And it was so pleasant!
Eventually, as the gray light began to fade, I slowly rose and made my way back. I was in absolutely no hurry, and so I noticed the robin who stopped and sang for me. As I came out of the woods back onto the street, I startled a buck and two does in someone’s yard. I froze, and watched the doe who had not bolted with the other two deer. She and I stood looking at each other for quite a while, before she made her way off into the edge of the forest. Even then, I saw the two does looking back and watching me. A blessing from Artemis.
My schedule is very full, and I don’t often make time to sit in the woods like I want. However, I am filled with the peace of nature, and I have that memory to recall whenever I am stressed by our technological world.
Thursday, May 24th at 6:00 pm PDT, I will be hosting a free training call – Grounding for Personal Peace, Power and Productivity. In this call you will learn the basics of grounding, the benefits of consciously grounding your energy every day, and be led through an exclusive guided meditation to help you experience grounding for yourself, live on the call! There will also be time for questions and answers at the end of the session.
