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Monthly Archives: December 2012

Alignment

20 Thursday Dec 2012

Posted by Lesley Irene Shore in Spiritual

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Align, Centered, Consciousness, Earth, Energy, Galactic Alignment, Harmony, Heart, Intention, Mayan, Soul, Vibration, Wholeness, Winter Solstice

At this year’s Winter Solstice, our sun will align with the middle of the galactic birth canal, the dark rift very close to the center of our Milky Way Galaxy.  Much has been written about this galactic event, and its initiation of a new era.

The Mayans predicted that this year’s Winter Solstice would end a 26,000 year planetary cycle.  A decaying, corrupted cycle of human activity would end.  Some understand that this ending could initiate a world where people live in harmony with each other and all of Earth.

Galactic AlignmentAccording to some teachings, the Galactic Alignment will open the door to a higher vibrational energy, enabling a shift of consciousness into a heart-centered way of being.  But there are no guarantees of what will happen.  The time is now, and it is up to us.

I believe that we incarnated at this important time because we each have a mission, a soul’s purpose for being here.  We are here to help birth this time of wholeness and living in harmony.  Each of us brings talents and gifts that will contribute to this process in some way.

On December 21st, at 6:12am, E.S.T. – the exact time of the Winter Solstice – our sun will align with the center of our galaxy.  Let us align with this energy by opening our hearts and setting our communal intention to help birth the time of wholeness and harmony for all beings.

The time is now.  It depends on us.

Making Stone Soup

12 Wednesday Dec 2012

Posted by Lesley Irene Shore in Spiritual

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Tags

Align, Ceremony, Consciousness, Cycle, Dark, Energy, Galactic Alignment, Growth, Harmony, Light, Manifestation, Nourish, Peace, Peru, Prophesy, Renew, Sacred, Season, Seasonal Cycle, Spiritual, Spiritual Practice, Spring, Stone Soup, Stones, Wheel of the Year, Winter, Winter Solstice

One of my favorite spiritual practices involves participating in ceremonies that honor the wheel of the year, the seasonal cycle from winter through spring, to summer then fall.  By aligning with the energy of each season, these ceremonies help me stay in balance.  They also support my spiritual growth.

The ceremonies take place at important junctions in our seasonal cycle, the beginning of each season, which is determined by the length of night and day.  Winter Solstice, the beginning of winter, takes place on the shortest day and longest night of the year.

Winter Solstice ceremonies welcome this darker time of the year, the time when we retreat inside to hibernate.   Winter is our time for reflection, for inner composting and rejuvenation.  Like bears who hibernate, our rhythms similarly slow.  If we rest and nourish ourselves during winter, we emerge in spring feling renewed, with energy for manifestation.

A few friends joined me recently to plan our group’s Winter Solstice ceremony.  One woman had just returned from a trip visiting Peru’s sacred sites.  As she shared some of her experiences, her words sparked a vague memory of a book I once read. 

I wandered to the nearby book shelf, surveyed titles, and my eyes fixated on “Masters of the Living Energy: The Mystical World of the Q’ero of Peru” by Joan Wilcox.  Grabbing hold of the book, I handed it to my friend who located a photograph of the ceremony she had been describing.

We then explored the coming Galactic Alignment anticipated by the Mayans and other indigenous peoples.  Ancient prophesies foretold that this Winter Solstice’s Galactic Alignment would herald an era of spiritual development, with consciousness potentially evolving to enable peaceful, harmonious co-existence with each other and all of nature.

Focusing on the ceremony, we brainstormed in many directions, from Peru to Mexico, from earth to sky and from intent to gratitude.  Our spiraling journey eventually gravitated toward a ritual involving stones.  One of our activities would include narrating the Stone Soup Story and then making Stone Soup.

While many versions of the Stone Soup Story exist, the central theme remains the same.  In a nutshell, here’s the story:

A stranger arrives in a town where the people are hoarding food because of a famine in the area.  When they let him know they have no food to share, the stranger pulls out a pot, fills it with water, builds a fire under the pot, adds a “magical stone” to the water, and declares he will share his delicious stone soup with everyone.  Then the stranger begs for just a little vegetable to add to the pot, to make it truly tasty.  One by one the villagers respond to his pleas and contribute to the pot, until a truly nourishing meal gets created – which they all share.

This story describes how our ceremony came together.  We each contributed ideas to the pot.  It cooked and a nourishing ritual emerged.

Making Stone Soup

After my friends departed, I left Joan Wilcox’s book on the kitchen table.  A few days later, I sat at the computer trying to put the ritual on paper.  Stumbling to find words that would adequately describe the Galactic Alignment, I searched the web to learn more about this anticipated event.

A few hours later, though bleary eyed and hungry, I finally had a sense of the astronomy involved.  Deciding to give myself a break, I went downstairs for a snack.  Sitting at the kitchen table with my bowl of muesli, I idly picked up Joan Wilcox’s book and leafed through it.

My fingers stopped at a page with the caption subtitle, “Andean Prophesy of Spiritual Evolution.”  Reading what lay below, I was amazed to discover information relevant to our ceremony.  This information asserted that we humans will need to work together, in a collective manner, to facilitate the shift in consciousness.

“Aha” I thought, “the prophesied shift in consciousness will require us to make Stone Soup.  Our talents may be different, our interests diverse, but if we pool our resources we can help create a better world.”

Yes!  We’ll prepare Stone Soup.

 

The Great Turning

04 Tuesday Dec 2012

Posted by Lesley Irene Shore in Whole

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Awareness, Buddhist, Cooperation, Earth, Earth Community, Future, Harmony, Hope, Interdependent, Partnership, The Great Turning, Web of Life, Wholeness

People prefer not to think about the fact that we’re destroying our life support system.  Feeling helpless and scared, we protect ourselves from the awareness that we’re nearing a planetary tipping point, a point of no return for human life as we know it on Earth.  This deadening of awareness prevents us from acting in ways that could create a better world, a world where people live in harmony with each other and all of Earth.

Joanna Macy, an Earth activist and Buddhist scholar, proposes that active hope might enable the shift she refers to as “The Great Turning.”  While she recognizes that our industrial growth society depends on the ever-increasing consumption of Earth’s resources, with corresponding ever-increasing waste products which get dumped into, around, and on our Earth, she considers this to be an extraordinary time in human history – with the potential to move from an industrial growth society to a life sustaining one.

In her “work that reconnects”, Joanna guides people to acknowledge their pain for Earth and to open awareness.  She invites us to release the false sense of separateness and to experience ourselves as interconnected, part of the web of life, members of Earth’s community.

The Great Turning requires that we take responsibility for what is happening on Earth.  This entails releasing old structures and enabling life sustaining ways of being to emerge.  It involves creating a new world.

In this new world, partnership and cooperation will replace competition and strife, empathy and compassion will replace hostility and aggression, generosity and sharing will replace selfishness and greed, and the power of love will replace the power of force.  We will move away from striving toward perfection and aim to grow into wholeness.   Rather than disconnection and separateness, we will experience ourselves as integral members of the web of life.

Holding hope for the future, let us join together and help create this better world.  

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