The evidence is all around us – Spring is, well, in the process of Springing, and everything is waking up. In one short week we will celebrate Beltane – May Day – the festival of fertility and growth and new beginnings.

What are you launching this Springtime? What lessons have you brought forward into new plans and hopes and dreams?

The power of our manifestation is related to the power of our preparation. We have generated new initiatives, aspirations, and intentions based on work we have done in the dark half of the year to review the past for lessons for the future. Hopefully, we have released what no longer served us, cleaned out our physical and metaphorical closets, and have energy and capacity for what’s to come.

A couple of weeks ago, I began to see that for a long time my path had become a process of reacting to what happens, using divination and manifestation of various kinds to explore and address these things, and then reflect on how well or poorly I had done so. I began to realize that many of the issues and dramas that used to recur in my life have abated. I take that as a good sign. At the moment, I don’t have to respond, react, and assess my responses and reactions based on my desire to walk my path with integrity.

I felt good about that, and then went inward to ask myself how things are going. And I found decisions yet to be made and less than ideal conditions, and that each of those things had a history. So even though the drama has abated for now, I continue to peel the layers of the Shadow, as do we all, and I engaged with a Shamanic practitioner for a soul retrieval for myself.

I will say that things are shifting. It was a powerful experience, one that continues to unfold in new ways of thinking, new ways of feeling, and choices being made. Because every choice we make sets a new wheel in motion.

We talk about the light and dark halves of year as times for action and reflection, and that is the Solar view, the medium picture – the big picture is our life time view, with occurrences like our 30-year Saturn returns, and other things related to the slower planets. But there is also the shorter story of the cycles of the Moon.

At the New Moon, governed by the Maiden Goddess of creativity and joy, we set new intentions for growth and manifestation. At the Full Moon, governed by the Mother Goddess, we send gratitude for what we have received and the fruits of our work. In the Waning Moon, governed by the Crone Goddess, we apply our psychic and intuitive abilities to clearing what must be released in preparation for the next cycle of growth.

And it occurred to me that the annual Solar cycle, predominantly about yang, projective outward-focused energy is about making things happen and putting things away when we’re done, sharpening our tools for the next round. The monthly Lunar cycle, predominantly about yin, is the inward-focused receptive, reflective energy that helps us consult our hearts and intuition for what is in our highest good.

In the learning cycle of Thought (divination), action (manifestation) and reflection (healing),  reflection is the phase of both year and month when we take stock of what we have learned to fuel our intentions for growth. And all of it, every inward and outer experience, is about the continued evolution of our immortal souls.

I want to thank my friend Justice Bartlett for completing my thoughts about this post by sharing her Luna Moth experience on Facebook – the Luna Moth was the Spirit messenger who joined me in my Soul Retrieval. Either everything is a coincidence, or nothing is a coincidence.  I choose the latter.

When you achieve your dreams, it’s not so much what you get, it’s who you have become in achieving them. – Henry david Thoreau

 
“So…my Spirit will come to you without shame.”

If we made the journey today, would we arrive at our meeting with the Holy Mystery without shame? Or are we still carrying it with us?

When someone compliment you on an achievement, a trait or characteristics they admire in you, or tells you how glad they are that you are in their life, where do your eyes go?

If you’re like me, your ego wants to pull them down, so you can hear the contrary script running under the surface of your thoughts, a script written by the experiences, beliefs, mistakes, and self-judgment that reside in our shadow that are the cause of our shame. Too painful to look at, too powerful to ignore.

Shame we need to drop to meet our Creator with straight eyes.

Because when we meet our Holy Mystery, we are going to hear the truth about ourselves.  We are going to be told that we are blessed beyond every measure, that we are loved beyond any need to atone.

Every life experience serves as a lesson for the growth of our souls and an opportunity to choose love – the voice of our Higher Selves -  or retreat to the fear of the ego.  We always have the choice to remember who we truly are – to embrace the messages from those who appreciate us, and from our Creator.

