Religion and Spirituality

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Is God Only Love? Pt 3

Photo by Stephanie K. Nead

 Photo by Stephanie K. Nead

Part 3

This post begins with the last line of Part 2 and continues from there…

Love is a living, moving Truth beyond any human ability to fully explain, understand or grasp in words. And so we use “creativity” and “Creation” to speak of God, because we feel it more accurately reflects, with language, a truer understanding, a truer connection; it allows you a more open conduit to experience what is true.

No human being is capable of fully receiving all of that quality of love so far beyond this creation without sort of burning up — in a kind of ecstasy, yes — yet burning up because it is so far beyond any conception, any words; it would wipe all that out.  It would be like wiping a hard drive, because in a sense, in order to be human, in order to form these bodies and share this physical experience, this time and space creation, a sort of “hardware” and “software” had to be created and downloaded.  Were you to meet that “Behind All Things” face to face, it would wipe the hard drive and erase the software, because It created the hardware and the software in order to experience this creation.  It, the Creator, is so much vaster, deeper, more.  You cannot download all the data off a huge computer onto a small one without blowing out the small one.  

The reality is that something new is being created through this Creation.  God is expressing God, always with love.  And so, you are not mistaken in relying on God to be loving.  You are never, ever mistaken in that, because that is what that One behind all things, within all things, expressing as all things, Is.  You can always access that.  You can always pray to that.  You can always trust It. 

For private 1-1 time with Stephanie & Our Friends, please email sknp4710@aol.com

All sessions are recorded and emailed to you.

Couple & Group sessions are also available.

Stop by https://innerteacher.net/contact-and-session-information/

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Is God Only Love? Pt. 2

So close as to touch. Photo by Stephanie K. Nead

So close as to touch.
 Photo by Stephanie K. Nead

Part 2

So when someone says “God is love or God is not love or God is something else,” the very word “God”  or “Goddess” or “Spirit” is encumbered by not knowing — and by the profound need for connection — that there is a great deal of projection, like the child who has never been loved or nurtured grasps for that needed unknown and imagined parent.  

What you call God, we prefer to call Creation (we include in this all that is beyond physical form, beyond time and space.)  We use this word because it differentiates from personality, from the idea that there is a human face of God; the human face of God is in the face of every single human being who has ever been born.  Where you find the worm face of God is in every worm that ever lived.  And where you find the star-light face of God is in every star that has ever been born or burned out.  Everything is the face of God.  And every non-thing is the face of God.  

And so, we use “Creation,” because as we have said, in using words (which are so unclear) the ultimate quality of what you think of as God is that of being creative.  In order to be creative you have to love, because there is nothing, there is no creative impulse, without a much deeper impulse that you would call love.  

We don’t use the word God, because it is such a projection-filled word for human beings.  It carries so much pain, disappointment, so much illusion, so much imagining, so much need.  Instead we say that what you call God is the infinitely, ultimately creative, because this is true of God in action.  Creativity is love in action, and love is an action; it is not a feeling; it is a movement; it is a life-force; it is an expression.  

Love is a living, moving Truth beyond any human ability to fully explain, understand or grasp in words. And so we use “creativity” and “Creation” to speak of God, because we feel it more accurately reflects, with language, a truer understanding, a truer connection; it allows you a more open conduit to experience what is true.

For private 1-1 time with Stephanie & Our Friends, please email sknp4710@aol.com

All sessions are recorded and emailed to you.

Couple & Group sessions are also available.

Stop by https://innerteacher.net/contact-and-session-information/

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Walking Death Within Life: Our Earth Journey

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...

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.”

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Pathway of Transformation

Sacred Counsel with Stephanie Nead
http://www.innerteacher.net
http://www.stephanieknead.com
stephanieknead@aol.com
541-292-9390

Please share this post with friends…

Hello Friends,
This season is replete with the energies of transformation. Potentials are very alive for us now.  May we each take this time to drop the seeds that need to nestle in our inner earth, to ripen and mature for their spring emergence in our hearts and lives.  May we give this gift to ourselves and to life.  May we bring ourselves to these moments, the opportunities and gateways open in front of us.  May we feel our shared community with one another with the entire Earth.   And may all the work we do bring forth blessing for this beautiful world we share.
With love, gratitude and blessing for you in my heart,
Stephanie

Pathway of Transformation

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.

