EARTH DAY
Originally Published in the Awakened Soul Newsletter sent April 22, 2024
Walking the shamanic path of direct experience, weaving the elements of both spirit and matter together in a way that promotes wholeness and healing has been a life-giving shift for me.
It has led to realizing that nature is the first teacher or, as Richard Rohr writes, Franciscan Theology believes nature is the first Bible. Mother Earth shows us this in her patterns, beauty, seasons, cycles, flow, fire, shifts and awe-inspiring wonders. The patterns and elements reveal the wisdom of our own bodies and life patterns. Rather than a sphere of materials for humans to take as if for free, earth medicine wisdom tells us the earth is living, and the generous host to countless living beings who the earth provides more than enough resources to flourish.
A primary principle of the Incan Cosmology is that of Ayni which is translated to mean reciprocity that honors the dignity of both parties.
We have Ayni when we are in “right relationship” with something or someone. It can be as simple as paying for an item in a store rather than stealing it, honoring a tree by seeing it and giving it our gratitude for sending out the oxygen we breathe, or being in a respectful, loving relationship with another human. It is a helpful principle in that we can ask ourselves in any situation, “Is there Ayni in how I am interacting with this other person, place or thing?
The invitation for us in honoring the earth on this day, is to realize how our very being is tied to the environment we live in and the planet we live on.
How can we drop deeper into an understanding of how having Ayni with the earth impacts and enriches every aspect of our lives and the lives of all other elements and people of the planet?
What if before we took something from nature, we asked first and honored the gift of it (air, water, fire, elements, etc.) with gratitude?
This past Saturday a group of women gathered in person and on zoom for a Soul Seed Saturday. As always, it was the openness and wisdom of the gathered awakening souls that brought in the gifts of the teachings for the day. Related to Ayni, we focused on the relationship we have with being female.
Women are portals of creativity as all humans, male and female, come through the portal of mother at birth. As a group of women we also were open to recognizing the portals of change and opportunity around us as we journeyed together. These portals invite awareness and alert us to choices we can step into.
We worked with images of goddesses from around the planet that show the concept of being in a portal and being a portal free of shame.
The following image is of a Sheela-na-gig in Hereford Ireland on the portal of a Romanesque church. Parishioners used to reach up and touch the open portal of the vulva of this carved image with gratitude and respect for the passage into life that she represents. Most Sheela-na-gigs are now hidden away in the basement of a museum in Dublin because the image was condemned by the church as a shameful representation of the female.
What if we shifted our perspective and could see her as the generous sacred feminine portal that we all relate to and experience with reverence, dignity and honor?
What if we could shift our relationship with the sacred feminine of our mother, planet earth?
