God Energy

God is...

After being invited to give a talk at a Schlitz Audubon Nature Center, Spiritual World of Nature program, I remarked, “I will look forward to preparing for it since I always learn so much in the process.”  As the date is now just around the corner I was hoping for some of that past enthusiasm to get me started formatting my upcoming presentation titled, “Does Nature Speak to You?”  The offering description states I will share how I overcame difficulty “… by watching, waiting, and trusting in the healing messages God sends through others and the natural world.”  Reading that description left me feeling flat and uninspired until I understood the critical missing spark.  Every day for three years, during a very difficult time, I sat down and reflected on the joys, sorrows and troubles of that day and briefly wrote them down.  Those words had power.  They put perspective on my troubles, which gave me just a little distance from them so I could be open to God’s healing messages.  Those words formed a holy trinity with others and the natural world where God speaks.   

In my presentation preparation I recalled a quote from my past work life as a Public Affairs Specialist for the USDA Forest Service, by its founder Gifford Pinchot.  I am just a little unsure if this is the exact wording.  I believe he said, “There are only two things important in this world, people and natural resources.”  I goggled quotes by Gifford Pinchot and could not find it among them.  I think it should be.  And I am recalling at the end of my blog post last week titled "Ask, Seek, Find" I related Carolyn Baker’s telling in her book, “Reclaiming the Dark Feminine,” the importance of ritual and how returning to our indigenous selves reclaims our connection to all things and one another.  What could that look like today?  There is no shortage of material for reflection.     

My Audubon presentation description ends with “If nature speaks to you spiritually you will have a chance to share your insights and experiences.”  I look forward to facilitating that sharing for we are all better off when we all share.   

What if we were all open to learning from one another? 

Ask, Seek, Find

God is...

In last week’s post titled Balance I concluded with:  “What if we daily asked our darkness what it wants from us?”  So this past week I tried it and although I may have missed a day or two, I am impressed with how my shadow informed me, made priorities apparent, and smoothed out my week.  I also reviewed my notes from Dr. Philip Sternig’s 1997 class, “The Shadow Knows,” and found good reasons to keep an on-going dialog with my shadow.

Clarifying definitions and quotes from class handouts deepened my understanding.

The Shadow:

-       It is not an entity.  It is more like a quality, a condition, an influencing force, a “coloring” element within the ego.

-       Those elements, feelings, emotions, ideas, beliefs, with which we can’t identify, which are repressed due to education, culture, or value system.

-       Contains psychic energy—constructive and destructive.

-       Edward Whitmont:  “When we can’t see it, it’s time to beware!”

-       It is 90% pure gold.  It keeps the Ego true to the Self.  But when repressed it emerges first in a violent, bizarre, distorted form.       

-       Maintains the essential balance inherent in all that is.

I now better understand the deep struggle I suffered over my aging parent’s care needs was really a struggle with my shadow.  My nightly writing during that difficult time slowly surfaced my real problems and eventually brought the grace to overcome them.  The following from “God Never Hurries” is the dawning of my understanding. 

“ A secret of life is suffering for profit.  The profit in suffering comes in the grace in knowing something inside me needs to die so I can experience new life.  What needs to die is the once easier submissiveness to tyranny.  It is so odd to feel I must learn to do more for myself and die to denial.  It is the opposite of all I’ve been taught.  I should be rejoicing, but so much darkness has been masquerading as light, making this a truly ugly struggle.  But this difficulty with myself I can offer up.”

And I finished re-reading Carolyn Baker’s “Reclaiming the Dark Feminine” where she writes of the importance of ritual and how returning to our indigenous selves reclaims our connection to all things and one another.  I wrote “God Never Hurries” to always remember the sacred ritual times I spent in the natural world where I experienced Oneness.  Baker also writes, “…the transformational process is never finished and the completion of one initiation is organically linked to the beginning of another.”  What’s next? 

What if we could all come to befriend our shadow?