A Gift For You: EarthShine

March 27, 2009 at 7:55 am (Chickens, Creativity, Magical Nature, Song)
Tags: , , ,

Spring Clouds

Spring Clouds

for 12-Secrets: Secret 12 Planning To Achieve Your Goals

Today marks the completion of this current round of The Next Chapter book-blogging group, which has been devoted to reading/discussing/living the book 12 Secrets Of Highly Creative Women – a portable mentor by Gail McKeekin. As always, when I commit to a course or program or to a group, I find that my whole life comes alive with the themes of what I’m exploring. I don’t even have to read the book or even actively participate the whole way through–I find that when I dip back into whatever I’ve committed myself to, the ideas have been performing this improvisational theater throughout my life!

So it was no surprise for me to read through Secret 12 the past few days and discover that I was right there. More than any other chapter in the book, this one offered just what I needed to take my next step, which has been my desire to reemerge from a decade long fallow period in my actively professional life, pull those strands of learning, absorbing, personal and spiritual growth, completed-apprenticeships, and everything else into a patterned weave of my own design, and step back into the world with a coherent multi-faceted treasure to offer. Yes, you can bring back all those magic items and learned spells and your super-hero self back into the real world. :-)

It is newly-emerged Spring, here in the northern hemisphere, and here in this little corner of N. E. Oregon, with snow melting and revealing little blades of new grass poking up from the thawing ground. Then the snow returns and covers it up, only to melt again quickly. It has been the longest winter I have ever known, but I am dazzled by the miracles of the simple. Those vigorous blades of grass. The hens in the backyard, pecking and scratching and just being fully in their chicken-nature (which is in no way cowardly, but rather, immensely practical and accepting of what is before them) no matter if the enticing ground is revealed, or entirely covered in snow (I have to admit that the hens do hunker down in the worst weather). The sun rising each day, sometimes fully revealed, often hidden by clouds so it’s only a glow or a presence. It is always there, generously offering all the energy we could ever demand, and a specific teaching for you, for us, each day.

In honor of our emerging/reemerging creative selves in this awakening Spring, I have created a gift for you (and for me too!).

EarthShine – a medicine song

I believe that we all have our unique carriers of “magic”, potency, intent, and manifestation. For some people it is working with qualities of herbs, for others it is a particular spiritual practice, or systematic approach to the world, or an art form. As bearers of a singular “medicine bundle” of our gifts and abilities we become fluent in certain languages and craft certain “medicine arrows” that are the deliverers of change or nourishment into the world. For me, each song is potentially a carrier of an essence, can be just what is needed to nourish a person, a habitat, a village. A song can be exactly what is needed for healing on any level right now. It can be that vibrational essence that shifts us gently or dramatically into some other field of being, invites us to do so, or nourishes us to do so.

With that idea in my heart I created (and invoked) EarthShine, an in-the-field-of my-vision-and-in-my-own-backyard recording. With my little Pandora’s Box (the brand name of my digital recorder is Pandora, not because it holds the all the evils of the world, but–I like to think–because we’re stepping out of those old stories of foolishness and succumbing to temptation, and are now moving into revealing the luminous, joyful gift of our own treasures) I stood outside with the snow dripping off the metal roof of the house, and chickens clucking and going about their business, and the song sparrow singing its joyful melodious song, and wind occasionally gusting its message over the mic, and machinery lending its own bagpipe-drone. I stood out there and listened to the music that was in my world right now, which is only another form of the music that is around you right now–with its nature, machinery, domestic, and wild elements all in their own conversation. I stood out there, thinking of you, dear creative soul, and all of us, and a song emerged.

It is called EarthShine because I recorded it on the New Moon (the first day of a new creative cycle, a special one because it is in Spring, the time of rebirth and new growth), and because my Eco-Logical Calendar had this to say:

“Sunlight reflects off the Earth and lights up the Moon; the effect is most intense just before and after the New Moons of March and April.”

