Insights – Melannie Thomas

Archive for the ‘Intuitive Guidance’ Category

Sacred Marriage, a union of opposites.  Carl Jung described the sacred marriage within as the anima and animus joining together in Heiros Gamos.

“If we are to live without silencing or numbing essential parts of who we are, a vow must be invoked and upheld within oneself.  The same commitments we promise when embarking on a marriage can be understood internally as a devotion to the care of one’s soul: to have and to hold…for better or for worse…in sickness and in health…to love and to cherish, till death do us part.

This means staying committed to your inner path.  This means not separating from yourself when things get tough or confusing.  This means accepting and embracing your faults and limitations.  It means loving yourself no matter how others see you.  It means cherishing the unchangeable radiance that lives within you, no matter the cuts and bruises along the way.  It means binding your life with a solemn pledge to the truth of your soul.”   ~Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening, pg 374-75.

To find the way between our internal opposites means to stay with the struggle and tensions between them.  Commitment to the process leads to the opportunity for Self-realization and personal growth…the journey to the Authentic Self.  Only then can we experience the truth of inner peace.

Blessings!

Veteran’s Day has been set aside to honor the men and women who serve us and our country.

There are many events locally and nationally in which we can participate, in person or on television.

“Honoring the sacrifices many  have made for our country in the name of freedom and democracy is the very foundation of Veteran’s Day.”  ~Charles B. Rangel

“True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic.  It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.”  ~Arthur Ashe

“But this Veteran’s Day, I believe we should do more than sing the praises of the bravery and patriotism that our veterans have embodied in the past.  We should take this opportunity to re-evaluate how we are treating our veterans in the present.”  ~Nick Lampson

I invite you on Wednesday to join in the celebration: a moment of silence honoring our veterans is a powerful prayer.

Words are many things.  Words are intelligent sounds, or sometimes not.  Words name things and people. Words are one way we communicate with each other.

There are words of encouragement, household words, harsh words, curse words, and words of wisdom.  There is a play on words, a password, and word crafting.  We can have words with,  we can break our words,  and eat our words.  Words can comfort, inspire, and motivate as well as destroy and incite.  Words are powerful.

Thankfully, the 2020 elections are almost at an end and with it the onslaught of words flooding the country.

I have chosen the following quotes about words as a focus of meditation for the coming week.  I did my best to select three from the many wonderful words I read.

“Better than a thousand hollow words is is one word that brings peace.”  ~Buddha

“Speak to yourself like someone you love.  Encourage yourself, motivate yourself, and uplift yourself with your words.”  ~ATGW

“Your words have power.  Speak words that are kind, loving, positive, uplifting, encouraging and life-giving.”  ~Unknown

Blessings!

We all make promises.  With maturity and wisdom comes an awareness of our capacity to fulfill the promises made.

To maintain our integrity we learn to not make promises that we cannot keep…to ourselves or to others.  And, if finding ourselves in the embarrassing and awkward position of being unable to keep a promise, acknowledge it, confess to the shortcoming, for whatever reason.

This powerful quote from Carl Jung is good food for thought about giving and receiving promises.

“The man who promises everything is sure to fulfill nothing, and everyone who promises too much is in danger of using evil means in order to carry out his promises, and is already on the road to perdition.”

Blessings!

Time is both a noun and a verb.  It measures the progress of events in the past, present and even the future when when taken as a whole.  Time is a schedule, a measurement of activity, a plan for the unfolding of future events.

A cornucopia of phrases exists relative to our experience of time:  ‘Best of times, worst of times’,  ‘Time is money’,  ‘Time waits for no man’, ‘Time flies’,  ‘Time is short and there is long time’, ‘Out of time’,  ‘Passing time’, ‘Quiet time’, ‘Time out’, ‘Time is now’, Time zones’,  ‘Time management’,  ‘Race against time’,  ‘Timeless’,  ‘Time is of the essence’,  ‘Wasted time’,  ‘On time’, ‘Timely’,  ‘Timeline’,  to list a few.

