environment

More about Potential

/ Shamanic Healing of Ames / Leave a comment

There is great potential here on this planet!

Your thoughts, words, actions, and beliefs have very real consequences and effects that will manifest in your life in some way. This is power! Use it wisely!

When you emanate fear, fear returns to you. It is all you see. When you radiate love, love is reflected back to you. Your life is rich in love. When you hate and seek to tear down and destroy others, this energy will return to you in some way. You will feel the harmful effects.

Pay attention to the energy you put out into the world.

Cottonwood seed pods

When anyone is left behind or treated as less than others, less deserving, other, unworthy, this energy reverberates through the web of life and diminishes those who do the diminishing.

When you plant seeds of harmony with your eyes open, your ears unstopped, your heart tuned to love, harmony will be restored to the web of life. This means to you and your family. It means every living being will benefit from your integrity.

You have the potential to heal, to harm, to tear or to restore. Every thought, word and action of yours has significance in the world you wish to create for yourself and all others.

Beautiful spider web

Your thoughts, words, and actions are filaments in the web of life. You weave the web thread by thread.

Potential in the web of life

/ Shamanic Healing of Ames / Leave a comment

From my vantage point there is amazing potential here on our sweet green planet.

There is vast potential for all beings to thrive, for all to live in harmony, for a renewal of the web of life, once again finding our home the Earth and her groves, her rivers, valleys, mountains, plains, and deserts, her frozen regions, all her various creatures to be sacred and treated accordingly.

Monarch butterfly and wildflowers

There is great potential for all beings to live in balance. When there is balance and harmony in the web of life, all beings are interconnected on the level of spirit. When this is so, all thrive together.

When I speak of “all” beings, I mean your family, not just distant or abstract concepts or foreign species. All beings include those you know and love, those you cherish, those you hold in your heart, those for whom you desire a good life and happiness and prosperity.

All beings include you and your beloved pets, your grandchildren, you and the gardens you plant, the trees that shelter you, the plants and animals you eat for food, the insects that pollinate your food and make honey, the coffee trees, the banana plantations… the people that do the work of harvesting and processing the food…

Newborn baby

Your beloved ones and those you depend on cannot be separated from all other living beings in the web of life.

The web of life is one fabric! We thrive together or decline together.

Near Death Experience for GCW

/ Shamanic Healing of Ames / Leave a comment

From Betty:

Last week a bucket truck and workers clad in day-glo vests carrying chainsaws were seen in the vicinity of GCW.

Instead of trimming weak branches and removing dead wood as I had hoped, her western trunk was cut off several feet above her roots. Huge chunks of wood, splinters, and bark now scatter the ground around her for many yards.

GCW in parts

I feel a huge sense of sadness and loss at this action. The landscape and horizon here on our patch have been changed forever.

For some reason a part of her eastern trunk was allowed to remain, so a portion of her once magnificent crown still gathers in summer light through silver and green leaves.

Remaining crown and trunk of GCW

It is not known if the men in chainsaws will return to finish the job and bring her completely down.

Her remaining lifespan and physical being have been severely curtailed, but her spirit endures.

Cross section of GCW

I know she will continue to speak. Her wise and loving spirit cannot be destroyed, cannot be diminished or eradicated.

Life is all we have

/ Shamanic Healing of Ames / Leave a comment

What really matters?

Tiny new plants claim hairline cracks in stone to spread their roots. Small mammals survive on discarded crumbs. Insects hatch in a dribble of water. They choose life. They cling tenaciously to life. They do what is needed to survive and thrive. They apologize to no-one for living!

Grasshopper on purple coneflower

Life will find a way.

When you have passion for life you will find a way to live fully. You are stubborn, a survivor. Even if others wish to impede your right to life, to instill fear, to diminish you, you will find ways to carry out your life purpose and be who you are meant to be.

Your dreams desires and plans all depend on you being here now in your body. On your taking your rightful place at the table, partaking of nature’s gifts, breathing deeply of Earth’s fresh air, walking freely upon our beloved planet.

You belong here in this vast teeming web of life. I repeat. You belong here. You are meant to be here. There is no mistake!

New grass shoots after a fire

Life is the spirit’s way of experiencing what it is to be in a body– plant, animal, insect, or human, and receiving an education like no other. Life imposes limited conditions on the body while teaching perseverance, endurance, and making the most of what you’ve been given.

Make your life count. Live in your body. Open your heart to those you trust, sit in the sun, breathe deeply and give thanks for your gift of life in this body at this time.

Life is not easy, your days are not guaranteed. You may suffer, you may hurt you may grieve. Yet, even still, life is the most precious gift of all.

Live fully within the conditions of the life and environment your spirit has chosen for you.

Which Earth will you choose?

/ Shamanic Healing of Ames / Leave a comment

The health and life of our planet depends on the collective choices of human beings. You have the agency, the free will, two hands arms and legs, the capabilities and brain power to make or break, create or destroy, build or demolish, weave or tear.