Your Higher Self is there to empower you and encourage you to move forward. Your ego’s job is to stop you from leaving your comfort zone. And it is merciless in the memories it will dredge up – the things you most regret doing or saying and the chances you most regret not taking.

Chief Yellow Lark’s prayer affected me deeply the first time I heard it. I felt the words “May I walk in beauty” explode in my heart, creating a longing for connection and a feeling of expansive love for creation. It made me listen to the wind as the voice of the Creator, to see each leaf and rock and creature as a messenger of Spirit, and it taught me that my only foe is my fear of embracing my shadow.  

It also made me think about who the real teachers are. Spirit is the teacher, all of creation and all of life is the classroom, and we have three instructors always available to us –

• Our higher selves who know our purpose in this life and can guide us to the best path to take;
• Our hearts, which are our Spiritual GPS – as Abraham continually remind us, if something feels wrong it is. If something feels right, consider it and consult the third teacher
• Our frontal lobe, our cognitive ability – our discernment. If something sounds too good to be true, or we feel the energetic exchange is unequal, it probably is.

And as A Course in Miracles tells us, a Miracle (a change in perception, aka learning) is performed by one who temporarily has more for one who temporarily has less. Our fourth teacher is each other.
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Many have written that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. All of these teachers – Spirit, our Higher Selves, our Hearts, our minds, and each other – stand ready. We just have to straighten our eyes so we can perceive and receive the love and support that is already surrounding us. Embrace the shadow, and look over its shoulder at the beauty that surrounds us.

So, it all falls apart. 

The plans, assumptions, expectations that drive us reach their conclusion before we do.

The imagery of the Tower card of the Major Arcana is a metaphor for the structure of our lives collapsing after being struck by a bolt of lightning. A complete cataclysm - the very end of the structure and fabric of the life expected and experienced by the man seen falling (jumping?) from the tower before being trapped in the rubble. All the institutions in which he believed, and perhaps the security of his relationships, and his physical and material well being simply gone.  The proverbial bottom.

In each of my radio interviews, I ask the guest to describe their path to the work and life that now engages them. Every one of them has their Tower card story, when it all fell down. Some refer to it as their "dark night of the soul." For some of us, things remain OK materially but life simply goes to shades of grey and we know that we're missing something important. Others experience a literal destruction of their way of life.

But the theme today is finding your way to a new kind or level of light. Not by "lightwashing" or "bypassing" the tough questions before  us, but by doing the hard work of understanding what put us there, and the beliefs and adaptations we made to destructive experiences that caused us to shrink, or lose a part of ourselves, in the process of moving forward. And those hidden obstacles cause us to approach similar or new experiences with fear unless we work through them fully. 

A Course in Miracles says that the opposite of love is fear, and they cannot exist simultaneously in any mind or heart. The love of our Creator is always around us and available to us at every moment, but we can’t feel it when we are being consumed by fear.

And yet even then, the memory of love tells us it is always there – if we can release the obstacles to perceiving it, knowing it, and feeling it. Which means, releasing our fear.

I have said before that all our experiences are lessons for the growth and evolution of our immortal souls. Some like to say we chose the things that happen to us which, when you look at the extremes of deprivation and pain that exist in some parts of the world and our communities, seems like an incredibly cruel way of blaming the victim. So let's think of it differently.

The way I see it, we didn’t ask for the specifics, but we know there are going to be challenges, lessons to learn. That's why we're here. And whatever comes our way we have a choice – to use it as a lesson for growth, or evade it. Whatever form of darkness descends on us, we have it within us to find our way back to the light. That journey is a sacred path. Because the growth and evolution of our souls is our sacred work, and we accomplish it through our experiences, our relationships, and how we contribute to the world.

