healing

Getting Real!

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High anxiety and stress seem very common in the human world. What is anxiety but an energetic message to you that your life is out of balance in some way?

Can you live more simply and more in tune with your body, more aligned with the rhythms of nature to bring yourself back into balance between body mind and spirit?

Rushing, worrying, trying to beat the clock and cram many activities into a finite amount of time, constant busyness, constant pressure to look “good”, to measure up, to perform to even higher standards, to acquire and organize and clean more things, to ignore your feelings, to attend to your shiny beeping and blinking objects, to allow those objects to dictate a measure of your reality – these and similar habits cause anxiety to root even deeper in your life.

Can you catch yourself as you buy into black and white thinking of should, ought, or must have, must do? Pay attention to these traps of thought that increase your anxiety levels.

For the health of your life and the life of the planet, slow down, pay attention to yourself, your body your senses. Pay attention to the healing and calming vibrations of nature.

Learn to get real!

Breathe mindfully and create space in your day for the real and true you. Discern your true needs and wants by quieting the mind and listening to the voices of your heart and spirit.

Give the voice of spirit attention for this is your best guidance for a balanced life. Your heart and spirit will not instruct you to go along with current trends, crowds influencers, glossy images you try to live up to. Spirit will show you only what is right and true for you.

In this way, you can access the deep liberating wisdom of your heart that knows only how to be real.

The Gift You Did Not Ask For

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One day as a child you woke up to the awareness and consciousness of yourself as an individual human being – that you have a body, that you breathe, your heart beats, you can move and speak and think and act with free will. You realized that you seem to be separate from those around you.

You spent some years early on learning how to master and live in your body. Perhaps it was an adjustment for your spirit, learning to live within the limitations of the physical world.

Newborn

Somehow beyond your conscious awareness, you spirit ended up inhabiting a body at this time in the history of our planet. You ended up in this place. It was no accident!

You as an individual may not yet know the larger meaning of your own life or how it fits in with the larger patterns and connections between events and peoples and living creatures, the land and oceans, the big picture of life on Earth.

Know this: The web of life is the big picture, the universal pattern composed of infinite smaller patterns and connections that interweave, interact, and overlap with each other creating an achingly beautiful tapestry of the whole.

Even if you consciously did not choose this particular life or the conditions of your life, you have been blessed with a span of years to live.

Spring Tree

You have been given the opportunity to experience joy and laughter, to know grief and heartache, to heal from grief and heartache, to seek and maintain connection with others, to learn about love, to experience growing older, to become a grandparent one day perhaps, to develop your talents, to do those things that satisfy your soul.

All that you do with kindness and good intentions blesses and strengthens the web of life.

Think of your life as a gift – the greatest gift you did not ask for. You are here now, so make the most of it!

Ice and Water

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Dear beloved, do you exist in the manner of frozen ice, living in a perpetual winter, or do you live and breathe and move like flowing water? Have you known both ways of being?

All who walk this earth find themselves in the season of life called winter from time to time, a winter in the mind, in the emotions, a frozen heart, perhaps a time of grief.

GCW in snow

If you are stuck in the cold, you will find a way to cycle through the season of winter in your life and move on to the time of thaw and warming. This feels like spring with new life unfolding everywhere, giving way to the bank full flow in streams and rivers and the green leaves of summer.

When you are living in the seasons of spring and summer within your heart, your life flows effortlessly downstream finding the path of least resistance, moving forward with grace, moving toward the ocean with ease.

In summer, your life is like a river, refreshing all who drink of it, sustaining life along its course. The river of your life moves through the landscape, flowing easily around obstacles, even cutting through layers of stone over the course of centuries, to reach the goal.

Sunlit ripples, shallow creek

Then once again you may experience the biting winds and chilly air of autumn and into the frozen time of winter. All forward movement, all flow ceases when winter arrives, life goes underground and water freezes. Everything is stuck in place, frozen in time and space. As you have been here before, you know it is a temporary state. Do not lose heart, dear ones.

With time, patience, self awareness and self love, you can thaw the frozen and stuck places in your heart. Reach out for help if you need it. Your life can once again flow like water in midsummer.

Where there is forward movement and flow, there is life.

A Practice for Connecting with Your Inner Child

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In this practice, you will be going inward and meeting yourself as a newborn infant…

Find a quiet place where you can relax and just be for a little while. Tune into your breath and your heartbeat. Settle comfortably into your chair or cushion

Now with your inner vision, bring up a picture of yourself as you currently are, your fully grown self. Send yourself heartfelt love for the person you are and the person you are becoming, heartfelt empathy for the challenges you face, the mistakes you’ve made, and heartfelt acceptance for yourself, flaws and all.

