Have you gone outside on a midwinter day to lie on the cool crusty snow, letting the Earth take your weight and support you, the snow molding to your shape?
Winter deer path
Have you gone out to lie down and soak in the cool fresh air, to absorb the Earth Energy that powers you? To know your oneness with all of life?
Let the nearby trees weave a lacy net of branches for your protection. Know the solid fabric of their roots below the surface, creating a strong foundation for your physical life, holding and anchoring the soil that gives us life.
Let the clean cool air refresh and revitalize your energy, lift your spirits, the blue sky inspire your dreams, expand your mind, enlarge your knowledge of what is possible.
Dream and rest under the sky, letting the blanket of snow cushion and cradle you.
Let yourself be one with this Earth and accept her precious winter offerings.
Your sweet spot is found at the intersection of you at your best and brightest and you carrying out your true life’s purpose.
Do you crave the sweetness of being in the flow of your life, feeling on top of the world, and doing your best work, letting it pour effortlessly from you?
Yellow swallowtail butterfly on bee balm
When in your sweet spot you are expanded, focused, in the flow without judgment doubt or fear. You may lose track of time or even forget you have a body momentarily. Time in your sweet spot is satisfying to your soul.
You have felt this, and you can feel this again. If you are doubtful, remember what you felt as a child laying on the Earth watching the clouds float by, playing with your beloved pet, laughing with a friend, finding shells and stones on a beach… A child’s true work is play!
Some call your sweet spot alignment with source, or connecting with divine light while in a body. The light fills you and calls you to your soul’s true purpose
Then life is sweet. It flows with an uncommon ease. All is accomplished with grace, without overthinking, striving, or pushing others out of the way to get ahead.
Unlike a craving for sweet foods like candy or honey, cookies or cake, time in your sweet spot has no side effects, causes no health problems. It’s like a sugar high, only good for you!
When you spend time in your sweet spot you feel wonderful and the Earth prospers! This is the true currency of life.
Put your ear to the ground. What do you hear? In what language does our Earth speak to you?
Can you hear the hundreds of thousands of earthworms turning and fertilizing the soil, carrying out their singular and necessary purpose in the web of life?
Can you hear the billions of roots of grasses, trees, wild plants and “weeds” food plants and flowers of all descriptions, reaching deep, stretching down, absorbing water and nutrients?
Deep rooted prairie grasses
Can you hear the fur bearing creatures in their dark and cool burrows, the snakes gliding almost silently along the Earth through the tall grass? Can you hear the nearby stream flowing quietly?
Can you hear the millions of ants creating their underground cities, marching in unison, intent on their building project, living their lives, feeding their families?
Can you hear the underground rivers, streams and aquifers, the water fresh and cool, lapping in dark rock shelters? Can you hear the slow dripping and dropping of lime infused water from ancient stalactites in secret caves so far beneath the surface of the Earth?
Can you hear the deep hum and vibrations of the bedrock, the foundation of ancient stones that supports our home?
Stone cairn
Can you hear the humming, the sound of creation as your ear tunes into the subtler frequencies of the Earth’s spinning, her movement in space?
Can you hear the deep and awesome harmony of creation? All is one great symphony of sound and vibration.
The earth speaks to us in her language of stone, metal, water, fire, air, soil, seasons, night and day, and abundant life of all descriptions.
Underlying all on our Earth is the sound of creation, the great hum.
Even in this dark and frozen time, I am alive and thriving. I am fully aware in the way of trees. My spirit never sleeps.
Grandmother Cottonwood
Here in my beloved home my roots reach deep into the soil. I do not question my existence. I do not worry. I do not fear. I simply am.
I do what trees everywhere do. I root to the earth and grow effortlessly toward the light. I respond to the seasons, sending out seeds in spring, bursting with growth in summer, releasing my leaves in fall, sleeping in the winter.
I am expansive. I am so much more than the magnificent tree you see before you. I feel what you humans would call love for this life.
This love is me. It is my energy, it is who I am. It may be invisible, but those who have the sensitivity, the ability to feel beyond the five senses will know it.
Life here on this patch of earth under the dome of the eternal sky, day and night, sun, moon, planets, and stars brings me what you humans might call joy.
Perhaps joy is my true purpose here…
…the joy of being, the joy of living, of expanding toward the light, the joy of knowing the precious gift of life!
To heal the web of life on Earth, we must all clean up our act! Individually and collectively.
Begin within your heart.
