The Spring Equinox is imminent—this Wednesday the 20th with the full moon—and after this whacky winter and late Spring here on Vashon Island, it is most welcome. This year was a winter to get through, and we did—huzzah! I wanted to write a blog post to wish you a Happy Return of Spring, and also to say a few words about balance. 

The equinoxes are, of course, all about balance, being the equal day/night points in our dance around the sun. The seasons balance themselves, from the winter and summer extremes, and these days we do have extreme events in them, making the milder times even more enjoyable. Blue sky, flowers, birds, warmer but not hot temps, longer days...ahhhh. No more heavy coats and cabin fever.

I like to think about the fact that, if it weren't for a fateful collision of some giant rock from space with our little blue planet, causing an extinction event and giving us our tilt—and henceforth our seasons—the balance here would be very very different, and possibly we couldn't live where we live. Or even be alive.

I like to think about the random, cataclysmic events that made life for our species—and millions of other species—possible. An excellent series to view to consider this and many other very cool things about our blue living planet is One Strange Rock (now streaming on Netflix), and I recommend it if you haven't checked it out. 

Knowing and not knowing is another balance point for us to be aware of in our day-to-day perspectives. Knowing and not knowing simultaneously is a measure of the wisewoman and the warrior-not worrier, and of course philosophers such as my man Socrates. Practicing being comfortable with uncertainty and not-knowing while contemplating the space it allows for revelation, discovery, insight, and serendipity, keeps us fluid and flowing, open to wonder and wondrous things happening out of nowhere, and always ready to grow and learn.

In Zen, there's the saying mind like water—a fluid state of knowing/not-knowing that keeps one fresh, open, aware, and in flow. Children are always wondering about stuff. My fairy godson, who is 2, is in a "where does x come from?" stage. It's a very good question to ask, and wonder about. Where does Spring come from? From the tilt! See the diagram, because we take for granted our helical tilt-a-whirl movements that lean our hemisphere closer to and farther from the sun in our annual rotation. 
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Another aspect of this is how much we are connected to the child we still are, simultaneously with our 'adulting' ups and downs. As adults, we love to be right, to know what's what, and what everyone should do about it—and knowledge does indeed come in handy. But we don't always know the exact right thing to say, think or do, or need to be right; we can't always persuade others to think or do as we do, and trying to force stuff doesn't really work.

Children know a lot too, in a different way, and are connected to the planet and all the beings around them in a way that keeps them very present. We grown-ups may know how to drive the car, but perhaps the child knows what to think about or play or sing or listen to while they ride in one. Like this little girl, singing Bohemian Rhapsody in her car seat. Balance for us is letting our child self play and speak and be heard, and keep wonder and curiosity alive in us. 

​Here's a Brain Pickings page on genius and the fluidity of the inner child. 

These are the days that try men's souls, someone once said. Balancing the busy mental load, and the burdens of a troubled world we're carrying, with asking our child self what they see, hear, need, want, think, and wonder about is good medicine for our souls, and good balance.

I'm creating a women's afternoon retreat in May, here on the island, for exactly that. The idea came to me a little while back, while a lot of child stuff seemed to be surfacing, and I happened to view some child stories and such that touched that part of me and made me realize she wanted some time to come out and play, be listened to, and enjoy support.

Children are saying some very wise and important things these days, needing to be heard and not just placated, and that goes for the ones inside of us. Listen to Greta Thunberg's TED talk here.

What does any of this have to do with shamanic practice? EVERYTHING! Everything is alive, time and space are elastic, we spiral through an immense universe, defying any notions our little 3-D brains can contain, and your wholeness and well-being depend on you keeping the child in you alive and playing.

We need to more fully realize—make real—we are one human race on this one little blue planet, full of beauty and wonder, and balance ourselves to rise above fear, to better love and care for it and the children, who already know they are facing a very rough adulthood, because adults didn't/don't quite care enough to keep it safe and healthy for them and for their children.

Equality, equanimity, and equity work miracles in balancing and alignment, and this week is the perfect fulcrum point to recalibrate yourself. May you dance your power dance, sing your power song, walk in beauty and balance, and know the truth.

