All is Light Changing Form - An Earth Day Vision

I determined not to work this Earth Day in order to give myself time to reflect on the past twelve months since Earth Day feels like my birthday. I typically use my May birthday as a day to reflect on the year prior, read my journals, and look through photos. I also took Earth Day off because I have been exhausted. This weariness of body, heart and soul is connected to the experience in my yard the day after Earth Day last year. 

Last year, on this day I watched a raven eat a baby robin from its nest. I had been a witness to the robin couple diligently building their nest cupped in the branches of the leafless crepe myrtle two feet from my kitchen window. An upstairs window gave the perfect vantage point to seeing directly into the nest. I knew when each blue egg was laid and I knew when each little life came into this world. I would awaken and pray fervently in the middle of the night during last spring’s stunning rains and I energetically imagined shielding the mother and her children as she hunkered over their growing little bodies. I developed a whistle to which the parents would respond and hop to me to eat meal worms and peanut chips I tossed them when the ground was too cold for worms to emerge. I had a relationship with these robins. 

Cognitively knowing that what I witnessed was part of Life’s cycle did not help my broken heart. Being told the raven possibly ate a weaker one didn't help either. 

For me, this experience was shattering especially as one who is sensitive. I journaled. I met with friends who are intuitive and I went into what I call my Joan-of-Arc mode. I placed a scarecrow created of my clothes, my hat and a wig under the nest. I personally sat vigil nearby hidden for two weeks as the raven returned daily in the early morning and late afternoon. When I could not be present, my dear neighbor Jo sat in my hidden place. 

One evening after a session with an intuitive friend who helped me piece together what I was living, I came out to my car and there sat the raven on a limb on my neighbors driveway side. It was head high and urgently talking to me. In retrospect I wish I had stood before it and listened. Instead I was “on.” I shooed it away and I never really gave myself time to listen or feel (anything but rage) until yesterday. 

Yesterday I reread my journal from that time, reflected, listened and felt.

Mid-morning, I walked into the front yard and impromptuly decided to dig. Getting dirt under my nails revives me on all levels. 

The first thing I noticed in the dirt by the driveway were 6-7 tiny down feathers. In the past year I learned from Gary my hair guy that down falls from the mother's breast when she's laid her eggs. Previously I thought it meant a bird had died.

"New life is here" and I was being told to lie down. 

Lying down in the middle of the day is challenging for me even on Earth Day. It suggests I’m not being productive. This societal, tribal, familial message is hardwired into me. Yet I knew to ignore this message was to ignore listening. To ignore listening was to ignore the Divine directive shouting through Nature to me.

I gathered the feathers, placed a sheet in the grass and lay upon it. As I felt myself sink into Earth, I saw a butterfly made of fuchsia light. The butterfly then turned into a hawk. Then I saw the head of a rose breasted grosbeak. I knew I was being shown the grosbeaks are near. They migrated through our yard for the first time last year just after the baby bird was eaten. 

Seeing the butterfly turn into a hawk, I knew Everything is Light changing Form - Everything even people, past and present, judged as horrible, they too are Light Changing Form. Mentally I know this yet being shown this helps me “get it” in my depths. I needed this message in relation to the raven and the robin to assist in my healing. 

And this morning as I sat outside I looked up to see a male rose breasted grosbeak at the feeder. I saw its black, white and rose coloring and thought, ‘Black and White rose together.’ 

What if those of us, black and white, rose together? Imagine the glory of that? What if we moved beyond our internal and external opposing black and white positions of good and bad? What, just what, might rise from that? 

The one thing I had not done was look up the symbolism of grosbeak. I went inside to find “Animal Speaks’ and read: 

Grosbeak represents the healing of the heart. 

To me this is divine perfection and grace? 

I stumble, resist, ignore, procrastinate and delay, yet the Divine through Nature shouts, "Dawn, I am a partner in your heartbreak and your healing if you listen and allow. New life is here!!!"

As I hold this message personally, I invite you to listen to the part of this experience that resonates with you.

New Life is here. 

Everything is light changing form. 

The heart can heal. 

Nature speaks. 

