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Each
month, Dana Reynolds shares her life-transforming
thoughts, ideas, and sacred imagination based around our
"theme of the month." Dana is a visionary Spiritual Midwife, who
devotes herself to helping women birth their creative
gifts into the world.
Meditating with the Higher Self
Over the years I have received guided writings from
my Higher Self. Many people refer to this as channeling.
I’m not comfortable with the New Age labeling of this
kind of free-flow writing, so I prefer to think of it as
writing that comes from an interior place of wisdom and
understanding.
You may want to experience this meditative form of
being fully present through the pen. Sit quietly with
your journal open to a blank page. Rest your hand
holding your favorite writing tool to the paper. Close
your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Offer a prayer
for guidance from your Highest Self and then write
whatever begins to flow into your consciousness. If
nothing seems to be coming to you, then write whatever
you are feeling at the moment. Keep the pen moving and
in time you will find the open door to your active
imagination and Higher Self.
This month I am offering several of the pieces I have
received from the kind of writing experience I have just
described to you. Please take them for whatever meaning
they may have for you. You may want to use them as
meditations or stepping stones to drawing, collage, or
deeper writings of your own.
We are embarking on a journey into the New Year. It
is a time of mystery and pure potential. I invite you to
use all your senses and your sacred imagination to
enrich the possibilities of awaiting self-discoveries.
Blessings to you and yours as we step across the
threshold into the third year of the new millennium.
Meditations
Meditate on these Holy Mysteries:
The Mystery of Divine Guidance.
The Mystery of Blind Faith.
The Mystery of Holy Messengers.
The Great Mystery of Eternal Love.
Open your heart this day. Prepare your
interior shrine to receive that, which is coming to you.
Touch
Touch with faith and the expectation of
miracles. Your touch creates an exchange of vibration.
Begin to experience these subtle differences. Allow your
hands to be conduits for the energy you contain. Touch
with an open heart. The intention you hold is the
regulator of the vibration. Be awake to those around
you. Be sensitive to the needs they carry. Touch the
hand of those you sense asking to receive blessing and
grace. This is the way the world comes to healing. Touch
with your hands to raise the vibration. Pray with an
open soul by simply calling out the name of the one you
pray for. Touch everything with one clear
intention---healing for the common soul---the one soul
of humankind. Like the lens of the telescope, focus on
the individual and also focus on the human collective.
Concentrate the Light you carry---distill it to its
essence.
Healing
Healing comes in many forms. It is a
distillation from the green of life, it is a force of
nature, and it is something each human carries within
the cells as a portion of their ancestral heritage.
Healers are those who recognize their inner gifts and
through that recognition they activate their ancestral
cells and their connection to the Divine energy, source
of all creation. This is a Grace. This is a Truth and a
teaching. Healing flows in many forms, creating many
rivers. Music, poetry, painting, dance, are the
manifestations….the physical forms of healing.
Language and sound combined with touch are the emerging
tools for the healer. New vocabulary, new forms, and
alphabets are being sent to many of you. Symbolic and
pictorial language is returning. The realm of creative
imagination is the force field where God and human kind
meet to play and create together. You are healers. Open
the gates to your imaginable meadows within. Go into the
center of your meadow and gather the seeds from the
field of your imaginations. Plant them where healing is
needed and water them with devotion and prayer.
Remember the Seeker
So many thoughts, so many words, open
your inner vaults. Open the wellspring within
yourselves. Make music. Take form and translate it into
formlessness. Relish in the collective energy that you
create by simply being together. Do not despair over the
rigors of creating agenda. Simply listen.
Simply be. This is a time of healing, a time for
shifting into the new way of beingness. This is a time
for awakening your gifts---the gifts you have never
used.. Embrace the void. Live in the Questions. Live in
the Mystery. The answers will emerge as the sun emerges
from the darkness of night. You have only to remember.
You have only to shift your vision to the inner with
your hearts and ears of the seeker.
Shadow
Within the universe of your own
soul---your own beingness---there are the planets. There
is a sun, moon, and the vastness of heavens, the stars.
You have asked to traverse your own heavens---your
internal vastness. You are a voyager of your unique and
personal inner space. Gaze upon that place of great
Mystery in your night sky. Consider your moon within.
She controls your tides---your oceans. She holds the
wisdom and history of your personal story. She contains
eternal wisdom and guidance that is yours for the
gleaning. Gaze upon her face that is visible to you.
Look at those places within your psyche---within your
beingness---which have been exposed---which are
illumined by light, those aspects of your Self that
shine in her light. These are the pieces of your
particular puzzle that have been claimed, owned,
cleared, and integrated into your inner wholeness. Take
time now to observe your inner beauty, which shines with
strength, clarity, and purpose. You know what your gifts
are. You know what your Truth is and you know from where
these jewels have been delivered. Open your treasure
boxes upon your moon. The light of their magnificence,
the light of their contents is blinding with a comfort
of incomparable intensity. Bathe in this light. Examine
your treasure---jewel by precious jewel by precious
jewel and do this shamelessly, not with conceit or pride
but with appreciation and awe, the awe of the child who
gazes at her own reflection for the first time. Breathe
in with joy your evolved aspects of your own particular
Light and treasure. Just as you look into the night sky
to honor the moon and to bathe in the coolness of her
illumination, you, the voyager, now travel to her dark
side. Be the inner-spatial navigator. Journey from her
lighted face that has revealed her treasure, to her
hidden face, the side that has yet to bathe in Light.
