Tag: reset

Baba Yaga’s Call

We are at the threshold of the Snow Moon today and it’s Imbolc as well. It feels as if the Bone Mother calls on those ready to dive into fierce introspection. She is a prominent Slavic figure depicted in folklore as a sort of wicked grandmother. She is a powerful, wise, forest-dweller who may help you or devour you depending on the way wild nature moves through her when you cross paths. She represents the space between the living and the unknown, owning fears, and standing face to face with the untamed parts of yourself while opening to initiate radical transformation. She’s not too unlike the Hindu Goddess Kali in some respects, but Baba Yaga claims the power of the Crone; the old woman that many seek to overlook through repression as useless and no longer desirable. That’s a trick, of course, to keep you from knowing her as an archetypal ascended master.

If she doesn’t scare you off, consider calling on her for support in your shadow work under the last Full Moon of this Wood Snake Lunar Year. Ways to support yourself with the final shed through shadow integration:

  • Confront Fears: Make a Trigger Board. You may have heard of Vision Boards and you may or may not have had good luck with those. They can be an excellent tool for creating new experiences if your fears aren’t holding you back in some way. To Make a Trigger Board, you may only need tools for visuals of words and some paper with honest reflection about your triggers. List the things that you know hold you back. If words are effective enough for you, let that be but if visuals are more helpful, bring in printed images or magazine cut outs of the images that are going to be most helpful to your true processing of what holds you back. Write and/or cut and paste with intention on the paper or poster board of your choosing.
  • Devour Fears: Hold the words and images in your view. Consider ways you may respond differently. You may have to devour your ego to do this successfully. Invite an image of Baba Yaga into your mind and ask her how to devour your ego. Ask her how to gobble up your fears. Give some quiet space to see what surfaces as an answer or answers. Be gentle with yourself as you do this. Don’t rush through the quiet space, in fact, let there be more quiet space than you think you need.
  • Reclaim Your Power: Aim to be open to the different responses you gather. Let yourself imagine moving past any triggers and fears with as much loving grace as possible. Spend time seeing yourself reclaim your power in any scenario where you may have gone quiet before, questioned yourself, or reworked back into a known pattern instead of progressing in a way that would help you to make the gains you seek. Comfort sometimes becomes more appealing than change and we stay in ruts we know aren’t helping us. This is a time to be honest about that. Create visuals in your mind or externally of how you feel after you’ve moved past your fear and revisit these as often as you need to convince yourself it’s better on the other side of comfort and fear.
  • Forest as Reset: Get into the woods if you can after your trigger work. Let Nature hold you and help you to self-heal. Be with the earth in reverence and witness yourself moving with a lighter heart. Earth will hold you every chance you give her.

Sending so many good wishes to the brave souls approaching shadow work. If you find yourself in too deep, remember to call on a therapist to assist you. Some caverns are deeper than others and asking for support to help you out of there may be what’s needed! Love yourself enough to do what’s right for you.

Look Within

Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart, and that depends upon how much he has polished it. Whoever has polished it more sees more – more unseen forms become manifest to him.

— Rumi

Below you’ll find questions for self inquiry as we come away from a powerful solar eclipse. Paper and pen may be handy as people tend to find response in writing to be different than pure mental chatter. If you want to really stir things up, try writing with your non dominant hand. Give yourself space to answer from the heart as you consider the following:

How could you soften into your heart when you feel caught in the mind?

What does the heart allow you to see?

What could be seen differently if you release yourself from the storyline of your life as told to you by your mind?

What would you do next if you saw yourself as a character that could be or do or say anything to shift direction?

Letter 4

Ten Love Letters to the Earth

by Thich Nhat Hahn

IV

Your Stability, Patience, and Inclusiveness

Dear Mother Earth,

You are this infinitely beautiful blue planet, fragrant, cool, and kind. Your immeasurable patience and endurance makes you a great bodhisattva. Even though we’ve made many mistakes, you always forgive us. Every time we return to you, you are ready to open your arms and embrace us.

Whenever I am unstable, every time I lose touch with myself, or am lost in forgetfulness, sadness, hatred, or despair, I know I can come back to you. Touching you, I can find a refuge; I can reestablish my peace and regain my joy and self-confidence. You love, protect, and nurture all of us without discrimination.