Here are some questions for you:

  • Right now, in this time of reemergence and awakening and a new cycle of growth and putting forth, how is your own Sunlight–your way of being in the world, your own true I’m-totally-myself nature “reflecting off the Earth”? That is, how is your unique Light or Radiance in a dance with the practicalities and reality and everyday around you ? (which by, the way, like the Earth herself, can be understood as totally dazzling if you choose to view through other lenses)
  • How is this trajectory of Your Abundant Treasure, Your Art bumping against–or with–the dance-at-large around you in a kind of authentic movement experience? What fun is unexpectedly emerging?
  • And what Mystery is this contact illuminating as a result? What beauty and power and possibility is glimpsed or even revealed?

I offer this medicine song in support of your emerging Magic and its full expression. I offer it as a first Welcome of You in the fullness of your magnificent self into the surrounding world. You might try listening to this song every day for a week or for the rest of this Moon Cycle, and chart what emerges for you.

This song is infused with Reiki healing, my good wishes, the essence of a spring morning, the Moon at this moment, and my blessings to you. May you emerge this Spring as the fully expressive, creative, and make-a-difference-in-the-world and fully welcomed-for-your-gifts-and-radiance person that you long to be!

Click here to listen or download this mp3: EarthShine

Graces,
~ Jane

7 Comments

Get Up And Dance!

March 21, 2009 at 10:07 am (Creativity, Dreamtending, Magical Nature, Song, Weave)
Tags: ,

Annie dances
Annie dances

Photo: Story Doll by Lisa Mathias

for The Next Chapter: Chapter 11 – Subtracting Serenity Stealers

First, some updates from me:

Finally, finally–my harp CDs are once again available for online purchase via PayPal. You can download free tracks from each album by clicking on the highlighted songs there. Check it out, and enjoy the music!

Me–organic, for-the-past-decade totally right-brain–Jane is reclaiming some of my left-brain self in gathering the threads of my business and reweaving them into a spiffy new medicine blanket, with whimsical charms, eye-catching found items, rainbow ribbons, interesting bits of feathers and fur (gathered, of course), that cool shell, and a strong, gleaming antler all cleverly sewn in (my dream for it all, anyway!). Left-brain Jane is focused and on fire with ideas, thanks to a marketing resource she discovered in the “horse-whisperer of small business” Kendall SummerHawk. Her How To Charge What Your Worth And Get It and more have been great resources for me for breaking out of some calcified notions I’ve had as an artist and idealist regarding my relationship to business and, well, money.

Right-brain and Left-brain Janes are currently in a lot of focus-group meetings and communion-with-nature experiences (steered by Left-brain J. and facilitated by Right-brain J. respectively) to determine how the practical ideas and true-to-my-nature practices can intermingle into offerings that are Real Magic — authentic to me, effective in the outer world, and exciting to the creative, heart-centered envision-a-positive-future-and-live-it-right-now folk with whom I love to hang out (all of you!).

I’ve got some fun ideas up my sleeve. Stay tuned as they unfold!

… and now, for my 12-Secrets reflection:

Get Up And Dance!

Okay. My biggest Serenity Stealer is my repetitive thought pattern surrounding trying to figure it all out! In the past couple of years, this has involved trying to figure out the perfect place for us to live, the perfect place for us to live, the perfect place for us to live. That one’s finished up–for now, anyway. Hurrah! But I’ve replaced it with trying to figure out my business and who I am in my business. (and I won’t retype that 100 times!).

Enough! Several of my blogging sisters have posted their remedies for their personal Serenity Stealers, so do visit the 12 Secrets Of Highly Creative Women link above if you need inspiration on a remedy. Here, however is my favorite:

  • Get up and dance!

    • This one is top of the list for me, and I thank Lisa and 12-Secrets blogging sister at Girl Can Create for this reminder. Nothing, nothing moves stuck energy for me like dance/authentic movement. Just spinning around, or running, or dancing or being playful–springing like a deer, scrabbling like a raccoon, whatever sparks in that second–is just right. Other times, when I have space and privacy, and need to shake something off that is just an entangling rope around me, or just want to go burrow into the possible, I mix up a bunch of magic into that moment of movement and expression.

