“In an indigenous perspective we see ourselves as an offering, just as everything we see is a gift to us. It is not healing or constructive to see ourselves as just the recipient of beauty. We must also be a gift to that beauty.”
In this week’s journey circle, I invite you to delve into the topic of reciprocity.
How might you come into a deeper, mutual relationship with the more-than-human world where you live, be it with a tree, mountain, river, rock, or animal? How might you get to know this being better? What beauty might you offer?
Or perhaps developing greater reciprocity with the Unseen world, becoming a gift to the wise and well ancestors, spirit guides, goddesses and gods, guardians of the four directions, or other beings of Spirit is what tugs more deeply on your soul.
Let us journey this week into the wilderness of the heart to discover who calls us to a fuller relationship.
Once we get clear on what being(s) call us to a deeper relationship, let us seek answers on how to make these relationships mutual. How can we offer gratitude and beauty for the many gifts we receive from Gaia or the Spirit world?
The fiction of the lone “individual” who stands separate and discrete from the web of life is a fiction that is killing us, body, soul, and planet.
To enter into relationships of reciprocity with the beings in our midst is to embark on a journey of re-membering our true identity in and belonging to wholeness.
I hope you can join us this week.
RSVP
Gaia Shamanism is offering free online journey circles in 2022 on Wednesdays from 4-6 pm PST.
This weekly circle is an opportunity to hone the practice of journeywork in a spiritual container of mutual support, real talk, and humor.
If you would like to join us this Wednesday, February 23, from 4-6 pm PST, feel free to email me at anna “at” gaiashamanism “dot” com. All skill levels are welcome.
After about 20 minutes, the woods came to life. One small bird, and then another, announced the shift, flying so close to me I could hear the whir of their wings as they flew past. Where there had been only silence and stillness around my sit spot in the woods, now a symphony of life.
I’m not sure if the change from an experience of separation to one of welcome in the woods was due solely to the fact that it takes the more-than-human-world about 20 minutes to adjust to a human presence.
It takes me about 20 minutes to move into a felt awareness of the woods, gradually quieting and softening as I sit still in my chosen spot.
As I find myself growing more vital and alive through this practice, I wonder if the woods, too, are somehow healed or made more alive by my presence.
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When walking out on the land after being quieted by the woods, I have learned to notice who and what is moving around me. Noticing movement around you as you walk through the landscape is like watching the breath in meditation practice. It slows you down, brings you into the present moment, and restores you to your senses, but instead of focusing on one’s own breath, looking for movement attunes you to the collective breath we all share.
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I am finding my forest therapy guide coursework to be a study in applied animism, which is exactly what I’ve been looking for.
Shamanism is an earth-honoring practice rooted in the older spiritual substrate of animism. Learning to relate skillfully to the powers, peoples, and energies of the Unseen world rests upon a foundation of relating skillfully to the powers, peoples, and energies of the more-than-human world.
We can only engage the healing power and potency of these worlds when we move away from our screens, are pushed beyond our preconceptions, and invest in time spent outside-of-doors.
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Sitting in my sit spot, I have been noticing a softening in the grief I carry within me about the state of the natural world.
A river of grief runs through me pretty much all the time, but sitting here in the woods, rooting into this time and this place, feeling into the layers of life, death, and decay beneath, around, and within me—again—something shifts.
The raging waters of grief, a grief we share with the more-than-human world, grow quieter and are contained as I root into the presence of something far larger and wiser, someone more ancient and alive than I.
Here, on the banks of the river of grief, I am returned to a feeling of trust and appreciation for the wisdom of this process of transformation initiated and overseen by our source of life and elder, Gaia.
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I’ve made a commitment to spend an hour of each day out on the land until the arrival of Spring, sitting, walking, exploring, drawing, building relationships with my more-than-human kin. I find that for those first 20 minutes in my sit spot I am cold, I am fidgety, I am bored.
My mind tells me I am crazy, that nothing is happening, that I am making things up about the subtle energies I perceive—the same litany of complaints I heard when first I began the practice of shamanic journeywork.
Then, after a time of feeling directionless and lost, I shift and the world shifts around me, too: new answers present themselves, birds fly close by, and my being overflows with quiet joy.
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Sitting out on the land will be a different experience during the dry summer months of fire season. These February days are already clear with little rain in the forecast here in Oregon.
