I found this quote again today, and it describes perfectly how I feel about moving into writing two books related to Our Friends. One a book of quotes and art, with some quotes accompanied by two to four paragraphs of deeper discussion on the theme in the quote. The second, at least the beginning of my story with Our Friends in my life.
This turning toward what you deeply love saves you. Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks
Photo by Stephanie K. Nead
By Stephanie K. Nead
As we move through solstice and into the lengthening light.
In the fall, seeds drop, burrowing into the Earth’s embracing soil, to nestle, be watered by early winter rains, to rot and thus open. As the dark of our northern hemisphere approaches, when all is most fallow, beneath the surface something akin to a miracle is occurring. In the deep dark cold soil, new life is rising. Out of the cracked skin of rotted seed, from within the nourishment at its core — built up, stored light of summer’s sun — new life presses forth and now pushes toward that light which is returning to our skies as the days lengthen. This is such a potent time!
What seed did you drop this fall? What seed needed to rot in cold, wet soil of winter; what needed to compost into new life? And what is being born? What new growth are you feeling under your skin, in your Holy heartbeat, beneath the soil of your life? Can you feel it? Can you speak of it at all? Perhaps not. Let us hold this rebirthing for one another over the next week and a half, during this most powerful time. Let us listen and vision deep within ourselves during this dark time; what is waiting and wanting our attention in order to be born? Listen for its guidance: how and what is the deepest you asking in support of this birthing?
Let us remember that on the other side of our Earth, in the southern hemisphere, we are balanced in our rebirthing by those who are celebrating the fulness and abundance of summer, when all they seeded half a year past is now pouring forth new and vibrant life.
Blessings to you on Solstice, as the Earth is reborn. Blessings on Christmas as so many celebrate a rebirth through a story that speaks to their imagination and soul. Blessings that your soul is always nourishes and held with love…
Stephanie
Our next Our Friends Circle Call will be Sunday, January 5th 2014.
Anyone is welcome on this call. Please feel free to forward this email to others.
The call will run approximately an hour and a half and will start promptly at 4:00. After a short introduction, Our Friends will share a short talk, then the call will open to questions & answers. I will record the call. If you would like a copy of the recording, send me an email after the call at sknp4710@aol.com.
A suggested donation for the call is $25-$50. I am happy to receive PayPal. You can log in using my sknp4710@aol.com email. Or, my snail mail is Stephanie Nead, POB 923, Talent, OR 97540.
The call-in number for Our Friends’ Circle is 218-632-0244. The access code is 363636#.
Call for a private Our Friends’ Circle for you and friends (generally $20/person for a 90 minute call-session with a $100 minimum,) as well as individual and couple sessions (generally $125/$175 for a 60-75 minute call-session.) Please contact me to make arrangements. Email or phone is welcome. 541-292-9390.
We are lit by a light we may struggle to see, yet in the dark we see what cannot otherwise be seen. Walk with eyes closed and inner feeling alive!
This Sunday, December 15th at 4:00 p.m. will be our next Circle call with Our Friends. Please see the end of this post for details.
Entering the Dark of the Year
First bring yourself, with whatever tension you have, to this very moment. Breathe it, feel it, accept it, have loving kindness and compassion for yourself in your nervousness, in your tension, in your holding. Simply love yourself and breathe: naturally, fully, and deeply. Feel what is there, ask if it can let go a little. Let yourself be with you in integrity, in honesty, in love, in kindness and gentle accepting presence. Hold yourself. This is the path of learning, Being and doing. It is for you to hold.
Next, leave off the small things, the petty things, leave off your past, leave off your friends, go to the core and stay only with the core that is you with you.
These are the important things: releasing the past, the familial linkages, the lineages, the bindings, the agreements. You let go.
You can only do this work for yourself. You cannot do it for others. Only they can find this place of release for themselves. They are much more likely to seek it and find it when they see, feel, and experience it in you. So, your letting go is wholly healing.
Now, open your gates. Open your inner sanctum of self. You are asking to step forward into the fullness of your own soul embodied. You are asking to be en-souled, in voice, in thought, in feeling, in body. You are asking, in this life, to be fully present in your highest essence, in this body, in each moment. You are asking to walk in this life fully awakened, aware, in each step finding and creating the true path of your unique essence. You both offer yourself and invite your Self.