Let go of your logical mind for a while and allow yourself to roll back in time to the day you were born.

Tiny baby

Now see your current self lovingly lift up and hold your newborn infant self, cradling him or her gently to your beating heart. You might imagine yourself rubbing their tiny back with the flat of your palm. Perhaps you can feel the velvety softness of the newborn’s skin and hair. Can you see and feel the perfection of ears, fingers and toes?

Smell their scent, Feel and see the perfection, the expansion of spirit in this completely unique, beautiful and tender being.

Do you sense your newborn’s complete trust in you and in the new life they’ve chosen? Can you allow your heart to open with love and tenderness for the tiny but mighty being you were?

As you hold your newborn self in this healing place inside yourself, consider what promises your current self will make to your infant self. What stories will you tell him or her about your life? What will you tell this precious being her about who he or she is. What qualities will you recognize in this beautiful infant? How will you care for and protect your tender inner child?

Spend the time you need reconnecting with yourself on the day you entered this life. When you are finished, put your infant back to sleep and return to the here and now. Tap your cheekbones and the center of your chest to ground yourself in the present. Take a few deep breaths. Notice how you feel now.

In the sacred place deep within your heart, you have the power to soothe and heal your inner child.

Ask for Help

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Dear reader, this post is from the archives of AskGCW.

Dear friends, I feel a great heaviness in this world right now.

I can feel the vibrations of your tension, the tightening of your shoulders and throat, the churning in your gut, the stress, the weight of worry many are feeling right now in this time of uncertainty.

For those who are worried, frightened – lean against me and those of my kind, the extended family of trees. Enter into our friendly energy, rest your weight on us, we will support and calm you, help you know what is real and solid and true.

Grandmother Cottonwood

Tune yourselves to our quiet and subtle frequency. Listen with your whole body and heart, your wise self.

We will help you know you are not alone, that life goes on, that you are safe in this moment.

Know this. All trees and the collective spirits of nature – animal and plant, insect, reptile, amphibian, all angelic beings, your human ancestors who have crossed to the light, all spirits or land air and sea, of heaven and Earth, of the Universe are with you always.

Male Cardinal in winter

Please call on us for advice, kindness, companionship, spiritual nourishment, comfort. You are not alone. You are surrounded by love.

Tune into our quiet and loving voices to steady and calm your anxious minds.

Survival

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Dear readers this post is from the archives of AskGCW.

Rumors of the demise of Mother Earth have been greatly exaggerated. This planet will endure, she will continue spinning on her axis, orbiting the sun. Day will follow night. The sun will rise in the East. The ancient cycle of seasons will endure, the moon will wax, become full, wane, then begin again in darkness.

Full Moon

The ancient cycles will endure even if humans are no longer here to witness the beauty, to name the seasons, and study the stars

Humans are slowly committing suicide as they ignore the warning signs of the stressed and overtaxed environment and atmosphere. I ask you to slow down and listen to your Great Grandmother the Earth. Learn her language. Pay attention to her signs, symbols, her distress call.

When you learn her language, the language of the web of life, you will learn the ancient ways of survival on this planet. You will learn to respect the amazing intelligence built up over eons of time within every living thing and every living system.

Tuning in to the messages and intricate interconnections of the web of life and hearing the voices of all living things here on this planet still means survival.

Technology in your pocket, shiny objects, expensive homes will not save or buffer you from the reality that you are a part of this web of life, a part of nature. We survive together!

Take action to divest yourselves and your human cultures of greed and corruption. Stop over-consuming our precious resources and hoarding wealth for only a few. These things damage the web of life.

Learn to use only what you need. Learn to be humble. Learn to love each step you take on Mother Earth, each breath you take into your miraculous body, each beat of your heart.

Wake up and embrace your precious life on this precious Earth!

Choose life! Slow down, live simply.

Time to rebuild

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So much has been lost this year, so much destroyed by wild fire, high winds, furious storms, a deadly pandemic. Now it is time to rebuild and create new lives from the ashes.

Grandmother Cottonwood

Will you rebuild on the same models, in the same places with the same materials, the same ideas? Will you stay with what worked in the past?

Take into account all that has changed as you plan to create and rebuild. Sands shift, weather and climate change, fires and winds roar through, people die, babies are born. Rebuild and recreate your new reality that is now.

You are called to embrace the present moment and the coming moment and the next and the next. You are called to be flexible and resilient. You are called to stay relevant to your own life,

You are called to take the time to mourn what has been and let it go, to face the present and future with eyes open. Can you do this with resolve? Can you do this without preconceived notions of what should be?