My plan is to sit out on this land I love for at least the magical threshold of 20 minutes, even if I have to wear a respirator.
Time will tell if the river of grief will be contained or will spill over its banks with this practice.
Experience tells me that the practice of quitting my house to be with my more-than-human relations will help me move through hard times with more humor and joy than I could ever hope to muster on my own.
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Gaia Shamanism is offering free online journey circles in 2022 on Wednesdays from 4-6 pm PST.
This weekly circle is an opportunity to hone the practice of journeywork in a spiritual container of mutual support, real talk, and humor.
If you would like to join us this Wednesday, February 9, from 4-6 pm PST, feel free to email me at anna “at” gaiashamanism “dot” com. All skill levels are welcome.
Imbolc, meaning “ewe’s milk,” is a Celtic celebration of the mid-point between the winter solstice and vernal equinox. Some scholars think that Imbolc, traditionally celebrated on February 1, was a season, rather than a day.
Food and fuel stores were running low by this time of the winter and the coming of ewe’s milk was more than a hopeful sign of the coming of spring, but the arrival of a much-needed food source in the midst of the leanest season of the year.
In our time, at least for the majority of us in North America, our most pressing spiritual need may well be generating the spiritual resolve necessary to cut through the physical, mental, and emotional clutter that is the cost of participating in our consumer culture.
This week’s intention aims at helping us gain clarity about what steps we might take to simplify and declutter our inner and/or outer lives over the six weeks and six days between Imbolc and Spring.
What might we pare down to make room for the emergence of new life?
How might we give of our excess to assist those going through lean times?
I look forward to journeying with you this Wednesday in celebration of Imbolc.
RSVP
Gaia Shamanism is offering free online journey circles in 2022 on Wednesdays from 4-6 pm PST.
This weekly circle is an opportunity to hone the practice of journeywork in a spiritual container of mutual support, real talk, and humor.
If you would like to join us this Wednesday, February 2, from 4-6 pm PST, feel free to email me at anna “at” gaiashamanism “dot” com. All skill levels are welcome.
One of our hens, Despacita, went missing a month ago. She wasn’t in the chicken tractors in the mornings when the flock was let out to free-range. My mate Will and I assumed that she was dead.
About a week after assuming her demise, I spied Despacita balancing on the back fence before hopping into the chicken yard to eat. She lives! But Despacita continued to avoid spending the night inside the chicken tractor with her flock. Because most everyone loves the taste of chicken–coyote and human alike–this hen’s behavior didn’t make any evolutionary sense to me. Until this weekend.
Walking back from my sit spot in the woods yesterday, I stopped when I heard a distinct peeping noise coming from under the stairs to our house. In the shadowy world beneath our deck, I saw a number of chicks scamper back to Despacita and disappear into her feathered wings.
I don’t have a firm chick count as of this writing but Despacita has at least 8 chicks. [Now the count is up to 12] And today I learned that she’s also sitting on a fairly large clutch of fertilized eggs positioned well out of my reach.
It’s the middle of winter, mind you, and I haven’t seen an egg from any of my chickens for weeks. It seems ill-advised, suicidal even, to leave one’s flock behind and take up residence outside the bounds of protection, but belonging and fencing can cost us our lives insofar as they rob us of the ability to steward our precious life energy.
I admire a rogue hen. As we placed the feeders, waterers, and fencing around Despacita and her babies yesterday, I chuckled to myself. Thanks to her hard-headed determination, everything this hen needs to realize life on her terms is now being provided to her.
As I waver and wonder about getting a day job or doubling down on my own efforts to provide spiritual care in this age of climate collapse, girlfriend is showing me how it’s done.
Intention
Despacita’s example raises several themes for possible journey intentions this week:
Is the desire to belong, be normal, or otherwise conform with your flock’s expectations interfering with your ability to realize your vision for life? How might you free yourself up (even a little) for a season?
Do you have generative instincts you want to honor but feel that now is the wrong time or that the project is too risky? How might you break the rules to honor your deepest instincts?
Does all of your life energy go to feed the lives and agendas of others? How might you stockpile and incubate some of your creative output in order to hatch your own dreams?
And, as always, if none of this speaks to you, you are invited to journey for any intentions you hold.
RSVP
Gaia Shamanism is offering free online journey circles on Wednesdays from 4-6 pm PST.
This weekly circle is an opportunity to hone the practice of journeywork in a spiritual container of mutual support, real talk, and humor.