Do the difficult yet vital work of healing your own hurt and bitterness, sadness and grief so you can be clear and help lead the way forward, be part of the solution, be a weaver of the web of life.
Learn to feel and know your anger and express it in healthy ways that will fuel you to your highest good and create true justice. When anger is expressed as hurtful rage at others and rotting hatred, great damage is done to the intricate web of creation and will come back to harm the rageful one.
Pay attention to the magnificent web of life, know your vital place in it. Turn down the volume on your ear buds, close down Facebook, turn off the news for a time, and tune into your heart and body, your spirit.
Ask for help to move toward wholeness, otherwise known as healing. You are a powerful and vital element in the web of creation. Your healing and moving toward the light and releasing anxiety and fear benefits you beyond measure and creates a healthier and stronger web for all beings.
Beware of those in power who try to control through hate and fear and convenient lies. This damages the web of all things and the trust and connections between people. The brokenness these leaders bring to the world may take generations to repair. Choose your leaders well!
Don’t let large corporations manipulate you, addict you, and steal your privacy so you become a product in the wheel of e-commerce to be used and discarded when you no longer click or buy. This harms our world and destroys trust.
You are a vital thread in the web of all things! You belong here on this planet at this time! The healthier, the more clear, the stronger you are, the more you can access your own inner power, the brighter your light can shine, the stronger and more resilient the web of life will become!
Humans are designed to think, but also feel. Logic without feeling creates a coldness, a lack of human connection, a distance between people. Feeling without logic may ignore some important facts and cause mistakes.
Perhaps you’ve been rewarded for your thinking prowess with fellowships, awards, gold stars, summa cum laude diplomas for your walls. But, dear one, are you balanced between head and heart?
If you need lessons in feeling, you can get them from any healer, counselor, or young child. Lessons in thinking are everywhere in your schools and universities, even preschools, your libraries and courts, your businesses … you are overloaded with them.
Happy kid in fall
Find a balance!
Analyze but also simply allow what is to be without judgment. Take things apart to figure them out, but also see the whole. Seek understanding, but also allow yourself to surrender to the mystery.
If you feel you are unbalanced, you can remedy this by learning to pay attention to the ebb and flow or your thoughts as an observer, not taking them all seriously, and tuning more fully into the sensations of your magnificent body and the wisdom of your heart. Quiet your mind so you can hear the still wisdom of your heart below the attention seeking noise of your thoughts.
Let your mind rest at times, for overthinking and over analyzing can make you anxious, can create worry and fear, can cut you off from your body and suck the joy out of life.
Tune into the wisdom of your heart and let yourself be for an hour or two, a day, a weekend. Be mindful of your body. Feel the stretch of your muscles, follow your breath, your heartbeat, the rhythm of your walk.
No need to name the muscles, understand how the lungs work, break down the mechanics of your walk. Let yourself be free of these concepts for a little while while you enjoy the flow of life in a body on this Earth.
Know that your thoughts are not you. They come and go, they flow through your head, they flow out. New ones come in…. They come and go they flow through your head, they flow out.
You will know you are in balance when you can allow yourself to loosen up, have a little fun, play with the suds in the dishwater, let yourself dream, make a snow angel, climb a tree, wade in the creek, build a sand castle, lay under the stars, skip stones… then sit down and focus on your intellectual puzzles that fuel your passion and make life interesting!
Snow covered weed
To become the most effective human being you can be, learn to find a balance between thinking and feeling, head and heart.
Dear humans, your beautiful minds that define and confine your species can be a blessing or a liability.
Your constantly creative and inventive minds have made so many advances in the world making life easier, healthier, and more comfortable for many. The innovations in science, medicine, travel, communications have transformed our earth in un-imagined ways.
Grandmother Cottonwood
Blessing – or liability, or some of each?
Your logical minds can be a blessing when you work together to solve social environmental and family problems, when you use your endless creativity and powerful intellects to make life easier and more comfortable with enough to go around for all inhabitants of this Earth, human, plant, animal.
Your logical minds can be a liability when they refuse to let in the evidence of the heart and gut, the intuition and knowing each of you has been endowed with. A liability when shutting out all evidence of feelings and of your spiritual selves. A liability when your innovations lead to inequality, to environmental degradation, to violence and corruption.
When new technology is accepted without a second thought to the possible problems it will create, the heart, the spirit, the web of life are trampled on and weakened.
When humans learn to find a balance between head and heart, mind and spirit, our earth will come more fully into balance. Yes, the same earth that seems to wobble and shift underfoot during difficult times.
