Family

/ Shamanic Healing of Ames / 2 Comments
Autumn in Iowa

Family of growing things

Grandmother Cottonwood speaks of family:

Technically, in the great classification system devised by humans in which all things are separate, we are not defined as members of the same family. I, a magnificent and glorious Cottonwood tree, am not related to your potted snake plant, your beautiful shiny philodendron, your red flowered geranium according to this way of seeing and analyzing the world. Worst of all, this system states that I am not related to you, my many layered human friend.

Yes, we are not family by blood or sap. We do not share hair and eye color. On the surface of things we share very little in common. Your bark is very thin and would never stand up to winter storms of summer suns like mine does.

Can you guess where I’m going with this? Then you already know that you and I and all living things, all rooted things, all six legged things, all bacteria in the soil, all creatures on this earth are intimately intertwined and interwoven of the same stuff, the same energy – the stuff of life that permeates and enlivens all. I am here to tell you that you must expand your idea of family! We are family. We all belong together in our shared home.

Let us take care of each other and love each other! Let us know that each of us from the tallest redwood to the tiniest speck of algae to a minuscule deer tick to a new human baby, each of us belongs here, is desired, wanted, needed, loved and cherished by all that is. Each of us has our part to play in the great web of life, which is our extended and beloved family.

Rushing and resting

/ Shamanic Healing of Ames / Leave a comment
Tiny seedlings and concrete

Tiny seedlings and concrete

GCW speaks of rushing and resting

You’ve built your human world right over our world. You’ve divided, paved over, fenced off, mown down, and altered our world beyond recognition – so your noisy motors and machines can have access to every bit of space. You leave untouched only those places that flood or where the soil is unsuitable for your mega plans.

You rush here and there, in your cars looking neither right nor left. Missing out on your present moment while speeding toward what is next, and next and next. Do you rush home so you can do it all again tomorrow?

Do you feel your breath as it flows though you like ocean waves?  Have you rested your body and soul on the loving earth today? Have you gazed upward through golden leaves at a slate blue sky while crows sail high above? Have you taken just a moment to breathe and slow down, to allow the thoughts in your mind to drain away, so that you may be in tune with your true nature? – the silence and infinite depth at your center.

Disappointment

/ Shamanic Healing of Ames / Leave a comment
Maple leaf

Maple leaf

GCW speaks of disappointment

Will you allow disappointment, failure or a big mistake to shipwreck your life?

Rooted things do not make mistakes. All we must do is grow toward the sun and send our roots down. We simply exist with no judgment, no standards of beauty, no measure of success, no report card.

But for you magnificent humans, who can move, speak, decide, think, feel, and make choices, you who must answer to others, you must find a way to love yourselves when life doesn’t unfold in the way you’ve so carefully planned. Love and forgive yourself, feel the grief, the feelings of disappointment, but never let your spark go out! Then get back up on that pony & ride like the wind! As long as you are focused in a body, you have another chance and another and another.

Let the memories of your disappointments be like autumn leaves. At first they stand out with blazing brightness, then they let go, drop to the earth, and crumble to dust under foot to feed next year’s growth.

Illness

/ Shamanic Healing of Ames / Leave a comment

GCW speaks of illness

New life from old

New life from old

Do not blame outside forces for your illness. How is it affecting you? Are you tied, achy, is it hard to breathe? Go inward to the mirror that knows all things. Ask what you are tired of. Ask what is making you ache with emotion. What is preventing you from taking in life fully and allowing it to express through you? Where do you feel these things in your body? Pay attention. Befriend your body.

Your body is not separate from your emotions, feelings, thoughts, spirit. Take care of all of you. That includes your spirit. Acknowledge and befriend your infinite spirit, the essence of you. Pay attention to your feelings and emotions for they are your true guidance in all things.

If you persist in doing something that feels wrong, or too much, or unpleasant, something in you will send up an alarm. Pay attention! Address it before it mirrors itself in your magnificent body. Then you will be forced to pay attention!

Do those things that feel good and make your heart glad! If that means resting, sleeping extra, curling up with a book, closing your eyes while the sun shines, find a way to do it! Do not be contrary! I know you will try to argue and say you do not have time! Grandmother Cottonwood wishes the best for all living things, that this community, this mother earth may continue to bless all who dwell here. When you make time to do what is right and healthy for you, it strengthens the exquisite web in which all things are one.

Four elements

/ Shamanic Healing of Ames / Leave a comment
Burned tree

Burned tree

GCW speaks of the four elements:

Fire

Leaping, consuming, transforming everything in your path. A reckoning! Change is commanded, forced. A fresh start, a renewal from scorched and blackened earth.

Contained and tended you mesmerize, encircled by bodies and hands that need your warmth. Out of control you are a tyrant rolling forward with no pity– Destroyer.

Creator of new beginnings.  Tend and keep your inner flame.

2013-01-01 00.00.00-149

Water

Must seek its way, must join droplet to sea, creek to river, river to ocean, to all that is, where all finally become one.

Simply to merge and become one; to give life itself to all living things. And all living things must know in time, what it is to merge and become one with spirit. Stuff of life, roots reach deep for you, thirsty souls are blessed by your giving. You draw us to your shores and banks with your power and your effortless flow.

Carry us easily on your flow to the river’s mouth, where waters join and mingle, where all our burdens can be released.

2013-01-01 00.00.00-557

Air

Unseen giver of life. Surrounding, breathing through all living beings the rhythm of this earth. The rise and fall as you support life on this planet without effort. You exist and permeate all. The ultimate giver.

And we breathe you in, carrier of sweet scents, this earth atmosphere that clears and heals itself. Leaves roots branches, all alive, all breathing- grasses, trees, flowers, every bird, every animal, every insect, every living thing; all breathing. Our health and your health inextricably aligned.