All life on Earth now depends on you and your species to take responsibility for the health and life of our planet! Each and every person, every living being, from the humblest human being to the richest person on Earth, from lowly ants nesting in the soil to the mighty elephants of Africa and Asia from tunneling worms to magnificent soaring birds all depend on the interconnected web of life.

Grandmother Cottonwood

Humans now in this age with the stroke of a pen, the detonation of a bomb, the clear cutting of a mountainside, the gratuitous use of violence, the misuse of words and images have the power to damage or even destroy our web.

By God we need better from you! I speak for our Earth for the web of life, for all living beings.

You have been endowed with the stewardship of our planet and given the care of billions of your kind. All deserve to live in peace and plenty without fear.

Will you see those different than you as expendable as “other” as unworthy of your care or will you recognize your shared humanity? Will you see yourself in the mirror of their eyes?

Put down your weapons, your divisive actions words and thoughts and look inside yourselves. Find wholeness within your hearts. If you can’t find it, ask for help to know yourself!

Search your souls. Access your higher selves. Your spirits and hearts are larger and more expansive than you know. When you discover this you become one with the great wave of human consciousness shifting toward the light.

Cottonwoods at sunset

Dear humans, we spirits of nature have had enough of your drama and trauma! Our patience is growing thin.

Please step up and learn to live together in harmony. Use your power to restore the web of life.

Trees and perseverance

/ Shamanic Healing of Ames / Leave a comment

From a minuscule seed to a towering giant many decades later, we trees have an enduring will to live to survive and thrive. We know how to persevere.

We develop strong roots and sturdy branches and thick bark to survive. In our tender days and weeks, we must survive hungry insects and gnawing mammals looking for a tender bite, a succulent treat, floods that would undercut our roots, drown on suffocate us, mowers and grazers, weeders, weed killers, cultivators.

Tiny seedlings and concrete

We must live with the prospect of being overshadowed by larger plants, storms, wind that might uproot us or break our branches, lightening strikes that kill our friends and neighbors, the dreaded chainsaw; winter chills frost upheavals, summer heat that could fry an egg.

Yet we endure! Every spring we wake and choose life once again, sending out new shoots and leaves, increasing our roots, growing taller, wider, stretching to the light.

Grandmother Cottonwood summer light

We persevere for what choice do we have? We choose life.

Balance in the Web of Life

/ Shamanic Healing of Ames / Leave a comment

Can you widen your perspective for a moment? Imagine rising up above our Earth like a soaring bird and viewing the beauty of our land from above…

…the woodlands, streams and rivers, the grazing deer, flocks of birds flying below, fields of green, shady and pleasant neighborhoods, the gardens and parks, lakes and ponds, farms and ranches, the quiet cemeteries, the playing fields…

…Vast oceans and seas, waves breaking on beaches and rocks, mountain peaks and deserts… clouds of butterflies migrating…

Flying bird, summer landscape

From this birds eye perspective you may begin to discern the magnificence and complexity of the web of life on this planet. Can you feel the peace and calm that seem to be generated in some areas?

Do you feel a kinship, a deep connection with all that you see?

But dear ones, as you soar above the Earth you may also see the devastation created by human alterations of our ecosystems, over-development and pollution. You may see some dying and diseased landscapes.

You may sense the anger and suffering inequitable policies have engendered. You might feel the widespread fear of disease for those with no safety net. You may feel the grief of those who have lost loved ones in the pandemic.

The web of life weakens when those with too much power believe the accumulation of massive wealth is the only thing that matters. When this grasping for wealth is valued over the equitable balance and distribution of resources, when health care is doled out for profit and those who cannot pay are left behind, the health and well being of all life on this planet suffer.

When kindness empathy and mutual benefit are seen as weak, when living together in harmony is scoffed at, when co-existing in peace doesn’t manufacture enough money to fill the bottomless pit of greed, the web of life weakens.

Do not allow the precious and complex beauty of our world to become damaged beyond repair under the weight of such stupidity greed and negligence.

Choose leaders who seek to assuage suffering, who do not turn their backs when others are hurting. Choose leaders who are rooted in reality, who make decisions based on the best advice available, who use their power for the good of all humans, all beings, the web of life.

When there is balance within the great web of life on Earth, all her beings can thrive.

Spring Evening

/ Shamanic Healing of Ames / Leave a comment

Sun sinks toward the western horizon. Light pierces through the woods creating long shadows, dramatically spotlighting a single leaf, tree trunk, branch or blossom.

Robin sings the familiar evening songs all robins have sung since this land was new.

American robin

Tender new maple leaves fan out, yellow green against the pale blue late afternoon sky. Ferns unroll their sweet green toothy leaves and stretch out in the cool shade.

Violets shelter close to the ground, lifting their purple faces among the heart shaped leaves. Bumble bees work every possible blossom while the light holds.

