The Dark Days

Here it is, that time of year again.  The shortest days and longest nights of the year (Northern Hemisphere).  For me, the Dark Days always went from Thanksgiving week until Christmas, and sometimes up until New Years. 

Way back when I was married, holiday obligations ranged from family get togethers to work parties to getting together with friends.  It all became way too much, and it wasn’t until I got divorced and discovered the book “The Highly Sensitive Person” by Elaine Aron that I realized why the holidays were so unpleasant for me.  The hallmark of a highly sensitive person is that we tend to get easily overstimulated by what is happening around us.  Combine that with a marriage that was not quite working out, and I just wanted to stay home. 

Of course, holidays as a child were perfectly fine, except for the usual on going family drama that was bound to occur.  That was nothing new.  As children, all we had to do was open presents, enjoy Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner, and hang out with relatives.  There were no obligations. 

Once I was single, I could pick and choose what holiday activities I wanted to engage in, in addition to being able to leave an event when it became too much.  I do have to say however, that I am able to tolerate much more craziness now than in years past. 

Now for the flip side of this yearly situation.  This is the dark time of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.  Days are short and nights are long.  What a perfect time to hunker down and go within.  Of course, that is easy for me to say as I am in a living situation where I can do that.   If you are not, I encourage you to create some down time for yourself.  Meditation, introspection, and contemplation are enhanced during this time of year.  I recommend finding a quiet place where you will not be disturbed.  Even in your car will do if you need to get out of the house!  Close your eyes, and quiet your mind.  Do your best to sink into that dark void space and just be.  Calm and relaxed.  Even a few minutes of this is better than nothing.  You can even set your intent ahead of time for some sort of outcome or information.  By finding your quiet place, you will be resetting your energy field to zero to get ready for the start of the Winter Solstice, New Year.   

The end of the Dark Days is the Winter Solstice, when the days start to get longer.  For me, this is my organic New Year, and I always do some sort of ceremony on that date.  When I lived in Colorado, I would have a pot luck dinner and outdoor fire ceremony to commemorate the occasion.   The photo at the top of the page is of the Winter Solstice sunset from last year.   That was the first time I was able to go out to the Parowan Gap for the event, as the weather was dry and balmy. 

Winter Solstice is also a very important occasion for the Native American people.  Energetic seeds of intent are planted for the organic New Year, and the Sun is called upon to help germinate those seeds.  On that very important day, I can just feel the darkness starting to lift.  My holiday season is finished at that point, as I do not celebrate Christmas.  What a relief! 

So please take some time off for yourself in the weeks coming up, and take advantage of the dark womb of the void for your healing, peace and calmness.  That can be your holiday gift to yourself! 

Its All About the Animals

 

This past weekend here in Cedar City, we had our annual Livestock Festival.  The weather was perfect, and all of the events were highly entertaining.  We had venders, a rodeo, a sheep herding demonstration, draft horse competition to see which pair of horses could pull the most weight, an antique tractor pull, a Dutch oven cook off, cowboy poetry, and an excellent quilt show, to name a few of the events.  There was something for everyone.  Lots of community spirit to go around, too.

I was especially entertained by the goat roping competition featuring teams of 4 elementary school children per team trying to get a rope around a goat’s neck.  The goats were freaked out and huddled together in a very small fenced off arena.  There were several adult men in the enclosure whose job it was to get the goats out in the middle so that the kids could get to them.  What a hoot! 

Of course, the highlight was the sheep parade on Saturday morning.  The original pioneer settlers in this area herded sheep and cattle.  There are still many ranches here to this day where this is done.  The sheep are down here in the valley in the winter, and up in the mountains for pasture in the summer.  They are all brought back down in October, and the big finale for the Saturday parade involves 1000 sheep being herded down Main Street. 

Here are some photos from the parade.  I am just showing animals and children.  A herd of Texas Longhorns brought up from Kanab Utah starts things off.

Pioneer wagons.

Rodeo Princess and an attendant.

Horses.

This ranch breeds mini horses.  

This little boy looks like he is falling asleep!

It looks like these are twins.

This one waved to the crowd the whole way.

Draft horses.  Once a staple working horse for every ranch or farm, now only bred for show and competition.

Another budding cowboy!

Here come the sheep.

