What have you offered Spirit lately?
What doorways have you opened and chosen to walk through?
Where has the path led you?
This New Moon in Libra is calling us to throw out any pre-made plans for relationship with ourselves or with others. It is a new moon of definite action and forward movement searching to achieve justice and balance.
There isn’t much we can say we do in this lifetime that does not involve relationship. From the passion of romance and friendship, to talking to ourselves, to feeling the void of loneliness, there is always someone else with us observing, listening, judging perhaps. But ideally not judging at all. We bring this observer everywhere we go. Connected, we feel the presence of the Divine. Disconnected, we hear the lies of the Critic within and speak only to those belief systems and projections that whisper in our ears of our own failures.
I have come to see that All of Life is a communication, a reciprocal relationship. Relationship includes the breath we breathe in and breathe out, sharing the gasses necessary for our survival and for the survival of the plant world. Without the plants we have no oxygen to breathe. Relationship also includes the invocations and words we speak to Spirit and long to hear from Spirit. Relationship is also the way we treat ourselves.
To those of you who long for answers, who long for a connection to the Divine, to the Spirit that flows through all things and to the spirits that may be your ancestors, What do you offer to Spirit in return? Many of us have been taught that “The gift” is a passively received talent bestowed upon us for unknown reasons. It is a privilege that others don’t have.
I challenge that idea. When we begin to think of ourselves as separate, as privileged, as gifted, we create separation for ourselves from others and separation from Spirit. Spiritual communication requires Spiritual Relationship! And it is important to consider how and with what we are creating that relationship.
Do you ask questions and expect Spirit to answer when you have no foundational relationship?
Do you choose paths to follow without consulting the advice of Spirit?
Do you ask for gifts without offering anything in exchange?
Treat your relationship with Spirit as you would any human relationship. Care for it. Nurture it. Offer it the best parts of yourself. Tell the Truth to it. Don’t take advantage of it or manipulate it.
Sometimes we find ourselves opening doorways and walking through them when we don’t want to. On the day these pictures were taken I was having an argument with the person I love more than anything. We both had some choices to make that day about holding our anger or letting it go. We might have both been a bit slower to come together than usual. When I am upset I usually turn to Spirit for guidance. I took a quick side hike by myself and offered to the energy of the beautiful Nusta (nature being) of the land. I spoke from my heart to Spirit, asking for guidance. Soon I rejoined my partner and my daughter and we walked together through what I have to describe as sacred land. As I began to hear and feel and sense a spiritual presence who spoke to me, my partner gazed off into the trees, later telling me he had seen a man in the woods that disappeared as quickly as he appeared. The Spirit stood tall and proud in my eyes, a Native American spirit of stature, nobility and grace. He spoke of justice for his people and the way this land was taken from them. He welcomed the help of any person, any color to help, and suggested that my family and I were way showers, igniters, leaders of the path to justice. He reminded me that it was braver for his people to accept defeat at the hands of the settlers and to endure what they have endured for centuries than it would have been to fight every battle and lose just to save face. The nobility and the sacrifice shone in his beautiful eyes. He spoke with urgency. He longed to be heard. He recounted many of his people’s struggles and I paused our entire hike to sit and listen, translating out loud for my young daughter who longs to serve Justice for all people.
I was gifted a message of cosmic proportions and of personal significance. Within his stories, I felt comfort, strength and power. A giving and receiving of love so powerful that a nation sacrificed their pride, their very existence, to save the last of their own. And I wept for the loss of valor and dignity and life that was taken from them. All he asked was that I share this story and continue to show other white people the way.
Within his story I was gifted a wisdom that served my teeny tiny problem too. I had been triggered by an argument that spoke to me of many old battles with unworthy partners. I sought to protect and to defend myself from an enemy that no longer existed. I saw at once that it would be braver for me to admit this vulnerability and to seek a truce than it would be to fight for my old stories with this beloved man.
I took some time with this new certainty that I must be brave and be soft in my response to what I considered an affront. I cherished and made offerings of rose petals to the Spirit of Metacom who spoke to me here. And I chose a pathway that connected me deeper to my love and to my new stories of love and growth and relationship. We were able to repair things to a condition that was better than before. Sort of like taking a row boat and adding a sail. (Why make things harder than they need to be after all?)
