numinous jane
  • Home
  • Facing the Minotaur Online
  • Bespoke Blessings
  • healthy boundaries for kind people
  • reframing
  • about jane
  • one to one work
  • somatic experiencing
  • Soulmap Journaling
  • DECISIONS, DECISIONS!!
  • art
  • Blog
  • free stuff
  • decisions decisions classroom
  • the hidden door dream workshop
  • classroom ftm July 22

always looking at the light; a cautionary tale.

2/27/2016

1 Comment

 
Picture
​Today's blessing comes by way of a parable. Settle in.



Once there was a woman who was imprisoned in a dark and dank room. The air was fetid. The walls and floor were slimey.
The room was hard to explore as she could not see and was fearful of bumping into something or losing the tiny amount of warmth she had generated on the spot on which she sat.



The only change that happened in that room was the irregular and putrid food that came through the door that was firmly locked.



In the beginning the woman tried to find a way out but as the darkness around her became more familiar a darkness grew within her and she found it harder and harder to make herself move.



One day she heard a rustling in the darkness.



This was terrifying to her. There could have been anything there and in her mind the only possibilities that gained traction were possibilities of darkness and more harm.



Pinned to her tiny warm spot the woman could do little more than breathe and wait in fear and listen to the rustling grow closer and closer.



But then something miraculous happened, as the food arrived, after what seemed like days, the slam of the door left a tiny crack open in a small window high up in the door. In through that window streamed light.



Miraculous, blinding, radiant, light.



And though it seared her eyes and made tears stream down her face, the woman looked up to the light. She tried to drink it in with her skin. She tried to reach it with her hands. She felt like an old and precious friend had arrived to tend to her.



It reminded her of all she had left and all she had been and the beauty of it cracked her open and she wanted more and more and more of the light.



Unfortunately for her she was so distracted by the light she did not see the snakes coiling by her feet and without notice or fear she stepped towards the light.



My blessing is this: Do not be so seduced by what is promised by the light that you take your eyes from what is really there.
​

And if you like the way this story feels to you and you would like to look at your own life in this style of using faerytale imagery and metaphor to dig into your patterns and stuckness then click here and read more about my beloved process Reframing Your Story.

1 Comment

closed system, open heart

2/12/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
I have the privilege of living on one of the most beautiful coastlines in the world.  The sea here is part of the great strengthening and revivifying forces in my life and i like to be near the ocean as much as i can.

The other day i was walking our dog after a storm.  There was a huge amount of sea plant material (can't bring myself to call it seaweed - sounds so pejorative) - the huge variety and immensity of the piles testimony to a great upheaval in that unseen realm.  

​There was velvety green weed (my favourite) and large bull kelp with its tenacious roots still holding the rock it was melded to.  There was neptune's necklace and all kinds of other usually unseen miracles pungently rotting in the sun.  There was also plastic.  Large pieces of fishing paraphernalia as well as tiny bits as well as the unseen plastic.  

My husband and i gathered large bags of it to bring home for our compost heap.  It made me happy knowing that the minerals we could give our garden could be harvested in this way.  That i could be part of the cycle; the miraculous cycle that something that grew in the depths could be just what my land needs to flourish.  Amazing.

I thought about how the cycle of life in nature is closed.  A self sealed system that has all it requires and all is useful.  Nothing is wasted.  The Life/Death/Life cycle is the ultimate recycling.  All parts of the system are there in service not only to themselves but to the system at large.

Until of course we get to humans.  The source of that unuseful plastic.  The source of waste.  Humans, in our need to be in control of the world around us, in an attempt to manage our meagreness in the face of the immensity of life, have tried to alter that system.  Have tried to have ourselves think that we can be in control.  That we can take what we want.  That we can make something outside the life death life cycle and it will serve us to do so.

I think that is broken thinking.

I think that humans have a role to play in the closed system and that not with cutting the world open and scooping out what lies beneath.  It is not with overpowering that balanced, self righting system.  It is not with more power over and control of.  I beleive that the place for humans  is to be found with their open hearts.  

I believe that we are required, in order to take our place in the scheme of things to turn up with open hearts, reverence and prayerfulness and tend lovingly to ourselves and the world.

Our role is one of lover not rapist.  

Because we are so embedded in the paradigm of progress and boundless growth (which is impossible and frankly childish thinking - MORE MORE MORE, I WANT MORE is really only appropriate coming from the mouth of 2 year olds and then a bit irritating after a while) it is very difficult to see the value or the worth in this prayerful response.

It can feel lonely to turn up heart open for the planet. 

But what spurs me on is the knowledge of the closed system.  Because prayerful reverence is a very human possibility i believe that this action is part of the closed system and that because nothing is wasted in the closed system our reverence and love is met.

i found this post on facebook the other day from Grandmother's speak which summed it up for me.

​
“LET THE EARTH LOVE YOU BACK”
As soon as I sat down before my altar, the Grandmothers spoke. “There is a goodness rising up,” they said, “a deep down goodness. It’s under your feet and all about you. You’re enfolded in it, so enfolded that wherever you go, it goes with you. You are living, breathing and moving within a matrix of good.” As I listened to them, I began to feel it. Something was supporting me, filling my body and mind with utter contentment. The Grandmothers were right. Something had begun to permeate me, and the only world to describe this something was ‘goodness’.
I looked at the Grandmothers in amazement. “Did you think all the love you’ve been sending to the earth over the years would not come back to you?” they asked. “Did you think you were the only one doing the giving? That this giving only flowed one way—from you to Mother Earth?
“Lovely one,” they said, and gazed at me with so much love that I choked up, “receive it now. THERE IS A TWO-WAY FLOW OF LOVE,” they explained; “it’s like breathing. You can’t live by only exhaling,” they laughed. “So start inhaling this goodness now,” they commanded. “Let the earth love you back.”
Each day since they told me this, I’ve been making a point of letting the earth love me back and what a difference it’s made!!
Please try it yourself. After all, this message is for you too.

If like me you believe in our human responsibility to turn up lovingly for the world you might like to join us on Praying True, a facebook group dedicated to just this cause.

I invite us all (me included) to open our hearts and step back into that closed system and close the door behind us.  

​Love is waiting.
0 Comments

    RSS Feed

    Author

    jane- creativity activist, synchonicity celebrator, conduit for love.

    Categories

    All
    Dreams
    Forget Me Not
    Heroine
    Hunger
    Longings
    Praying
    Rivers
    Simple
    Yearnings

    Archives

    February 2022
    December 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    April 2021
    April 2020
    November 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    November 2017
    July 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    October 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013

    RSS Feed

Photo used under Creative Commons from South Africa The Good News