Balance between head and heart will bring a more satisfying equilibrium to your lives, your relationships.
Dear reader, this post is from the archives of AskGCW.
Heavy cloud cover
Dear ones, we can feel that the energy you call anxiety is contagious. You feel it and pick it up from each other. It is in the air, so to speak. In the atmosphere around an anxious person.
Those on a similar wavelength tune in and the red frenetic energy you call anxiety spreads to the other like a virus. It is like what you call panic, and can spread like fire through a family or group of people.
This does not help anyone! It saps your strength and power, distracts you from your inner light, as you are felled by the churning in your gut, the tense neck, the heart that hurts, the throat that closes up…
My dears, you do not have to be imprisoned by these feelings of anxiety. Learn to breathe deeply from the belly. The heaviness you feel will clear like clouds before a breeze. Run, swim, walk, move. You are meant to move! Dance. You must move as much as you can, to be fully who you are meant to be. Your body is not designed to be still!
All feelings must move, all beings, all energies must move! If not, you become stagnant like the smelly water backed up in the creek on a hot summer day.
Surround yourselves with people who light you up! Hug a tree like me and imagine your roots growing deep in the earth as if pulled be a magnet to her core. Then feel the stability when the winds of emotion blow. You are anchored and nothing can knock you down.
Trees and rooted things do not know anxiety or worry,doubt or fear. We can be an example to you! Are you open to that?
Put your hands on your heart and breathe deeply. In this way you calm yourself and soothe yourself. Know that in this exact moment place and time you are safe.
I am perfectly attuned to my chosen patch of Earth, my rooted place, my real estate, my home. I’ve gone all-in, set up camp, sent my roots deep, made a commitment.
I may be here longer than the longest human lifespan, so I must make my peace with my choice of growing site, make the best of it, learn to love it.
Grandmother Cottonwood, winter
To survive I must be flexible with the changes happening around my patch of earth and sky. If I am brittle and rigid, I might snap in two during a heavy windstorm, losing limbs right and left.
To survive, my roots must reach deep, for shallow roots would not hold my weight or counterbalance my majestic limbs, and I would topple in weather conditions that would undermine and weaken me.
I have made my stand, sent down roots, taken my place among the community of trees, knowing my interconnections with all the living beings of this place – those who rely on sunlight, water, earth, and air for their lives.
Grandmother Cottonwood, summer
Whatever happens, I stand strong and tall. I carry out my purpose; reach to the light and root to the Earth, my home.
Dear one, have you gone off script, wandered away from your chosen path, slipped and fallen away from the dreams of your youth?
You can get yourself back on the path to the thriving life you dream of. You can right your course, re-calibrate your position and reorient your life once again to what really matters to you.
White and black butterfly on red flower
Begin by discerning what is most important to you, what you will focus on with your heart and spirit and passion, something that will tap into your talents and skills, that will be of benefit to you and will bless this Earth and all creatures. Something you will never tire of throughout your life, something that floats your boat, makes you happy, spins your top!
Now is the the time to step out into the light, to take a stand for what you wish to create in your life and the lives of your children and grandchildren, the web of life on Earth.
Every thought, action , every word you generate reverberates and ripples through the web of life.
When your thoughts words and actions line up with your dreams, you become a powerful creator.
So, be mindful of your thoughts. Do you diminish yourself or others in your mind? There is powerful energy in your thoughts, They are the precursor to creation! Begin to pay attention and gradually shift them to reflect what you want in life, what you want for others, the best of you.
Choose your words with care for they carry the energy to harm or heal. Your words are powerful. You can choose to hurt or elevate others or yourself with words. You can use words to gradually create the life you want or keep yourself and others small and boxed in by hurtful language.
Let your actions line up with the true and deep needs of your spirit. Let your physical presence and the expressions of your body carry out your soul’s purpose, to make it manifest here on this planet.
Yellow Swallowtail on bright pink zinnia
Think about your purpose here, in this body at this time, in this place. Are you digging deep into the vein of gold that lies under the surface appearances of life? Are you listening to the whisperings of your heart and spirit, the hidden treasure deep down among the bedrock or do you see only the surface appearance of your inner landscape, unaware of the riches at your center?
When you long to connect with your true purpose, you can make it happen. With practice, desire, persistence, you too can tap into the amazing treasure at the core of your being where your purpose and the source of all things intersect.
When you know your soul’s purpose and open up to spirit, you tap into abundance beyond measure.
Ask Grandmother Cottonwood 