insight

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Gift Received…

My thanks to Leslie for the letter below, which she sent out today.  Sometimes reading Our Friends words through other people’s eyes gives me new appreciation.  So it was today.

My life has been rather busy recently, and I have not had time to get a new post completed.  I hope to do so very soon.  Inspiration rises with the return of the sun in our parts.  I hope spring is blessing you.  Stephanie

 

 

Praying for the water of our water planet, of our bodies, of our Life...water responds to our prayers...we can offer our gratitude, our apology, our desire for forgiveness...in so doing we join and all life on Earth flows together...

 

Since I got the green light from Immigration, I have been listening to some of the many recorded sessions I have had with Stephanie Nead and Our Friends during the last 12 years or so.  I don’t know what I would have done without their insights, explanations and loving support to make extremely huge changes in my life during those years, realigning my outer world to better match the essence of who I truly am.  
I went online to see what they have to say about the current global situation and found two web pages of particular interest.  I’ve included the two quotes from one page here – and highly recommend that you check out the other webpage and Stephanie’s whole website online: https://innerteacher.wordpress.com/humans-gaia-en-earthed-2/.
Blessings to each one of you!  It is indeed a blessing to me, to have you be part of my world!
Leslie
 
Quote of the Day 
In honor of the Summer solstice, I am posting two quotes of Our Friends.  They both feel essential to this 
day.      -Stephanie

Disconnection from the Earth leads to disconnection from your own bodies and one another. 
Whether you are disconnecting or connecting, it is always reinforcing. Connect more deeply, consciously and consistently with yourself, with one another, with animals, with the stars, with the energies of Creation, and you reinforce connection.  Disconnect from yourself, and you cannot help but disconnect from all others.  You must be connected, with compassion, acceptance, love and peace with yourself. 
For most humans, it is most difficult to connect within themselves in a loving, accepting, respectful way, and then to connect with other human beings in a loving, respectful, accepting way.  It is the most challenging work for human beings right now.                               Our Friends
 
Blessing and Gratitude 
It is a great gift to Creation, to the Spirit of Life, that you feel richly blessed.  It is a huge blessing to Creation when you take in, richly and deeply, all the blessings of your life, knead them like bread dough within you, so they nourish your very being.  Such deep receiving sends out, like rainbows, loving 
blessings to Creation.  Your gratitude nourishes the energies of Life. Gratitude is life force.  To feel appreciation of your blessings is to bless.  And the blessing is a real thing, with living energy.   Our Friends 

Greetings Everyone!

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Blessings as Winter spins into Spring…unfolding new life…

May Gaea Be Our Guide...

“I bend my knee beside the pool of blessings at the threshold of eternity.”        (traditional Hebrew prayer: translation by Rabbi Sue Morningstar*)

“The ultimate spiritual teacher is moment-to-moment daily living.  The ultimate challenge of spiritual unfolding, of Becoming, is to bring through whatever is in the moment, the heart of your highest self, your Being, your Essence.”  Our Friends

Hello My Friends,

I am thinking of you as the year turns and the inwardness of winter begins to shift to the rebirth of spring.  I hope, wherever you live, and however your life is unfolding today, you feel within the newest shoots of life’s endless rebirth.  I hope everything in your life is well and good. 

The past year was amazing for me…starting with the building of my blogs: for Our Friends sharing www.innerteacher.wordpress.com.  My artwork can be found at www.stephanieknead.wordpress.com. 

A summer article about my communion and sharing of Our Friends (http://www.roseyroundtherogue.com/column8-16-10.html) was wonderful and introduced me to a new group of truly lovely human beings. 

I was blessed with an ongoing presence at Ashland Art Works Galleries, an artist collective here in my hometown.  (If you ever visit southern Oregon, please drop me an email or call.  I’d love to meet you, and I’m always available for in-person, as well as phone, sessions.  Meeting Our Friends in person is filled with love.)  I spent the late fall happily ensconced in my art studio creating new work for a show starting February 1st at Illahe Gallery here in Ashland.  (the photos will be on my art site as of February 1st.)

My poetry has been flowing.  As you will see, each new piece for this show is accompanied by a poem. 

So, the grace of the past year has been the infusion of my creativity, including Our Friends, more fully, day-by-day, into my life.  A greater gift is hard to imagine.  It is the inflow and epitome of abundance for me.  They say “Do what you love and the money will follow.”  Well, then, I should soon be very wealthy! 

