Easter and the Goddess of Dawn
09/04/2012 at 11:42 am | Posted in Happiness, Nature, Wellbeing | 2 CommentsTags: Easter, Guidance, inspiration, meditation, nature, self-development, wellbeing
Easter comes from the Goddess of Dawn.
Look beneath any festival and you will find simple truths about people and our planet. Easter is a great example of this. The word ‘Easter’ is a variant of ‘east’, the direction in which the sun rises at dawn.
The word has ancient roots in the seed language known as Proto-Indo-European. The original word, ‘aus’, or ‘austre’ meant ‘to shine’, particularly at dawn. It was personified in early Europe as Austron or Eostre, the goddess of spring, fertility and the rising sun. Her festival was the Spring Equinox, that time between the shortest and longest days, which heralded the beginning of the all-important growing season. The changing seasonal cycle as we journey around the sun is more important to us than our mechanised lives reveal. But beneath the confusion of 21st century timetables, our bodies still respond to the longer days of sunlight in basic ways that haven’t changed since life emerged on the planet.
We absolutely take pleasure in the new life that is around at this time, and within us ideas that were incubating over winter begin to take on real life. What does this year mean to you? What are you beginning to achieve in terms of your own self-development? This is a good time to be aware that Eostre, the Goddess of Dawn, is an archetypal force in you that is driving you towards summer and the fruition of your hopes and dreams.
Three-minute healing circle
10/12/2011 at 3:48 pm | Posted in Healing, Meditation, Uncategorized | 14 CommentsTags: happiness, healing, inspiration, meditation, Spirituality, wellbeing
Ideally, do this after a daily practice of meditation, when the mind is still and calm, and the body rested, yet alert.
Sit comfortably, with your eyes closed and your back straight, in a peaceful place where you won’t be disturbed. Take a few deep breaths, releasing any thoughts, knowing this time is for you, and for those who may wish for your help…
First minute: create the healing circle.
As you breathe in, picture a white light in the centre of you, glowing and sparkling brightly, like a diamond. As you breathe out, picture the white light radiating outwards from your hands, creating a large white circular space in front of you: a healing space. As you continue to breathe out, send out an invitation to all who may wish for healing, to enter the circle. Each time you breathe in, see the diamond at the centre of you glowing and sparkling ever more brightly. Each time you breathe out, see the healing circle in front of you shining more and more brightly. Continue to send out a general invitation to all who may wish for healing.
Second minute: maintain the healing circle.
As you breathe in, and as you breathe out, continue to maintain the shining white healing circle in front of you. See people enter the circle, and stand in it, soaking up the healing white light. You may recognise people; you may see strangers; you may see a mixture of both. You may see nothing; just trust in the process and continue. The people do not see you. They simply approach the circle and stand inside it, soaking up the light. As you continue to breathe in and out, be aware that the whole of you, too, is glowing and sparkling with healing white light.
Third minute: close down the healing circle.
Send out a thank you to all who have entered the circle, and watch them begin to leave. As you continue to breathe in and out, gradually let the light settle down, fade, and return to normal levels. As it does so, the last people leave the circle, and then the circle itself vanishes.
The minutes don’t have to be exact. They’re just a rough guide.
Looking at the world through angels’ eyes
10/09/2011 at 10:10 am | Posted in Uncategorized | 8 CommentsTags: inspiration, meditation, nature, wellbeing
My daughter calls these angel clouds. They are a great reminder of a simple truth: when we rise above a problem we look at it with different eyes. Suddenly, we can see the big picture. We can actually see beauty where perhaps before we just saw stress and sadness.
Look at this picture, taken last week over Southern England. Everything is beautiful if you look at it from a higher perspective.
Hitch a ride on the lightwaves, and be still
14/02/2011 at 11:22 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a commentTags: meditation, nature, wellbeing
Meditation word for this week is ‘Sky’.
Sky is a challenging word: how can we keep our minds on something vast that is constantly changing? And if we do manage to hitch a ride on the lightwaves, how do we stay calm and centred?
Actually, it’s a great word for meditation. And here are just some of the reasons why…
Looking at the sky with our mind’s eye is like looking at the skyscape of our own minds. Calm our thoughts, and the sky we conjure up in our mind becomes calm too… and yet always changing.
Meditating on sky helps us to understand the constantly changing currents of humanity… and find our own still point within the constant change.
Looking down at land from the sky, everything looks so ordered, and patterned, like a vast, intricate woven carpet. We know that the people way down below are a seething mass of emotions. We know we are too… and yet, from one mile high, it looks as though everything is just the way it is meant to be.
And then we may discover something interesting: what if our own lives are like intricate, hand-woven carpets? From our usual vantage point, on the surface, it feels like we’re struggling, sometimes getting nowhere, sometimes meeting a dead end and having to retrace our steps.
And yet… from the sky’s point of view, our lives look perfect, with colours, themes and motifs all placed exactly right. The U-turns we take and the mistakes we make may actually look like beautiful flowers from the air. The times we ambled along may look like silken mountain streams bringing much needed water to the flowers. And our most wonderful moments may look like bright woven diamonds, a stunning motif that recurs at exactly the right moments to help the pattern to look complete.
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Suzanne Askham 