Testimonials for Sacred Counsel with Stephanie Nead

From Stephanie, this feels authentic, right and appropriate. To me she’s the real deal.  I am certain your sessions with Stephanie will exceed your expectations. She is an authentic intuitive, and she will bring many insights to the questions you have. I can attest that her professional integrity is beyond reproach.
Rabbi David Zaslow, Ashland OR

Stephanie’s gifts are many. She offers her loving, nurturing presence and her accessing consciousness.  She knows how to open herself gracefully to the “Divine Field,” receiving and reflecting what is alive and true, which in turn opens this field for all who have come to receive this flow of blessing.
Receiving a session with Stephanie is a deep practice of remembrance, remembering my true self and feeling deeply at home, connected to the creative life force that is within and all around me, deeply enfolded in the Divine web of human and nonhuman Being.   Stephanie is a conduit and bridge for this experience that is a deeply embodied way of encountering Divinity.  I return to moments in the session almost daily and through this find access to an inner barometer that knows well being and interconnection.
Mia Cohen, Ashland OR

To share in Stephanie’s Sacred Counsel is to feel held in the arms of G-d…so lovingly.
Ellen Marks, Ashland, OR

Over 15 years Stephanie’s Sacred Counsel has lovingly taken me from a place of inner confusion to one of joyous expansion.   My life has blossomed and evolved to much higher levels of personal awareness and beauty than I could have ever imagined, including greatly improved physical health, and professional work and life that I love.
With a commitment to evolving along one’s path, the assistance of Stephanie’s Sacred Counsel can be an invaluable and blessed gift.  It can be rare to find such high level counsel so readily accessible for guidance in one’s personal life, but here it is.
J. Rubey, Holualoa, Hawaii

 

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Healing

"Dancing Together" Stephanie K. Nead

From a recent session:  With permission, I share it here.

Question:  How to create prosperity, abundance…of money, of joy, of love?

It is to differentiate from the you, you were taught.  It is to differentiate from the you who feels so small and dark and weak and hurt, and cleave to the strength of your soul, of your gifts, of your mind, of your Being.  To know that your soul is always there in all its purity, beauty and strength, that love is always with you.

We know there are times when you feel you cannot trust, have faith, feel loved, when you feel that all of your fear and pain comes between you and communion, comes between you and Creation.  Yet, everything that you need is there.  All of Creation, and all the allies you need, are ever with you. 

Be in process: feel yourself, be true to yourself.   Feel the negative experiences of this child you were, this adult you have been, what you went through, how painful it was.  Look at and learn the imprints it gave you, see how you have lived by those.  These things are important. 

It is important to breathe this, to sweat it, to swim it, to work it, to walk it, to yoga it, to scream it, to cry it, to be with you, to be with the you who has felt hurt, and to nourish and nurture that you in a way that you never received before and that only you, only you, with G-d, with Creation, only you can give this to yourself, because it is from you that you need to know you can get it at all times, the one who never leaves you. 

This is a very human process.  Pain does not mean you are wrong or bad.  Often it means that a healthy part of self has been pressed down for a long time.  It struggles to rise and be free.  In your learned holdings, you feel pain. 

See it as a process to freedom, a process you can only engage by engaging, by breathing, being present.  So often adults do to themselves what they were taught as children: that freedom comes through bondage, the bondage of suppression, repression, “pretend,” denial. 

Thus, the free self, the full soul, the life-force of full breath and embodiment/incarnation remains unexpressed, and the struggle takes new forms. 

You must clear the pain, you must listen to it; you must be with your whole self, the whole experience of your body and being and life, so your soul, with your gifts, can come through your body and Being and life with greater and greater clarity.  It will bring wholeness and richness, nectar and nourishment, more and more and more as you clear what needs to be cleared, by listening to yourself, to what you experience, giving your ear to yourself. 

You can give to yourself the listening.  You can give to yourself the truth of your experience and your feelings.  You can listen to you and care for you, own and honor and protect and nurture and love you in the truth of your experience.  In that, you will heal and you will bring in more light and more openness, more expansion of your soul and your Being, and you will gain confidence.

Most humans lack confidence.  The part of you that is wounded and hurt feels so weak, feels incapable of doing the work of your soul.  You see it, you feel it, you know it is there, but you are more grounded in the pain, in the ways it has bound you and ground you down.

And so you need to be present with yourself, you need to clear out the pain.  Through this, you gain confidence that pain is not going to overwhelm you, is not going to overtake you.  You gain confidence as you have more and more space in yourself, in your life, as you have more energy in your days for the flowing of your soul, for the energies of your soul to come forth and be.  You gain confidence that you will follow through, that you will be able to stay in that light of Being, that you will be able to be the wholeness of your soul, because the pain will no longer be constantly threatening to surface and drown and overwhelm you. 

This is a necessary process, this relieving, this letting the pain out like opening a dam, letting it move, releasing it from your body so that you can be free.  It is in openness; it is in letting your cells and your body speak and release, through your movement, your energy, your thoughts.  Through this you grow clear for the flowing of your soul, in all the ways that your soul wishes to flow. 

Know, learn, realize, feel that your gifts are always there.  Your gifts are always with you.  The strength of your gifts is always there. The truth of your gifts is always there.  The need is to live in genuineness, in truth, in clarity of communion within yourself, and to bring forth who you are with a clear, rooted, groundedness, without dishonesty, without hype, without persona, without pretense.  You can learn to do this. 

Be in your path, be true to your soul, and in being true to your soul, remember that your soul is in your gifts, not in your pain.  You pain is in your body.  Your pain is not your soul.  Your beauty, your gifts, your strength, your aliveness is your soul.

