That’s the thing about healing, you heal into someone else. A completely new person, not even because you want to, but because who you were you could no longer survive as. Let it go and let a new you happen.
~ Shams Tabrïz
Growth is Noticing Red Flags
Growth is noticing red flags and saying to yourself: “this is not for me.” It looks like releasing the fantasy that your kindness and patience will change a person. It looks like choosing your mental health over the sake of being in a relationship that chronically disappoints.
~ Alyssa Mancao
Know that Whatever You Do
Know that whatever you do, you will disappoint someone. That’s okay. Just don’t disappoint yourself.
~ Michelle Maros
The Path of the Sacred Warrior: Where Hero and Healer Converge
“It is better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war.” ~ Zen parable
The garden is a metaphor for the interconnectedness of all things. Most warriors are unaware of this interconnectedness, and thus they are unaware of the garden. A warrior unaware of the garden is merely a brute — all courage, no compassion.
Unfortunately, most warriors fall under this category of unsacred warrior. They have either never become aware of the garden (out of ignorance), or they have repressed or ignored it (out of willful ignorance).
But ignorance does not get them off the hook for being connected to the garden. Everything is connected to the garden.
Sacred warriors, on the other hand, understand that the garden is foremost. They realize that the path began in the garden with birth, health, balance, and discipline; and it will end in the garden with death as compost for future health.
For the sacred warrior, the path is clear. Hero and healer must converge. It begins in the garden of mortality.
The garden of mortality:
“Warriors live with death at their side, and from the knowledge that death is with them, they draw the courage to face anything. The worst that can happen to us is that we have to die, and since that is already our unalterable fate, we are free; those who have lost everything no longer have anything to fear.” ~ Carlos Castaneda
Where the hero gathers courage and fierceness from the ashes of death, the healer gathers health and interconnectedness from the humus of death. Both unite to become the sacred warrior.
The garden of mortality (and really, the overall Garden itself) is always a dance between death and rebirth. Sacred warriors dance the dance well. They respect death. They honor mortality. They pay homage to finitude even as they respect Infinity.
Sacred warriors walk with death at their side. Death teaches them how to live. It gives them perspective. They learn how to live well in order to eventually die well. Death becomes a kind of compass they use to navigate the infinite. Their mortality is self-actualized. They are at peace with the fact that they are going to die. This peace transforms fear into fuel for fearlessness.
The garden of shadows:
“Our imagination flies—we are its shadow on the earth.” ~ Vladimir Nabokov
Where the hero integrates the shadow to transform demons into diamonds, the healer integrates the shadow to transform wounds into wisdom. Both unite to become the sacred warrior.
The garden of shadows is the ultimate existential crossroads. Sacred warriors go here to discover rebirth. It is in the garden of shadows where the all-too-common egocentric warrior dies, and the sacred warrior is born with a soul-centric perspective.
The garden of shadows is different for every warrior, but some flavor of spiritual reckoning or existential cocoon is almost always involved. Dark Nights of the Soul are prevalent. Ego death is common. Annihilation is ubiquitous.
After the cocoon, the shadow forever becomes an ally to the sacred warrior. Death and darkness are honored. Pain and grief are subsumed. Shadow and light blur into each other. Fearlessness and fierceness combine with compassion and openness to create the absolute vulnerability of High Humor.
The garden of detachment:
“Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.” ~ Frank Herbert
Where the hero practices detachment to encourage discipline and tolerance, the healer practices detachment to inspire discipline and open-mindedness. Both unite to become the sacred warrior.
The garden of detachment is a spiritual pivot for higher growth. Sacred warriors go here to learn cultivation, sharpness, and responsibility. Here, discipline is foremost.
The secret to detachment is discipline. And the secret to discipline is practice. More specifically, practice that comes from a healthy routine.
As Andy Andrews advised, “Discipline is the ability to make yourself do something you don’t want to do in order to get a result you really want to get.”
Sacred warriors inspire discipline within the routine of cultivating the garden. This routine creates growth that is detached from itself. It is divorced from the Self. A kind of growth that personifies the garden rather than the ego. This way it does not become self-serving or self-serious, and self-preservation takes a backseat to self-overcoming.
The garden of higher service:
“Strategy is a mental process in which your mind elevates itself above the battlefield. You have a sense of a larger purpose for your life, where you want to be down the road, what you were destined to accomplish. This makes it easier to decide what is truly important, what battles to avoid. You are able to control your emotions, to view the world with a degree of detachment.” ~ Robert Greene
Where the hero becomes one with all things (God) to honor the “tribe” through security and liberty, the healer becomes one with all things to heal the “tribe” through love and service. Both unite to become the sacred warrior.
Armed with Death as a compass, Shadow as an ally, and detachment as a discipline, the sacred warrior discovers the higher purpose of self-as-garden and garden-as-self.
In the garden of higher service, sacred warriors have the courage to ask themselves the difficult questions: “Does your path have heart?” “Are you living your best life?” “Does your life have purpose and meaning?” And then they have the audacity to turn those questions around on the “tribe.”