Yes! It's a new year, a new day, a new helical dance with our playmates, the planets, spiraling around our sun, as it spirals around a galaxy spiraling around other galaxies in the never-ending dance of the universe.

Already it's quite obvious this year has a lot of new good stuff, challenging the old stuck stuff, and looks a teensy-weensy bit to me like women are an equal-or-at-least-more-equal part of that.

As my flying pig fetish gazes at the photographic reason for her existence, in the photograph of the two of them, I want to wish each and every one of you a year filled with when-pigs-fly leaps: leaps of faith, of courage, empty-handed leaps into the void, all the kinds of leaps that are required of us when we reach for something better. Year of the Pig, no less!

I'm not doing a January retreat this year, for the first time in 3 years, simply because I wasn't called to do one. All my retreats and other shamanic creations are told to me by my helpers, and I simply follow the energy. Other aspects of my work are calling, tho, big time, through dreams, through following and noticing, and through the needs of clients and others reaching out to me.

I feel no need to make any lists, do any summing up of my accomplishments from last year, no special rituals of intent—although I do feel a little nudge to do a personal divination today, maybe after a walk. I definitely DO feel the strong intent to lighten up this year, which includes my BMI. 

Just looked out the window as a hummingbird zoomed in and out of view—an apt power animal showing up in ordinary reality to agree with the Lighten Up zing of energy!

What is happening now more than ever is what last year's retreats and blog posts were about: raising our vibration above fear. All of last year's intent and practice cultivated practical and spiritual ways to do this, even while pinged, stressed, and nearly overwhelmed. This year, rising above fear and aligning to just the good stuff amplifies to another level, with grace and ease. And that includes doing something we're reminded and encouraged to do all the time, but which can actually activate all our fears instead.

Yes, I'm talking about letting go.

I remember way back in my early retreat-facilitating days, I did a Letting Go retreat, and a staunch friend and client groaned, Oh I've gone to Soooooooo many letting go workshops, not another one! Yes, and that was 17 years ago, and yet the letting go work continues. But as a recent meme on my facebook page mentions—go easy on yourself. You are clearing thousands of years of outdated conditioning.

Yep, we really truly do have the opportunity, the call, and the capability now, multi-dimensionally, to move our identification of self and our consciousness/perceptive reality up a notch or two. We can come more from our true self, our soul self, than from our small self, our fear-driven, ego-protecting, dog-eat-dog, eye-for-an-eye self, that limbic brain part of us that is pushed and pulled by fear reactions, fight-or-flight instincts and old conditioned responses.

Paul Selig, who I've mentioned in previous blogs, is bringing in new teachings from his guides about this a lot, because it's time. I'm happy to see so many thousands of people worldwide, reading and listening and workshopping these words to the wise, and the accompanying vibrational energy transmissions. Many who ask questions of the guides, at his workshops or on the webinars, are concerned with what they have to give up in order to shift from the small self to identifying as their true selves. 

People are concerned that it's going to be all different if they do, that everything they've thought of as real is going to change, and that all they've worked to create will shift. And that, basically, they won't know who they are or what they're doing anymore.

Like that's a bad thing, instead of exactly what they have always known at the soul level and wanted from the heart level, and dreamt up from the level of being able to interact from a place above fear.

Basically, you mean I have to let go of all I've never wanted to get what I always wanted? And that's scary?!? It would be ridiculous if we weren't so poignantly human.

Hence, the being gentle with ourselves part. We are human beings, and that's confusing AF a lot of the time, because we have several iterations of ourselves going on simultaneously. We are a conglomeration of paradoxical identities, conditioned by fear, control, violence, shame and blame to go low, to fret and strut our hour upon the stage.

It takes courage to let go of known identities and responses. It also really helps to have practices that allow you to, and mindsets that encourage a loosening and a lightening in a discerning state of being, with deep connection to truth, cultivated relationships with guides and helpers, and your inner wisdom voice. That's what my work is all about, and why I bang on about stillness and helpers and all. Stillness allows access, and opens you up to be present for the helpers and inner guidance within and without.