In this, you will remember life and light, happiness and joy, prosperity.  It will bring your own love into the world, and in bringing your own love into the world, you will draw to you a love song…and in that there is abundance, there is prosperity, there is care, there is joy, there is all. 

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Emotions and Feelings   (Part Three)

 In short, emotions express life force and feelings express pain.  Emotions rise up from deep in your Being.  Emotions and feelings are both energies.  Emotions are energies of Creation, energies of the Essence that is you expressing though your earthen self, this body.  Feelings arise from the psyche and are thoughts held in and expressed by the body, mostly in terms of pain and fear. 

 When emotions are locked down, they block life force from expression.  When feelings are locked down, they block thoughts, beliefs, fears from experience and expression. 

 Emotions are meant to be lived, expressed, experienced as the Essence fulfilling itself through this earthen embodiment.  Feelings need to be witnessed, breathed and felt in order to recognize the thoughts and beliefs behind them, in order to release them. 

If you hold onto, lock in, feelings, you lock pain and fear into the body.  If you hold onto, lock in, emotions, you lock life force into the body.  Either way, you create tremendous tension.  The body and the psyche will seek to release what is held and will grow as inventive as need be to do so. 

 To release emotion and its trapped life force, you must first release feelings.  Pain and fear will always de-press life force, because life force cannot be controlled when free, and the function of pain and fear is control.  Life force takes risks.  Life force knows it cannot be destroyed and that what created it is renewing it in each moment. 

 The ego, which creates pain and fear, neither knows nor believes this, and the body is certainly aware of its temporary nature.  Thus, fear of annihilation brings constricting control.  Yet there is no real control in this.  You choice is to live free and die, or to live unfree and die.  No energy in all of Creation remains static and unchanged; all things grow, evolve and change.  Death is only one form of change, the ever-shifting energy process of Creation. 

If there is one truth about God/Goddess/Creation/Sprit…whatever name you choose…it is that “it” is in constant motion of growth, of extension, of exploration of the possibilities of Being.  How could you be built with curiosity as your most foundational tool and this not reside in similar stature in the One who Creates.   

 Releasing feelings is perhaps easier than releasing emotion, because feelings are your own creation, and so you feel the limit of them.  You fear your pain and fear because you are identified with it; you believe it to be yourself and to be protecting yourself, even when you think you do not want it.  Fear to let it go exists because your pain and fear are so familiar to you and are born of beliefs instilled in you before you remember — as well as not infrequently being latent from other” lifetime” experiences; memories off the tree of life you all share, whether you are aware of them, feel them as your own, or are affected by the vast human memory of experience that is both encoded with your DNA and lives within the energy field of all humans on earth as a whole.

 You might think that if you each carry feelings from the whole of humanity, then how can you be free of them?  It is not a once and for all thing, this being free.  It is a way of Being in the moment, moment-by-moment.  Learning to free yourself of your own personal pain and fear gives you the tools and ability to process and release any pain and fear that comes to you or through you on a moment to moment basis.  And it will keep coming.  This too is the nature of life within humanity still. 

 By learning to release your own pain, you can end your own conflict.  As you move through life moment to moment, clearing and processing in the moment, you offer a model.  As well, you no longer contribute to pain and fear in the human energy field.  And so you no longer hook into it.  You will experience it, but no longer as something that gets stuck in you, no longer as something that affects or controls you, rather as a passing choppy current on the waters of your life.

 How do you release feelings?

  It is simple, yet challenging.  Because you have held feelings at bay for so long, you have an antipathy to feeling, experiencing, knowing them.  And you have developed the belief that doing so may kill you.  This is a lot to face to get to the process of release.  Yet any of you can do it. 

 First, sit quietly; learn to witness your thoughts without engagement, letting them pass like a leaf on a river – you on the bank watching, separate.  Then, feel your breathing, be aware of where and how it sticks, holds.  Be aware of your body.  Feel your body.  Become aware of where and how you hold tension.  Try to harbor no judgment of yourself.  You are alright, just fine, and good just as you are…with all the tension and holding of breath and muscle. 

 If you do not believe you are holding tension, know you are mistaken.  It takes real courage to move deeply into your essence.  Your self will defend mightily to convince you that all is well, you are in control, you already “have” all this.  Extremely unlikely.  To grow, one must be willing to release all self-belief, both positive and negative, and just Be.  This is a state without control, without future, without past.  None of you will fully achieve it.  The body holds so much that is of time; so long as it lives you have chosen to reside within, experience and contribute to a creation that incorporates time.  Memory is a function of time.  This is why we say that processing feeling will never end so long as you have body and even for some time after if processing is left undone…this is one source of many wandering disembodied souls.

 Accepting that you have the judgments you have of yourself, ask yourself to relax around them.  Ask yourself how much you can let go of the tension you feel in your body.  Do this in a specific way.  Feel your face…your forehead, your eyes, your eyebrows, your ears, the line between your ears and your jaw, your jaw as it slides down you face, your cheeks, your lips, your teeth, your tongue, your throat, your voice box, you upper chest, your lower chest and ribs, your solar plexus, your belly, your shoulders, your shoulder blades, the line down the side of your neck to your arms, your upper arms, your forearms, your hands, your fingers.  Be very particular. 

