Grief

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GCW speaks of injury, loss, and grief

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Have you seen? I have lost many branches in my long life, The dead sumps and scars are here to be seen, the bark still protruding where it once protected a dear limb, now white and rotting on the earth at my roots.

Have you lost something precious, someone dear? Does your heart grieve? All living things know loss. Sickness and health. Injury and healing. Having and losing. Grasping and letting go. Falling and rising again, perhaps to a new reality you didn’t ask for and don’t want.

Can you sit and breathe through the tears? That is enough for now, simply sit and feel and breathe, even though your tears may fall. Can you love yourself, the part of you that feels what all others who have walked this earth have felt? Can you simply love yourself as you sit and breathe and feel?

For love heals. The breath heals. Feeling heals. Tears heal.

Expect nothing. Simply sit and feel and breathe. Like waves on the shore – in and out in and out, the rhythm of life.

Aging

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GCW speaks of getting older

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Grandmother Cottonwood

Surrender, my dears to life. Life moves you downstream on the river finally to merge with all that is.

Perhaps you’ve awakened from sleep and seen a gray haired man or woman looking out of the mirror at you, or lines on your face that you can no longer pretend away. Perhaps the dreams you’ve held dear since childhood no longer feed your soul. Can you find the gold in this mud?

Can you let go of those dreams, desires, beliefs that once seemed so vital and precious but are now hollow and stale, outdated and obsolete?

Can you conjure a new dream for this time of your life? What desires still hold your heart’s attention?

What new dreams will carry you to the end of this life and beyond – with eager anticipation, passion and delight – so that as your body ages your life’s true work comes into focus, your spirit feels joy, your heart sings? For your heart can sing now in older years, without embarrassment, with true wisdom and beauty, the song of your soul.

Embrace yourself as you are with a whole heart. Live from the inside (soulside) out for the outside of you is just a temporary wrapper for the spirit.

Your aura

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GCW speaks of your human “atmosphere”, the aura

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Cloudy atmosphere

All living things have an atmosphere that is too fine for most human eyes to see. Your aura is as much you as the skin, hair, teeth, or bone of you. You are inseparable from your aura and cannot live without it just as the invisible atmosphere we breathe is inseparable from the earth and supports all of life.

You are larger than you think. Your aura/spirit overlaps with the energy of others, even when your bodies seem separate. You are adept at silent energetic communication, yet you do not know it. Your spirits speak louder than words or actions.

Have you been repelled for no apparent reason when you meet a new person? Does your gut warn against a situation? Do you feel drawn to someone without understanding why? Do you feel a stab of anxiety when your beloved daughter, miles away feels fear and worry? Your aura has picked up and sensed these subtle feelings and communicates what you need to know. Your spirit does not lie! It is sensitive across time and space. Tune in and pay attention!

Your aura is in constant movement. Nothing stands still about you at the most primal, most intimate level of your being. Your thoughts, emotions, feelings are all energy.

We trees can feel and sense the flow of you or the way you might be stuck in a holding pattern, unable to move forward. This affects your entire being, and will show itself in the body in ways that may alarm you.

The potential in each of you is infinite! Care for your atmosphere, your energy field, for it sets the tone for your entire existence – thoughts, emotions, feelings, attitudes, beliefs. Recognize that you are energy, let your thought, feelings, emotions flow like a stream, do not dam them up and hold onto them.

You are larger and more tuned in than you know. Use this knowledge wisely.

Do you hide?

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Do you hide your light under a bushel?

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Foggy winter day

As a child, the one who speaks and writes for me heard these words often: “Do not hide your light under a bushel.”

She did not know what the words meant, and hid her light, because it felt safer to be invisible than shine in the magnitude of light and delight her spirit knew.

She hid under an upturned basket in the dark and comfort of silence, reining in her light, her life force, her gifts. A few air holes kept her alive, a little light shown in, a little light shone out. As an adult, she learned that her hiding place was really a death-trap for her soul, and took steps to emerge.

Do you allow you light to shine with its full brilliance and magnificence? Your light is integral to the web of all existence. Know this!  If you hide and cover up, there is a dark spot, a weakness, a smudge in the great web of light – all that is.

Take your rightful place in this life you’ve chosen!  Finally allow yourself to be all you’ve come here to be, radiating the full spectrum of light, illuminating this earth and all who live here .

Fear of moving forward

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GCW speaks of moving past your fears:

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Winter sunshine and shadow

Do you feel stuck in the mud, glued to the spot, relegated to the shadows? Is taking action painful? Do you allow yourself to be distracted by shiny blinking things, physical pain, TV sitcoms, murder mysteries? Do you worry about things that will never come to pass in this world or the next?

If you look in the mirror and see a body and a familiar face looking back at you; if you reach out and touch yourself and feel warm skin and a pulse; if you take sweet air into your lungs and breathe; if you exist in this place and time in a human body, you are meant to take action when inspired. You are meant to move forward into the unknown when called, and fearlessly reinvent yourself in each moment.

You are meant to dissolve the invisible barriers that keep you small. You dissolve unfounded fears by shining a light on them, loving them and moving forward past the doubt, the heaviness in your chest, into what you know in your gut is right for you.