You have an immense capacity to embrace, handle, and transform everything that is cast at you, whether it be great asteroids, refuse and filth, poisonous fumes, or radioactive waste. Time helps you to do this, and your history has shown that you always succeed, even if it takes millions of years. You were able to reestablish equilibrium after the devastating collision that created the moon and have endured at least five mass extinctions, reviving yourself every time. You have an extraordinary capacity to renew, transform, and heal yourself—and also us, your children.

I have faith in your great power of healing. My faith comes from my own observation and experience, not from something others have told me to believe. That’s why I know I can take refuge in you. As I walk, sit, and breathe, I can surrender myself to you, trust wholly in you, and allow you to heal me. I know I don’t have to do anything at all. I can simply relax, release all the tension in my body, and all the fears and worries in my mind. Whether I’m sitting or walking, lying down or standing, I allow myself to take refuge in you, and allow myself to be held and healed by you. I entrust myself to you, Mother Earth. Each one of us needs a place of refuge, but we may not know how to find it or how to get there. Looking deeply today, I can see that my true home, my true place of refuge is you, my beloved planet. I take refuge in you, Mother Earth. I do not have to go anywhere to find you; you are already in me and I am already in you.

Dear Mother, each time I sit in stillness on your Earth, I will be aware that because you are in me, I can embody your wonderful qualities: of solidity, perseverance, patience, and forbearance; of depth, endurance, and stability; of great courage, non-fear, and inexhaustible creativity. I vow to practice wholeheartedly to realize these qualities, knowing that you have already sown these potentials as seeds in the soil of my heart and mind.

A Necessary Winter

We know the winter of Earth as a regular experience. We expect it and prepare for the season though we may not all enjoy the cold and darkness. We have holidays, sweaters, fires, and warm drinks to comfort us along the way. Many of us create a traditional or improvised hearth in our homes to welcome family and friends as additional cheer.

Winter can be felt as more than a seasonal affair for the planet. This post, written for you mid fall, comes alongside reflection on how Jessica and I have allowed a winter in our friendship on more than one occasion. If you’re new to the blog, we are two long time friends who want to connect with you about showing up for life with as much presence and genuine positivity as we can without denying the full scope of our human experience.

We have been away from the blog for some time — a winter, if you a will. When chatting about this and if we wanted to let this space go or continue on, we remembered two distinct winters within our friendship when both of us were going through transitional time periods. When we returned to the friendship it involved a conscious decision to change our expectations around relating through different chapters of life. It also involved a total drop of ego to reach out again after a gap in communication. If you want to restart and/or maintain a friendship (whatever the distance), someone has to take the initiative of reaching out with heartfelt communication to let the other know they’re important to you and that you appreciate having them in your life.

In hindsight Jess and I know that taking big breathers (at one point a year without communication) meant not holding the other to a certain way of being based on what had been. It meant we were allowing decomposition of the old which can be sad, scary, and lonely. We have experienced its potential and beauty though collectively we are not taught to do this intentionally and I can say we were not consciously intentional at the time.

The first winter was in our late teens to early 20s after I had become part of a significant romantic relationship and Jessica had explorations to undertake that were quite different than anything we had been doing together. (Ask her about skydiving sometime.) The second winter was in our mid to late 20s with becoming a mother for me and adjusting to a new life in another part of the country for Jess as she committed to the man that is her husband today. It could seem that these are times when you want to hold a steady connection with your dear friend, but sometimes the opposite is what’s needed most – to let go- to let space do its thing.

Winter is important and necessary. You may even spy small winters within your daily cohabitation with another person and you may witness it with creative projects too. Allowing space for nothingness also allows space for new seeds to grow into new ways of relating, fresh ideas, as well as to appreciate what has changed.

As we work our way back into sharing here with you, we bring along our new ways of being since we last posted. Jessica has spent the time away training as a yoga therapist and is now living in a new location with her family. I have spent the time becoming a certified wellness coach, sound healing facilitator, and teacher of kundalini infused movement and meditation practices. We are looking forward to sharing with you in this next season!

With deep gratitude for you all — Valerie 💫