April 8, 2018 – Play In The South
Channel: Unity of Walnut Creek
Date: 2018-04-28

At Unity of Walnut Creek, you will experience practical, spiritual teachings that empower abundant and meaningful living. Wherever you are on your spiritual path, there is room for you at Unity of Walnut Creek.

Elephant seal w/enormous black eyes, watching me walk by as rest of herd  slept.  I felt very alive, in a place  of wonder and awe, connected to my body, sand beneath  my feet, sea, this wild seal with enormous black eyes. A day later in a med. retreat, young  woman, speaks of her first job as if it’s a prison she must endure, working in Start Up in SF;  flg confined, disconnected, like her soul couldn’t breathe. Is this what it means to be a  grown up, she might be asking? No. It doesn’t have to mean confinement and disconnected  to earth in order to be successfully plugged into technological ways of world. Big Lie – we  are separate from nature, our bodies, earth, other beings, Spirit.

We can choose more suitable work environments, to sleep when we’re tired, eat when we’re hungry, feel our feelings, play, create, serve, relate from natural rhythm of soul and nature. It’s just harder than it used to be – maybe a lot harder. I want to intro you to a guide for our natural rhythms; to help us live in/from our wholistic, divine-human nature.

FOUR SHIELDS – Wheel of Life – Human Mandala 
 Seasons, Human Development, Elements
 Body (Child)-Soul (Adolescent)-Mind (Adult)-Spirit (Spiritual Being)

Teachings 4 Shields – “I Am a Ghost” (Cheyenne & German) taught Steven Foster & Meredith Little; wrote bk on what they learned from him and thru decades of direct experience in rites of passage work, founding of what is now called School of Lost Borders (where students are initiated into full sacred human nature through wilderness fasts, and soulful connection with others. I am blessed to be a student and guide of this work too). 
4 Shields like flags
4 Directions; 4 Seasons; 4 Stages of human development
S – summer, child; W – fall, adolescent; N – winter, adult; E – spring, Spirit.

Indigenous cultures typically initiate their children into adulthood through Rites of  Passage. Rituals mainstream American culture typically does not offer. Indigenous  peoples lived closer in proximity to earth and didn’t entertain idea, fear or doubt of being  separate from it. 

Inner child will show way back to true nature – earthy, natural, salty, sensual  self.

This week, let’s befriend our child within and go out to play – engage our senses fully, love and move our bodies – leave our electronic devices behind and let forest, river, ocean or trail take you where it will. Build a fairy house, respond to bird calls, play in water, dig in dirt, laugh a lot, cry if you want to.

Affirmation: I befriend the child within me and go out to play!

STORY: Body Talk, p. 199 Women who Run with the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Tandem Storytelling performance with Clarissa, una Mexicana and her frd Opalanga an African American. Opalanga is tall and slender. She has a small gap between her front teeth. In her US culture, she was chided for her height and told as a child that the gap between her teeth indicated she was a liar. Clarissa is in her words built low to the ground and extravagant of body. They speak in their performance of the slings and arrows they rec’d about their bodies over the years. They danced and mourned and swayed over how they rejected their own bodies, wished them to be different, since they did not meet standards set by “they.” Then Opalanga told Clarissa she had travelled to Gambia, West Africa where she met some of her ancestors and lo! they were tall and thin like Yew trees. They had splits between their front teeth – and they told her the split was called Sakaya Yallah, meaning “opening of God” and was a sign of wisdom. Then how equally surprised Opalanga was when Clarissa told her she went to Mexico and found some of her ancestral people. They were commanding in their size and they told her women are La Tierra, made round like earth herself b/c the earth holds so much.

Meditation: Happiness & gratitude to body parts or Inner Child