S. Kelley Harrell's Blog: Intentional Insights - Ancient Healing, Modern Shamanism, page 75

The Weekly Rune – Tiwaz

For the week of 6 September 2015

Do overs and rewrites shape the story this week.

Raidho remains the half-month rune through 13 September. Read right to left is Raidho, then Tiwaz.

Following is a summary of The Weekly Rune. The full runecast is available through Patreon.  The full cast is more detailed, gives more insight into the half-month rune’s influence, and for $5 a month, receive it before everyone else.   Even better, for $10, get all of the aforementioned, plus a monthly rune draw on the intention of your choice! Find my more of my runic artwork on Etsy.

Telling a more authentic story of the self has been the theme of this year. Last week, Jera encouraged laying a solid plan for how that’s going to happen, and Raidho played muse to filling in the details. Raidho’s role remains similar this week, though Tiwaz brings in a new plot.

Before we get into the intuitive stave, Tiwaz, I want to look more closely at the timing of Raidho with Mercury retrograde. What to evaluate during this retrograde?

Plan B. Tiwaz, I call the survivor rune. It indicates Tuisto, a precursor of the god Tyr, who in battle, couldn’t save his people. The story usually skips the musical montage and cuts straight to, “Though he created a new race that became the three Germanic Tribes.” Easy, right? What about that space between realizing he couldn’t save his people, having to ditch them, deal with guilt and sadness around that, to save himself? I suspect there’s rich  drama in there, of the hear broke survivor guilt variety.

Whatever survivor guilt you’re feeling over the life you didn’t have, now’s the time to ditch it. The elements are in favor of grieving it properly, because until that’s done, Plan B can’t get in gear, and that one’s the winner. Even now, in a month of molasses-slow progression, the Powers That Be are pointing to not just success, but victory in how we reconstruct ourselves.

Stay with it. Take no prisoners, not even yourself.

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Celebrate the Small Things – Gratitude

My weekly gratitude post, in the Celebrate the Small Things [ongoing] Blog Hop.

I’m grateful for the effectiveness of physical therapy.

I’m grateful for my wonderful lover.

I’m thankful for the Universe swooping in with an answer.

I’m thrilled to have had great sessions at the Dancing Moon. Join me there next month!

I’m happy to have finally gotten the Spirited Paths classroom spiffed up with a new layout.

I’m thankful for my students, Initiates, and clients.

What are you grateful for this week? How will you show thanks? Who is grateful for you? I am!

This post is part of Lexa Cain’s blog hop, Celebrate the Small Things, along with her  co-hostesses L.G. Keltner and Tonja Drecker. Participate by following the link and adding your name to the Linky list, then post your gratitude every Friday.  Easiest blog hop ever!

Click here to hop on, and thanks for coming with me on this journey of self-empowerment and collective awareness.

The post Celebrate the Small Things – Gratitude appeared first on Soul Intent Arts - Intentional Insights.

The Weekly Rune – Jera

For the week of 30 August 2015

Plans laid shape the story this week.

First off, I want to thank everyone for the kind words and notes I’ve received over the last month. My surgery and recover has gone well. While physical therapy is really hard, everything is looking good. I’m grateful to have had wonderful support on many levels. I’m back to writing The Weekly Rune real-time, and it feels good!

Raidho remains the half-month rune through 13 September. Read right to left is Raidho, then Jera.

Following is a summary of The Weekly Rune. The full runecast is available through Patreon.  The full cast is more detailed, gives more insight into the half-month rune’s influence, and for $5 a month, receive it before everyone else.  Find my more of my runic artwork on Etsy.

The focus of the spring and summer has been seating into a new self. It’s gone through every iteration imaginable to bring it into being, deal with the reactions of loved ones and friends, ground self in spite of sed reactions, and make peace with our own psyches wanting to turncoat on Who We Want to Be. This week, Jera encourages laying a solid plan for how that’s going to happen, and Raidho fills in the details.

Words are all we have when it comes to overt communicate in our world. However, the process of what happens before we speak, before we commit pen to paper is what is highlighted this week. Jera encourages us to lay clear plans for ourselves. Recall it is the half-month rune native at Winter Solstice, which carries with it associations of impeccable inventory. Know what’s available; create a supply avenue for what isn’t. Realize what works; apply a system to improve it. Clarify resources; generate new ones and give up unneeded ones. All of this hearth math allows perfect clarity on what’s possessed and what’s needed. Knowing that, the story can be told.