May you be blessed with all you need this year.  May you recognize both the need and the receiving.  May you hear with your heart and body, letting go the stories of your mind and history.  May love light your way and may you feel yourself blessed every day.  May life always be received as a gift, a mystery, an honor.

Love,                                                                                                                                       Stephanie

*This translation is based on the multiple meanings inherent in every Hebrew word.  For those of you with a Jewish background the transliterated prayer is “Baruch Atah Adonai, elohaynu melech haolam.” 

Baruch means “blessed” or “knee.”  Atah means “One” or “pool.”  Olam means “threshold” or “eternity.”

 

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Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse &…

Moon Shadow and Sun reflection...deep blessings of Creations energy...

There is much talk about 2012, and much talk about this solstice, with its conjoining lunar eclipse.

I think being blessed with an imagination is, at times, a problem. Or perhaps it is simply our huge human ego, which, despite all evidence to the contrary, still wants our human existence in the Cosmos and in God to be the purpose, center & meaning to both.

So many huge spiritual and astrological dates have come and gone, and lo, little has changed. I’m not saying the energetic events are not huge; I am saying that humans are not the focus or purpose of them.

Creation and God have much more profound, powerful, & extensive foci and purposes than we will ever know while here. What ripples to us of these events and gifts are the tiniest ripples, long dissipated by the much larger waters within which we live and have our being as humans. When it hits us like a black hole, we’ll only know that…we still won’t grok the enormity and meaning of it to Creation and God.

We need to engage, to work with the flow of Creation’s evolution…and for this reason alone. To do this we must disengage our egos; this will also disengage our fear, whose existence only inhibits our ability to commune, connect and be of service — in our small way — to Creation and God.

 It’s not about us. We are sunbeams of the sun.

Perhaps we might start by writing our own autobiography from this moment forward, each of us living the best of ourselves — the highest self we know is within us — in action in the world. Write how we have manifested this in our life as though looking back from 20 or 30 years hence.

Like writing the lists we might use to vision and manifest a new home, we can reach forward and connect with our best life by putting it on paper and then moving toward it with action.

It’s not just what we think and feel, it’s how we act in the world that matters. How do I contribute to the best that I dream?  What are my gifts to bring?  How do my joys apply? 

As the earth shifts, physically and energetically, as the moon illuminates this transition from darkness into light with great clarity, may we take time to breathe it in, to witness it, to sing with the moon, the dark and the light.  May we use this night to turn our energies toward living, in action, the best life we possess inside, the life that yearns to come forth, unique to each soul, into this waiting Gaean Earth. 

 May your darkness nurture you, may your light bless you.  May both, equally, awaken you.  Stephanie

Please pass this site on to others.    https://innerteacher.wordpress.com/introduction-nice-to-see-you-here/

To schedule a personal session with Our Friends, in person or by phone, call Stephanie at 541-292-9390. For more information on sessions, click  https://innerteacher.wordpress.com/contact-and-session-information/

 If you would like to keep up with posts to this Inner Teacher site, please sign up for an email subscription. 

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“The Pivot of Free Will” Gaia En-Earthed Part VI

 

Earth, Sky & Water...the elements of Gaia that create one another, sustaining and expressing Her, endlessly...

(I am deliberately posting this thread in small pieces, because there is much to absorb.  Each piece offers something essential to ponder.  I hope you are finding it nourishing.)  Stephanie

Free will is The pivot upon which turns the creation called human. 

You have long seen this pivot as a personal human failing.  It is not. 

It has indeed astonished the One what you have chosen to do, as a body of humanity, with this choice.  Yet the greatest mistake lies in, and the greatest pain grows out of, the story you have told yourselves — for eons — that this “fall” is your fault and that somehow you are unutterably and irredeemably flawed for having made this choice. 

This story, this belief, has lead to a human-made separation from Self, from Essence, from communion.  Believing yourselves guilty, you have disowned your own soveriengty, your very Being in and with Creation.  Self-judgment has cut you off from that communion that is yours always.  And so you have “fallen” into such fear that you have treated youselves as you believed you deserved, creating enormous pain because of a false belief.  It was never so. 

To read Gaia En-Earthed from the beginning, click https://innerteacher.wordpress.com/humans-gaia-en-earthed-2/

Please pass this site on to others.    https://innerteacher.wordpress.com/introduction-nice-to-see-you-here/

To schedule a personal session with Our Friends, in person or by phone, call Stephanie at 541-292-9390. For more information on sessions, click  https://innerteacher.wordpress.com/contact-and-session-information/

 If you would like to keep up with posts to this Inner Teacher site, please sign up for an email subscription. 

