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Dana

Sacred Imagination
January 2002 Column

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Dana's Current Column

by Dana Reynolds

Each month, Dana Reynolds shares her life-transforming thoughts, ideas, and sacred imagination based around our "theme of the month."  Dana is a visionary Spiritual Midwife, who devotes herself to helping women birth their creative gifts into the world.


Meditating with the Higher Self

Over the years I have received guided writings from my Higher Self. Many people refer to this as channeling. I’m not comfortable with the New Age labeling of this kind of free-flow writing, so I prefer to think of it as writing that comes from an interior place of wisdom and understanding.

You may want to experience this meditative form of being fully present through the pen. Sit quietly with your journal open to a blank page. Rest your hand holding your favorite writing tool to the paper. Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Offer a prayer for guidance from your Highest Self and then write whatever begins to flow into your consciousness. If nothing seems to be coming to you, then write whatever you are feeling at the moment. Keep the pen moving and in time you will find the open door to your active imagination and Higher Self.

This month I am offering several of the pieces I have received from the kind of writing experience I have just described to you. Please take them for whatever meaning they may have for you. You may want to use them as meditations or stepping stones to drawing, collage, or deeper writings of your own.

We are embarking on a journey into the New Year. It is a time of mystery and pure potential. I invite you to use all your senses and your sacred imagination to enrich the possibilities of awaiting self-discoveries. Blessings to you and yours as we step across the threshold into the third year of the new millennium.

Meditations

Meditate on these Holy Mysteries:

The Mystery of Divine Guidance.

The Mystery of Blind Faith.

The Mystery of Holy Messengers.

The Great Mystery of Eternal Love.

Open your heart this day. Prepare your interior shrine to receive that, which is coming to you.


Touch
Touch with faith and the expectation of miracles. Your touch creates an exchange of vibration. Begin to experience these subtle differences. Allow your hands to be conduits for the energy you contain. Touch with an open heart. The intention you hold is the regulator of the vibration. Be awake to those around you. Be sensitive to the needs they carry. Touch the hand of those you sense asking to receive blessing and grace. This is the way the world comes to healing. Touch with your hands to raise the vibration. Pray with an open soul by simply calling out the name of the one you pray for. Touch everything with one clear intention---healing for the common soul---the one soul of humankind. Like the lens of the telescope, focus on the individual and also focus on the human collective. Concentrate the Light you carry---distill it to its essence.

Healing
Healing comes in many forms. It is a distillation from the green of life, it is a force of nature, and it is something each human carries within the cells as a portion of their ancestral heritage. Healers are those who recognize their inner gifts and through that recognition they activate their ancestral cells and their connection to the Divine energy, source of all creation. This is a Grace. This is a Truth and a teaching. Healing flows in many forms, creating many rivers. Music, poetry, painting, dance, are the manifestations….the physical forms of healing. Language and sound combined with touch are the emerging tools for the healer. New vocabulary, new forms, and alphabets are being sent to many of you. Symbolic and pictorial language is returning. The realm of creative imagination is the force field where God and human kind meet to play and create together. You are healers. Open the gates to your imaginable meadows within. Go into the center of your meadow and gather the seeds from the field of your imaginations. Plant them where healing is needed and water them with devotion and prayer.

Remember the Seeker
So many thoughts, so many words, open your inner vaults. Open the wellspring within yourselves. Make music. Take form and translate it into formlessness. Relish in the collective energy that you create by simply being together. Do not despair over the rigors of creating agenda. Simply listen.

Simply be. This is a time of healing, a time for shifting into the new way of beingness. This is a time for awakening your gifts---the gifts you have never used.. Embrace the void. Live in the Questions. Live in the Mystery. The answers will emerge as the sun emerges from the darkness of night. You have only to remember. You have only to shift your vision to the inner with your hearts and ears of the seeker.