At the very least, we can make the choice to maintain our hope - which is the next card in the Major Arcana, the Star. And we can maintain our willingness to love those around us. Some of the most extraordinary stories of redemption and compassion occur in some of the worst places and situations, told about people who maintained their capacity to love and continued to serve others around them in the worst of circumstances.

​​This week on Reclaiming Your Sacred Path, I will be talking with Aura Imbarus, an educator, professional speaker, and the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, a Pulitzer Prize entry and Amazon best-seller, Out of the Transylvania Night: A Story of Tyranny, Freedom, Love and Identity.
 
It is a story that begins in Aura’s Native Romania, on the day "Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown in a violent revolution and fled from the capital, Bucharest. Three days later, he and his wife Elena were executed by firing squad. It was the last of the popular uprisings against communist rule in eastern Europe that year "*The book is the story of Aura’s experience as a young woman coping with tumultuous life events and finding meaning and redemption in her life and experience.

And after talking with Aura, it is very clear that no one will ever be able to close her open heart.

Aura is the Publisher of See Beyond Magazine, An avant-garde motivational and spiritual magazine for teens, younger minds, and young-at-heart adults. created to provide inspiration and strategies that 

You will be able to call in on  866-451-1451 to talk with Aura.

Please use the link below to listen live at 6:00 PM Pacific/ 9:00 PM Eastern time on Tuesday, April 10 - Just click the "Listen" button at the top of the screen and we'll be ready to go.

http://boldbravemedia.com/shows/reclaiming-your-sacred-path/

Last week's show featuring Emily Pereira is available for download here:

https://www.spreaker.com/show/reclaiming-your-sacred-path

If you'd like to download any of the first 12 shows to listen later, Please use this link. All the past shows are up, and the March 20 show should be available in a few days. They are also available on Apple iTunes Podcasts.

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Empowerment - one of many overused words, along with transformation and engagement. Actually, they are all perfectly good words with real meaning and with one thing in common – they all come from within.

We can’t empower each other. And we can’t transform or engage each other. If someone says they are “empowering you” to do something, it means they are assigning you that responsibility and placing you under the umbrella of their authority to make it happen. You are the one generating the energy to make it happen. As Harvard’s John Kotter has said “leadership is getting people to want to do what you want them to do.” Someone can create the environment for empowerment, but we have to step up and bring our own fire.

If you attend a workshop on personal transformation, someone will do the design and facilitation but you will transform yourself by what you choose to allow – to open yourself to new ideas, and allow those ideas to change your perspective.  And if you’re standing in your power, you will decide what you allow.

And any group or organization can try to create an environment that will interest you and make you curious and involved, but to truly become engaged in that group, you must find it in alignment with your values, and commit to the point of being willing to offer discretionary effort toward its goals and your part in them

Many people get into Spiritual paths because they have personally experienced the consequences of having someone exert power over some aspect of their lives – or their whole lives, and they are looking for recovery.

Unfortunately, some of those spiritual paths have themselves been the agents of those experiences.

If someone tries to tell you their path is the one true path, the appropriate strategy is to run. Being an autonomous Spiritual being means we do not accept the word of anyone outside ourselves for what is right for us. That is empowerment.

Which is one reason I wrote Reclaiming Your Sacred Path, with the emphasis on the word your.

Being empowered happens on the inside. It is the power to – claiming the power and the right to define yourself, have your values reflected in the way you live, the people and things you choose to have surround you.

So how do we light our own fire?  First, we decide what is worth our effort and create a vision for our life path. Next,  we clean out the fire pit by doing our inner work - our shadow work - to release the grief, fear, guilt and shame that cause us not to believe in our own power. Then, by seeking the uplifting, hopeful, joyful, engaging fuel of  experiences and relationships that teach us how strong we really are and building a new fire.

And finally, by looking back on those experiences, and our entire lives, and counting our strengths and successes - the real ones - that show even us that we are worthy of our lives. And we simply refuse to accept anything that does not resonate with our highest good.