And imagine our collectively "getting" that Everything is Light Changing Form. Black and white are rising together. Divisions, fear, separation, judgement, and violence are diminishing. New life is here as we are experience the healing of the heart, the individual heart, the racial heart, the collective heart and I believe the Earth’s Heart. 

-Dawn, The Good News Muse  23 April 2015

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

Guns, Gas and Guys

Tuesday night before hearing Stevie Wonder, we had dinner at a new Nashville eatery whose outdoor dining space happened to face the Music City Center.

There I sat eating my taco while reading the huge banners for the NRA convention. The one that got my attention read: "9 acres of guns and gear."

Nine acres of guns and gear.

I shouldn't be surprised. Tennessee's legislators have been eaten up with gun bills over these last few years. (Growing up in the country, 'eaten up with' something meant usually chiggers or ticks. I don't think I've ever used that phrase but it seems appropo here.)

In the 2010 election, TN voters even got in on the act thank to smooth maneuvering by the pro-gun side. The right to hunt wasn't threatened yet an amendment voters voted on made it sound like hunters were about to loose their guns. The campaign was so slick I had some non-hunting, non-packing friends that voted "yes" because they feared hunters were truly about to loose their guns.

Money and manipulation (that stirred fear) got that bill passed.

At present legislators have passed a bill allowing guns in parks. This bill will pass unless Governor Haslam has the courage and wisdom to veto it. We've guns everywhere except the legislative building of course. (I find that a bit odd. Are they afraid a tree hugging, pacifist is gonna bring in a gun and suddenly turn violent? They're probably more afraid of one of their constituents come to think of it.) 

Amidst all the goings on with guns, I was reminded of another possibly country phrase related to guns in my childhood.  Often when a male member in the family had gas, the phrase was used, “He shot his gun.” I don’t recall that phrase being associated with the females, but of course being a female I may have blocked that out.  And I don’t know the origin of this phrase just that it was periodically used.

This prompted me to wonder if somewhere around adolescence this shooting of the bodily gun gets shut down and traded for a need by many men (and now women) to shoot a literal gun.


Think about it.  Some folks laugh when a two or three year old 'shoots his gun.'  It's less socially acceptable at least outside the home when these noises come from an adolescent.

Thus I'm proposing one root of the gun issue is connected to a man having to disown his insides and in turn stifle his bodily experience resulting in the disconnection from his body and a sense of true potency.

Think about it.  Food goes in and gas comes out. Similarly Fear goes in and the guns are brought out.  Guns are brought out because men, the traditional protectors of family, feel unsafe and vulnerable.  Unfortunately still in our society, a man’s labeled feminine when he owns his vulnerability and wants to talk things out. 

Contrary to what you may think, I am not anti-guns or anti-hunting.  My intent is not to oversimplify things or make light of serious matters. 

I’m concerned about the twisting of truth, epidemic these days as powerful corporations and their lobbying arms try to turn descent gun-carrying, meat-eating folks against descent animal-loving, vegetarian folks.     

Lobbyists and politicians who benefit from this manipulation measure their potency in terms of the billions of dollars they reap by stirring fear.  They’re strategically using these times to their benefit while trying to convince the common man that it’s for his benefit.   It appears they’ve done a good job especially in this time when the American citizenry is blending as never before and white folks especially white men are declining dramatically in proportion to the population.  

Everyone wants to feel safe.  Most folks want to feel potent or good at something from one's contributions at work or caring for one's family.  Many have been convinced they're not safe and that potency lies in guns rather than stepping outside one's stereotypes and comfort zones and getting to know strangers.  

Real potency starts with owning one’s insides.  Until the internal stuff of our insides is as valued as the external of our appearances and looks, we are vulnerable. We will be easily manipulated and made to feel fear until we connect our thoughts, feelings and actions.  

The greater vehicle for increased safety isn't found in a gun.  Increased safety is found in connected body, mind and heart which in turn is willing to relate not retaliate and respond rather than react. 