The sundials of ancient Babylon, popularized in ancient Egypt, are the earliest man made tools for measuring time.  Monoliths throughout the world both large and small marked the passing of seasons…the equinoxes and solstices.  Examples like Stonehenge, Ahu Akivi, Chacko Canyon, Machu Picchu, and the Sphinx, still do so today, with remarkable accuracy.

Tracking time evolved from ancient sundials through mechanical clocks that required water to function, to the pendulum, then to the spring drive and into the myriad forms present today…digital, electric, analog, hybrid, touchscreen etc.

Steve Jobs said, “It’s clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.”

We all have a time budget.  How we spend it has a direct influence on the quality of daily living, on our physical, emotional and spiritual health;  and often upon those around us.   Knowing our own bio-rhythms, our individual tolerance for activity or lack thereof, our goals, desires, passions, creativity, all contribute to spending time.

Albert Einstein reportedly used the following analogy to explain his relativity theory, “When you sit with a nice girl for two hours you think it’s only a minute, but when you sit on a hot stove for a minute you think it’s two hours.”

How we spend or endure time has the same quality.  When doing what we enjoy, what we love, ‘time flies’.  Time spent doing what is unpleasant and ‘time slows to a crawl’.

This week I invite you to examine your ‘time budget’.  Is it working well?

“Time is the coin of your life.  It is the only coin you have. and only you can determine how it will be spent.”  ~Carl Sandburg

Blessings!

I recently came across this analogy from Zen which says that ‘trying to find serenity in a chaotic world is like trying to catch a river in a bucket.’

I am still (over a week later) ruminating on this. I feel I see the obvious. I know from personal experience that staying centered, grounded and serene is like the ebb and flow of the tides. When the tide is in I am in the zone. Staying in my inner peace place is easy, daily prayer and meditation are effortless. Then the tide goes out. I am aghast at how easy it is to slip out of my daily routine. But it is not just about the timing of my daily exercise; there is also a qualitative aspect.

When I am not expending great effort ‘…to catch the river in a bucket’, I feel so connected to the Holy Spirit.

I believe I understand the cyclic nature of this process, yet rather than total surrender, I still find myself looking for a bucket for my trip to the river.

Seemingly, now more than ever, serenity has an aura of great value.  To achieve moments of serenity amidst the swirling maelstrom of social chaos is a considerable accomplishment.

“To become mindfully aware of our surroundings is to bring our thinking back to our present moment reality and to the possibility of some semblance of serenity in the face of circumstances outside our ability to control.”   ~Jeff Kober

We are living in a remarkable era;  a time that will forever change the landscape of  our personal, social and global community.

This week I invite you into serenity.

Blessings!

For the fourth time in three years, fire ravages my heart.

I was born and raised in St. Helena.  I moved to the Sonoma Valley when I was 29; later moving to Santa Rosa, and subsequently migrating to West Sonoma County in my early forties.

I spent the second grade at Foothills School in Deer Park; spent decades swimming the warm waters of Putah Creek and then Lake Berryessa after the dam was built.  I have hiked the Pallisades, lived in the Toll House on Lawly Toll Rd; swam the icy waters of Las Posades; spent hours playing at the Old Bale Mill before it became a historic State Park.  I love Glass Mountain and my ‘…hills of home.’

I have hiked hours and hours in Annadel and Armstrong; several Regional Parks;  Sugarloaf;  part of the Kortum Trail and Bodega Head.  I have played at Goat Rock and Portugese Beach, flown my kites at the top of Coleman Valley Rd.; swam in the Russian River and Lake Sonoma after the dam was built;  marveled at the history of the Round Barn…loving the ‘hills of my second home.’

Watching the tree-filled landscapes and landmarks of childhood through to my twilight years, that have  so unconditionally supported the journey to my authentic self, being transmuted by fire, brings a flood of grief into my soul-self.  Tears flow unbidden, crossing my cheeks, dripping from my face into the abyss of change.

The heat in the crucible of growth is more intense than I ever could have imagined at this time in my life.  Peace and comfort come as the authentic self accepts and allows; observing and engaging the unfolding.