 You do not have to do your entire body with each sitting.  These sittings will only last 10 – 20 minutes.  If you do more than this, you will sabotage yourself, as you will move too much energy too fast, and you will kick in the body-psyches automatic defense system, which will generate shut down against your will.  You can do these sits twice a day if you wish, but do not do more than 10 – 20 minutes with each sit.  Focus on a few places that rise to your attention with tension.  Ask yourself if you can soften a little at these places.  Do not ask yourself to let go of everything. 

 The human body has to carry tension to reside within time and space; gravity is real and the body moves because is resists magnetic forces such as gravity.  Gravity and magnetism are like the wires for the puppet.  Without them, the puppet cannot move.  Your body requires some tension in order to hold itself in movement.  You will learn over time what this healthy level of tension feels like; it is a true relaxation to the human body. 

 You will feel your body take two of three spontaneous deep, releasing breaths, and you will feel a sense of energetic opening, a smile is likely to appear naturally on your face, a small sense of joy.  Rest for a moment in this.

 Most likely, on most days, next your mind will kick in again.  Your thoughts will rise up, or memories take over.  Now, rather than engaging in the story the thoughts or memories are telling, as a witness feel for the feelings behind the thoughts or memories.  Perhaps you are making a list of to do’s.  Are you feeling anxious…you might say to get up and on with your day…look deeper…what do you prove to yourself by your lists, your to do’s, your running around, your accomplishing?  What do you protect?  What defend?  Your mind will give you all the “good” reasons for your running.  They exist, but they are not the question now.  Put them aside.  What do you seek to prove to yourself…what do you seek not to feel…what do you fear if you do not do? 

 Behind the physical fears, beneath even the physical survival fears are much bigger fears, fears with much greater power over you.  The ultimate fear is of being unworthy, of being bad, of not being good enough…of not being lovable.  If you do enough, you believe, you will prove you are worthy, are lovable…and so you won’t be alone. 

 Allow these deepest fears, which is also great pain, to rise up in your awareness and body, breathe with it.  Feel it in your body and keep breathing it, with each breath pull it into the breath and breathe it like a tide you are riding.  You are not “trying” to move it out of your body.  You do not need, and it is not a good idea, to do any special breaths to “make” the feeling go.  Your goal is to Be with the feeling as you breath, and you do this by feeling the feelings in your body while you breath fully and deeply, allowing the feelings space within your breath.  As you do this, you will feel the feelings move.  Do not judge, do not jubilate, do not try.  Just witness with kind attention the tide of breath and feeling as it moves through your body and energizes in movement.  This brings release.  Allow yourself to stay with it as long as you are able, and allow it to dissipate as is natural.

 You will not get through all of any feeling in one sitting…allow the letting go when “done enough for now” to happen.  Rest again in just breathing and feel the difference in your body and energy.

 There are times when you will get up from this practice feeling light and happy; there are times when feelings will rise that you have not felt for many a year, and you will rise feeling dense and weighted.  Both are well. 

 Feelings that have been long held must still be released, and that release can be incomplete on one session.  It can be a shock to the psyche to have such buried feelings rise and be felt.  It can leave an imprint. 

 As you move into and through your day, be present with that imprint, the shadow, the felt-sense of residue.  It is the shape of an emptiness in your energy field and body, a space long held by pain and fear.  As you accept yourself with it, accept yourself in having carried such feelings for so long, accept your own process of release, and keep feeling and breathing throughout your day, you will achieve more movement, more release and more freedom.

 Coming back to this meditation day by day can be challenging as painful feelings rise to be released.  With ongoing practice, your own being will come to trust you more fully, and so feelings will rise to release…and the release process will grow easier and less distressing. 

 Most of all, be a kind and loving witness to yourself, whatever comes up, whatever you feel.  Offering yourself unconditional acceptance is the single most important offering you can make.  It does not mean you do not wish growth and healing for yourself.  It means you accept who you have been, all that has taken place in your life, how you have responded, reacted, dealt with, taken in, and held onto your life experience; it means you are willing to start from precisely where and who you are without hiding.  Self-judgment is hiding in denial.  To judge yourself is to deny yourself, for it is to separate yourself from you, as though there is a virtuous you who would never have made the mistake of the judged you, and then there is the judged you whom you refuse to accept as you.  There is only one you and you are a whole.  Accept all of you; only then can you heal, transform and evolve.  Only in the greatest vulnerability, moment-to-moment can you experience emotion, being and becoming the Essence that you bring to this earthen life, only then are you incarnate in this creation.  And this is the goal. 

