WINTER SOLSTICE 2011

It is interesting that I am coming back to this blog after not being here since last Spring Equinox. It feels like years of living and learning have occurred this year. 


I have been writing on my website (www.wheelkeeper.com) but am returning to this blog so I can work in conjunction with Lisa Tardiff (Okwaho Lablanc) in teaching the Medicine Wheel.

 

This past year has been filled with change and challenges for us all. The biggest one has been this new business that I was called to begin. It has to do with making connections with others in the community and selling Traditional and Contemporary Aboriginal Arts and Crafts. But it is so much more than that. It is a place for me to grow and learn, to develop new skills that I know will serve me in my Shaman Initiation. 

Already I am learning how to discipline my hypersensitivity and to shape-shift out of my Initiator into a more diplomatic role...lol. You can't be triggering people when running a business. 

Since my Mother passed over in 2008, I have been in a process of going through tests and challenges related to my initiation. It is amazing how the universe and the dreaming brings us what we need to grow and learn. There is no doubt in my mind that we are guided every step of the way if we are open to our Guidance. This takes trust and the ability to surrender. It sounds easy but how many can really let go of the need to control and be the master of their own destiny? In the end, resistance only makes things harder. I truly understand what all those great sages are saying now when they talk about surrendering to a higher power. 

In these final days before 2012, the chaos and confusion is building. The cosmological influences are pushing us to adapt, change or suffer with our delusions and illusions. 

That which worked in the past may no longer apply. Like the saying goes... if what you are doing isn't working, try something else.

The Medicine Wheel gives us 36 different stones, 36 different perspectives, 36 different ways to look at any one situation... yet we often stay stuck on one stone. Usually these are our broken Moons that hold us back. Moon work is about allowing these parts of you to have a space to grow, learn and heal. It doesn't have to take years of psychotherapy. It is about experiencing the child within. Just by acknowledging it, you are starting a journey of healing. The Moon wheel unfolds as you bring consciousness to your reactions and emotions. Then you are able to make conscious choices and take actions to change the behaviours that no longer work. 

Right now, as we count down to Winter Solstice 2012... this year we are being forced to work harder than ever on our personal unresolved issues. There is no shame in being broken, hurt or lost. The only shame is in NOT doing our work. That is all that is asked of us.

I know from twenty plus years of being on this path, that the more we do our inner work, the more life gets better and easier. We become clearer, happier and stronger.

We don't have to save the world. It is arrogant to think we can when all the great masters, prophets and sages of history have failed. All we can do is save ourselves and support and encourage those close to us who are also willing to do their work. 

We can't do our work alone. We need to be humble enough to ask for help and to listen when confronted with our imbalances and dysfunctional ways.