If you would like to join us this Wednesday, January 26, at 4 pm PST, feel free to email me at anna “at” gaiashamanism “dot” com. All skill levels are welcome.
Darkness, for me, connotes not evil but a rich loam of unknowing capable of feeding and sustaining the seeds of new life.
As our plans are upended by the pandemic yet again, as we enter our third year of navigating our changed relationships with each other and the world, let us draw closer to the potent darkness in which we find ourselves that we might learn its lessons.
What seeds of learning are here for you? How might you tend these seeds of new life? What do you need to hang in there with this learning, this tending, and this collective process of transformation?
Let us find our way through these rich, dark times, together.
RSVP
Gaia Shamanism is offering free online journey circles in 2022 on Wednesdays from 4-6 pm PST.
This weekly circle is an opportunity to hone the practice of journeywork in a spiritual container of mutual support, real talk, and humor.
If you would like to join us this Wednesday, January 19, at 4 pm PST, email me at anna “at” gaiashamanism “dot” com. All skill levels are welcome.
The five-petaled path of Venus as seen from earth.
At the moment, the planet Venus is absent from view in our skies.
On December 19th, Venus left her position in the night sky as the evening star. On January 29th, she will return to view again, but this time as the morning star. Venus repeats this process every 18 months.
Right now, we are in the midst of the 40-day underworld journey of Venus. Ancient peoples linked the number 40 to transformation and change. In the Hebrew Bible, for instance, 40 was often used for time periods, 40 days or 40 years, which separated two distinct epochs.
We are now on an underworld journey with the Goddess and we are invited to rise with her into a new epoch upon Venus’ return to our skies as the morning star.
Intention
For our journey this week, let us explore the question of what values or priorities you are called to commit yourself to for the next 18 months.
Put differently, what commitments might you make that will help you to rise again and shine brighter in our world?
RSVP
Gaia Shamanism is offering free online journey circles in 2022 on Wednesdays from 4-6 pm PST.
This weekly circle is an opportunity to hone the practice of journeywork in a spiritual container of mutual support, real talk, and humor.
If you would like to join us this Wednesday, January 12, at 4 pm PST, email me at anna “at” gaiashamanism “dot” com. All skill levels are welcome.
I don’t expect things to get better in 2022, or in my lifetime.
In the past month, I stood in line for two-and-a-half hours for medication at our local pharmacy, twice filled our bathtubs so we can flush our toilets should we lose power from winter storms, and have suffered a spate of migraines in the aftermath of immunizations.
And I am among the most privileged of people in our world.
If a “better” year means an easier year, I’m afraid we can just kiss that goodbye.
But if a “better” year could instead mean rooting more deeply into the solid ground of the soul, then we might just be in luck.
To get through these times–and to enjoy them–we need to find ways to harness who we are, and what we love, to the service to others. Then, whatever might happen, we will be ready to move away from the default position of the frightened bystander into a spiritually potent and useful role that we have crafted for ourselves. Should we fail in our efforts to help, at least we can go down trying.
What is it that you have longed to learn, or do in the world, but haven’t found time for yet? Make a commitment to start this year so you might be of service to the world in ever more soulful and skillful ways.
This year will see me begin volunteering with hospice and learning to forage in the forest for the ingredients to make tea. Both are rooted in my intention to become of greater spiritual service and both lend me a sense of purpose and excitement about the coming year, regardless of the challenges coming our way.
Great years are made, not received whole from a mysterious source beyond ourselves. Great years, like 2022, are shaped into something beautiful and useful from the muck and mud of our lives.
I hope you will join me on this journey of service in 2022. May we fashion this year into something truly soulful and of use.
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Once again, in 2022, Gaia Shamanism will offer free online journey circles on Wednesdays from 4-6 pm PST.
This weekly circle is an opportunity to hone the practice of journeywork in a spiritual container of mutual support, real talk, and humor.
If you would like to join us, feel free to email me at anna@gaiashamanism.com. This week we will dedicate our journeys to the question of being of service.
And if you haven’t been to the circle for a while, but miss the heart-centered practice and camaraderie, start the year out right and join us this Wednesday, January 5, at 4 pm PST.
It is said that the veils between the worlds are thinnest at certain times of the year, for instance, during the solstice. I always thought this was just a bunch of superstitious hooey; that is until I began hosting this journey circle.