To Gift this work, click here…and many Thanks!   https://innerteacher.wordpress.com/donations-gifts/

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Humans: Gaia En-earthed Part Two

 
 

Gaia's majesty in rock and sky...

 

(This is the second installment of a piece regarding humans’ place in, with, on this Earth, as creatures and creations of Gaia.  I will post a short section each day or two for the next couple of weeks.  To read the piece from the beginning, click https://innerteacher.wordpress.com/humans-gaia-en-earthed-2/

This creation, this earth, these bodies…this is not meant to be a limitation.  It is a gift, an experiment, an expression of Creation. 

The Creator and the Creation are One. 

Whatever name you give to the ultimate impulse, which is the very heartbeat and breath of the One, the impulse is movement…there is nothing but movement.  And in this movement, there is always extension of the Being of the One, and in this there is creativity. 

The One is not static, not finished, not done.  Always complete but never completed, the One is a constantly breathing tide of movement into expression, always exploring the limitless possibilities of experience.  This world, this physical universe…and all that is of it, and in it, including all that is non-physical (which is the greater portion) is part of this exploration of the One. 

The One, the Creator, is the ultimate artist. 

Call now to schedule a personal session with Our Friends in person or by phone. (541-292-9390)  Introductory sessions are half price: $50.  Refer a friend and get another session for the introductory price.  Order a gift certificate for the Holidays and get a session for yourself at half price.  For more information on sessions, click  https://innerteacher.wordpress.com/contact-and-session-information/

 If you would like to keep up with posts to this Inner Teacher site, please sign up for an email subscription.  The only thing that will come to your email will be each new post when it is published.  I do my best to contribute a new post three to four times a week. 

Also check back on the “Recent Additions to This Site” menu tab, as not all additions go out as new posts. 

Please pass this site on to others.    https://innerteacher.wordpress.com/introduction-nice-to-see-you-here/

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Humans: Gaia En-earthed

Blessings for a day filled with loving laughter in gratitude.  May you recognize fully all the richness of your life.

(This post begins a long piece regarding humans’ place in, with, on this Earth, as creatures and creations of Gaia.  I will post a short section each day for the next couple of weeks.  I will create a new page that I will append to each new post, so those who wish may read through the entire sharing as it unfolds.)

Human beings tend to think of themselves as walking upon the earth but not being of the earth.  There is not the recognition that your bodies are made up of water and dirt, that every element and chemical that builds your bodies is of this earth.  And so, like the bees, the grasses, the ox — and the water that is so much a part of you — you are of this earth.  You are part of a much larger organism and a much larger consciousness than your individual “I-ness.” 

In that loss of awareness, or separation, is a tremendous dislocation and disconnection that creates a fear of death, a fear of complete annihilation, because it loses the recognition that you are part of a much greater Oneness.  And then comes the need to try to change that and control it, which truly is beyond your ability to do.    Our Friends

If you would like to keep up with posts to this Inner Teacher site, please sign up for an email subscription.  The only thing that will come to your email will be each new post when it is published.  I do my best to contribute a new post three to four times a week. 

Also check back on the “Recent Additions to This Site” menu tab, as not all additions go out as new posts. 

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Marvel of creation between earth, sky & water...all in the making of Gaia...all held under her dome...

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Through Your Eyes…

Creation experiences seeing through me, a creation, as Creation unfolds before Itself a sunset harmony that nourishes the essence in me, in Creation. There is only Creation...when I breathe, I integrate my embodied place...a point on the web through which all energy can flow... Stephanie K. Nead

“The whole of Creation looks through your eyes and works through your world.  There are worlds upon worlds within your world.”    Our Friends

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Peaceful Being…in Acceptance

 
Please freely repost this link. 
 

"Peaceful Being" Photo by Stephanie K. Nead

Acceptance of  Self & Others

Our Friends

As you relate to others on their path, from your place on your path, whatever may be happening, simply recognize that you may see things differently.  Be in acceptance of the other…and yourself.
 
Accepting yourself with gentleness, with loving kindness, with compassion comes first.

Until you accept yourself, it is impossible to really accept anyone else.   

When self-acceptance exists, there can be a great container of Being that creates “space” for allowance and acceptance of others. 

When acceptance of self is small, very often kindness, lovingness and giving to others are actually offered in order to get: to be accepted, to be thought well of, to be approved of, to be loved.  What is given comes out of a sense of fear, lack and pain, rather than growing from a place of spacious Being — like fresh air across a spring field, a place of acceptance, a place where life is good even when it’s not perfect.

