This week of sacred first harvest, let me return to the most simple and vital wisdom I could ever give out on this site. The invitation to set aside the chatter of your head, put down any and all e-devices including tv, and get back to your home.

The constant whir of busyness, of personal and political tumult, of stress and sickness and crisis, is not consistent with the nature of true reality.

It is an indicator of the collective soul sickness of humanity.

Your part in the collective impacts not just you, but the collective.  You are made and remade by it, much as you make and remake it.

Your true natural state is one of safety, love, vulnerability, joy, healing, grace and connectivity.

Get back outside where the unfettered rhythm of life is untouched by satellite or cell tower interference.

Let the grandness, the power of the earth and the sun and the moon in the consistency of their infinite dance do what it does.  What its bigness is meant to do.

This is the root of real magic.

This is the rising of the ocean’s tide, highest at the gravitational peak of full or new moon.  This is the rising of sap in the tree, result of the tension of the elements of the seasons. This is busting seed into both deep down root and breaking ground bud.  This is the power of fruit and flower into full bloom.

This too is the source: the reliable recycling of life energy eating itself to birth newness again, again, and again.

Be still, and know this.  Patience.  Change comes.

This practice is available at any time for any living being to access.  There are no secrets, only breaking down or putting down the defenses built up against the patterned chaos of Wild.

It requires you only to re-connect to it.  Never underestimate the body’s ability to, in my friend Sepideh’s words, recalibrate, once we’ve gotten our body back onto the earth and away from all the distracting artifice.

My own mental and soul health cannot be separated.  Recently, after the loss of my long time wise woman elder, I found myself experiencing professional and personal burn out.  I knew that now more than ever it was necessary I heed my own “wisdom”–a word that I use always to mean that which translates from one’s own, personal experiences.   10 years ago I made the commitment to my self that I would travel the road, wherever it took me, to be able ultimately to work for myself, according to my own wisdom, soul, passions, and medicine.  That I would blaze my own trail, whatever that took.

I arrived here, back to me, my own hand-built life and dream, over this past year.  Who could know that the spiritual mentor, my wise woman Gretchen, whose guidance so surely and regularly led me back to my own while on that path, would depart the earth at the same time as my own arrival into this level of self-autonomy.  I had to reach down deeply and trust my own life.

I examined the calendar and chose a week to take off completely.  To turn off e-devices and get away from all distractions entirely, to disconnect from the go go go pace of the do do do material world.  I chose the time of the month of nature’s elemental reset, the dark moon’s balsamic wane, before the moon remerges as new each month, that I’d make my return.  I chose the time of the year when the growing season of summer leans into its own great pause, a great expanse of release and rest, from which the quickening of energy will then surge of itself into first Harvest.

My dark to new moon tide staycation, the dark tide that would birth us into this moon cycle right now, Thursday’s full moon: First Harvest for those in the Northern hemisphere.

My dark moon staycation took what I knew it would, days to simply allow for the stress of my MindBody, my somatic muscle memory juiced and running on amped up nervous system, to dissipate.  Then time and more time: it took more days, of moment to moment existing, fire building, cooking fish in the coals, swimming for hours, tent pitching, surfing for hours, laying on the earth in hot drenched sand or beneath trees drowsy with a book over my chest.  No agenda, no drive.  Just right now with mama nature’s healing rest.

It’s a lot of years I’ve walked this path, and returning to me by returning to her has never led me wrong or let me down.  It is always a reset to the imprint of my rhythm, and it is always stunning to me the unexpected doses of harmony and serendipity that occur whenever I do.

It is always a practical miracle how much more I am resourced from within when allow for that reconnection.

Whether or not you nerd out on tracking your own life by the tides of the moon and the seasons of the year as I do, on the real, actual alchemy of it–this medicine can return any of us back to the great majesty of truth in Life:

We are all connected in this sacred web.  We create, much as we are created.

The magic of the female body is the rhythmic reliability of this very understanding.  The fertility of the full moon is reflected in the peak hormonal time for menstruating women during ovulation each month.  At ovulation the psyche is inspired and sparkly. The decline and reflection of the waning moon is aligned with the interior, hormonal alchemy of reflection and release. If we learn to take the time to treat our bodies with reverence, rest and quietude during this time, conscious transformation happens on the psychological, spiritual and physical levels when the period comes.

Learn how to deprogram from the artifice of the material world’s rhythm. The world  devalues the feminine orientation of process and change, intuition and emotion. So you must choose to value it in order to find your own rhythm, and to further explore how and in what special, unique ways your own rhythm aligns with nature.  This is a gift that will certainly come as result.

To me, it is the gift. The great grace of living. Magic.

Lunar Lammas, celebrated traditionally Aug 2 as Lammas, is reflected the world around in agricultural and indigenous societies that follow the cycles of growth and decline in nature.   It is celebrated as a women’s or lunar mystery when the moon grows full while in the sun sign Leo, which this year is this Thursday night, peaking on Friday afternoon.

It comes to us as an imprint of when the late daylight and ample moonlight allowed for the stocking up on the harvest of this season’s fruit, vegetables, and animals.

It is, as all sabbat(h)s or holy days on the earth path, when we too can consciously deepen into a meaningful flow of our own day to day living by being reflective about what we have made of or with our own life.

The energy of a full moon lasts about three days.  It holds us still.  My sister Chantal, who leads our moon circles, reminded us this week that this week’s full moon is accompanied by a lunar eclipse.

Mama moon, some say, dictates our inner life and systems, what’s under the surface.  Eclipse is when her light is blocked by the earth, which some might say dictates growth in the material, concrete world.  So count on something deep in the interior life transformed by your own willingness to release or make changes in specific details of your outer life.

Llewellyn’s moon sign datebook, that tells when to plant, fish, and harvest by the moon tides–given by my soul sis Beth–suggests that we lay low this weekend as this eclipse may generate anger: “fury and wrath.”

In my experience, disembodied rage is an entry point to calling the self or soul back to the self, back to the body.   The world devalues the individual’s right to his or her own body’s experience.  It devalues the emotional truth of this, too. So when overpowering anger happens, this is often the start of a healing experience that can allow for deep-seated core beliefs (what I frequently call shame stories) to bubble to the surface. Be mindful, for both the deep masculine and the deep feminine lay beneath disembodied rage. Fury lingers as a defense to the wound of the body being not allowed to trust itself. Rage is an indicator and fuel for true inner transformation.

What a powerful tide this could be, if the eclipse helps us alchemize the hurts and faulty beliefs underneath our anger!?

The tide of energy is on the side of creation this week!  It is on the side, by the weekend, of active release.

Remember, when we release something it is often helpful to be mindful of what we wish to grow in its place.  You get to choose that, if you’re willing to keep returning back to the process of helping it grow!

So most important, what is your flow?  How are you feeling?  What do you really need?

Ask.  Listen.  You are more powerful than the world would ever, ever have you believe.

Be mindful of the anger at the gate to your truth.

Experience you, learn from your own medicine, your own life experience: your unique Wisdom.

Who we are is what and how we do.  Embrace your harvest, friends.

Get outside and celebrate, because you’re here, and you can.

Lammas blessings!!!  Begin, again~

~

image, Antonio Rubino, 1907