Prepared now, you call upon G-d, G-oddess, life force, essence, Being. You call upon what is the IS; you call upon your G-d, ultimate essence. You invite, you ask, you call with your whole open heart for the Light of G-d to reside with you, in you, through you, to teach you, to guide you, to protect you, to hold you, to nourish you, to nurture you, to provide for you, to clear the path before you and make your steps strong and firms, to guide your thoughts, your feelings, your voice. You invite all of this into your body, into your heart, into your life, and you surrender yourself to that Divine flow that all will become true and strong. You ask G-d into your life fully, completely, embodied in every cell, thought, feeling, moment, and breath.
You hold loving space for yourself.
This Sunday, November 10, 2013 at 4:00p.m PST will be Circle with Our Friends. Anyone is welcome on this call. Please feel free to forward this email to others, whether or not they already know Our Friends.
The call will run approximately an hour and a half and will start promptly at 4:00. You can come on the call as early as you wish. The line will be available. I will check in to see who is new to Our Friends, do a short introduction of myself and Our Friends then bring Our Friends in for the bulk of the call. They will offer a short talk and then the call will open to questions & answers. I will be recording the call. If you would like to receive a copy of the recording, send me an email after the call at sknp4710@aol.com.
A suggested donation for the call is $25-$50. I am happy to receive PayPal. You can do so by logging in using my sknp4710@aol.com email. Or, my snail mail is Stephanie Nead, POB 923, Talent, OR 97540.
The call-in number for Our Friends’ Circle is 218-632-0244. You will be asked for an access code. It is 363636#.
I am also available to provide private Our Friends’ Circle sessions for you and friends (generally $20/person for a 90 minute call-session with a $100 minimum,) as well as individual and couple sessions (generally $125/$175 for a 60-75 minute call-session.) Please contact me to make arrangements. Email or phone is welcome. 541-292-9390.
I hope to meet you on the call this Sunday, December 15th at 4:00p.m. PST
Love, Stephanie
Gaia’s sky…a marvel of Creation between earth, sky and water…all in the making of Gaia…all held under her dome…
Our Friends Circle Talk
November 10, 2013
We will talk about how the energies work within each of you, about tides coming in and going back out within lives that shift and change.
Right now there is a lot of shifting happening in your world. The energetic shifts of your seasons are becoming more profound, more deeply felt inside each of you. Transformations feel more potent and challenges feel more intense. Gifts feel more poignant. It is fine tuning of the energies. Within your world there is a dissonance between the way your society and culture is still going about things, which is clunky — like a bull in a china shop — and the way in which the energies are shifting, working and weaving in your world, growing finer and finer.
There are times when you feel as though you are sitting in an audience where the violin section is playing a divine, blissful symphony, yet somehow the wind section seems to be trying to play by a completely different, chaotic rhythm, while the drum section is off somewhere else altogether. One part of your mind is trying to follow the sublime melody of the violin section, your other side feels wracked by the dissonance and cacophony coming from other parts of the orchestra. You feel this in your body, because your body responds to that very fine quality of energy and to the dissonant energy.
This is a place for breathing. It is a place for being willing to be present. This is a reverse kind of shifting, as the energies create very fine, beautiful melodies of what you would call a high vibration alongside the intensity of what you feel as a disruptive, clunky, unpleasant vibration. The fine vibration goes within and sifts upwards anything in you that is part of the cacophony, that is part of the dissonance. This would be anything that has been put away for a long time. It can be anger or grief. It can even be capped joy, capped loveliness, capped love and laughter. Any way you have been hiding something from yourself. The fine vibration with raise it up, and the intense cacophony will prevent you from covering it over again. So, in a sense, these vibrations are harmonious. Although it does not feel harmonious, these vibrations are acting in harmony to help you come clearer.
The only way to grow clearer is to stand in that experience, which can be at times exquisitely uncomfortable, breathe with it, allow to rise up what is there. Be a compassionate witness to yourself; speak to yourself with love. Speak to whatever is happening in your mind, your body, your emotions, your reactions, what you feel rising up that you might rather not be there. Speak with kindness, compassion and sweetness. Hold it all with loving kindness, even when you are tired and you would rather kick it away from you. Be present and breathe with whatever is. Know that whatever rises up will indeed pass away. It will pass away more fully and more quickly if you are able to not lock down against it, as you are able to breathe through it, as you are able to hold compassionate, loving presence with yourself.