This is the only black sheep that I noticed in the whole flock.

So there you have it.  What a fun day.  

What Do You Identify With?

 

Lately, I have been paying close attention to what I identify with, whether it is an emotional reaction, a physical issue, an opinion, a role, or even the agenda of an organization.  If you identify with anything other than the fact that you are a pure and divine spiritual being having a temporary physical experience, you run the risk of further anchoring yourself into this physical realm by lowering your vibrational frequency.  Keep in mind that “where attention goes, energy flows”.  By keeping your attention on whatever you are identified with, you are feeding it your precious energy and draining that energy away from yourself. 

What got me on this track is my work with energy healer Ken Lloyd.  I started working with him almost a year ago, when he was just starting to work with groups on the internet.  At that time he billed his work as “Accelerated Ascension”.  Things have shifted radically since then.  Now, he is almost exclusively working using light language codes to heal a wide variety of physical ailments.  Even thought there are enough light codes dealing with higher dimensional states in his work, the vast majority of people who are attracted to his workshops are looking for physical healing. 

I get the feeling from how he promotes his work that he feels that everyone can benefit from each and every one of his events, so he is encouraging people to attend every one, regardless of their physical state.  Does that mean that he is encouraging his audience to identify themselves as physically ill humans?  I certainly do not identify myself as such, so I have cut back on my events with him, only doing those that really resonate with me now. 

So if you find yourself starting a sentence with “I am…”, what is it that you are identifying yourself as?  Rich, sick, in charge, less than, a black sheep, fallible, perfect, needy, the one who knows, fearful, a codependent caretaker, and on and on.  Stop right there, take a step back and acknowledge that these are just roles that you have taken on this time around.  You can release those roles as easily as changing your clothes.  They are not you. 

Only keep your attention on who you really are—a divine spirit having a temporary physical experience.  Nothing less.  All difficulties and identities are only temporary. 

(P. S.—I know that some of you are on R J Spina’s e-mail list, and may have caught his $3000 offer a few weeks ago.  I was mortified at his behavior, and got myself off of his mailing list right away. You know what I mean.)

Fall Colors in the High Country

As soon as I got back from my recent trip, I checked the weather forecast.  The aspen leaves had been turning before I left and I wanted to see if there was any color left for me to see.  As we were having some rain coming in in a few days, I headed up to the high country the next day.  Wow, was I surprised!  I have never seen the aspens turn such vibrant shades of red and orange as they did this fall.  With our recent drought conditions, I expected that most of the leaves would just dry up and fall off early.  Not so.  Enjoy!

 

White Sands National Park

On the last afternoon of the conference, instead of participating in a group activity at the Lodge, I chose instead to drive back down to Alamogordo and west of there to see if I could get into the park. As you can probably tell by now, I really enjoy doing my own thing, and I certainly enjoy my adventures.

White Sands National Park is located in the largest gypsum dune field in the world, and is also surrounded by military bases.  I had been there once before, and one of the reasons why I signed up for the IRVA conference was so that I could go there again.  The plan was to go there first thing in the morning the day before the conference started while the temps were still cool, but because of the government shut down, that didn’t happen. The park was closed.

That is why I was thrilled when I found out a way to sneak into the park!  I drove a bit down the highway from the visitor’s center where the dunes were close to the road, climbed up the dune and under a barbed wire fence.  Quite a few people had the same idea, as there were a fair number of cars parked there on the highway. 

What a magical place this is!  The dunes stretch for miles, and are composed of gypsum sand.  They are as white as snow, and can be mistaken as such in photos.  You can read up on the park on your own as I won’t go into the details here. 

One of the varieties of gypsum is selenite.  In fact, I have sometimes seen the description of the sand there as selenite instead of gypsum.  Selenite is a mineral known for its ability to cleanse and raise the vibration of its environment.  In fact, I have pieces of selenite placed around my house for that purpose.  Imagine standing in a dune field that is pristine and vibrationally elevated! 

I would have hiked further and stayed longer if it hadn’t been for the 87° temps that afternoon.  Here are some photos of that magical place.

If you ever get the chance to visit White Sands National Park, I highly recommend it.  It is quite out of the way, and can be dangerous in the hot weather, but at least a drive through can be done at any time.