Avenya
Welcome to your monthly Earth News!
Hello Friends,
This month we have several gems to share with you!
In the mood for a video? Check out "Movements of Life" by April. How about a special discovery in the forests of the D.C. area? Barbara has something for you!
Take a journey with Lief into his "Journey of the Soul". Discover how the elemental forces are moving within you in Andrej's "Release the Water" meditation.
Thank you for being here and reading Earth News. We would love to hear your experiences & comments about Earth News.
From our hearts to yours,
Andrej, April, Barbara, Lief & Melanie
August 2021
Movements of Life
by April Phillips
Nature. My refuge from the stresses of life and relationships. It is in nature that I can return to myself, breathe, and be surrounded by so many life forms - plants, trees, spirits of the land, the elements, and feel my heart in closer connection with Mother Earth. I seek out the friendship of soothing waters, the cool shade of trees in the heat of the sun, I visit thousands of plant species, rocks, animals, and countless invisible beings. And it fills me up. I feel my breath rise and fall with the natural rhythms of nature and feel my place in all of it. I feel alive. I release heartache, sorrow, and stress in the safety of their presence.
I feel my heart beat in my chest and I begin to feel a little calmer, a little more inspired, a little more at peace. I bring to you a little nature medicine with this video.
Once in a Lifetime
by Barbara Mroczykowski
I was cycling in rock creek park when I came upon a clearing in the woods. I felt compelled to stop at the sight of a single flowering plant commonly known as a magic lily or resurrection lily. This is the hardiest of all Lycoris lilies that bloom in late summer in the temperate deciduous forests that surround the D.C. area. In past milder climates, these Lycoris plants formed tall majestic blooming colonies. This year I found a single plant.
Lyrics started to ring in my head*
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may ask yourself, “How did I get here”?
The song invites us to ask, what will it take in this lifetime for us to step out of “auto-pilot” as we find ourselves alone in a physical environment that no longer supports and nurtures us.
At this moment, I observe a biosphere where it is becoming harder for all life forms to bloom and disperse their distinct “scents” and “seeds”. This single lily becomes etched in my mind. My body senses and reacts to the dissonance of the elements; a reflection of all the wildfires and floods raging across continents, a reflection of the gradual “decomposition” of our physical world. As I step into my heart, I find reassurance that our spiritual essence and the spiritual essence of all precious beings driven to extinction in our lifetime will live on in perpetuity.
* Once in a Lifetime-Talking Heads
Journey of the Soul
by Lief Hollowell
What’s missing in daily life is the inner journey we can start to take, to explore the unknown within and to discover the journey of the soul. Inside all of us is the key to this greater journey. As daily life gives us riddles, the soul has answers to questions the mind can’t see. Bits and pieces of my journey present like flashes of a forgotten world, a bigger perspective that awaits. The more I steer with my mind, the more lost I find myself.
It’s hard to translate, filtered through by the familiarity of my being, familiarity that distills the possibility of the moment. Each flash comes like a hidden message from the beyond, images of this greater journey that awaits, a journey that keeps me on my toes and enlivens the moment with something new. That’s what I yearn for, to take that journey freely, to look through my own distortion, past my fears, and instead to live now, and to share freely about the journey that awaits. How do I find the courage though? As behind each corner lies riddles that hold me steadfast, like inner friction, a signal that reflects the growth that is part of this journey. But that inner friction is a burden, a spotless perfection sought by my unconscious, a small room created to protect me from that which makes little sense.
Perhaps there is more to that which lies within, as I pay heed to battles that do not have to be fought in familiarity. Such inner wars only breed hunger for the machine and emptiness that lay hand in hand. It’s a torture that often entraps me in unique ways deemed as necessities of daily life. I dread the silence, for its a place that holds the key to the ending of my machine, yet a burden that when unsoothed, always finds a way to eat me alive…
I guess that’s the growth that accustoms our daily lives, its present in those riddles, riddles meant to awaken more of our inner journey so we can experience more of who we truly are and where we are going. Embedded within that journey is friction of the familiar rubbing up against the unfamiliar, while that which holds us still is the very thing we must turn to. That which carries our next step is normally into the darkness, a place within we have never been. For behind our closed doors and hidden in shady corners are places that are less traveled, places that hold the key to that which has been undiscovered about ourselves. It’s a journey that calls all of us in different ways, a journey that remains hidden in the moments of silence. For when that which is uncomfortable is given the necessary attention, understanding can replace friction, and life can can rejoice in the marriage between flesh and spirit.
Release the Water
by Andrej Loncar
Human beings are comprised of the soul, the body, and the mind. The quality of our precious life experience and our true power in life come from our ability to recognize who we are as a soul and to make steps to allow our life energy to live and develop through us. The overall presence of the human being acts like a large battery; we emit the quality of the energy that permeates our being and our actions. When the majority of people around the earth internalize certain values (e.g., a certain quality of a particular energy) and incorporate that value into their daily lives, we collectively create a large grid of this energy around the earth. This energy then starts to permeate our natural world and begins to impose itself onto plants, trees, the land, and the water. The natural world then simply reflects that energy back to us and therefore the energy that we embody and give out to the world becomes our reality.
At the moment, we are withholding a large amount of our own power because of the ways in which we have been conditioned to think and because of what we collectively value. This makes us withhold/block the qualities of the energy of water within us. The spiritual quality that corresponds to this withholding is the energy of trust; trusting life, trusting the universe, trusting the earth, trusting the spiritual world, trusting each other, and ultimately trusting ourselves.
We also withhold taking steps in our life that correspond to this absence of trust. Consequently, we do very little of what we dream of (things that matter to the soul) – we all are aware of examples of this. As a result, we begin to witness more and more challenges in our physical world related to water as a reflection of our lack of trust and withholding of this precious life energy. Droughts, fires and floods are all examples of physical manifestations that reflect this great imbalance.
Balancing the element water on the material level starts within each of us. Balancing trust with proper intention and following up with appropriate action is ignited through an inner process that can allow us to develop insight, trust, courage, and love.
Process to Release the Power of the Water
(allow the four elements to balance and ignite their spiritual qualities)
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Sit in silence for a moment and observe what is taking place within you.
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Then start to follow your breath, the in-breath and the out-breath allowing each to stream smoothly and with more ease in and out of you.
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Follow one inbreath into the core of your heart, the place of anchoring of the spiritual presence within your heart. Spend a moment allowing it to permeate you.
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Ask to feel the presence of the four elements within you, the earth, the fire, the air, and the water.
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Ask to feel the way element earth is streaming within you. Where in your body do you feel element earth needs balancing? Then allow it to stream through that part of your body the way it wants to and feel how it is changing your overall energy and notice what that is telling you.
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Then ask to feel the way element fire is streaming through you. Where in your body do you feel element fire could be depleted? Then follow its impulse as to how it wants to stream through that part of you, how does that make you feel, and what does it tell you?
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Ask to feel the presence of the element air within you. Where in your body do you feel element air is calling for your attention. Feel how the element air wants to move through you and what is this evoking within your entire being?
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Then ask to feel the presence of the element water within you, and the way it is currently living within you. Ask the water within you to show you how would it like to move through you and then allow it to do so. Follow what this is evoking within you, what is it telling you and what kind of action is it inviting you to step into.
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Then notice how the element water is collaborating with the other three elements within you and just be present with this inner process in your body and your soul.
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(The continuation of this meditative process/exercise will be given out in the next issue of Earth News)
We welcome your responses about the content of Earth News! How do you feel after doing the meditations or viewing videos, articles, artwork? What did you enjoy? Click the button above to share how you received this experience!
See you next month!