This week consider all the shedding of what isn’t authentic, and the awkward fitting into what truly is. With that work behind, think about the story that has to be told. Who’s in it? Who isn’t? Is the destination of life the same, or has it changed? Be flexible in holding what feels true and what feels secure. The advent of Jera as the intuitive stave indicates that sincere heart-centered plans are supported by the Powers That Be, at this time. The clearer we can be in discerning those plans, the more support we have in implementing them.

The post The Weekly Rune – Jera appeared first on Soul Intent Arts - Intentional Insights.

Celebrate the Small Things – Gratitude

My weekly gratitude post, in the Celebrate the Small Things [ongoing] Blog Hop.

I’m grateful for a surviving an intensely rough week.

I’m grateful for the support of loved ones.

I’m thankful for a great surgeon.

I’m happy to have finally gotten the Spirited Paths classroom up and going.

What are you grateful for this week? How will you show thanks? Who is grateful for you? I am!

This post is part of Lexa Cain’s blog hop, Celebrate the Small Things, along with her  co-hostesses L.G. Keltner and Tonja Drecker. Participate by following the link and adding your name to the Linky list, then post your gratitude every Friday.  Easiest blog hop ever!

Click here to hop on, and thanks for coming with me on this journey of self-empowerment and collective awareness.

The post Celebrate the Small Things – Gratitude appeared first on Soul Intent Arts - Intentional Insights.

The Weekly Rune – Ingwaz

For the week of 23 August 2015

‘Being church’ is the mantra this week.

Ansuz remains the half-month rune through 29 August, at which point Raidho moves front-and-center. Read right to left is Ansuz above, Raidho below, then Ingwaz.

Following is a summary of The Weekly Rune. The full runecast is available through Patreon.  The full cast gives more insight into the half-month rune’s influence, and for $5 a month, receive The Weekly Rune before everyone else.  Find my more of my runic artwork on Etsy.

The focus of the spring and summer has been seating into a new self. Through having it poked and prodded by everybody and their sister, we transitioned to making peace with how a new self impacts life around us. This week we get to put it all into practice.

Ansuz, as the half-month rune, brought us fumbling to order, after plumbing the depths of our chaotic natures. From a mythological standpoint, this first stave of the Æsir in the traditional ordering of the Elder Futhark, segues into Raidho, which presents a natural ordering with hints of organized religion. A phrase that generates a knee-jerk reaction in many, hearkening to the nuts and bolts of how a spiritual reality becomes discipline is far more organic than our modern sensibilities can sometimes allow.

I have a friend who addresses any significant meeting of kindred as ‘church.’ It could be a lunch date, a concert, a moment in Nature. That it has deep meaning is the only requirement. This week, Raidho puts it all together to form the church of self. Generally speaking, this is a stave of authority, of authoring how we tell our story. That, at some point, has to include parameters for what’s allowed, what goes against deep truth, and how to apply those tenets as a way of life.  This half-month rune is ensuring that we’re not just running on intuition. Again, that flies in the face of some readers as much as the organized religion bit. The reality is, it takes both wild intuition and disciplined ground rules to truly live out loud.

That’s where Ingwaz comes in. Traditionally accepted as meaning ‘the god Ing,’ it is more roundly indicative of his followers, who were the Ingvaeones-Nerthus cult. Significant in this connection is that this was a fertility cult, based upon the idea that the female consumes the male in order to replenish crops, energy stores, etc. The idea of something needing a proper amount of time to gestate before it can healthily and functionally come into being is the focus of Ingwaz.

Take time to figure out the parameters of the church of self.

We get to make our own rules about this. They will be challenged, and that’s okay.

 

The post The Weekly Rune – Ingwaz appeared first on Soul Intent Arts - Intentional Insights.

Celebrate the Small Things – Gratitude

My weekly gratitude post, in the Celebrate the Small Things [ongoing] Blog Hop.

I’m grateful for a relatively smooth if not premature return to the day job.

I’m grateful for calm, in lieu of strangling a very specific someone.

