Category: Nature + Moon + Tea

My Year of Answered Prayers

New Moon greetings!

The world was magic this morning. Although the sky was clear and blue when I woke up, the trees still glistened with diamonds, residue from yesterday’s rain. I lay in my bed for a while, just watching the quiet garden through the window. A cool breeze flowed in, making the sheer curtains dance to its slow soothing rhythm. In a time of drought and El Nino, I had to take some long deep moments to just savour this scene. I don’t know when it will come again.

I’ve been in a space of reflection, allowing and dreaming for the last couple of weeks. A bout of illness that kept in bed during the days building up to the New Year made sure that I stuck to my intention of a slow and centred start to 2016. The dormant phase was necessary because in it’s wake I’ve felt myself rising hopeful, focused and ready to move forward, and especially now with the new lunar cycle.

I searched long and hard for the words that will guide me through 2016 and the energy I want to draw to myself. In the end, it was “Answered Prayers” that settled into my chest and tugged at my heart strings. Last year, my words were “Wild Mother”, words that stimulated a profound shift in my life and that drew me out of my comfort zone in so many ways. I’ve been in awe at how some of the desires I’ve held for so long have manifested in the last year (I’ll explore this more in another post). I feel I owe these blessings to the powerful creative feminine force of the Wild Mother energy. But it also brought with it an emptiness and an acute awareness of the one missing thing in my life – the child I wish to carry, birth and mother.   

So, a few weeks back I found myself at risk of falling into the trap of counting the unfulfilled dreams and desires in my life. Infertility has a way of taking you to those places. I know it all too well. It’s a road that only leads to depression and feelings of being forsaken. It’s a path I’m not willing to walk because it will only advance a swift descend down an already sinking spiral.

That said, as I evaluated the space I was in and contemplated what I want to feel this year, I knew I needed something that would steer me away from the potential danger of being stuck in a place of lack. When I stumbled upon the words “Answered Prayers” they seemed to fit snugly into my emptiness. I saw the words in three different places in a space of a few hours – a sign speaking directly to my heart.

There are three things that made them feel right for me. In order for prayers to be answered, I need to pray. I need to be in communion with Spirit, with Goddess. I like that these words keep me centred in relationship with sacredness and remind me to make space for divine intervention to work magic in my life too. Secondly, I have to ask myself: What am I’m praying for? This question calls me to be intentional, specific and to offer prayers from an authentic place. It requires me to focus on what I want to manifest, feel and experience, not what I don’t want. Meditating on answered prayers also draws my attention to my blessings and what I am grateful for. Gratitude is a deeply healing tool as I’m sure you already know. It’s a touchstone I really need at the centre of my life right now. Starting January off working through Rhonda Byrnes, The Magic, is helping me do precisely that, to be immersed in the vibration of gratitude.

So this is my Year of Answered Prayers.

Do you choose words of focus or mantras for the year? What are your words?  

answered prayers.jpg

What is your heart calling you towards?

Hello dear wild and gentle heart,

I hope that my words find you in a space of peace. I’d like to invite you into a moment of stillness and deep breathing.

Look at the ocean picture below and breathe in its wild healing.

Relax and be open to following the ocean’s wisdom. Does it have anything to teach you? Let your breath and heart synchronise to the rhythm of the waves…deep, slow and steady.

Listen to what it is telling you.

Which part of yourself to do see a reflection of when you watch the waves? What place inside of you does the immense ocean mirror?

What does that part of you need right now? And how can you draw the medicine of the sea into your body and soul?

ocean1.jpg

Spending the last few weeks of the year (2015) at the coast made me feel that I want to be like to ocean, because no matter how far it stretches out venturing over the shores, it always washes back and returns home to itself in the next breath.

Do you know what it feels like to come home to your own full heart over and over again? To be held in its grace?

I think we all do in some way. I want to feel the thrill of that reunion in a much bigger way, though. I want to rush back into my own arms and be fully immersed in my centre, my essence, in a more complete and accepting way than I’ve always struggled to. Don’t you?

Right now, the old tides of time have washed out to sea and are long gone. New waves are slowly washing in like soft laps upon a calm shore, a New Year full of hope and beauty. And of course this newness is stirring wild dreams within, awakening visions of what I hope the year ahead will bring. These dreams are still seeds, settling into the soil of my heart and slowly taking root. I’m allowing these stirrings to unfold at the pace that they need to, trying not to rush into giving voice to them. Slow beginnings are good. They make for authentic and solid foundations on which to build.

So tell me dear friend, what is your heart calling you to this year? May these wild dreams of yours be washed in love and light.

beachmandala1.jpg

Land and Sky: A Deep Listening Exercise

“Each landscape asks the same question, I am watching myself in you–are you watching yourself in me?” ~ Laurence Durrell

Sit quietly. Listen to the land, to the sky (in this picture or in a nature space where you are).

Breathe it in and listen.

clouds.jpg

What do you hear? When you reach into its essence and touch its sacredness, peace and stillness, what do you feel? What stories do you find in the midst of its light and shadows? Which parts of yourself do the land and sky mirror back to you? What do they have to teach you?

Listen. Look deeper. Sense beyond the surface.

The wild Earth is always whispering something, a story, a poem, a deep soul healing wisdom.

And if stories are what you are looking for, then it is worth checking out Sarah Elwell’s new storybook collection, The Coracle Sky. This wild sky writer’s stories are so intertwined with the energy of land, sea and sky. I’m enjoying what I’ve read so far and with The Coracle Sky loaded in my e-book reader as I prepare to journey to the coast this coming week, I know that my soul will be fed with magic and mystery.

May you always find ways to listen to the wise and healing wild whispers of the Earth.