In this breathing space within oneself, there is room for the Being of another to be free, to own herself.  There grows appreciation for the uniqueness of another for all he brings that is a revelation.  There grows excitement in the new and acceptance of the difficult, because the Self lives in a space of Being that is free, inclusive of goodness and flaw without judgment or threat.  It is a quiet place of love out of which grows a smooth energy, like silk, that can be felt by others.  It is rare; it is necessary; it is profound and powerful.  And you each deserve it…from within.

If you would like to keep up with posts to this Inner Teacher site, please sign up for an email subscription.  The only thing that will come to your email will be each new post when it is published.  I do my best to contribute a new post three to four times a week. 

Also check back on the “Recent Additions to This Site” menu tab, as not all additions go out as new posts. 

Please pass this site on to others.    https://innerteacher.wordpress.com/introduction-nice-to-see-you-here/

To Gift this work, click here…and many Thanks!   https://innerteacher.wordpress.com/donations-gifts/

 

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Musings on trust in Creation

We have just returned from almost 2 weeks on Maui.  This was a mostly gifted trip, the result of problems coming up with a house we are moving into. 

My homes have always waited for me.  I trust that.  I write down what I am looking for.  I imagine it; I see myself living in the space and loving it.  I feel it.  Yet I know what I find will not be exactly what I imagine.  My imagination informs Creation what I want.  Creation also knows what I need…not only in terms of the home but in terms of the process.

My sweetheart and I are moving in together.  While this is good, it has engendered some anxiety, conern, and stress.  Our process of finding our home, and the process the house itself had to go through to be ready for us, has perfectly reflected our needs and our vision for our relationship. 

The whole thing started when my landlady told me she might want to rent my apartment to a friend.  “OK,” I said.  So my sweetie and I started talking.  We decided it felt good, the idea of living together, even though we had anticipated another year before we would do this.  We decided to sit with it, feel it, see how it evolved.  We had some time. 

Three nights later we were at dinner with new friends.  Admiring their house, we were told, “It’s a rental.  We think we found a place to buy.”  We jumped at it.  And we were 98% sure we had it after we met the landlord.  A week later, a call told us his best friend’s marriage was ending and he wanted the house.  Gone. 

Wow!  Regroup.  Keep looking.  Two weeks, three weeks, we found a place my sweetie thought perfect.  It didn’t feel right to me.  The layout and location were great, but the house itself felt bad to me…like bad ju-ju in there.  I just could not accept it.  Everything in me said “No!” even as my brain told me all that was good about it.  We passed on it.  Blessings on my sweetheart that he accepted my “no” with grace, that he trusted my gut feelings without needing to feel the same himself.

A few days later, we learned that the ad we had responded to, leading us to the house with bad ju-ju, was actually for another house…just four doors from the first.  We ran to see.  It was perfect.  It felt good, was even better in several key areas.  It had a funky smell, which the landlord assured us would be gone once the carpets were shampooed.  We signed. 

Carpets cleaned.  Smell worse…much worse.  We aired the house for two weeks.  We had time before move in.  No help.  Landlord, gone home to California by then, agreed without hesitation to have the carpets redone.  Carpet guy brings black light.  OMG!!!  Cat pee everywhere…down the walls, all over the carpets, down the vents.  He tries his best.  Four days after, bad small as bad as ever.  Carpet guy comes back and declares carpets are toast.  Landlord, my Heaven bless him, doesn’t hesitate.  He agrees to replace all of them and have the vents overhauled.

But we couldn’t move in.  Well into our paid tenancy, with notice given at our old places, we had no where to go.  Our landlord says “I have a condo on Maui that’s empty, get yourselves there and it’s yours; we’ll trade straight across for rent days I owe you.” 

Now, I turned 50 on September 7th.  When I turned 40, I did a piano concert for my friends and family.  I wanted to do something equally specially — but with less work  —  in a beautiful place.  The past few months have been so full, I had not been able to create a plan and a place.  So I had let go of that idea. 

Creation, the Universe, G-d, G-ddess, Life…had not let go of my clear vision…

I spent my 50th birthday on Maui with my beloved and one of my best friends (who flew over from the Big Island.)  I swam in Maui’s sacred pools; I swam in the ocean: I snorkled with magnificent fish and coral; I watched local families play, truly play, in the water; I saw traditional hula performed; I watched and envied surfers (next time!)  We rested, read books on the beach, slept to the crash of the waves and the songs of the winds.  It was truly paradise.