When you are not holding a compassionate response to yourself, a loving response to yourself, you are automatically contracting and constricting. Constriction creates binding, binding creates further dissonance, and dissonance creates all kinds of pain. Breathe and be present.
There is pain that comes up that you can only breathe through, sometimes again and again; receive it as a teacher, listen with loving attention to yourself, to this pain. Let it soften and temper you. It is at your service, though it may not feel so to you in the moment. If you can be loving with yourself, you will begin to be able to inquire of and under the pain to a place where healing and release happen. You have to stay present and breathing to do this.
When you find it hard to bring yourself back to a place of breathing presence, know that resistance happens; there are times when it is very difficult, particularly in physical pain. It can also be very difficult in emotional pain or thought-form pain. All of these are times to wrap yourself in your own love, in your own angelic presence, give yourself profound love and kindness, call yourself whatever words of endearment are meaningful to you, that you can hear from you, that cause you to feel your shoulders relax, to feel that you have a bit more breathing room.
It is all an experience. Remember always that your experience is, in one sense, uniquely your own, so very personal to you. At the same time, your experience is always a human experience. Allow yourself to breathe into the truth that what you experience you share with all human beings. They may not all experience exactly what or as you do, but all human beings share experiences of both joy and pain, of love and fear. You are not personally singled out for either joy or suffering. You are not personally wrong to feel whatever it is you feel or to have whatever experience you are having. You are in the experience of being human, and you share that not only with all other human beings on the planet now, but with all who have ever been. In that there can always be a sense of connection and a sense of support. Remember, in this shared experience there is no blame or shame.
An Audio File from Our Friends…”On Longing…”
Please join us this Sunday, August 11th at 4:00p.m PST will be our next Circle with Our Friends. The call-in number for Our Friends’ Circle is 218-632-0244. You will be asked for an access code. It is 363636#.
Anyone is welcome on this call. Please feel free to forward this to others, whether or not they already know Our Friends.
The call will run approximately an hour and a half and will start promptly at 4:00 PST. You can come on the call as early as you wish. The line will be available. I will check in to see who is new to Our Friends, do a short introduction of myself and Our Friends then bring Our Friends in for the bulk of the call. They will offer a short talk and then the call will open to questions & answers. I will be recording the call. If you would like to receive a copy of the recording, send me an email after the call at sknp4710@aol.com or the email listed above.
A suggested donation for the call is $15-$35. I am happy to receive PayPal. You can do so by logging in using my sknp4710@aol.com email. Or, my snail mail is Stephanie Nead, POB 923, Talent, OR 97540.
I am also available to provide private Our Friends’ Circle sessions for you and friends (a 90-minute session, normally $35 per person with a $150 minimum,) as well as individual or couple sessions (generally $125 or $175 for a 60-75 minute session.) Please contact me to make arrangements. Email or phone is welcome. 541-292-9390.
Our_Friends_on_Life_with_Death_July_14_2013
Click on the WAV audio link directly above to hear “Our Friends on Life with Death.”
As a full moon reflects unseen light…so death reveals life…
Death within Life
…an excerpt…
“We will speak of what it is that you experience as death. What it is to live with that experience. What it is to have that as part of the creation within which you reside. There is so much fear around it, so much questioning, so many beliefs. But to be and to breathe in the walk that is a life with death is a very beautiful walk. It is a liminal space. It is a space of great aliveness.”
A gift I received in my inbox today! Thank you Leslie Lightfall. For more, see my “Testimonials” page at bottom of right hand column.
I have been working with Stephanie and Our Friends for about 15 years now. They have greatly helped me to discover mySelf, explore my multi-dimensionality and understand things about mySelf and my experiences that are very difficult to understand from only a human perspective.
I highly recommend Stephanie’s work to anyone who is committed to living and fully expressing as their full, expanded, multi-dimensional Self. Our Friends’ influence was integral to my having the courage to trust my guidance and support from the unseen world with such marvelous results on my recent trip to South America.
