Musings From The Trail
maybe it is her birth
which she holds close to herself
or her death
which is just as inseparable
and the white wind
that encircles her is a part
just as the blue sky
hanging in turquoise from her neck
oh woman
remember who you are
woman
it is the whole earth
~ Joy Harjo
🌎
Photo by Ruthie Martin
on Unsplash
She is intuition,
she is far-seer,
she is deep listener,
she is loyal heart.
She encourages humans to remain multilingual;
fluent in the languages of dreams, passion, and poetry.
She whispers from night dreams,
she leaves behind on the terrain of a woman’s soul
a coarse hair and muddy footprints.
These fill women with longing to find her, free her, and love her.
She is ideas, feelings, urges, and memory.
She has been lost and half-forgotten for a long, long time.
She is the source,
the light,
the night,
the dark,
and daybreak.
~Clarissa Pinkola Estes
🌙☀️
New Moon in Libra, champion of justice, balance and equal relationships. But imbalance and chaos rule right now in the outer world. The crazy roller coaster of events and emotions continues day after day.
The Goddess of Justice reminds us that true justice and equality are rarely easy to achieve. People who have amassed power and riches from playing by the rules of the current system will fight to keep the system as is — even as the unfairness and inequities of the system are being exposed to everyone. As Machiavelli noted centuries ago, “power corrupts.”
But the Goddess of Justice also reminds us that true power is not about status or position or money. True power flows from within. True power is grounded in knowing and trusting in one’s self and one’s gifts. And standing in a place of true inner power, one person can change the world. Remember Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Joan of Arc, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Lasting change grows out of people standing in their power and their knowing.
Get off the roller coaster of news and rumors for awhile. Focus on you. What does your heart need right now?
Allow yourself to feel everything that this time is bringing up in you; fear, rage, confusion, despair, hope, love. Those feelings are markers pointing you towards what matters most to you – and what parts of you need extra care and healing right now.
You can cultivate your internal power and knowing by listening deeply to yourself and all your fears and desires. Inner balance, peace, wisdom and power lie just beyond all those difficult feelings you’ve been trying to avoid.
Your Soul is always there, beneath the outer noise. Listen.
🌙
“The woman who takes the time to grow herself in darkness becomes familiar — perhaps for the first time — with the real source and containment of her psychic strength. No longer is her strength dissipated in obeying an idealized father figure, in pleasing a lover, in trying to satisfy a perpetually unsatisfied mother figure, in accommodating to a patriarchal organization or culture, in appeasing the inner witch who tells her she is worthless. No longer is her strength lost to obeying compulsions, drives, and obsessions that can slip in during the dark night of the soul and substitute for the real thing.
“And what is the real thing, the thing for which she longs? The love affair with her own spirit, the inner marriage that commits her to her destiny, the rituals of soul that feed her deepest hunger, and the sense of being pregnant with her Self, her creative essence.”
~Jill Mellick
“We must remember that the feminine works in a non-linear fashion, so while many are impatiently looking to new-age checklists and dream dictionaries for a bottom-line, the final answer, they rarely find anything enduring. This is because there is a greater genius at work which we could never integrate all at once. Instead we must follow a mysterious and melodic trail, which lures us deeper into the unknown, fortifying our trust in that which is parenting us. One day, sometimes years down the line, we finally understand how the symphony resolves itself.”
~Toko-pa Turner (toko-pa.com)
〰️〰️〰️
#NavigatingByMoonlight
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice —
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voice behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do —
determined to save
the only life that you could save.
~Mary Oliver
To the North within you,
may you express the wisdom of your true self.
To the West within you,
may you be reborn with every season.
To the South within you,
may you hear the counsel of your heart.
To the East within you,
may you be blessed with illumination.
To all Above that is within you,
may you be guided be angels and divinity.
To all Below that is within you,
may you discover the blessing of your shadow.
To the Spirit within you,
may you find your way home.
~ Tanya Markul, Thug Unicorn ~