Sacred warriors both fight for the tribe and heal the tribe through the power of unconditional love. They are foremost a force of nature (the personification of the garden itself). They hold the garden up to the tribe like a mirror, reflecting both the healing and ruthless qualities of the garden. They are social levelling mechanisms of the highest order, teaching how the tribe is sick while also attempting to protect it from further sickness.
Their higher service gives their purpose a clarity that cuts through all things. Their minds are clear. Their souls are sharp. Their hearts are antifragile. With the abyss behind them, the horizon is wide open in front of them. Their love is unconquerable. Their fierceness is unrelenting. The healer waters the roots of the hero. The hero cracks open the third eye of the healer. Together they stand, vigilant in their vital safeguard of the garden.
Embracing All the Moon Cycle Phases: Rituals to Connect with Our Inner Alchemy
“Our cycles ensure that we do not live static lives. Instead they demand that we live dynamically, constantly exploring the different gifts of feminine power that each portion of our cycle holds. Part of learning the art of being a woman is learning to honour each element of our cycles and ourselves.”
Moon Time: harness the ever-changing energy of your menstrual cycle
~ Lucy H. Pearce
Women are connected to the cycles of the Earth and the Moon (as explained in the Archetypal Phases of Women and how it aligns with the moon cycles, reading this link will help you understand the current article better). A woman’s body represents Nature in a human form: she experiences spring, summer, autumn and winter every month in her womb.
We have forgotten how to align our inner nature to the Great Cosmic Mother, Pachamama or Gaia and this alienation has had a deep impact on our physical, mental and emotional health. This is why it is so important for us, both men and women, to connect to our inner power to negate this negative effect.
Here are some rituals and exercises to connect to your inner alchemy and make the most of your cycle to align with your true nature.
Maiden’s Phase
This corresponds to our inner Spring, the week after our menstruation. It symbolizes new beginnings and being more social, sharing and playing with renewed energies.
This is the perfect phase to start new projects! During this phase you feel quite focused, you can have a good amount of mental work, and you are quite efficient in ‘lineal’ and logical thinking.
During this time, I would recommend you to write the schedule for the month, to start those activities that you are looking for, and to plan the budget or your business or whatever you need to do that requires you to focus.
A beautiful ritual would be for example to write down all those plans and wishes for the month and light a candle with the intention of fulfilling all those activities.
Another idea would be to literally plant all those ideas and intentions. You can write them down, cut the paper into pieces and put them in the ground with some water.
Mother’s Phase
This time corresponds to our inner Summer, a time to nourish ourselves while enjoying the radiance of the ovulation week. During this phase, a lot of motherly qualities come to the surface – you tend to focus more on others and want to nurture them.
You can use this loving energy that flows so naturally to put it into creating something beautiful – to manifest your wishes and to nourish your own plans. This is also the week of creation, as it is the time when a woman can get pregnant!
If you are not planning to have a baby, use this potential to care and feed your personal projects that you started last week in the maiden phase. In this period you will feel calmer and see things with patience, you can also review the list, and see how you feel about it.
During this phase a creative ritual is very powerful, like for example make an altar in Nature with flowers and seeds, focus on your projects and wishes to be fulfilled. You can also connect with the water element here (connected to the water of the womb) and take a bath with flowers, this has a very loving energy.
Enchantress Phase
This is the phase of your inner Autumn – a time to start going more inwards to review your progress of the month. Select your priorities, you can decide to cancel, postpone or let go some plans and things that you feel are not really helpful at the moment, or is taking too much of your energy.
During this phase your focus is not great, but you become highly intuitive; which makes it a good time to decide using your heart what you really want to do, and trust in the process. Maybe you were too active or optimistic during the first week, and you realized you are lacking time and energy to do everything, then this is the week to recalibrate.
A powerful ritual during this time would be, for example, to write down the things, ideas that you want to discontinue or even write down the names of people that you feel are not serving you in your life anymore, and you want to say goodbye to them, and throw the paper in the fire.
We bid goodbye to things and people with love and appreciation, there is nothing wrong in letting go what is not aligned with your soul anymore.
Witch/Shaman Phase:
This is the week of menstruation, your inner Winter, a time to rest and sleep as long as you need to. You are also at a peak of your intuition, dreams and inner vision! This is definitely not the time to stay focused or to work hard.
Do you know that women used to gather together during this time in ancient tribes in order to enhance their capability to have visions and predict events? They would guide their tribe and warn men about possible attacks from foreigners. Probably you have experienced this before with some female friends or your sister that when you spend long time together, your period starts to synchronize.
During this week, the best you can do is just to flow with what your body is asking you to do. One of the best rituals would be to spend as much time in Nature as you can, even go for a couple of nights camping outside and feel the connection with the environment.
If you have a drum or other instrument that you can carry with you, it would be great to explore the vibration medicine, chant mantras or meditate.
This is the time you just let go completely of what you released last week and prepare for a new phase. Empty your body, heart and mind from what doesn’t serve you anymore in your life, and look forward to the future of a new reality next week.
Aligning yourselves with your womb cycle is the most powerful thing that you can do as a woman. The more you practice this, the more ideas you will have and the more intuitive you will become. You will be surprised of how your working life begins to manifest better and with ease. Flow freely with your creativity and enjoy the process!
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