Namaste,
Leslie Lightfall
Blogs:
Our Friends Sacred Counsel with Stephanie Nead
http://www.innerteacher.net
http://www.stephanieknead.com
stephanieknead@aol.com
541-292-9390
photo by Stephanie K. Nead
This Sunday, July 14th at 4:00p.m PST will be our next Circle with Our Friends. See below…
The sacred, the mystery that is behind all story and all explanation, actually resides within your body.
The sacred spark is inherent within your body, is the creator of your body, is alive within it, and continues to exude it into form every moment through every breath. There is great Divinity to embodiment.
The recognition that your body is sacred is essential right now for re-rooting a consciousness on this planet that can help to overcome and move through some of the chaos and stress in your world, for human beings and for the planet herself. This consciousness is an awareness of living within the mystery from within the body, and is a fundamental recognition of its sacredness.
Your bodies are made to be a specific manifestation of your Essence as it is coming into this particular place and time to express. Your Essence is like a prism. When you come into a lifetime, you are choosing to refract the Light of your Essence through a particular facet of that prism. Your body is designed to help you manifest that particular rainbow of Light in a given lifetime. It is an ongoing occurrence and emergence from your Essence and the Oneness of Creation. It is a very specific, beautiful manifestation.
The everyday “I” can commune with the bodysoul, can be present with it, engage and interweave with it, but the “I” does not have the control the “I” would like to have.
It is a great learning how to bring your soul, your Essence’s expression in this lifetime, into your everyday life and each everyday moment. It is very challenging and difficult. Your culture and the ways your world works do not make it easier, and yet it is very possible to grow in this. This level of ensoulment and presence brings wellness to your body. Real wellness comes when the soul is fully present, attended to, activated, and honored. Then all embodied energies are ever in motion, ever breathing as in Creation, where everything is always in movement like waves upon the shore.
Be willing to be in the present and eternal moment inside every breath, from within your very cells. Reside here, emerge from here every moment, just being present. This frees up a great deal of energy and health, for you, for the whole of humanity and for the Earth.
This Sunday, July 14th at 4:00p.m PST will be our next Circle with Our Friends. The call-in number for Our Friends’ Circle is 218-632-0244. You will be asked for an access code. It is 363636#.
Normally, these calls will take place every second and fourth Sunday at the same time. However, we will be skipping Sunday, July 28th due to a scheduling conflict.
Anyone is welcome on this call. Please feel free to forward this to others, whether or not they already know Our Friends.
The call will run approximately an hour and a half and will start promptly at 4:00 PST. You can come on the call as early as you wish. The line will be available. I will check in to see who is new to Our Friends, do a short introduction of myself and Our Friends then bring Our Friends in for the bulk of the call. They will offer a short talk and then the call will open to questions & answers. I will be recording the call. If you would like to receive a copy of the recording, send me an email after the call at sknp4710@aol.com or the email listed above.
A suggested donation for the call is $15-$35. I am happy to receive PayPal. You can do so by logging in using my sknp4710@aol.com email. Or, my snail mail is Stephanie Nead, POB 923, Talent, OR 97540.
I am also available to provide private Our Friends’ Circle sessions for you and friends (a 90-minute session, normally $35 per person with a $150 minimum,) as well as individual or couple sessions (generally $125 or $175 for a 60-75 minute session.) Please contact me to make arrangements. Email or phone is welcome. 541-292-9390.
Sacred Counsel with Stephanie Nead
http://www.innerteacher.net
http://www.stephanieknead.com
stephanieknead@aol.com
541-292-9390
Bodysoul nourishment…
This share, from our June 30th call, follows closely the theme of our June 16th call. If you have not read that post, you might want to scroll down and read it along with this one. Many Blessings to you, Stephanie
This Sunday, July 14th at 4:00p.m PST will be our next Circle with Our Friends. See below…
Aligning the Body to Wellness
Bodily nourishment and pleasure: What deeply nourishes, and therefore brings happiness to, the body and the bodysoul has a great deal to do with wellness.
Your bodies deal with a great deal of complexity in your world and your time. They are generally made to be a specific manifestation of your Essence as it is coming into this particular place and time to express. Your Essence is like a prism. When you come into a lifetime, you are choosing to refract the Light of your Essence through a particular facet of that prism. Your body is built and designed to help you manifest that particular rainbow of Light in a given lifetime. It is much more than a partnership. It’s not so much the joining of two, body and soul, or body and Essence, but they are one in a sense. Your body is exuded from your Essence and the Oneness of Creation. It is a very specific, beautiful manifestation.