I’m thankful for western medicine.

I’m elated for how well the first-year Initiates are doing in the Intensive.

What are you grateful for this week? How will you show thanks? Who is grateful for you? I am!

This post is part of Lexa Cain’s blog hop, Celebrate the Small Things, along with her  co-hostesses L.G. Keltner and Tonja Drecker. Participate by following the link and adding your name to the Linky list, then post your gratitude every Friday.  Easiest blog hop ever!

Click here to hop on, and thanks for coming with me on this journey of self-empowerment and collective awareness.

The post Celebrate the Small Things – Gratitude appeared first on Soul Intent Arts - Intentional Insights.

Life Betwixt – Go Deep, or Lie

For the last year I’ve been in deep catharsis about what I’m doing on my path, what I want to do in my time on this planet. I’ve discussed it some in the Betwixt series, though it’s largely remained a personal exploration.

Part of that curiosity has been sitting with realities around childhood dreams of making my living as a novelist tempered by the more practical results of publishing. My truth is that I never wanted to do anything else. Complicating that desire with the shamanic fury in my head has generated a deep sense of purpose for me.  Yet like so many others who work the survival job and the passion job(s), I’m depleted and unable to make the strides I want in dazzling life areas because I expend so much just meeting mundane obligations.

The key to fusing elbow grease and manifestation is etheric relationship. I say it constantly to my students, clients, Initiates, mentorees. Relationship is everything in animistic life. Anything desired must be connected with and embodied if it is to become. In other words, we must become it. We must shapeshift into it.

With that in mind, I recently ventured to call in the spiritual manifestation of Writing for a meeting of hearts. Instantly a lovely man in his mid-twenties came to my sacred space. His skin was metallic gold, and he was very fit.

I thanked him right away for having been with me, pretty much from my first awareness of love of writing in childhood. I thanked him for inspiration, stamina, imagination–the gamut of what it takes to truly take the ignited spark and light not just a page, but a book. In doing so, I felt deeply what it’s like to have done just that, and to know that I will do it again.

Yet my heart grew sad around that thought, and I talked to him very openly about my disappointments, the changes in the industry, in my life, and how they have affected my desire to stick with it. I told him that while I love writing Intentional Insights, I didn’t feel supported by the professional process, that it didn’t give back nearly what it took out of me to create. He understood, and when I asked him what he needed from me, he stepped into my life force.

Being joined with him was familiar, invigorating in the same way as knowing what the next forty pages will say and racing to get the words out. As I experienced him conjoined with me, I became aware that connecting with Writing wasn’t enough. I needed to connect with Publishing, too.

I wasn’t thrilled about that. The writing isn’t what sucks; it’s the engine that is publishing, and how hard it is to retain visibility in it that drains, even for established authors. As soon as I had the thought, an extremely tall man with the horns of an auroch appeared. He glowed amber light and stood at least eight feet tall. His horns spanned ten feet easily.

He was a tad intimidating, though I proceeded to tell him my position on things. I spoke sincerely, as whine-free as possible, then waited. Without preamble, he stepped into me and Writing, and clear as day came the words, “Go deep, or lie.”

Embody, or fake it.

Honor, or complain.

Do, or shutup.

There’s no between.

The impact of his proclamation was such that I was temporarily thrown out of the trance. It happens. Sometimes what transpires in ecstasy is so profound that it can’t be held, the moment can’t be sustained. I breathed through the disruption and slowly made my way back to the space.

Upon becoming aware of them, I was again merged with both Writing and Publishing. I held that connection for as long as I could, sitting with the revelation of authenticity and how it relates to what I want in my time here. I let my imagination go as I experienced embodying the currents I want more of, and I recommitted to time with Writing and Publishing, regularly.

The other ‘r’ that travels with ‘relationship’ is reciprocity. Engagement goes two ways. It can’t just be all about us and what we want from the connection or life. I often work with others who understand the relationship part, though don’t engage reciprocity. They don’t value the bond enough to see the other being in it, which while hard to do, is imperative in any relationship–interpersonal, or inter-spiritual.

When I asked Publishing what he needed from me, embodiment was his response. Expression. Acknowledgment.