Even though it would increase harmful greenhouse gases, maybe if men (and women) needing to prove their man/womanhood with guns returned to regularly shooting their bodily guns we’d have less violence in the world. "Shooting ones gun” freely and loudly might be the best start at real self-defense.

In the meantime, I wish we could be eaten up with courage. 

-Dawn, The Good News Muse11 April 2015

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

If You Love It Enough, Anything Will Talk to You - Booker T. Washington

Yesterday April 5th was Booker T. Washington's birthday and I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes that comes from him.  

"If you love it enough, anything will talk to you."

Mr. Washington was talking about Big Love, not I'll-love-you-if  love. 

Usually when I hear this I think of traffickers, the men and women who enslave 27 millions girls around the world and sell their bodies in the sex industry. Can I love these soul-less seeming men and women who take young girls (and boys) lives so horribly?  

Most days I can. I can love these soul stealers because their souls were stolen at some point or they wouldn't do what they do.  (I use Ho'oponopono a Hawaiian shamanic practice that I learned through Jean Houston and Peggy Rubin to energetically hold traffickers in my heart and hands while asking their forgiveness for my negligence, ignorance and all ways that I have contributed to the shadow they carry that is connected to me.)

Yes, it would be different if one of these people actually sat down to talk with me.  Could I hold space for this person, take the time and prove I am trustworthy? I hope so and I don't know. Could I love them without my own agenda if they continued their ways? 

"If you love it enough, anything will talk to you." 

Can I love politicians enough and imagine them talking with me?  I'm not talking about 30 second sound bites on tv or slightly longer interviews on FOX or MSNBC. I don't want to see any more come-to-Jesus, God-forgave-me pop culture interviews in which these individuals say they've changed then it's back to business as usual.  

Imagine them really talking to us, with us, coming clean, sharing their motivation for getting into politics to begin with then selling out to greed, power, the machine.  Can we make time, hold space for discussions of this Nature?  Wall Street and the powers that be might cry, "No! Time is up.  There are votes to cast, sides to take, deals to do, money to make." 

If we don't have time to really look at how we be, mankind's time may be nearing "up."  

"If you love it enough, anything will talk to you." 

Do I have time for Monsanto?  Can I love this business with its hands all over our food, trying to control seed and thus us and our health?  Can I love this business that hides behind a mask of saying they're for the American farmer?  That's a big one and yet just last week I used Ho'oponopono in relation to Monsanto.  I have ignored for most of my life how my food is grown. My ignorance is connected in the greater web to Monsanto's ignoring on a deeper level the long term ramifications of their money-making endeavors using genetic modification, toxic chemicals and such.  

What might Booker T. Washington, a planter, scientist, inventor and artist himself, say to us about Monsanto?  I imagine his encouraging us to hold these entities lovingly as this peanut farmer does his plant in the Colquitt, Georgia mural "Spirit Farmer" by Winnipeg artist Charlie Johnston. 

I imagine him saying, "If you love it enough, anything will talk to you." 

-Dawn, The Good News Muse, 6 April 2015

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

1. There are many sites regarding the shamanic prayer/healing/forgiveness practice of Ho'oponopono. Please check them out as I've linked the story above to only one.

2. And learn more about Monsanto here

3.  Here's more also on Colquitt's amazing murals.

Receiving Signs

Saturday night I lay in bed so weary and worn I asked aloud for a sign. I usually make my requests quietly in the pages of my journal or telepathically in my mind. In this particular moment, I loudly demanded a sign. I was tired in my core and in the moment didn't even know for what kind of sign I was asking or why. 

Sunday I awoke feeling like new and thought of the prior night's cry. I also recalled how before going to bed, I lay in the grass for the first time in a month. Communing with Earth, I felt at peace and connected yet by the time I made it to bed I just about shouted my request. Was feeling better my sign? 

Later in the day I drove to the country where I've a home surrounded with gardens. (The original owner was a Master Gardener.) I arrived with hesitation due to the two nights of twenty-degrees we had just experienced. With the same energy with which I demanded a sign, I had also begged the angels over my property to protect the emerging life there from cold's harm. I had telepathically demanded that the flowers remember the sun held in their roots as the freeze took hold of the area. 

