Juniper Medicine Alchemical Acupuncture Blog | Whidbey Island

Drumming On Bamboo To Call A Phoenix

In meditation this morning it feels as though I’m riding a wild dragon. As my mind whirls in chaos, I return to breath and open my gaze through the inner eye. A moment of silence fades as thoughts reassert themselves. I return to breath and gaze with my inner eye. Back and forth it goes until my attention is called to the steady pitter patter of rain upon the rooftop. Its sound trickles gently through my being. A bird’s song sparks an inner lightness and perceptions clear and brighten. Thunder rumbles in the distance becoming louder and closer, attuning me to center.

Inner and outer continue to intermingle in deep conversation until they become one and the same. Timelessness infuses the time-bound, flowering into a pregnant pause. There is a softening, and then Emptiness.

A kaleidoscope of light, color and moving shapes envelope me. It is fluid in the way that water is, melting the remaining tightness in my body. A face emerges from this watery substrate and I recognize the small, young seal who traveled with me when I walked the beach yesterday. In moments of stopping and gazing at one another we entered a space of inter-being. A profound love arose and overflowed from my heart. Continue reading “Drumming On Bamboo To Call A Phoenix” →

Holy Longing: Becoming A Compassionate Ancestor

Posted 1 year ago by Monique Gaboury

Holy Longing:

Becoming A Compassionate Ancestor

There is a longing that echos from the infinite depths of our innermost being, from Gaia, from existence itself. Although we may not know what we long for, we are continuously moved by its presence. It inspires us to question, seek, explore, create. Although longing feels personal, it is also transpersonal. It is like an endless koan deconstructing the false to reveal the essence of the true. It is like a spirit guiding us from beyond.

Longing often brings with it a sense of aloneness or separation where there exists a seemingly endless sea between what is and what wants to be. Rilke observes in his poem below that in our humility, the presence of the sacred reveals itself to us. In the presence of the ‘wise ones’ and in our aloneness we become available to receive the blessing of something larger than ourselves. In the empty chamber of the heart within the heart, the longing within the longing guides us in the way that a clear stream flows home to the wide open sea.

Longing lives and moves in emptiness.

Emptiness flows though form and formlessness alike, pulsing with life in the space between molecules, atoms, breaths, heartbeats, planets, galaxies, self, and other revealing that nothing is solid or what it appears to be, and all forms are in a dance of relationship and inter-being. Empty space is a living tissue, an invisible potency that enlivens and connects all things. When we come to inhabit and abide in this emptiness of which we are made, we touch the wholeness that unites all things. The ten thousand things return to source. Continue reading “Holy Longing: Becoming A Compassionate Ancestor” →

Traversing the Wild Lands of Spirit: Calling Down the Rains

Posted 2 years ago by Monique

Traversing the Wild Lands of Spirit:

Calling Down the Rains

Before I open my eyes, a heaviness in flesh and bone announces the dampness filling the late summer air. The icy fingers of autumn cause my pores to contract, reminding me of the downward and inward movement of the coming months. I want to stay curled up like like the beans and peas in the garden who close at night. As I peer out through the shadowy in-between time of early morning, a thick mist hangs above the ground where the sun is just becoming. I, too, feel as though I am just becoming.

Moving outside to the garden, I reflect on the time of the pandemic and the great ‘truth telling time’ we are living in. We are collectively and individually bearing witness to the revealing of truths that have been shaping our landscape internally and externally all along the course of human history. How we live and what we believe about our place in existence is reflected in our internal and external environments. My garden tells me about what it needs in very clear ways. I am continuously learning the language, how to read the signs, and about how every aspect of mineral, soil, bacteria, insect, animal, and weather patterns relates to the flourishing or demise of what I’m trying to grow. In this great dance of inter-being, there lies the potential for all life to be nourished. Or not.

Continue reading “Traversing the Wild Lands of Spirit: Calling Down the Rains” →