One little quote on—as our present day modes of intercommunication would have it—an Insta of a Tweet of a quote from a webinar of Paul Selig's guides asks three pertinent questions about our personal willingness to let go:

Am I willing to be what I am, in expression, for the benefit of the world?

Am I willing to know myself, in a new way, beyond the tenets or structures that have limited me?

Am I willing to let go of any idea I may have ever held that will serve as an obstacle?

Good questions! Ones to ponder and contemplate as we take a walk, or sit in traffic, or fret about the falling-apartness of our old systems of control, or try to get to sleep.

Matt Kahn, who also brings wisdom and guidance through for our vibrational upliftment ease, offers this affirming response that I, for one, use as a practice, to help pry my grasping, conditioned fingers off my small self identification and sometimes-present Miss-Know-it-All persona:

I am willing to see beyond my beliefs, ideas, and conclusions.

Which I'll take as a yes to the 3 questions above. What do we have to lose? That's a trick question! Start from the top of the blog if you're unsure.

An empowered life as a spiritual warrior with a deep connection to nature, guides and helpers, living in harmony with the helical dance of the universe, free to be, free to forgive, free to save the world, free of fear, and free of the idea that to be thusly free means others must do as I will, allows me to be free of the old stuff, and align to the good stuff, and see what happens.


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Do you feel the magic in the air? When I watch the light go and feel the season turn at end of summer, I get happy every time. The magic of the light, the scents, the dreams, and changing colors just beginning in the tops of the trees, the geese starting to fly, the earlier twilights and later dawns, the crispness and slight chill of mornings... I could go on and on, but you get it.

I feel more than just physical, palpable things—I feel spirit. I feel the trees knowing it's time to turn toward their yearly transformation. The clouds about to come in, the rains in them. This year, in  the new normal-not-normal, we had a lot of smoke for a bit, so these clear blue skies and bright sun are appreciated even more.

This week, there's another element to the feeling of magic in the air, courtesy of our solar system's dance steps. Of course we feel them, and dance along, like the tides and all of nature. This week, astrologer Pam Younghans cites aspects that foster release, healing, and completion, after a long eclipse cycle. Always written with clarity and depth, her weekly journal report (click on that to read) is news you can use.

This week's release allowance feels really powerful in a gentle, natural way. So I wanted to mention it to you. It's like the serendipity that happens when you want to buy something particular, and you happen to run into exactly what you want, at an unbelievably great price, without even looking for it. It shows up on your path, and you say Hey! Here it is! Perfect!

In fact, I'm seeing memes and blogs from trusted folk affirming and reinforcing this release thing all over the place right now. How am I working on release for real ease, personally? In a word, easily. Each day, each night, practicing various ways to unhook my old burdens, beliefs, ideas, and conclusion, held stuff, narratives, associative feelings and stuck emotions to wards self and other, and letting everything go.

Yes, I did just use a bunch of ease & easy words on purpose. Each easy ease of release...

It's getting more and more easy, and more and more fun, and less and less difficult to recognize the stuck energy and apply the antidote—which often is simply this: more self-love and acceptance, more forgiveness of self and other, more compassion for self and others, less holding of hurt, judgment, comparison, blame, guilt, and that stuff. More choosing to align with love+light, period. I align with the light! That's all I gotta do.

Matt Kahn supplies a handy affirmation for this, which you can use any old time you want:  I allow myself to see beyond my beliefs, ideas, and conclusions. He uses the word see because this is a practice to open the third eye. Give it a test drive, and repeat it a bunch in your head, and feel your third eye start to pulse, and, if you look in the mirror, you will notice it looks different!

Pam Grout blogs about her practices with A Course in Miracles, her own books, her life and work and experiences people have applying her thinking redos to their lives. She is very accessible and mainstream while totally rad, and continually emphasizes the don't-believe-your-limiting-thoughts practices, dream into what you want instead, and watch what happens. It's fun, it's documented, it's upheld by lots of real folk, and it works. But you actually have to do it, and do it and do it, and that means—yes, you know what I'm going to say next—actually releasing your old way of thinking about how things go, what's possible in your own life and why, who you are, how it all happens, etc.

