Today is Makara Sankranti– holiday celebrated in India to honor the turning northward of the sun. Happy Makara Sankranti! (photo taken at sunrise time, 10:00 am, 1.11.15, Anchorage)

I needed my body to be the frontier of my knowledge…

— Emilie Conrad, Life on Land

This is also the way I am being led, step by step. It is in this very body that realization of our true identity occurs. To live fully in the body and experience divinity in this body is my path, and I will not abandon it. Breathe with awareness!

Today is the tenth anniversary of the passing of my dear friend Catharina Marciel. I love this photo of her, which captures her spirit embodied.

This morning it is very cold and the trees are covered with hoarfrost. This is in contrast with the above picture, taken in August. However, the woodpecker came for a visit on this winter morning as well.

As he pecked with his full being, taking in the suet that was in the hole of the log, I “became” him, and I could feel that this was a total act of assimilation– which he, in fact, needed to sustain life in the intense cold.

What I take from this is an intention to fully assimilate the food that is important for the well being of my soul. I will contemplate this today, and will intend to notice what my soul food is. When I notice it, I will eat it fully.

1.6.15

So how did I do with this? I returned to this intention a few times when it popped into my mind. However, I have learned from past experience that I must schedule in specific times to put my full attention on my intention in order to make real progress. Instead of finding another attribute of the inner Self for today, I will stick with this one. Because I imbibed the attribute of full assimilation so fully yesterday, I have not lost the palpable experience of assimilation.

I know from past experience that being aware of my breath moving through my body and being is foundational to my awareness. So, at specific times during the day, I will return to the awareness of my breath and meditate, open-eyed, on my breath for one minute. I will go back to my “6 point day”– sunrise, solar noon, sunset, and three other times when I am beginning a new activity.

To do this is to make an investment in fully assimilating my true soul food, which is awareness of awareness, the Witness state– the state of the inner Self.

I remember very clearly my years in Haiti, where it was impossible to separate the movement of the people from the Creole language, the bird calls flitting through the trees, the particular ground and shoes that were worn, and the constant caress of the sea. I also remember that when I began to speak Creole amidst the mountains and perfumed bougainvillea that I experienced the movement of Haitian dance quite differently than in New York.

— Emilie Conrad, Living on Land

Within us is the old one who collects bones.
Within us there are the soul-bones of this wild Self.
Within us is the potential to be fleshed out again
as the creature we once were.
-Clarissa Pinkola Estes | artist Samantha Mash

She is the womb that births the divine into the flesh and bone of matter.

— The Mystic, Write with Spirit, 717-669-7238, http://www.writewithspirit.com/

The task of the shaman is to set free the energy bound in our stories, in our wounds, and to transform this energy into power and compassion within us, so that we may reclaim our own souls.

– Dr. Alberto Villoldo

Some say that ever ‘gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
This bird of dawning singeth all night long;
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,
The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.

Hamlet, Act I, Scene I
William Shakespeare, 1564 – 1616

Marcellus to Horatio and Bernardo, after seeing the Ghost,