And when you come into this life, you come through the process of being gestated in your mother’s womb. In that process you begin to be introduced to, and your body begins to be introduced to, the impact of thoughts and feelings. You are also impacted by the specific DNA – not just the genetic inheritance, but the energetic and emotional inheritance, because what is not yet fully recognized is that there is an emotional and energetic imprint to your DNA as well as to physical body. These things come in; they are bit like information to the soul, to the embodiment in a given lifetime when you are in the womb and gestating. And then of course you emerge, and you are then affected by and imprinted by the many the experiences and emotions of childhood and growing up. All of this becomes part of what is being worked with in you, as you, in this life.
And then your body is also very much “ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” It is very much of the Earth. You are made of dirt and stardust. What impacts the earth is going to impact your bodies. One of the things to remember at this time, on this planet, is that human bodies are as impacted by the toxins to the earth — the things that have occurred through human choice and through those you would consider nature’s occurrences. Each body is unique and is going to be affected and impacted differently.
It is the “I” part of you that thinks of yourself as an “I.” The “I’ who thinks “This is my body” is not much in control. The bodysoul is an ongoing occurrence and emergence; it is interweaving and inter-breathing with all we have described. It is sort of its own kind of organism. The everyday “I” can commune with the bodysoul, can be present with it, can sort of engage and interweave with it, but the “I” does not have the control the “I” would like to have.
And so we say that in terms of wellness, there are the things you know about eating foods that are healthy, there is working your body and breathing and these things. Yet, the bodysoul needs more than anything the nourishment of resting back; what we would describe as a backflip into your body and into your Being that comes about through deep meditation, through rooting and grounding.
Oftentimes when people think about rooting and grounding, they are thinking about it. When we speak of it, we call it a back flip into the body, because it is like when you do a backflip into the water. You go into the water and the water completely surrounds you. It is similar with really rooting and grounding. It does not come from the mind; it comes from a deep backflip to experience the body from the inside, as an underwater swimmer experiences the water, and in that having a sense of connection and communion to the body, the cells, the bones, the blood, the earth, and the Spirit that enlivens them all, very deeply.
Wellness comes through deep rooting, through the nourishment of soul that comes through breathing deeply and fully, and the moving of energy, the moving of emotion. In much of your world today, there is not a natural movement of emotion. By that, we don’t mean venting or expressing every emotion to another person. We mean the ability to be fully present — in that backflip way — to the feelings, the felt sense of what is arising within the body, whether or not it makes sense to the mind, whether or not it is comfortable, whether or not it is even recognized for exactly what it is. The ability to keep the breath open from the very top of the head to the very deepest places in the belly, to feel the block or holding or contraction when it catches in certain places, to be able to be loving with that, be compassionate and accepting with it, and to continue to relax around it, to inquire of it, to breathe and work with it until it releases. Sometimes that means sitting in meditation, sometimes in deep breathing; sometimes it means working the body hard physically to move energy and move emotion, or even to scream or to yell into a pillow. Sometimes it means to go to the art studio, the art place, where the energy can move through the experience of creative expression and be released, sometimes without a lot of conscious awareness at all, because the very act of being in the creative process moves so much energy that a great deal goes with it, and so it is cleansing on its own.
All of these things are very much about wellness and the body. In your culture and your world, there is so much holding; there is much contraction, much attempting to put the soul aside. Your culture tends to want to bring things to stillness, to contraction, to control. This creates a rigidity that can create tightness in the body, which leads to various kinds of suffering. It is a great learning how to bring your soul, your Essence’s expression in this lifetime, into your everyday life and each everyday moment. It is very challenging and difficult. Your culture and the ways your world works do not make it easier, and yet it is very possible to grow in this. This level of ensoulment and presence brings wellness to your body. Real wellness comes more than anything when the soul is fully present, attended to, activated, and honored. Then all embodied energies are ever in motion, ever breathing as in Creation, where everything is always in movement like the waves upon the shore.
This Sunday, July 14th at 4:00p.m PST will be our next Circle with Our Friends. Normally, these calls will take place every second and fourth Sunday at the same time. However, we will be skipping Sunday, July 28th due to a scheduling conflict.