I have found that my journeys are stronger with the combined intention and presence of others. If you want to journey better, journey with those who are more practiced than you. Journeying with practiced others improves our practice–even from a distance.
But over the years I have found that journeys taken on equinoxes and solstices themselves offer a whole new level of clarity. Insight and vision truly are gained when we intentionally align ourselves with the rhythm of light.
So let us gather tomorrow, on the Solstice, with our questions, longings, heartbreaks, and gratitude. May we come to understand something new, find direction, experience healing, or feel more deeply connected to the living earth.
Let us ask, together, to receive what we most need on this, our blessed Solstice, that we might be better able to sew the seeds of Life in the coming year.
I hope you can join us for Gaia Shamanism’s last circle of 2021.
With all my love,
Anna
RSVP
If you would like to attend Gaia Shamanism’s free online Solstice journey circle this Tuesday, December 21, from 4-6 pm PST, email anna “at” gaiashamanism “dot” com.
As I sealed up our last surviving beehive this morning, after removing an empty quart jar of bee tea, I spoke a blessing through the open hole in the back of the hive that the bees might fare well through the coming cold months of winter.
It’s a precarious time of year for the honeybees–and for the human colony.
While I knew we were approaching the grim milestone of 800,000 dead to Covid in the US, I burst into tears this morning when I learned that we have lost one out of every 100 of our elders in this pandemic.
Y’all know I’ve been caring for my folks, both of whom are in their 80s, preparing and eating dinner with them each night. Now, I am adding another lovely woman in her 80s to my caretaking duties on Wednesdays before we go over and cook for my parents. This is why our weekly journey circle is moving from Wednesdays to Tuesdays.
With regard to these three elders, I am committed to helping them stay in their homes and to die a good death when that time comes. And, I am keenly aware that things may not go the way I hope either for my beloved honeybees or human elders.
But as I draw closer to these untamed places of heart and world, I am starting to catch glimpses of a luminous beauty that can only be known, it seems, from the sacred lands of an engaged and vulnerable love.
I hope you can join me for the journey circle to explore these lands.
Intention
Let’s journey together to the untamed places of heart and world, of engaged and vulnerable love, and share what we find there with one another.
RSVP
If you would like to attend Gaia Shamanism’s free online journey circle this Tuesday, December 14, from 4-6 pm PST, email anna “at” gaiashamanism “dot” com.
All skill levels are welcome. Hope you will join us this week!
It seems all I want to write about these days are the animals in my midst.
In preparation for our journey circle a couple of weeks ago, I went to pick apples for an offering to Gaia from one of our trees.
I had a particular recipient in mind for these beautiful sunset-colored apples. There is a white horse who lives next door, so close that I can pet his nose while standing in the chicken yard. He takes great interest in the snacks I bring to the chickens in the late afternoon.
I don’t remember this horse’s name, but he spends his days apart from the other horses. Horses are incredibly social animals, so the white neighbor horse has three goats to keep him company. He often chases and plays with his three bleating buddies.
My favorite thing about the white horse, though, is his habit of rolling on his back in the mud. Now that the rains have returned, this horse is a giant and beautiful mess.
Neighbor horse is equal parts majestic, playful, and muddy. And until recently, I have adored him from afar.
The apples I offered to Gaia were meant ultimately to go to the horse. He liked the offering of those apples so much that he licked my hands gently in gratitude.
Now, when I go out to feed a snack of Special K to my chickens (don’t judge, Dad just purged the cabinets of all expired cereals), I make a point of bringing three apples for our neighbor.
After the horse eats the apples out of my hand, I go collect the eggs. And the muddy white horse walks with me as far as he can go on his side of the fence. He waits for me there until I come back in his direction and then walks me back to my house as far as the fence will allow. He walks me home, as best he can, as any good friend would.
The animistic spiritual path is one we knew already as children. It isn’t a heady thing, though those words sound that way when they are all strung together. But the reality is simple.
To be devoted to the earth, to be in a relationship of growing intimacy and reciprocity with Gaia, is to learn how to be a good neighbor to the majestic and muddy ones in our midst.
Intention
How best to attend to the human or more-than-human neighbors in your midst?
RSVP
If you would like to attend Gaia Shamanism’s free online journey circle this Wednesday, December 8, from 4-6 pm PST, email anna “at” gaiashamanism “dot” com.
All skill levels are welcome. Hope you can join us this week!