I feared the emerging flowers would be frozen. Mrs. Stewart, Clarice as she was known, planted a variety of daffodils and I so wanted to see them this year. Truthfully I longed to see them this year. 

Acceptance and non-attachment are tricky for me. I wanted to be okay with frozen foliage, but frankly I didn't want to feel the sadness that mushy, limp daffodils and hyacinths would stir. 

I arrived to see Jerry unpacking his backpack and airing his tent from a weekend trip. I was happy to see him but I see him every day. I was happier to be greeted by the guests I only see once a year. Flourishing daffodils, bluebells, hyacinths, and trilliums all showed their colorful heads about the yard. Even now tears of joy come to my eyes as I type this for these precious beings only arrive once a year for such a short time. These aren't the flowers in the grocery or florist's shop. These are living entities with whom I've had a relationship for eight years. They were loved by the woman and man who planted them and are equally loved by Jerry and me. 

I walked around seeing "my sign" everywhere. The forsythia was in all its yellow glory. The lilac blossoms were thriving as were tiny bleeding heart blossoms, lily of the valley, Easter lilies, peonies and columbine. And the spiral of lavender bushes that looked dead over winter showed signs of green! 

These beautiful blossoms were my sign. My prayers of protection had been heard by the angels and spirits I experience in this place. 

I started not to share this story. My inner judge said, "Who am you to pray over plants when people are hungry, homeless and sick? Do the flowers really need your prayers?" 

They may not need them but they love them. I feel that just as I felt them loving me as I sang to them yesterday. And I know I need their joy in this world of guns, fracking, fighting, sex trafficking, GMO's, animal abuse, ecological degradation  corruption, hunger, homelessness, and such neglect. I need to feel the joy they bring me. I need to feel my prayers are heard just as I need their sweet scent in my face intermittently as I type. 

I only cut flowers in my yard when I feel a sense that I'm suppose to do so. Yesterday as I walked about I heard from the ones desirous of returning to the city with me. I sang and clipped as today I write and cry tears of joy as this bouquet of aliveness sits across from me. They remind me I am the Master Gardener in my life whether I'm offering prayers of love and care for me, my home or others or I'm pouring out my heart's love as I lie on the earth or dig in the dirt. Ultimately it is all about Love. 

Love, Love, Love, Love, Love. 

-Dawn, The Good News Muse, 30  March 2015

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

Enjoy the beauty of these seven varieties of daffodils.

Mystery's Messages in the Small Things

In mid-November as I was pulling out of my driveway, this leaf fell from the sky to my windshield as a light rain began. I immediately thought, "Love fell from the stars" and took this photo.

This was and is beauty to me especially since astrologically I am in my Venus Return. At the time of this photo, Venus and the Sun were together and I had just that day asked that all old emotion in me be excavated so I could be clear of everything holding me back from being my purest, truest self.

I received exactly what I requested. In the two weeks that followed, I was regularly awakened in the night feeling the rising up of emotions I had suppressed since childhood. I was navigating the Underworld within me.

Two weeks later, I looked down to see this heart shaped burning bush leaf on the rug to my morning writing space. It took my breath. I still have this leaf.

I knew Nature so loves me and I knew Love resides in the above and the below.

Pay attention to the small things.

Mystery's messages lie therein.

-Dawn, The Good News Muse 19 March 2015

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

Nature Speaks - How Do You Listen?

Yesterday I found a male cardinal someone had placed just behind the small brick wall in front of my home. I imagined their gently laying it under the burning bush because they sensed or knew I tend the birds whether they are living or dead.

Under the stars at day's end, I smudged and blessed this beautiful, bright red bird then placed it in the ferns in the back yard. This area has been the final resting place of many birds, snakes and animals. I laid sprigs of lavender on its body, then covered it with leaves. I asked its kin to receive it as well as continue coming to Earth to gift us with their beauty and song.

Then I asked two things I had never previously done. I asked the fern fairies to honor it as well and I asked for renewed vitality for those of my human kin that needed it as well as their recognizing the beauty of their self-importance. (Ted Andrews in the book "Animal Speaks" writes that cardinal represents renewed vitality through recognition of one's self-importance.)