 Emotion is life force flowing.  It is the essence of Creation in you, as you, unique and of the One through the body-mind, incarnate into this creation.  You are seeded essence into form in this creation.  You are born of earth, part and parcel of Her Being and Body.  This is the whole point of this Creation and participation in it.  This is a joy and the Life.  You are meant to be in communion with this earth and the whole of Creation through this earthen art form.  The spark of the One enlivens this creation as the seed which enlivens the egg to gestate new life in a woman’s womb.  This physical process in species is but a mirror of the creation of physicality through Creation to physical form. 

 To experience emotion is to feel and allow and respond to the tug of joy, of desire for that which brings you alive, awake, to a sense of inspiration and joy.  It is risky.  There is not control here.  You must always be surfing the edge of the wave.  The moment you step back into safety you are away from the surging joy.  Inherent in emotion, in life force experience, is balance on the wave, openness to the next moment with no life vest.  Whatever might come, you will breathe it, be with it, and let it move through you, your breathing body into life…whether by breath, by laughter, by tears, by art, by voice…you will be profoundly alive, as you are meant to be, a creation of the Creator in this earthen embodiment of exploration and experimentation. 

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Reading other writings that have come through and found this.  Seems like a Part Two to the previous post.  A Part Three found also…coming…Stephanie

Our Friends Response to Catastrophic Predictions:  June 2010

 Fear wants a reason to exist; it creates a story to justify its own existence

To assume a fearful outcome is to assume an unkind and unloving intent on the part of the earth and Creation. 

 Fear wants a reason to exist; it creates a story to justify its own existence.  The more fear presented, the bigger the story needs to be in order to justify and feed that fear.  Images of doom and destruction arise out of fear: individual and collective fear that imagination is feeding upon, creating a story that seems very real.  We do not predict catastrophe, worm holes, global electromagnetic madness for many reasons.  Doing so would do no positive good in the world, and that is the whole point of Being.  Also, to predict anything is not in alignment with Creation’s process.  It’s like salmon swimming upstream; try to predict and follow the course of one salmon, and you are going to lose sight of it in no time, because there are thousands of them.  You simply can’t do it.  The energies are so many and moving so fast, in so many directions; so much is happening. 

 To predict is to try to control; it is the antithesis of how Creation works.  To assume a fearful outcome is to assume an unkind and unloving intent on the part of the earth and Creation.  This has more to do with a human feeling of helplessness. 

 Fear separates you from the very solution you seek.   It leads you to struggle for a level of control that you do not have, and it does so by looking outside your own essence and presence, which is the only “place” where you truly exist at all.  It is only here that you hold your awareness with Creation, with the loving, infinitely creative essence that lies at the core of all creation.  Such is the Being of the Creator; such is the Being of you.  In surrender and honoring, listening and heeding, in movement out of that, you have control, never through blaming, fear, or anger.  Creation, even your known Universe, does not operate like this; fear, anger, blame, these are nullifying energies, never creating energies. 

Those who are waiting for, and believe they desire, a big event, a dramatic shift toward something “else,” something new that they imagine to be more wonderful than what you have now, are missing the fact that you live in a true Eden now. Those who imagine that all the others will disappear, leaving the “good people” to a better world, are very confused about the Creation, about the art form of Creation that is this world, about who you are as humanity. 

 Imagining and waiting for a great “shift” is really a savior concept that has to do with presumed “goodness” vs. presumed “wrongness.”  This concept of reward and punishment is a strong thread, tangled deep in human consciousness across most of the earth.  It emerges over and over again in different guises, new story lines.

 And also, every story is, in a sense, true.  Those who are very devout Christians and believe they will meet their Savior when they die, will.  That is a true story to them.  People need to be very careful about the story they are attaching themselves to, because it is going to be true for them.  Do you not want the story that says “I don’t know, but I believe in the beauty behind Creation, because that’s what I see at the heart of all of it?”  Wish to experience, and hold to, the place of “Show me!” rather than the place of “I know.”  The “I know” comes from fear. What you believe you know, you will find, because Creation will not scare you as you scare yourself.  Creation is infinitely patient in its unfolding love.  If you adhere to your story, we guarantee it will be a limit, a garden wall that prevents you from seeing everything that’s in Creation.  It may be comforting, but it is confining, that garden wall of certainty. 

 You are confused in believing yourselves to be individuals, separate from one another as well as Creation, in independent bodies.  There is nothing independent in all Creation; all is within the One; all is interflowing.  There is nothing independent about your bodies; this is why you fear death.  You are creatures of this earth; these bodies were created to live here, in Eden, in an absolute beauty and perfection.  This creation was designed to be as utterly interconnected and interdependent as the whole of Creation.  It is a beautiful and loving truth of Creation.   It is wonderful. 

 As long as you are trying to escape death or escape the body, you are operating from fear.  You are running away from something, rather than moving toward something.  When you are operating from fear, you cannot be connected to Creation.  So many people feel their bodies are a trap they need to escape.  That is a very sad thing.  In truth, you are already the real Essence of you, and this can never change.    Your body is an added bonus, a temporary gift to enjoy, as is this Earth.  Move toward this gift.