I came home, with my beloved, to a beautiful house…and to a wonderful new person awaiting a session with Our Friends.  A blessing to be sharing them again, as they nourish and beautify my life and soul.

So here’s my musing.  I believe in Creation, and while I have never had a lot of money, I have always been provided for and blessed.  I believe in trusting that whatever is happening, there is some kind of blessing in it.  I went through this house and home search with that belief.   (I’ve actually left a lot out…it was a very interesting process!)  In the end, this great good gift dropped in my lap.

I have learned trust does not mean I should be passive or not choose clearly for myself.  I have to vision what I want and then work toward it in action.  I also have to surrender to the process and know that Creation knows better than I what I really need for the growth I have most deeply requested, for the evolution of my soul.   It is still up to me to say “no” and say “yes” and to act.  But by going on faith in the midst of all that, I am often blessed in unexpected and wonderful ways.

We came home to a house that has been made as new as possible for us, a place the old shmutz has been cleansed, just as we are working in our relationship to clean up our old shmutz and make this relationship new, bring our best and growing selves to it to create the relationship we have each dreamed, visioned and felt.  We keep holding the feeling and the vision, and we keep working through what comes up to be cleansed.  In the process, we are creating a  home for ourselves with each other that is like-new, and feels — as this house now does — like a blessing and a gift.  We feel at home here…and we feel more at home with each other living together. 

Such a gift!  Such a blessing!    Aloha & Mahalo,  Stephanie

The ocean from within a lava tube...north shore of Maui...created when trapped gas within molten lava escapes as the lava cools...very cool!

If you would like to keep up with posts to this site, please sign up for an email subscription.  The only thing that will come to your email will be each new post when it is published.  I do my best to contribute a new post three to four times a week. 

Also check back on the “Recent Additions to This Site” menu tab, as not all additions go out as new posts. 

Please pass this site on to others.    https://innerteacher.wordpress.com/introduction-nice-to-see-you-here/

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What is Channeling?

Channeling is a much used, and perhaps misused, word these days. 

I have felt a good deal of discomfort with the term even though I am a channel.  Much of my discomfort arises from the lack of clarity as to what channeling is and isn’t.

Channeling, as I understand it from Our Friends and from my own experience, is an inherent gift that can be developed — just as an artist’s talent must be both inherent and developed, as a mathmetician’s ability must be inherent and developed, as an engineer, as a Doctor, as any gift must be invested in, cared for, nurtured. 

Just as not everyone is an artist or a mathmetician, not everyone is a channel.  We all have some degree of almost any skill if we set ourselves to build it.  But is it our natural, inherent gift? 

Channeling is the gift of being able to surrender to an energy that is not embodied, an energy for positive good, so the energy may speak and work through the channel to help others.  I believe that any energy coming through the channel comes always to work with and help the channel as well, perhaps first and foremost.

Channeling is often confused with mediumship, which is the ability to hear and interpret those who have died.   There are people who have a type of mediumship ability that relates to “hearing” and being able to interpret animals as well.

Channeling is frequently confused with the experience of being deeply present with oneself, another, or a situation to such an extent that you are able to hear and act upon your intuition and instincts easily.  This is an ability we all possess as children but have often had “taught” out of us.  Relearning it feels almost a miracle, like touching some miraculous wisdom, yet it is our birthright.

There is a confused belief that a channeled energy should know “everything.”  There are many reasons why this is not so.  Two reasons that I am very familiar with from sharing Our Friends in sessions are 1) that much in life is not set in stone, all is not planned, and so prophesy is not possible; 2)  to prophesy is to take away another’s power for action and choice, which denies that person’s soveriegnty as a human being.  

As Our Friends often say, our lives are a journey much like a river’s.  We are meant to meander.  To tell someone where they are going is to point them in a straight line.  Head out on that line and life will have to change the goal, because we are meant to take the journey of our lives, not head straight for the finish.  Besides, there is no finish…just a scene change, so to speak.

…that’s all for now…

Love, Stephanie

Glacier's Majesty...the work of millenia of lakes and rivers and glacial flows...water over rock, the most effective transformative agent on Earth. It's amazing!!! And a lesson in quiet, soft, consistent Being as a means to all "acheivement."

If you would like to keep up with posts to this site, please sign up for an email subscription.  The only thing that will come to your email will be each new post when it is published.  I do my best to contribute a new post three to four times a week. 

Also check back on the “Recent Additions to This Site” menu tab, as not all additions go out as new posts. 

Please pass this site on to others.    https://innerteacher.wordpress.com/introduction-nice-to-see-you-here/

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