Shadow
Within the universe of your own soul---your own beingness---there are the planets. There is a sun, moon, and the vastness of heavens, the stars. You have asked to traverse your own heavens---your internal vastness. You are a voyager of your unique and personal inner space. Gaze upon that place of great Mystery in your night sky. Consider your moon within. She controls your tides---your oceans. She holds the wisdom and history of your personal story. She contains eternal wisdom and guidance that is yours for the gleaning. Gaze upon her face that is visible to you. Look at those places within your psyche---within your beingness---which have been exposed---which are illumined by light, those aspects of your Self that shine in her light. These are the pieces of your particular puzzle that have been claimed, owned, cleared, and integrated into your inner wholeness. Take time now to observe your inner beauty, which shines with strength, clarity, and purpose. You know what your gifts are. You know what your Truth is and you know from where these jewels have been delivered. Open your treasure boxes upon your moon. The light of their magnificence, the light of their contents is blinding with a comfort of incomparable intensity. Bathe in this light. Examine your treasure---jewel by precious jewel by precious jewel and do this shamelessly, not with conceit or pride but with appreciation and awe, the awe of the child who gazes at her own reflection for the first time. Breathe in with joy your evolved aspects of your own particular Light and treasure. Just as you look into the night sky to honor the moon and to bathe in the coolness of her illumination, you, the voyager, now travel to her dark side. Be the inner-spatial navigator. Journey from her lighted face that has revealed her treasure, to her hidden face, the side that has yet to bathe in Light. Notice the temperature shift. Notice your awareness of your reaction to the sudden immersion into the inkiness, the night within. What are the secret places made of? How do the valleys hold the unevolved, denied, and feared shards and remnants of the unclaimed self? Feel the contrast to the treasure you discovered in the Light. Walk through your valleys of darkness guided by your map of natural knowing. For by your courage to visit these ignored and even forgotten places, you bring Light to them so they might show themselves, the way starving children emerge from the dark corners in a village of poverty. For your place of darkness----the other side of your moon----holds treasure also. Mine your gems. Dig deep into the hillsides of your valleys. Expose the diamonds in the rough. Polish these hidden jewels with acknowledgement and witness. Walk the forests of this shadowed world and collect the cocoons, which hang from the branches. They need the Light to warm them. They need the Light of your willingness to see them, to continue their transformation to beauty and freedom. Explore your dark side of the moon. Where are the most treacherous places for you? Observe how you experience this journey. For there are lessons everywhere you turn. Remember you carry the answer to your own riddle. Remember that the journey includes all aspects of your interior heaven. When you feel you have completed your exploration you may circumnavigate to the Light side of your moon once more. Taking time to move from the dark to that meadow of gray where grain and texture come into focus. This is the place approaching healing and transformation, the place before color and form. Notice what you discover emerging from your darkness. For these are the gifts that are coming to you. Prepare to receive them.


You are invited to submit your story and accompanying photos to be considered as a feature for the Sacred Imagination column. E-mail me at dana@sacredimagination.com for details.

Copyright© 2002 Dana Reynolds. 

 

Read Dana's Past "Sacred Imagination" Columns:

December 2001 - "The Prayer Cord"

November 2001 - "Explore, Express, Imagine"

October 2001 - "Seeking Sacred Alchemy"

September 2001 - "Invoking Your Muse"

August 2001 - "The Blessings of Daily Bread"

July 2001 - "Entertaining the Dream Visitor"

May 2001 - "Embracing the Whole: Choices for Conscious Living"

April 2001 "Nourishing the Souls of the Children"

March 2001 "Opening the Senses to Beauty"

February 2001 "The Eyes of Love"

January 2001 "Patterns of Authenticity"

December 2000 "Finding Peace in the Fields of Time"

November 2000 "Cultivating Gratitude: Heart-Hugs and Prayer Leaves"

October 2000 "Journey to the Center - The Sacred Mystery of the Labyrinth"

September 2000 "The Heart and Craft of Healing"

August 2000 "Transforming Life’s Challenges into Beauty and Story"

July 2000 "Sacred Spaces Invite the Muses of the Soul"


Read Dana's Soulful Living Feature Articles:

Visual Prayers

Intuition and the Sacred Imagination: The Dance of Co-creation


Leaf
For ten years, Dana Reynolds has been facilitating women’s spiritual presentations and retreats nationwide. Her work as a Spiritual Midwife, one who assists women as they birth their creative gifts into the world, is the foundation of all her endeavors. Her background as a visual artist and writer enriches her Spiritual Midwifery: Birthing the Feminine Soul workshops.

As the creator of an art making process known as visual prayer, Dana teaches women how to combine ritual with sacred intention to create altars, collages, spirit dolls, and other touchstones. The creation of sacred spaces is also paramount to the Spiritual Midwifery experience. Her web-site http://www.sacredimagination.com offers samplings of her visual prayer collages, poetry, and a workshop catalogue.

Be An Angel

Dana is the author of the whimsical and colorfully illustrated book, Be An Angel, a co-creation with illustrator and graphic designer, Karen Blessen, (Simon & Schuster). Her essay, Visual Prayers is included in the anthology, Our Turn, Our Time: Women Coming of Age, edited by Cynthia Black, (Beyond Words Publishing).

Our Turn Our Time

A trained labyrinth facilitator, Dana incorporates the labyrinth and other spiritual wisdom into her retreats and workshops. She recently traveled to Chartres and Vezelay Cathedrals in France to gather information pertaining to ancient sacred mystical traditions. She currently lectures on such topics as spiritual midwifery, sacred journal keeping, feminine spiritual wisdom, and the early Christian women saints and mystics.

Dana’s life follows the spiral path from rim to center and back again. She looks for the sacred in forgotten places and openly embraces the great Mystery of life. Guiding women to the discovery of their creative inner gifts is the passion that fuels her soul.

 

Visit Dana at:
www.SacredImagination.com 

 

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