When you jettison your thinking, you get to your knowing. Eckhart Tolle continually broadcasts the message of stopping thinking, giving up listening to that channel for true guidance, and learning stillness as the portal to the real stuff coming through. I get his lovely memes of positive nowness thoughts in my inbox, as I do both Pam's weekly wisdom. I find they cut through the crap and feed my spirit, my practices and my soul with wisdom to prevail through giving up most of what would push me through my own life through fear. Nah. I align to the good stuff, I mean the really good, magic, claim it and name it stuff.

So many good reminders and cues to simplicity and grace, without loading up on dogma. It's a fine line that experiential knowledge helps define, and magic makes absolutely clear—getting those skin feelings when we hear truth or feel something our soul recognizes as helpful. 

When it comes to rising above fear, into the way of knowing, claiming, and being, Paul Selig and his guides continue to dish out true wisdom direct from the Source. Sooooo glad spirit directed me to the MFA program he was then Director of, just as his channeled texts were first being written and published. No accident there. I continue to be chuffed at the magic twists of fate that continue to direct my soul path, and I'm opening wide for what's singing to me as I sing to it, to intend and create the future I desire, being a warrior, not a worrier, releasing old training, aka beliefs, ideas, and conclusions.

Paul's guides are now supplying information about going Beyond the Known, another complete alignment with the wisdom coming from all over. Remember Matt's I am willing to see beyond... affirmation. It's time to go beyond, and rise above, fear and the thoughts and feelings and actions governed by fear.

These include not loving and accepting ourselves as we are, knowing our knowing and not fearing our not-knowing, without getting confused my our little brains—or sucked in by those who are stuck in the fear-based frequencies at this time, as has been around for eons—and opening to a higher dimension of being we can roll with, just as we are (sans fear) that is healing and whole, loved and cared for, loving and caring, and damn joyful! Also sassy, because the future is female and that's a good thing for the whole planet.

It doesn't mean we turn into some holier-than-thou caricature, or turn into a narcissistic fool like... oh you know. It doesn't mean suddenly we have no challenges to face. But we face them differently, aligned with Source, in flow, coming from wide open ok show me how this goes and what my part is, because I don't know but I do know I can receive all kinds of seeming-miracles through this alignment.

​It means we substitute self-love, self-care, self-compassion, clear presence, alignment with the higher vibe, fearlessness, and apply massive doses of forgiveness (the secret sauce) to all that surfaces for release, changing the old stories we carry about what happened to us and why. Or, in shamanic terms: intent, intent, intent.

As Paul's guides said, and I quoted last Valentine's Day:

In my shamanic work, personally and client-based, the helpers say the same message, the same gentle insistence that it is time for this, that we can each individually choose this, claim it as who we are, and let the rest, our old identity, fall off like a cheap suit. I love that metonym, around for donkey's years (another metonym), and appropriate to this new identity shedding and shapeshifting. It's like we get to get a new look, new clothes, new body, new carefree head, new station in life, new alignment, light bodywork, new perspective, and new peace of mind. That's the release, healing and completion this week is all about. Get it!

It's there for you to claim, to choose, and to embody wholeheartedly. As ACIM suggests, you can say to yourself (I do a lot, when I wake up, when I'm close to fretting activity, etc) Spirit am I, free of all limits, safe and healed and whole, free to forgive, and free to save the world! Actually, I add my signature twist of free to save the fucking world because that's just how I roll and I don't mind it a bit.

Shamanic work can be very helpful in the releasing process; as an energy wrangler, I am shown energy to remove and release, and easily do that with my helpers. But it is necessary for each soul, each person, to consciously intend to release energy that does not belong to them, and to be willing to go beyond beliefs, ideas and conclusions that are simply not cricket in the above-fear seats. Your little brain and old fear rhetoric may fight against this, but your love and acceptance, compassion and guiding intent can act as a wash of grace and ease, which becomes more and more natural and preferable with practice.

Grace and real ease, with secret forgiveness sauce (use ho'oponopono as a handy practice) and lashings of light, makes letting go a breeze as welcome as the cooling whispers of fall.