This morning only a sprig of lavender remained where I had placed the cardinal. 

This happened once before when I had left a large, black snake in the same place. The next morning, just like this one, the animal was gone yet the leaves appeared unmoved. 

This morning I imagined the fern fairies wearing cardinal's red feathers and the cardinal feeling great joy. Then I sat in my writing chair next to the ferns. 

At some point I glanced down to find a portion of a turtle's shell at my feet. Upon seeing its details, I immediately had three associations.  I saw a portal, then ripples made by a pebble tossed into a pond and lastly a spider's web. The fairies had left me a gift. A gift with many messages. 

Earth is a portal. And my simple, mindful actions, whether blessing an animal or my fellow human kin, create unseen ripples in energy's field by which a new web is being weaved. I held this treasure for quiet awhile. Even now as night is here, it lays across from me. In my world, this is quite the gift. 

Moses had a burning bush. 

Nature is my burning bush, a testament to the presence of the Divine leading me step-by-step in this journey called Life. (I later read in "Animal Speaks" that turtles are associated with doorways to the fairy realm!) 

Take time to notice and be mindful of the messages Nature has for you. Pay attention to your intuitive hits. Trust yourself. Take your time. Listen. Look. See. 

-Dawn, The Good News Muse 17 March, 2015

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

In Honor of Pi

For the Audio version of this story is HERE.

In late October 2011, I saw the familiar stones at the Stonehenge Golf Course east of Nashville and thought, 'That looks like pi.'  I had golfed there previously and never thought this. I wasn't even sure what pi meant. I mentally made a note of what to me felt like a sign.

Two weeks passed and I felt compelled to drive to the country overnight for the 11/10/11 Full Moon.

Early the next morning before my drive back into Nashville, the moon still hung in the southwestern sky.  I had never before made a quick round trip like this and was only returning to the city because a friend invited me to join her for an 11-11-11 ritual at the Bicentennial Mall.

Nearing Nashville, a traffic jam forced me to take an exit I had never taken as I tried to wind my way into downtown.  For some reason at that exit I felt led to invite any lingering energy related to sorrow and suffering to join us for the ritual.  When these ideas show up, I don't question.  I trust.  I spoke aloud asking that the residual pain of the Native Americans, slaves and civil war soldiers in this area join me.

I felt like I was on a mission that I could not have anticipated moments prior.  The road curved slightly and I was suddenly on a street leading straight into downtown. I was running late. To my surprise policemen were stationed waving me and other cars through at each red-light. It was as if they knew I was on a mission.

I arrived at the Bicentennial Mall yet was delayed there due to cars parked everywhere. I found a parking place and had a choice. I could run ahead and join my friend who waved to me half-way down the mall or I could start at the beginning where Tennessee's rivers and towns are mapped out in stone.

With a vase of summer's last zinnias in hand, a bottle of Glastonbury water in my pocket and great love in my heart, I started at the map of Tennessee. I honored four communities to which I feel connected by placing a zinnia one each one's name. Then I gave one to a homeless man bearing witness to my ritual from a nearby picnic table.

Next were the fountains representing Tennessee's rivers. At that time the fountains had not been working since the May flood of 2010. I hurriedly walked past each river wanting to catch my friends before remembering the sacred water from Glastonbury, England in my pocket. I stood at the Eastern  end of the state and blessed every river especially the Wolf River because wolves are such teachers and have willingly suffered so much and the Buffalo on which I grew up.

When I arrived at the grassy area that fills the mid-section, I realized the policeman had been on a mission. They were clearing traffic for the Veteran's Day parade. Before me were civil war encampment scenes with cannons, costumed people and pyramid shaped tents. Something about this was perfect for 11-11-11 as we began the shift from control and conquest to greater cooperation and compassion.

I walked through this scene and offered zinnias to many of those in costume.  Each person accepted my offering.  I placed one on an old ironing board that was part of a homestead and another on a cannon, symbols of the feminine and masculine.  I was born a bit late to be a flower child yet I felt like an emissary of Mother Earth leaving the beauty of love evidenced by flowers at stops along the Mall.

