Author: Monique

Painting By Meinrad Craighead 1983, Wisdom

 

Lodestone: Heart of the Pilgrim Soul

 
 
“When I reach through the hole at my center the gift eludes my grasp. Whatever it may be,
I can possess it only as that mystery which beckons from the greatest distance and draws
my heart deeper into the quest.

The journey waxes full and then wanes dark, again and again. I stare into my hole focusing
on a single point, waiting for her to dart wildly through my landscape.”

Meinrad Craighead artist (1936 – 2019)1

 

There is something that pulls us ever-forward to the heart of our own mystery. In an unending pilgrimage our life journey orients homeward, centered in a world that we know and one in which we cannot fully know. As unseen forces guide us over each threshold, the inner muse arouses the creative impulse allowing life to continuously be revealed to itself. But never completely.

Lodestone means ‘leading stone’ or ‘way stone’. It is a magnetic stone use by ancient sages, seers, and alchemists for divination and then later in compasses because of its ability to orient toward to the north star. It is found near the surface of the earth and is thought to be magnetized by lightning strikes. From the invisible realm the heavens touch the earth, impregnating it with a polarized force stable enough to guide us through the endless cycles of birth and death so that we may discover something enduring.

The heart of the pilgrim lives in the overlapping space between surrender and discipline, compelled by mystery. Following the path of water between heaven and earth we travel embedded within the dream time of natural and preternatural realms. Through the labyrinthine caverns of physical reality, human and other-than-human beings offer nourishment and clues. Within this sacred communion, medicines are shared. Continue reading “Lodestone: Heart of the Pilgrim Soul” →

 

 

The Other Kind of Fire: Soul of the Wounded Healer

 

Fire calls us forth to intermingle, laugh, love, and enjoy, yet so many are feeling lonely, exhausted, isolated, and bewildered even as we come out to socialize after the Great Loneliness of these past three years.

Summer is the season of the fire element bringing warmth, connection, intimacy, ripening, expansion, circulation. Fire also purifies, clearing out the what is no longer useful to be recycled into nutrients for soil and new growth. Indigenous peoples teach that there are ways to help the earth by setting contained fires to prevent the build up of understories that have become congested with overgrowth or that have lost their vitality. The nutrients from the ash feeds the earth and creates fertile soil while preventing natural fires from burning out of control.

I can see how this is also a metaphor for our own psycho-spiritual health internally.

As multitudes of fires burn out of control across the body of Gaia each summer, I can feel how she struggles to nourish all her children, even as we continue to harm her. I wonder about how our own bodies are responding as I take off my sandals and step into the salty water. What happens to the earth happens also in our bodies. Continue reading “The Other Kind of Fire: Soul of the Wounded Healer” →

 

 

The Way of Dragon Veins:

A Prayer From Where the Heart Begins

 

There is a breathing that is more than our own, a palpable stream of cosmic vitality that moves, enlivens, connects and transforms along numinous pathways between heaven and earth. Ancient Taoists knew these currents as dragon veins, along which the breath of life—qi—ushers emptiness and form back and forth to one another; moving between realms like an unborn, undying prayer from the heart of existence ceaselessly offering its spirit to the full potential of embodied life.

As spring winds steadily fan the flaming spirit of summer’s becoming, warmth and light is offered to the hidden or not-yet-formed things so that they may continue their full emergence and live in the world of form and time. There is no such thing as holding back to plants, creature beings, planets, stars. Life is made to bear fruit, and in so doing, dies wholly to itself over and again in a participatory dance of inter-being.

In the midst of the bursting exuberance of spring, it is easy to forget that growth is also contingent on inward acts like letting go. Growth is mostly not smooth and happens in stages, each one requiring courage, faith, trust and death. Birth requires much dying. Immense suffering is often the result of not knowing how and when to die, and that it is simply okay to let go. Continue reading “The Way of Dragon Veins: A Prayer From Where the Heart Begins” →