 If you are worried about disaster, then it is up to you to decide how prepared you are willing to become for any sort of natural disaster.  Understand that the physical universe has its own laws; its life unfolds without malicious intent.  Everything on the web of physical being is affected, including you.  You are always loved and cared for.  Remember that who you are is so far beyond this body.  Creation cares about you.  Your body is a temporary experience; it is the jeweled container of a priceless gift. 

 The evolution of Creation is rather like a painting or a piece of art.  You don’t just go “splat” and it’s done.  It’s a process; it evolves; it emerges.  There is always that impulse to move further and push farther, to grow.  Growth, from the deepest essence within each Being, each spark of Creation, is the desire and action of love at the heart of all things; it is Creation creating itself always. 

 Those who hopefully await a sudden shift are scared, trapped in a new version of an old story.  It is a child’s wish to have all that is difficult removed so the child can be at peace.  You are not children.  You are sovereign beings. 

Regardless how many stories you create of salvation from afar, peace is never going to happen by the action of some power greater than yourselves, because this would deny who you are as sovereign Beings of Creation.  As sunbeams of the sun, you are creators of the Creation along with all of Creation.  You must be the incarnation; it cannot be done to or for you.  And you all will do it.  You are not G-d, but you are that spark of the Divine come to emerge into this world fully.  That is your task in any given life; to wait for the miracle is to disavow the reason you’re here. 

 Not knowing how to be more fully embodied, not knowing how to incarnate, the feeling of vulnerability is enormous.  Incarnation requires choice moment to moment; it requires work.  It asks each human to do his or her own work, the nitty gritty work of inner cleansing through focus and choice.  It asks you to look at your thoughts, your emotions, feelings in your body, all that needs to be cleared.   Peace resides within you and between you at any moment; it is for you to achieve.  This is being and becoming the core of your Being and embodiment.

 It is very easy to get off into a side track of some kind of fear.  It is an issue and a question for every human being.

 There is a balance, a place of awareness.  We are asking that you keep your focus on a place human beings have not been much accustomed to focusing on: recognition of the beauty and the love that is at the core of life.  When you look at a sunset or a tree, or love another human being…everything that is truly core is coming from love and beauty.  Recognize that this must be what Creation and the creative impulse is at the heart of everything.  Everything else is some kind of picture and process within that creation.  Trust the beauty and love impulse that is core.  Hold the thread of your awareness and choosing on that, rather than getting attached to any of the images that out-picture, or seem to out-picture, in the world.  In so doing, you become the peace you seek.  As you are, so you give.  Be peace to bring peace. 

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Will we “be saved?”

A friend wrote asking what I “was getting” after receiving an email relating how a “galactic Federation” were on the brink of interfering with humanity and saving the Earth…at least that was rather the gist of it.  I did not know how to respond, so I asked.  This is what came through.  I just reread it after putting it aside for a week or so, and found it so clear and consistent in its message that I have to post it.

With respect to all…Stephanie

Ultimately, the only saving there is to do, you must do yourselves.  Not enmasse, not through attacking and blaming another, any other, or others, but to realize that you are so deeply connected that no one of you does anything, no organization is formed, no evil done, without some participation and acceptance by you all.  You quest is not to wait for someone “from the sky” to come save you, individually or as a whole; it is not the try to escape by leaving this earth or your home, retreating to some other life in another place with or without a body.  You are here, and you chose to be here.  You chose to be part of this earth and these times.  You are not separate.

And this is not about “good” and “bad.”  You are not good to “their” bad.  They are not bad to “your” good.  You are one humanity.  Ironically, the only way you are going to heal and rise is through your singularity as human beings operating together individually.  This will make the change. 

The change must and can only come from within each of you, from within your deepest heart and percolating up to your every thought, every word, every value, every action, every choice.  This is hard work.  This is THE work.  When you go march on Wall Street, or any other, then spend your money on food that has been grown in poisons, when you spread those poisons on your lawn, when you buy items without knowing who made them or how that worker was treated, especially when you buy them having a good idea that another human being was misused in the process…in these choices and actions, you are the one you march against.  When you disrespect your husband, wife, friend. when you are unkind to a stranger, or judge another without truly knowing their situation or struggles, when you overlook a child or an animal, when you are less than present in your life and the moment, these things are the “crime.”  These actions, this lack of valuing, expresses greed.  And greed is at the core of what you wish to rally against.  And at the core of that greed is fear…fear of survival, so exquisitely human an emotion. 

What do you cling to?  How do you make excuses to hold tighter to your portion, rather than opening your hands and sharing with others?  What are the excuses you give for claiming a poverty that is not true, for claiming that you “deserve” and “earned” all you have and therefore should not have to be more generous?  What are the excuses you make for your greed?  You are the one you wish to Occupy against.