The thing is, we have to woo what we want in life. We have to tell it it’s pretty, buy it special things, make it feel spectacular. Modern Shaman and Podcaster, Christina Pratt, says a lot of profound things, though one gem she shared years back was the limitations of our intimate love relationships are mirrored in our etheric ecstatic relationships. Where we’re afraid to go, or don’t know how to proceed in intimate interpersonal bonds, we won’t just magickally transcend in spirit work. It’s not possible to go deeper in one part of life when we’re not invested in others, because it’s all related. That truth is at once transcendent and embarrassing, sad and liberating.

Who wants to admit their shortcomings in relationships? Who wants to truly overcome their personal shit to engage reciprocity? Yet nothing is gained without it.

Nothing is gained without it.

So, short of putting the cart before the horse–or the author in this case–my focus for now isn’t on writing or publishing, but on the relationship with both, and that of the other desires, people, I value most. My focus for now is on being in what I love, being in love with them, now.

What do you want most? Are you in relationship with it? Are you willing to go deep, or would you rather sustain the lie?

 

 

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Revisiting a Wise Voice – Sandra Ingerman

Last summer I featured many Wise Voices on Intentional Insights to celebrate the release of my book, Teen Spirit Guide to Modern Shamanism. Among them was modern shaman, Sandra Ingerman, who spoke very candidly about her childhood spiritual experiences, and how they helped shape her path as a nature activist and shaman. Check out my interview with Sandra, and learn more about her current work, including global conferences through the Shift Network, and various courses available through Sounds True.

 

 

 

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The Weekly Rune – Jera

For the week of 16 August 2015

Reasonable accounting challenges the focus, this week.

Ansuz remains the half-month rune through 29 August. Read right to left is Ansuz, then Laguz.

Following is a summary of The Weekly Rune. The full runecast is available through Patreon.  The full cast gives more insight into the half-month rune’s influence, and for $5 a month, receive The Weekly Rune before everyone else.  Find my more of my runic artwork on Etsy.

Through this season of turning over a new self, we’ve moved from the subtler currents of unconscious drives to manifesting the aspects of self most needed to live life as desired. As Ansuz became the half-month focus, we moved from barley distinguishable urges to a clear proclamation of who we need to be. Carrying that identity forward has been a bit challenged by loved ones and primal self-currents that cant quite get onboard. This week the challenge becomes more personal and practical.

In short, that challenge is ourselves. Raising a fuss isn’t some old self, a wounded soul aspect, afflicted personality component, or a loved one who should have our backs. Our biggest obstacle in rooting who we have most wanted to be into habit is ourselves.

[image error]Jera, in its native space, is about hearth accounting, getting practical affairs in order. This stave of the ‘year’ is about taking careful stock of the present, so that solid plans for the future can be laid. Ansuz also has a pseudo-accounting aspect; it references how we name things. Language is so rudimentary for us, we forget to pay attention to what we call things. Yet when we do, patterns emerge. What we say most transpires the most frequently. How we describe what transpires multiplies. Woo math grammar yes, but math, all the same.

This week we delve into what beliefs, thought patterns, and memories leave us doubting or sabotaging the new self. There is no failure here, only sussing out old ruts in creativity, how to dig out of them gracefully, and move on in a manner that sustains and builds new direction.

Get out the checklist and be very honest about self-support and self-surrender. Consider what self was in the driver’s seat a year ago. Are things better? Worse? Let go, and let grow.

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Celebrate the Small Things – Gratitude

My weekly gratitude post, in the Celebrate the Small Things [ongoing] Blog Hop.

I’m grateful for a gentle recovery from surgery.

I’m grateful for the help and support of friends and family.

I’m thankful for toffee.

I’m thankful for solid one-handed typing skills.

What are you grateful for this week? How will you show thanks? Who is grateful for you? I am!

This post is part of Lexa Cain’s blog hop, Celebrate the Small Things, along with her  co-hostesses L.G. Keltner and Katie. Participate by following the link and adding your name to the Linky list, then post your gratitude every Friday.  Easiest blog hop ever!

Click here to hop on, and thanks for coming with me on this journey of self-empowerment and collective awareness.

The post Celebrate the Small Things – Gratitude appeared first on Soul Intent Arts - Intentional Insights.