She Who Guides the Way
If these are uncertain times, times of change, the “time between stories” in the words of author and speaker Charles Eisenstein, how do we find our way? This is the question I am quietly obsessing about.
The idea of the independent, isolated self is breaking down and we are moving into the time of the interdependent being and the mystery of the quantum self. Our economic systems are breaking down, our institutions are no longer venerated and old ways of relating to the stranger as “other than” are being challenged. Author and teacher Sandra Ingerman says that, from a Shamanic perspective, the planet and all of life is going through an initiation. We are being asked to shed or burn away our old identity and old ways of living that no longer serve us, all of life and the Earth. But how do we do this in a culture that has little or no understanding of initiation? What is the container for this burning away? Where do we stand while the old story dies and before a new story takes form?
She Who Guides the Way comes out of this questioning. Just over two years ago I began to paint, learning online with Shiloh Sophia McLeod and Cosmic Cowgirls University. Using Intentional Creativity, the canvas becomes a portal through which information can move. This information, for me, comes through images of the Sacred Feminine. She Who Guides the Way reminds me to draw on my inner compass, the compass of the heart’s knowing. And, to look to nature.
As I am beginning to understand, nature is leading the way in the changes that are a foot. Attuning to nature can protect me from over saturating myself with technology and data. The trees can remind me to stay rooted to the earth while drawing sustenance from the stars and the cosmos. The drops of rain, of tears, remind me to water the broken places inside me, in my community, and on this beautiful blue gem of a planet we call home.
Painting – inquiring, listening deeply to what wants to reveal itself – is one way that I am navigating this time of “inbetween”. What are you using to help you to move through this period of planetary change and transition?