Those you march against on Wall Street did not do this all alone, they did not do this “to you.”  You were there; you were complicit.  You are complicit every time you take without thought, or make excuses for holding rather than sharing.  In how many ways do you feel entitled?  While you may “have less” than those whose millions condemn them for their greed and dishonesty, have you not envied them their money and things, have you not in your turn run to “get” you share through investing and other monied ways, have you not relished when you have “made money on a deal?”  These actions, and these values are exactly the same as those you now condemn.  You are arguing about size, not true value, not true ethics, not spiritual truth. 

Each human being must heal and change and transform within him and herself for this world to change, to transform as you vision.  While there are many who support, assist, and care…protect and prevent major disaster, “they” will not save you. 

It is you, you wait for.  It is the bringing forth of the Spirit that longs through you.  The body and psyche you are was created as a perfect match for the Spirit that longs to live within and through this form.  It is your task, that survival-fearing “small” you, to learn to be still, to open, to let go, to surrender, to not know, and so to allow the greater Spirit to live through you…without the “ego” of small self.  Thus all the gifts of your body, mind, and heart with be activated fully, and all that can be brought to life through the vehicle of your life will flow forth. 

This has nothing to do with money, or social/cultural success.  These outward signs bear little relation to the true living of life and the true bringing forth of your gifts. 

When you hear words that cause or seek to instill fear, guilt, blame, shame and other such beliefs, know you are not hearing wisdom or the gifts of Creation. 

Know that the workings of Creation are not heirarchical.  Creation and the Creator is more like a great web.

Know too that you, individually and as humanity, are both more and less important than you imagine yourselves to be.  Know that you do not know your place and value in Creation.  Seek instead to learn, not with assumptions of superior intelligence, sentience, or the like.  Your world view still largely assumes the primacy of human importance in all things.  You are part of the web. There is ultimately no greater or lesser, yet too you are not G-d, but G-d is you.  Until you begin to understand what this means and surrender to it, you will continue to seek with your ego, with your survival-based self; the part of you that dies and so lives in fear.  The greater Spirit that longs to live with, through and as you, knows there is no death, only a shift and change…knows too that this life is like one day’s weather, death but one night’s sunset, birth but one day’s sunrise…each beautiful, but if you stay to elongate the experience, it will not stay with you and you will exist always in a state of disappointment, fear and anxiety.  You will miss every other sunrise and sunset that exists, and that is a true grief. 

Just as Creation is a web, so too is this earth.  And human is part of the earthen web.  You were given your role, your place, in the web.  You were given your kind of consciousness just as you were given your kind of physical sight, so different from the way the owl or the whale sees or “thinks”, yet each sovereign and vital to this earth.  One is not less, the other more.  They are each part of the infinity of variety created for this unique experience of G-d. 

There are conscious Beings on and off this planet who are much more deeply attuned and connected to the cosmic voices, much more deeply able to assist and support what is needed for this earth.  The earth does not need you to “help” her; she needs you to stop hurting her.  This means each of you…in very concrete ways.  There is not one of you reading these words who can, if you knew the truth, look in the mirror and say “I am innocent of hurting this earth, and I am innocent of greed.  It is only those others who do these things.” 

We do not say this to place blame or to cause guilt, but rather in hopes of waking you up to start looking in the correct direction for the change you wish to see.  That direction is within, within your heart to be kind in each moment, and in that kindness to consider the life of every other living thing — on this planet and through this universe — when you make your decisions.  When you have a judgmental thought of another, it is to stop and realize it.  Not to whip yourself for it, but to simply say “I am wrong.”  And mean it.  Know that you are wrong…not only for judging, but for whatever your judgment is.  It is not enough to think “Oh, I shouldn’t have judged that person…but I know I’m right.”  What is “right” is to know that whatever your judgment, you do not know the whole story, you do not know who this person is.  To know that if you understood this person utterly, you would feel kindness and compassion even if you found you needed to say “no” to their behaviors and influences.  It is a very different way of being, and it is little, little known among humans. 

To the extent you believe you are free of ego, know you are ego bound.  Those who most profoundly work to be free of ego are those who are most aware of the activity of their ego.  Ego is for the survival of the body.  So long as you have a body, it will be with you.  The goal is not to be rid of your ego but to understand how it functions and able to observe it such that you are not controlled by it and allowing it to extend beyond its purposeful bounds.  This is much easier to achieve when one is placed within a context that supplies one’s physical needs.  Yet it is essential that ultimately humans achieve this balance at all times. 

Those who are looking for outside influences to come and save humanity are assuming that humanity is the most important aspect of this Creation that is Earth.  We would say that their reaching for this assurance that a savior will appear is both a mistaken assumption of centrality, an expression of the human ego’s feeling of being very small and vulnerable (as a human would feel when faced with a saber-toothed tiger…as a mouse to a cat,) and an expression of long-held spiritual mythology that you will be saved by another rather than need to do it your selves. 