    Such as:

  • Opening To The Nature Around Me – the companionable spirit of the house, the sweet serving nature of my favorite teapot, the birds singing around me, the trees, the clouds, the moon in its cycle, the waters … opening to who and what is out there, listening to them, for them …
  • Calling in of other Essential Natures – of certain animals, plants, or other beings and knowings of the Natural World, the Grandmothers and Grandfathers, the four or five Elements …With Opening To and Calling In, I invite these beings into the dance-of-the-moment, and they become part of the weave of movement–sometimes as witnesses, usually as partners.  Invariably I discover something I already know in my heart, thanks to opening to this dialogue of Other Within And Without

  • Gratitude – this always enters the mix.  You can’t have an Upright Mind or clear being without feeling your blessings and truly appreciating them! I give thanks to who and what are with me, and continue outward from there.

  • Reiki / healing energy – I bring healing energy into the moment, but then begin offering it to whoever and whatever springs to mind that may need it! As humans, we are all healers, so just call in your own personal healing energy if the idea inspires you!
  • Song, Sound, and Silence – these improvised vocal and non-vocal expressions are my multi-part harmony with the spirit in the moment, the way I tune into the focused resonance of the possible, and, truly, wing my way into Grace

  • When I Finish I Always Say Thank You
    - to whoever and whatever and for whatever showed up. I often call, whisper, or shout out the word Ameyn! – the word Jesus would have spoken in his native language of Aramaic.

    • The movement/dance emerges as both prayer and mythic theater, nothing I offer to human witnesses–merely an ensemble experience with more-than-myself/qualities-within-myself. It’s like becoming a dance partner with a dream-figure in the landscape of the dream you had last night that still mingles at the edges of your conscious mind. (Hm, and you could explore your dreams that way, couldn’t you–through actual movement.)

    In fact, as I write all this, my mind opens to the possible, other ways to journey with moment.

    But, as I remind myself of my chief Serenity Stealer, “trying to figure it all out” — perhaps more aptly translated as “over-thinking” –I’ll just break off from my musing, finish off this email, then go forth and dance! How about you?

    May You Move Merrily through the Coming Week,

    ~Jane-Singing Deer

    2 Comments

    Of course, It’s Magic!

    March 13, 2009 at 8:27 am (Because Of The Red Fox, Creativity, Magical Nature)
    Tags:

    dragon1for the next chapter: secret #10 abundance

    I love the abundance that results when you take a stand for who you are, even when you’re not fully clear on what that who-I-am is.   The Universe starts whipping around, as you take step after step on the path that’s not quite clear, that maybe even feels like walking through the gusts and grit of a windstorm.  You do the tasks you’ve set before you, that feel like you must tend to–it’s for your survival, as if they were as fundamental as water in your body, food in your stomach, warmth and shelter and a human embrace.  And then you notice that the Universe is pelting things your way!  Everything you need to assist you on your journey–those micro-steps you’re choosing, even forcing yourself to take, because you must.  Then, wham!  You’re hit in the face with some solid, bold, flashy, can’t possibly ignore object.  It starts to tumble past you, but you wake up enough to turn around and grab it.  And as you gaze into the beauty and power and magnificence of this thing, you realize it’s a mirror–and it’s exactly what you need to know about yourself and where you are.  Space opens around you and you see your feet clearly on the ground, in the place you need to be.

    And, how cool is that?  The windstorm vanishes, and you have a hard time remembering why it had been such a struggle to recognize this place where you’ve always been.  But you also understand that that’s the way with us as human beings.  We are wired for acknowledgment.  We are wired to “wake up” when the outer world voices our inner nature, our inner reality, that which we know to be true for ourselves.