2015-06-06 10.55.51

Earth

Ground of being. Roots reaching deeply into your heart for our daily bread. Nothing here is severed. Nothing stands alone. All is interwoven in a vast web that extends to the reaches of the universe. You dear Earth, are love made visible, made physical.

All that make their home here commune with you in the age old dance of life – death – life. Ebb and flow, seasons of the year, moon cycles; we are deeply attuned to your elegant rhythms. Each of us belong here as an integral part of this magnificent web of which you, dear Earth are the center.

Addiction

/ Shamanic Healing of Ames / Leave a comment
Monarch butterfly on purple coneflower

Monarch butterfly on purple coneflower

C of Ames, Iowa asks:

Q. Why is it so hard to give up my addiction to sugar?

A. What is sugar, but a substitute for love? Wasn’t it easier for your parents to give you a gooey brownie or warm cookie and send you away than deal with the truth, the messy feelings, the real inside of you, the heart and soul, the hidden depths of you?

There is always some sugar filled or encrusted thing available to give you another high. But it keeps you distracted from what is going on deep under the surface of your being.

Your physical being is altered by sugar. The energies of those on sugar feel to me as though they are on overdrive; too much – too fast – not real- not a source of real sustainable energy. It revs you up and wears you out! Your body wants it, your mind wants it. But your spirit does not want it, Your wise self knows the addiction to sugar is distracting you from your true power.

And then, there is blackness when you crash- when there is not another candy bar or doughnut within reach. You focus on that, on getting the next cookie or bag of candy, removed from the only thing that really matters, your heart and soul, the feelings that flow and form the fabric of your life.

Tune in. Become aware of your feelings, the promptings of the spirit and learn to be with them, and you will need less and less of the sweet stuff that is unnatural in such huge amounts!

Changing colors

/ Shamanic Healing of Ames / Leave a comment
Fall color

Fall color

A six year old from Central Iowa asks:

Q. Why do leaves turn color in the fall?

A. My dearest, we want some fun before our long winter’s nap! We love to color and paint just as you do! We delight in showing off and being noticed! Its part of who we are, the colorful party for another growing season well lived! Its the closest we get to a birthday party!  The ashes and cottonwoods love the golden hues, as bright as sunshine!  The maples and oaks like reds and scarlets and oranges, sometimes purple!  What colors do you like to paint with?

Pick our beautiful leaves up and hold them to your heart. This is our gift to you!- Our breathtaking color combinations and hues. This is fun! We get to play before bedtime. Do you?

Think about this, and see if you do this too: We grow, we celebrate, then we rest. Grow, celebrate, rest. Grow celebrate, rest.

Love and tree hugs to you!

GCW Speaks

/ Shamanic Healing of Ames / Leave a comment
Cottonwoods

Cottonwoods

GCW Speaks:

My entire being cries out to express the love and delight, the expansive energy that is at the heart of my being. These qualities my beloved, reside also in you. My purpose in speaking through your representative is so that you may know and feel and live your true nature. So that you may know that at your core, you are love, the energy that holds this planet together. Know that love is the stuff, the quantum particles of the universe that saturate all things seen and unseen.

Know your magnificence! Know your nature as powerful beings of light! You are so much more than you think you are. Step up into knowing with all that you are, and you will never question your worth again! You will know your true nature and you will never be able to un-know it again!

These words do not express the expansion, the joy, the delight that we all are! Feel and know these feelings that lie far beyond the scope of words!

Autumn

/ Shamanic Healing of Ames / Leave a comment
Cottonwood leaf

Cottonwood leaf

Grandmother Cottonwood speaks of Autumn

Now the time of rest is upon us, the great release. Countless leaves drifting to earth to feed the soil. They simply let go.

The time of great silence and sleep, of drawing inward, of low slanting sunlight, sweeping and intense, with no canopy of leaves to soften and filter the brightness. Shadows here in my home lengthen as the daylight grows shorter. I am ready once again for my long winters nap.

I have earned my rest as have all rooted things. We have once again shown you, given you the best that is within us, the season of leaf; millions, perhaps billions of leaves here in this small valley. We are the silent community that supports your very life here on this green planet. Blossoming, leafing out, shading you, blessing you with our gifts; pouring our woody hearts out as we grow toward the warm sun all summer.

We love you in spring fall winter, summer. Our love encircles and holds this earth together like our roots hold the soil You may think we cannot feel, but there you are mistaken. We thrive when you thrive! We are acutely attuned to the vibrations in all things, acutely attuned over eons to the shifting slanting light, moving southward day by day, the cooler air, the age old tale of love, the pulling inward, the sleep followed by new life, blossoming into fullness after a long rest once again.

I’m ready for the season of rest. I shed my leaves as easily as a drop of rain merges with the ocean. But one last shimmer of my crown before I bid you all a good night.

Cherry pickers, chainsaws and shredders

/ Shamanic Healing of Ames / Leave a comment

GCW speaks of cherry pickers, giant shredders and chainsaws.

2015-10-01 12.32.08

It is well known that you humans wish to contain and control our treeish growth! See what huge, noisy, expensive equipment you need to maintain your illusion of dominance over our exuberant life force! Yes, you can trim and top, shape and prune, but our mandate from time immemorial is simply to grow, to take in as much sun, water and air as possible.

Your loud and jarring chainsaws do not harm or threaten us, for we will simply grow in another direction, reach farther, generate new and wider branches after this year’s chips have fallen. It is a game we like to play, you see. The game is called life! We will see you and your energy shredding chainsaws next year!

I delight in the fuss you humans make for us trees!