Where there is destruction and damage in your life can you rebuild, renew, and restore to a newer and better present? When your creations no longer serve you can you let them go with grace, move on, clear out, rebuild life from the ground up, one brick, one stone at a time?

What feels like destruction? Leaving a longtime relationship, moving to a new town, losing a loved one or a job, losing your home, injury, disease, accident …

These destructive events are “back to square one times” in the the constantly unfolding creative process called life. They can create new realities that may usher in fresh new thoughts, feelings, habits, ways of being and relating.

If you are brittle and unyielding, the storms of life may break you. you may find the damage difficult to repair. You may get stuck without a framework for creating a new life from the wreckage of the old.

Grandmother Cottonwood

When you are flexible like the willow tree and bend with life’s high winds, you will build strength needed to weather the inevitable destructive events, earthquakes, volcanoes of life. This flexibility will help you create and invent new ways of living in your present moments.

It is time to create new life affirming ways of being, living, thinking, and relating in the world that is now.

Heart centered

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I invite you, whatever your story, whatever your fears and worries to journey inward to your heart. Your heart, seat of your wise self or if you like, your soul.

Knower of the truth, interpreter of all threads of information coming in from your surroundings, perceiver of others people’s energy and intentions, sorter of who and what to allow into your life, who and what to distance yourself from.

Your heart is so much wiser than your logical ego mind gives it credit for. Quietly running the show, if you allow it, with discernment, non- judgment, knowing, wise guidance.

Late afternoon silver lining

Listen to your heart. Sing to it. If you are anxious, hum it into calm.

Follow the heart’s advice. Feel what it is feeling and know that what your heart tells you is vital information if you wish to live an awakened life.

Heart centered means trusting what you feel in your heart, allowing and noticing anger, fear, frustrations, just as you allow playfulness joy and contentment into your awareness. When you block any of these vital emotions, you are blocking your heart.

Heart centered means seeing others through the lens of your higher self, seeing beyond the surface to their hearts.

Heart centered living is not all sweetness and light, for that would be living a lie, erasing and blocking much of your human experience. Letting the wisdom and truth of your heart requires no apology or explanation to anyone!

When the truth of the heart is known, it moves us to act with wisdom, to feel with clarity, to live from our true and wise center.

Survival

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You are still here. You who are alive , you have survived furious storms, widespread sickness, social upheaval, massive migrations of people, loss of wild places. And yet you endure. Our planet endures.

New life finds a way. Seedlings push up through the crusty soil, reaching to the sun through cracks in concrete and stone.

You too, will find a way to survive.

You deserve wholeness. You deserve healing. No matter what has happened in your life, what you have done, what you have endured you deserve to live as fully as possible. You can reclaim 100% of your inner power, your spark of divine light, your heart and will.

Monarch butterfly and wildflowers

Know this. If you are alive in a body at this moment in time you can find peace, you can learn to communicate with your wise self and get to know your heart and spirit. You can live authentically, beyond the surface roles and costume dramas of daily life. You can get to know the true core of your spirit.

Ask for help if you need it!

Examine your beliefs. No belief, no physical condition, no problem or challenge is carved in stone or cast in concrete unless you believe it to be so.

You are made of energy. Your physical being is in constant motion, constant ebb and flow. Energy obeys and follows your thoughts and beliefs! So create new kinder thoughts that will gently shift your energetic reality to what you want.

When you know this you will survive and thrive!

Storm damage

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Last week a furious wind and rain storm tore through this place destroying and damaging many in our beloved community of trees.

Broken hackberry

The sound of chainsaws is heard in the land.

Huge piles of brush line roads and streets. Centenarian hackberries that have towered over this shady neighborhood split in two, others broke at the crown. Mighty oaks toppled, evergreens twisted, silver maples torn apart, wild cherries maimed, red buds missing vital limbs…

Downed cottonwood

It is time to mourn our lost companions. Yes, this is another great loss in a year of many losses.

Broken hollow oak

The scars of this storm will last for a long time in our land, in our hearts and spirits, but we (by which I mean all living things) will endure. We will heal. The spirit of the land endures as nature regenerates and reinvents herself.

And later this fall, dear humans, after a time of healing it will be fitting to plan for the future by planting many young trees. Yes, this will be an exercise in patience. In this way you can continue to nurture and care for those who will come after you and care for the Earth.

Even after you and your loved ones have passed into the light those who are now infants those not yet conceived will one day delight in the cool shade, the towering grace, the shifting sun and shadow, the brilliant fall color, the heavenly fragrance, the spring blossoms of a healthy community of trees.

Young oak tree

Plant new trees this fall and make our world more beautiful, more livable, a true home for all.