The plants, trees, shrubs, perennials, and what are often called weeds grow in a riot, each claiming its place, rooting down and reaching up to the light, each finding a home.

Red squirrel

Squirrels chase and take giant leaps from tree to tree, passing time with a little craziness, a little play, a little high wire act with no net.

Turkey vultures

Vultures make their way home from all across the city, soaring, catching the last updrafts of the day. They can’t resist a few final figure eights, and possibly an aerial trick or two, formation flying with their next of kin before bedtime. They finally approach the roost trees and make a production of settling down with much flapping.

The waxing moon sails like a kite above the houses waiting for night.

Now only the tree tops catch the sunlight, burnishing them a golden green or bronze for a precious moment before all is bathed once again in shadow.

All creatures and rooted beings who make their living here take their essential place in the web of life.

Our Earth turns and the sun sinks below the horizon. Time to rest and settle. Time to watch the stars come out.

What is your legacy?

/ Shamanic Healing of Ames / Leave a comment

Dear ones, Please do not underestimate your contributions, your necessity to the web of life. No matter what your calling is, what work you’ve chosen to do, your feelings, words and actions in this life leave an energetic legacy for all living beings.

Amazing spider web

Think of the gardens you’ve planted, the trees you’ve nurtured, the love you’ve expressed and shown, the meals you have lovingly prepared, the pets you have held to your heart, the smiles you have freely given, the songs you’ve sung; the empathy, kindness, connections, the heart to heart connections alignment with divine light, the joy you’ve felt, the seeds you’ve sown, the lives you’ve touched with thoughtfulness, wisdom, and attention, the unconditional love for others that flows from your heart – these are the lasting legacies that you have bequeathed to the web of life, your families, and your communities.

I ask – is your true legacy measured in stocks and bonds, dollars and cents? Money can be spent, lost or stolen in a heart beat, leaving your heirs with only their inner resources, courage, wisdom, integrity, honesty and the clothes on their backs.

Your true nature is to be mortal. Every living thing must pass through the final transformation. One day your hands will relax and release their hold on objects and the material wealth of which humans are so fond.

Your body will stay behind while your spirit lives on. You will leave this material world which is so precious, so dear, yet so impermanent, ever shifting and changing.

Late winter landscape, dusk

So while you are here, find joy in your embodied life with the senses and emotions and intelligence you’ve been given, love with your whole heart and express that love in ways others will feel and understand. Do the work that satisfies your soul. In this way you expand and strengthen the web of life.

You are an essential participant in the web of life whether you know it or not.

Let your life create strength and resilience and peace and love in the web, your lasting energetic legacy.

Reweave the Web of Life

/ Shamanic Healing of Ames / Leave a comment

Tender green shoots reach toward the sun. This is life on our home, Planet Earth. The seasons turn, spring follows winter, the earth revolves, night follows day. All life depends on these ancient cycles and rhythms that we have learned to trust and depend on.

Cottonwoods at dusk

But now the web of life has been severely disrupted, threatening human life on our home planet and creating vast imbalances that magnify pre-existing imbalances and injustices. This disruption is throwing life on our blue and green planet out of tune, off true center, out of kilter, creating untold misery.

The intricate web of life has kept our planet healthy and in balance for millennia, providing conditions for life under the sun and stars. Now the damage to our web is showing up with widespread sickness and death, magnifying the imbalances that provide rude shelter and meager food for billions, a basic existence for many, abundant food, water, good health and riches for some; vast unimaginable wealth for a few.

To help reweave the web of life, begin to rethink your definition of wealth. Let your new thinking inspire new actions.

What is more precious than clear unpolluted fresh air or a deep breath that is easily exhaled? The feel of sun or rain on your skin, the beauty of thriving evergreen trees, blooming grasses and flowers, songbirds building their nests, the sight of a thin crescent moon through bare tree branches? Happy and healthy children? The tastes and textures of a simple meal to be savored? The smile of a loved one? A warm home in winter? What is true wealth?

Evergreens

Can you simplify and downsize your life and still feel wealthy?

Rethink your definition of what is necessary for you to enjoy daily life. Rethink your definition of true health. That includes health for all who people this Earth, and all life forms that grow and live their lives here on land, in sea and air.

The disruption in the web of life on Earth will help to focus your human attention on what is precious, what is true in your life, what changes you wish to make, what you can do that will help all living beings reweave our priceless web of life in which all things are one.

Rethink your true purpose here. Go beyond the surface. Dig deeper in your thinking. Tune in to your heart and spirit, and ask to know your role in the web of life and your role in reweaving the web.

We are all connected as one. We are meant to thrive together in our interconnections, to live in harmony and balance.

We all create and experience the best of life and health together, or we stand by and witness the diminishment of our lives, our families our potential, and our spirits.

We must act with compassion to reweave and restore true balance in our web of life.