Blessings!

Photo Credit – Alvin A.H. Jornada/The Press Democrat, Sept. 29, 2020

As a people, a nation, a tribe, humanity struggles to find a way through the miasma of our civilization.  The Frankenstein Monster we have created threatens our survival on a daily basis in myriad forms; seen and unseen.

“I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness.  I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too.  I feel the suffering of millions.” ~Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

Digging deeply into our soul-selves, pursuing faith, trusting the Numinous to lead us out of the wilderness, demands that we find the necessary tools and strategies for balance and survival.

One tool I find increasingly helpful and supportive is Mark Nepo’s, The Book of Awakening.   The entry for September 23 is Repetition is Not Failure.

“There is no expected pace for inner learning.  What we need to learn comes when we need it, no matter how old or young, no matter how many times we have to start over, no matter how many times we have to learn the same lesson.  We fall down as many times as we need to, to learn how to fall and get up.  We fall in love as many times as we need to, to learn how to hold and be held.  We misunderstand the many voices of truth as many times as we need to, to truly hear the choir of diversity that surrounds us.  We suffer our pain as often as is necessary for us to learn how to break and how to heal.  No one really likes this, of course, but we deal with our dislike in the same way, again and again, until we learn what we need to know about the humility of acceptance.”

Be kind to yourself.  Be gentle.  Muzzle the inner critic.  Actively engage self-care.  Take time out.  In the depth of your soul-self seek the sanctuary of inner peace.  And when you find it, visit often!

Blessings!

This message came from the Hopi Elder White Eagle (click here to see the original) :

“This moment humanity is going through can now be seen as a portal and as a hole.

The decision to fall into the hole or go through the portal is up to you.

If you repent of the problem and consume the news 24 hours a day, with little energy, nervous all the time, with pessimism, you will fall into the hole. But if you take this opportunity to look at yourself, rethink life and death, take care of yourself and others, you will cross the portal.

Take care of your homes, take care of your body. Connect with your spiritual House.

When you are taking care of yourselves, you are taking care of everything else. Do not lose the spiritual dimension of this crisis, have the eagle aspect, that from above, and see the whole; see more broadly.

There is a social demand in this crisis, but there is also a spiritual demand. The two go hand in hand. Without the social dimension, we fall into fanaticism. But without the spiritual dimension, we fall into pessimism and lack of meaning.

You were prepared to go through this crisis. Take your toolbox and use all the tools available to you.

Learn about resistance of the indigenous and African peoples: we have always been and continue to be exterminated. But we still haven’t stopped singing, dancing, lighting a fire and having fun. Don’t feel guilty about being happy during this difficult time.

You do not help at all being sad and without energy. You help if good things emanate from the Universe now. It is through joy that one resists. Also, when the storm passes, each of you will be very important in the reconstruction of this new world.

You need to be well and strong. And, for that, there is no other way than to maintain a beautiful, happy and bright vibration.

This has nothing to do with alienation.

This is a resistance strategy. In shamanism, there is a rite of passage called the quest for vision. You spend a few days alone in the forest, without water, without food, without protection. When you cross this portal, you get a new vision of the world, because you have faced your fears, your difficulties …

This is what is asked of you:
Allow yourself to take advantage of this time to perform your vision seeking rituals. What world do you want to build for you? For now, this is what you can do: serenity in the storm. Calm down, pray every day. Establish a routine to meet the sacred every day.

Good things emanate; what you emanate now is the most important thing. And sing, dance, resist through art, joy, faith and love. ”

Resist – Be reborn
White Eagle has spoken

march 30, 2020

Many Blessings!

As the struggle continues to find, and/or to maintain our emotional, spiritual and physical balance in the milieu of crisis fatigue, I share this quote with you this week. It is a good piece upon which to meditate.

“Balance is a feeling derived from being whole and complete;  it’s a sense of harmony.  It is essential to maintaining quality in life and work.”  ~Joshua Osenga

Stay safe!

Many blessings!!