We are not saying that there are not forces and Beings who are connected with and working to serve and protect this Earth.  We are saying that they are not here to save humanity but to work with the Earth-Gaia in the evolution and unfolding she is involved in.  Humans are a small part of that, but they are not the all of it.  It is the feeling of being ants under the feet of elephants that causes the fear and fantasy that there must be another who will come to save you.  Ultimately, your growth as an aspect of Creation resides in doing the work of coming into balance from within.  This means within each of you and within humanity as a whole.  This means within your own heart, mind, soul, and body, as well as within the heart, mind, soul, and body of humanity.  This means treating yourself: body, heart, mind, and soul, as the sacred Temple of the Creator, as indeed you are.  This means recognizing that you are not the only vessel of the Creator, but that every creature and creation is a vessel and expression of the Creator and Creation as fully and completely, and Holy as yourself, as humanity.

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Mysteries of Water

“On a tide of tears she rises…”

The mysteries of water are many.  There is so much we do not comprehend  of water, yet it is the source and substance not only of our physical being but the container for the energy of our soul in form.  It is and contains an ultimate mystery.  Being in Wonder at water’s many blessings is perhaps one of the simplest  ways for us to connect with both Gaia-Earth and Supreme Creation at once.

This poem reflects one of water’s miraculous abilities…to carry memory over time through generations and DNA.

For those of you who are not Jewish or do not know Hebrew, some of the words may be a mystery.  At the end of the poem are translations, but I suggest you read it a time or three first and let the mystery soak in.  Then read the translations and soak some more.

Shechinah Rises
 
On a tide of tears        
She rises
Oceanic grandmother Spirit
Womb of my foremothers
 
Upwelling Ruach
Sculpts pathways
Over DNA-etched skin and bone
Bearing mitochondrial memory
In water-bourne blessing
From she to me
 
Shechinah memory
Between nameless unknown hers
Re-membered in Ha-shem
 
Seeded nashema-encoded genes
Bear fruit in the flesh of my body
Our Spirits’ longing
Pours from my eyes
As you-we pray 
A long-drowned dream
 
Beseeching
Teshuvah…return
To your-mine-our ancient G-d-ess
 
Shechinah
Kee l’olam hee lee
Forever She is me.

Stephanie K. Nead, 2009                      

The Shechinah is the feminine divine essence. G-d-ess in all the power, majesty, equal strength and needed balance of the feminine, every bit as strong, full, complete and necessary as the masculine aspect or essence of G-d.
 
Ruach can be described as the overarching aspect of soul/spirit. Our personal soul is our nashema. Ruach is “bigger,” less known in any conscious sense to our human understanding. The Holy Spirit is the Ruach HaKodesh in Hebrew. Literally translating as Spirit the Holy.
 
Note: tears carry an inordinate amount of mitochondrial DNA. No one knows why…but it is fascinating.  Mitochondrial DNA is the DNA that comes solely from our mothers and is the fundamental DNA of life.  It ultimately takes us all back to our genetic “Eve.”
 
Hashem means “The Name” in Hebrew. Ha (the) Shem (name). This is one of the most “familiar” names of G-d…like talking to your best friend. It is, to me, a name encompassing a very close, personal love between myself and a beloved who is beyond name. We say Hashem, because G-d’s name is far too sacred to ever be spoken aloud.  So we name the many aspects of G-d, all considered to be names for G-d, without trying to encompass all G-d is within one small word.
 
Nashema means soul. It is the personal soul of each individual.  And it is the part of our soul that may, in part, be passed down from generation to generation, the part that might carry and remember, to resolve or repeat, the experiences of our forebears.
 
Teshuvah means return. It has been mistranslated as repentance. In fact, it means to turn back to G-d, as in to turn one’s face back toward and to move once again toward, rather than away from, G-d. Teshuvah is always done with humility and the recognition of the need for grace and work on oneself, the recognition and acknowledgement that one made a mistake, is sorry for it and ready to learn to do/be differently.
 
Kee l’olam hee lee is translated here as “Forever she is me.”
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Prayer: Earth and Water

Gaia's Womb...

As you pray for the Earth, pray for the water. 

Pray for the water of your body before you eat…and the water of your food…that the water of your body be cleansed and nourished by the water of the food, that the waters you breathe out with each breath are purified as they pass through you, that your body be purified by the waters, that all the waters of the planet be pure. 

Send love to the waters of your own body as well as to the planet.  All waters are one water-body on this planet, as all water is endlessly recycled through the breath…breath of ocean tides, breath of clouds rising and falling again to earth, breath of your body, in and out…all is a constant circuit of life renewing: blessing, cleansing, healing, bringing new life. 

There is no life on this planet without water.  Every cell of every thing is mainly water.  Water carries energies and properties we have yet to imagine much less comprehend.  Bless and pray for the water. 

As you start with what is closest to home…your own body, you begin in your own root here on Earth.  It is important to always start here…with your own root, your own body.  Only from your rooted body, self, and place on Earth can you send forth powerful healing.  The healing is as much in your recognition of oneness and dependence as it is in your “sending” and intention. 

Be thankful, be loving, be kind…and send smiles and loving peace to your own waters and all the waters of the Earth through the endless recycling of which your breath is an integral part.  In this oneness all of Gaia is together.  In it there is healing and health.