You do this in response to your heart’s desires, the driving force behind all existence. You are spirit and body, and the heart is your navigator. You must get out of your chair, out of your head, and into the place where magic meets the material world. Surrender to your heart. You know it is where your true wisdom lies.

Tap in to the powerful energy of your heart. Listen for guidance. Act!

You and your gifts

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GCW speaks of celebrating you and the gifts you bring

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A cardinal in winter

Celebrate your existence here on this planet at this time in this place! You are here in this body against all odds – a billion to one, perhaps!

What is your soul’s purpose here? Why the sweat, blood and tears of this life? Why were you born? Why did your spirit choose this life?

You are first and foremost meant to be here. You need do nothing to prove yourself worthy of existence, of the fruits of this life. Your very presence here is all the proof needed. Your job is to be exactly who you are, sharing your gifts without apology, without embarrassment, without a second thought!

Allow yourself to shine forth in all your glory, for the earth has been waiting for you and your gifts, and is richly blessed by your participation in this life. Know this deep within the core of your being. If others tell you a different story, they lie!

Claim your birthright, the power and light that you are! You have the capability to expand and grow. Develop and practice your gifts and skills and talents. No one else can replicate you, or the amazing gifts you bring to the earth and the web of all existence.

Dear ones, beloved ones, you are magnificent and your gifts are needed now!

Love is…

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Q.   L of Ames, Iowa asks: What is love?

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A rose in winter

A.   Love, my dear, is your natural state of being. Do you remember what you felt like before you were clouded with fear, doubt, resentment, inadequacy -when you were a fetus in the womb, then an infant?

Love is the flow of the life force, unencumbered throughout your entire being – your physical bone, blood, muscle, tissue, and spirit, your aura, your energy. It is the highest, most delightful vibration. It isn’t solemn or stuffy or “good”. It simply is the thread that weaves the web of life and holds the universe together.

You are made of this thread. You are part of this fabric, interwoven with all existence. Behind all the clouds in your mind is the bright and shining foundation of all that is, the design and structure of your being.  As in the song, it is “a crazy little thing called love”… except it is a big thing.  It is the only thing.

You will find it inside of yourself, this love, and nowhere else. What seems like love outside of yourself is only a mirror of who and what you are.  Enjoy your reflection!

Let this love that you are shine through little by little just as the sun rises over the horizon until all is light! Allow yourself to connect with it at your core. Learn to feel it know it and live it.

You are love itself.

Beliefs of your parents

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You choose what to believe!

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Cottonwood seed pods and bark

GCW speaks of your parents:

My dearest ones: Our tree parents simply flowered and went to seed with no effort or planning on their part. They left our existence or non-existence to chance.

You have parents that carry beliefs and emotions that imprint you over the years of your growing . The blueprint for your body, your physical being, comes much like my seed; programmed from time immemorial. The feelings thoughts and emotions of your parents their parents and all ancestors have been bequeathed to you as well! But you can take them or leave them. Did you know that?

Unlike your bodies, eye and hair color you have no duty to carry on family traditions that hurt – that make you or others small – that keep you from your light and power! You get to choose! You have been given free will! If you are not happy, gently explore the roots of those feelings. Even though you may love your parents and those who came before, you are under no obligation to believe think and act as they do.

You invent your inner lives, you choose again and again how to think, feel, act and believe with each moment! You are the ruler, the king or queen of your inner self!  You are in command!

Choose life. Choose those beliefs ideas, thoughts & actions that support the life you want to create! You are blessed beyond measure!

Your wild nature

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Cottonwoods at sunset

GCW speaks of your wild nature

Reclaim the wild heart of you. Not wild like “crazy”, not wild like “out of control”. Wild as in expansive, trusting yourself and your gut feelings. Wild as in feeling your bodily sensations, trusting your body, knowing what you feel, and expressing that with power. Wild as in free, unrestrained by shame in your self expression. Wild as in living by the beat of your heart – not the worry and doubt of your brain. Wild as in the ancestors who painted on cave walls, delving and digging deep into the soul of the earth, drawing up their sustenance from the heart of bedrock, soil, mud, rooted things, fast moving streams, and the flesh and blood of the animals that share our planet.

As you make your way in this earth of windswept beaches, unexplored ocean depths, icy mountain peaks, ancient forests, trackless deserts, know that this is your home, a mirror of you.

You are too tame

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Flying crow

GCW speaks:

You are too tame. You are ruled by the clock, not the sun and moon. You follow rules written down by others, some thousands of years in the past. You color inside the lines with such care, when the entire page is white and open and ready to be filled with jewel-like rainbow colors. You allow yourself to be fenced in by the lines.

Can you see: your life is the coloring page. Are you extra careful to stay within the expected parameters of your family, your town, your nation, your religion? Do you long to range freely without society’s boundaries hemming you in? Do you shut off the vital gutsy sometimes messy parts of you that seek expression? Your rainbow is not complete without those colors too. Your page is meant to be colored from edge to edge with bright, dull, soft, vibrant, messy, colors, every hue and shade and tint imaginable!! You are meant to work with every color of the rainbow, the full spectrum.

Grab some colors in your hot little hand, and go to town!