By the time I reached the bell towers, it felt like the zinnias were my loaves and fishes.  They seemed to multiply as I had given them away.  I reached the bell towers and joined my friend and two others who were already meditating.  We sat in the center of the towers with the zinnias, water and other honored objects in the middle of us.  My friend played her Peruvian flute as I quietly invited the suffering I gathered to be transmuted and leave this plane.

As I sat receiving love from below and above and sending it out to all, Spirit sent a test to ensure I was clear of judgement and fear.  A man announced an artillery demonstration at the small stage down the mall just in front of us.

During each pause as a gun was fired, a man on a microphone spoke. At one point he referenced "warfare maturing in order to neutralize the field." This was the perfect.  Love is the greatest neutralizer.  Throughout time it has neutralized hate and fear.

To make this even more perfect, my friend played "Amazing Grace" on her flute.  This experience truly was Amazing Grace.

We parted ways and I drove home.  That afternoon while still in Nashville as I went through the mail, I saw the symbol for pi (II) on two different things.  Then as I sat in the car awaiting Jerry and flipping through a home goods catalog, there it was again. The pi symbol was on the face of a clock.

When I receive messages synchronistically like this, I intentionally don't research them. To do so usually puts me in a heady thinking space which takes me from an intuitive listening place.

Late that afternoon for the first time in all our years of leaving Nashville, Jerry drove out of town on a state highway rather than the interstate.  He didn't know of my driving into town on an alternative route.  As we left town, I again invited the energies of suffering from this area to join us.

Later under the 11-11-11 moon, we offered a ritual honoring all souls that have known earthly pain.  With sage, lavender, zinnias and Glastonbury water, we honored the French and all those burned at the stake. We called in the Native Americans torn from the Mother land they loved as well as those killed in the Holocaust. We called in those connected to the land we now live on whose prior lives have been hard as well as veterans who have died in wars. We honored the dark man, all those from Africa and other countries who were enslaved and we honored the dark man within - the shadow of humankind that has caused harm to others as well as ignoring Mother Earth and her children.

The winds were fierce as they often are that time of year in this particular area.  This was exactly how it is suppose to be as winds cleared the energy of suffering and sorrow that had joined us and came up from the valley below us. I sensed the ancestors above us joining in this profound ritual that spontaneously unfolded through listening to intuition. And I remembered those zinnias at the Bicentennial Mall.  I had left powerful little flowering portals with starry centers all along the mall.

The next morning we drove into Cookeville for the Art Prowl. I should have known since this was the 11th Annual Art Prowl that my story had not ended.

The first piece of art at the first venue I entered, Poets on the Square, took my breath.

Pi in the Sky by Kevin Courtney Delaney could have been the only piece I saw that day.  The Universe and God through this man affirmed the entire last twenty-four hours from Nashville's Bicentennial Mall to my rural yard.

I ordered a print and spent the rest of my day somewhat distracted wondering what pi really meant.  Upon arriving home, I broke my rule and went on-line in hopes of gaining an understanding.  I still didn't get it. I could not cognitively make connections. There was something missing in my brain or in what I read.

Two weeks later at Thanksgiving dinner in Iowa, I sat by Jerry's teenage niece. I asked what she enjoyed in school.  As soon as she said, "Math" I asked if she knew about Pi. Her eyes brightened.  We went to another room. With pen and paper, Abbey explained pi in her way and it clicked.  I got the message I needed when she said, "Pi goes on for infinity."

Infinity !

That's when I knew the beauty of Pi in the Sky and the rituals for transmuting sorrow and helping it pass on 11-11-11.  I was being shown infinity really is in the sky.

To solidify that I GOT this, the next day in a rural Iowa bookstore I found a paperback of which many had read but I had not. It's title? The Life of Pi.

There is life in Pi. Life never ends. Love never ends. We change form but we and love go on and on. Those who leave us are never really gone. We are connected through Pi throughout infinity to all we have loved.

-Dawn, The Good News Muse 14 March 2015

dawn@imaginetheshift.com