    My dear friend, Kara Jones, gets a sparkly, radiant, Crystal Harp Award (imaginary for now–but real in some form in the future!) from me for voicing exactly, exactly, what I needed to hear at this crossroads time in my life. I’ve been working hard on my business, reimagining what it is, attempting to glimpse just what the single, powerful medicine is that I am passionate about delivering to the world–that is the shining and gritty structure of my being.  My mind swirled around the current manifestations of what I am creating in my business–my children’s magical nature novel, a dream for creating custom music-and-nature CDs for clients, my healing artistry (and identifying just what the healing is that actually results from my sessions).  What is the single, driving message that is the arrow that unites all that I do?  The essential message I deliver and live every single day?  Of course, I’ve long known the answer to that question.  But in this reconceptualizing of my business, and attempting to bring it forward, I’ve bumped up against that Truth, and scurried away.  “Nobody is looking for that.”  — a ridiculous statement, because if I listen to my own Truth, the words I speak, I know full well that whatever is what we are passionate about–whatever the dream woven into our souls that is broadcasting on all channels–is what the World (including boatloads of folks!) is looking for and needs.

    Here’s what Kara wrote in her Mother Henna blogpost:

    “In the recent past, I’ve been thinking that I really diverge with traditional HJ [Hero's Journey] work at the point where the Hero is called back to the real world and must leave the magic behind (though the magic transforms and informs how s/he is in the real world now). But I’ve been railing against leaving the magic behind. I mean come on! If ever there were a world that needed magic brought into the “real” part of it, it is this world! So I was thinking I might diverge with traditional HJ thinking in this way.”

    Whoa! Those words banged into me like me walking into a looking glass–bam!

    And then:

    “The phone blinking with messages. The emails downloading. The emergency that requires I be at a meeting first thing. Oh. Duh. Real life. Would I love to bring the magic into this real world and thereby create a new real world? Yes.” [emphasis mine - Jane]

    … and I walked right through that glass.

    We realize our magic–those mythic or “super-hero” qualities about ourselves. In those intense, transformative, sacred space, heart-of-our-nature experiences such as you might have in a retreat, a journey, or vision quest. And we may actually conceive of magical tools and qualities that represent on an essential level who we are and what we are here to do on this planet. How do we bring them in a practical, authentic, simple, even brief way into, say, a business meeting, or in a conversation with a stranger, so that on some subtle but real level the nature of reality has changed, and the moment opens into something more truly itself–many-layered, and exciting, and full of heart–moving us all along on a more imaginative, positive, culturally-creative path?

    Dragonfly pouch created by fiber artist Maia Leitz

    Dragonfly pouch created by fiber artist Maia Leitz

    I believe in Magic. I believe in the heart and grace, and exciting power for creation and transformation that is woven into each one of us. It has everything to do with ourselves, our communities, with the health, integrity, and liveliness of the natural world, and with the breath and voice of Spirit in companionable conversation with each one of us.

    Moments open when we glimpse the larger, origami-unfolded reality around us as we work and speak truly. In those moments the magic is real–in the real world–and we can continue to carry it forward in simple, down-to-earth ways. It moves forward in how we engage in our next encounter, in the stories we tell to others about what magic (and fun!) has just occurred. In the stories that those people involved tell to others …. On it goes, the butterfly wings feathering the air into a breeze and wind, changing the world.

    I believe in your magic, and your ability to imaginatively manifest it in any situation, and to make a very real difference no matter where you are.

    Wow. I feel some articles brewing about how to practically, simply, and effectively bring magic into the “mundane” in a way that invites everyone involved to shift into the brilliance of their essential natures, carrying the whole interchange to a deeper level that is recognized as significant, and is remembered (thus changing reality). The key to Magic (whatever form of expression you make that is natural for you) is understanding why it’s powerful, why it works….

    More to come!
    Shell and Leaves

    Once again from the hero machine — Shell, the main character from my children’s magical nature novel, grown up and in her full power, with her companion, Leaves the Red Fox

    6 Comments