Notice the temperature shift. Notice your awareness of
your reaction to the sudden immersion into the inkiness,
the night within. What are the secret places made of?
How do the valleys hold the unevolved, denied, and
feared shards and remnants of the unclaimed self? Feel
the contrast to the treasure you discovered in the
Light. Walk through your valleys of darkness guided by
your map of natural knowing. For by your courage to
visit these ignored and even forgotten places, you bring
Light to them so they might show themselves, the way
starving children emerge from the dark corners in a
village of poverty. For your place of darkness----the
other side of your moon----holds treasure also. Mine
your gems. Dig deep into the hillsides of your valleys.
Expose the diamonds in the rough. Polish these hidden
jewels with acknowledgement and witness. Walk the
forests of this shadowed world and collect the cocoons,
which hang from the branches. They need the Light to
warm them. They need the Light of your willingness to
see them, to continue their transformation to beauty and
freedom. Explore your dark side of the moon. Where are
the most treacherous places for you? Observe how you
experience this journey. For there are lessons
everywhere you turn. Remember you carry the answer to
your own riddle. Remember that the journey includes all
aspects of your interior heaven. When you feel you have
completed your exploration you may circumnavigate to the
Light side of your moon once more. Taking time to move
from the dark to that meadow of gray where grain and
texture come into focus. This is the place approaching
healing and transformation, the place before color and
form. Notice what you discover emerging from your
darkness. For these are the gifts that are coming to
you. Prepare to receive them.
You are
invited to submit your story and accompanying
photos to be considered as a feature for the Sacred
Imagination column. E-mail me at dana@sacredimagination.com
for details.
Copyright© 2002 Dana
Reynolds.
Read
Dana's Past "Sacred Imagination" Columns:
December
2001 - "The Prayer Cord"
November
2001 - "Explore, Express, Imagine"
October
2001 - "Seeking Sacred Alchemy"
September
2001 - "Invoking Your Muse"
August
2001 - "The Blessings of Daily Bread"
July
2001 - "Entertaining the Dream Visitor"
May
2001 - "Embracing the Whole:
Choices for Conscious Living"
April
2001 "Nourishing the Souls of the Children"
March
2001 "Opening the Senses to Beauty"
February
2001 "The Eyes of Love"
January
2001 "Patterns of Authenticity"
December
2000 "Finding Peace in the Fields of Time"
November
2000 "Cultivating Gratitude: Heart-Hugs and Prayer
Leaves"
October
2000 "Journey to the Center - The Sacred Mystery of
the Labyrinth"
September
2000 "The Heart and Craft of Healing"
August
2000 "Transforming Life’s Challenges into Beauty and Story"
July
2000 "Sacred Spaces Invite the
Muses of the Soul"
Read
Dana's Soulful Living Feature Articles:
Visual
Prayers
Intuition
and the Sacred Imagination: The Dance of Co-creation
For ten years, Dana Reynolds has
been facilitating women’s spiritual presentations and
retreats nationwide. Her work as a Spiritual Midwife,
one who assists women as they birth their creative gifts
into the world, is the foundation of all her endeavors.
Her background as a visual artist and writer enriches
her Spiritual Midwifery: Birthing the Feminine Soul
workshops.
As the creator of an art making
process known as visual prayer, Dana teaches
women how to combine ritual with sacred intention to
create altars, collages, spirit dolls, and other
touchstones. The creation of sacred spaces is also
paramount to the Spiritual Midwifery experience. Her
web-site http://www.sacredimagination.com
offers samplings of her visual prayer collages, poetry,
and a workshop catalogue.
Dana is the author of the
whimsical and colorfully illustrated book, Be An
Angel, a co-creation with illustrator and graphic
designer, Karen Blessen, (Simon & Schuster). Her
essay, Visual Prayers is included in the
anthology, Our Turn, Our Time: Women Coming of Age, edited
by Cynthia Black, (Beyond Words Publishing).
A trained labyrinth
facilitator, Dana incorporates the labyrinth and other
spiritual wisdom into her retreats and workshops. She
recently traveled to Chartres and Vezelay Cathedrals in
France to gather information pertaining to ancient
sacred mystical traditions. She currently lectures on
such topics as spiritual midwifery, sacred journal
keeping, feminine spiritual wisdom, and the early
Christian women saints and mystics.
Dana’s life follows the
spiral path from rim to center and back again. She looks
for the sacred in forgotten places and openly embraces
the great Mystery of life. Guiding women to the
discovery of their creative inner gifts is the passion
that fuels her soul.
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