Anyone is welcome on this call. Please feel free to forward this to others, whether or not they already know Our Friends.
The call will run approximately an hour and a half and will start promptly at 4:00. You can come on the call as early as you wish. The line will be available. I will check in to see who is new to Our Friends, do a short introduction of myself and Our Friends then bring Our Friends in for the bulk of the call. They will offer a short talk and then the call will open to questions & answers. I will be recording the call. If you would like to receive a copy of the recording, send me an email after the call at sknp4710@aol.com or the email listed above.
A suggested donation for the call is $15-$35. I am happy to receive PayPal. You can do so by logging in using my sknp4710@aol.com email. Or, my snail mail is Stephanie Nead, POB 923, Talent, OR 97540.
I am also available to provide private Our Friends’ Circle sessions for you and friends (a 90-minute session, normally $35 per person with a $150 minimum,) as well as individual or couple sessions (generally $125 or $175 for a 60-75 minute session.) Please contact me to make arrangements. Email or phone is welcome. 541-292-9390.
The call-in number for Our Friends’ Circle is 218-632-0244. You will be asked for an access code. It is 363636#.
Many blessings to you, StephaniePlease share this post with friends…
The truest embodiment I’ve known…a great noble heart open in and to every moment…truly named Shaman.
Sacred Counsel with Stephanie Nead
http://www.innerteacher.net
http://www.stephanieknead.com
stephanieknead@aol.com
541-292-9390
Our Friends Circle June 16, 2013
Our Friends opening talk
Embodiment as Sacred
Hello Beloveds,
We are very aware right now of your energies in your world, and your planet in general. There is a very strong need for embodiment, for human beings in particular to awaken more deeply into the meaning of embodiment, what it means to have a body, to be a body, to be with a body. There are so many misunderstandings around that from your cultures and traditions.
The fundamental need is for an awakening. A shift so that there is no longer the sense of the spirit as being the highest and the body being the lowest, but rather that the same spark is inherent within what you think of as the spirit or your soul, that very same spark is alive within your body, is the creator of your body, is that which brought it into form and that which continues to exude it into form every moment. So there is a great, what you would call divinity, to embodiment.
This sacred awareness of the divinity of embodiment is an awakening that very much needs to happen among human beings, because with that awakening will come the awareness that the earth herself is an alive embodiment, that you are not only connected to but that you are a part of her body — that the sense of the sacred, the ultimate sacred, and the mystery that is behind all story and all explanation and all words, actually resides right within your body, and that the soul and the spirit of you reside right within the body of you.
Humans have such really a very strong aversion overall to being embodied, because there have been many, many centuries of experience and training in a way of the body that creates a kind of sludge and a reaction of pain. This causes a desire to pull way and pull out of the body even as you are still with it. And so the knowing of a sacred embodiment and a sacred container is very essential right now for a re-rooting of consciousness on this planet that can help to overcome and move through some chaos and stress for your world and human beings and the planet herself. It is an awareness of living within the mystery of having a body, as well as that fundamental recognition of its sacredness, this ultimate sense of mystery.
The idea of knowing is a very seductive one for human beings, because there is that part you call the ego that believes that if it knows something then it is in control and it is safe and then survival is guaranteed. Survival is of the body. Really there is almost nothing that you know. In a state of Being your only awareness is of being in that moment. It is not a knowing. Knowing has to do with the next moment or the moment before. It has to do with past and future. It has to do with theory. It does not have to do with a present and eternal moment, which gifts this sense of being in a sacred mystery always unfolding. Be willing to be in that, not so much with a not knowing, just with a being present. This includes the body. It frees up a great deal of energy, and what you would call health, for the whole of humanity and the whole of your Earth. It is that we wish to encourage today, that awareness and exploration.
Sunday, June 30th at 4:00p.m PST will be our next Circle with Our Friends. Anyone is welcome on this call. Please feel free to forward this to others, whether or not they already know Our Friends.
The call-in number for Our Friends’ Circle is 218-632-0244. You will be asked for an access code. It is 363636#.
A suggested donation for the call is $15-$35. I am happy to receive PayPal. You can do so by logging in using my sknp4710@aol.com email. Or, my snail mail is Stephanie Nead, POB 923, Talent, OR 97540.
Please share this post with friends…
Our Friends: Sacred Counsel 