Category: Sacred Becoming

This mala will be available in the August Art Auction, which you can learn more about here.

Ground Beneath Your Feet Mala

Steady yourself for the journey ahead, for while you may not know what is coming, you know you are the one that will be there. Root into yourself and you can trust that the ground beneath your feet will always be there. Whether you can see it or not, there is an abiding steadiness.

This mala helps you tap into that energy with the rich golden browns of chrysanthemum stone and the endless worlds that exist within the Mexican agate. Trust that you have the steadiness to journey longer and deeper in the face of anything that comes your way. The earth will not betray you. It will be there for you every step of the way.

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This mala will be available in the August Art Auction, which you can learn more about here.

Sky of Wonder Mala

Do you ever find yourself looking up when you are trying to find the right words? This mala invites in sky energy to aid you in communicating your deepest truths. Yes, sodalite is a stone of truth, of communication, but the energy of this mala made of orange sodalite goes deeper. The fiery orange flecks serve to burn away that which is not true so that you can find the boldness to speak with words and tone well chosen.

What if the sky was the limit in what you asked for? What if you honored how deserving you are to live your fullest truth? This mala invites you to claim that for yourself. Being able to speak and live your fullest truth requires an openness to wonder, because wonder takes you beyond the limits imposed on you by society and by others who try to shape your truth. Now is the time to shape your truth for yourself.

Learn more about mantra meditation.

Take your practice deeper.

This mala will be available in the August Art Auction, which you can learn more about here.
 

Deep Exploration Mala

When we take the time to slow down and notice, we become aware of the intricacies of the world around us, as well as the world within us. This mala invites you to be courageous, slow down, and look within yourself to discover the intricacies that make you who you are. The lush greens and red of the dragon blood jasper are echoed in the Mexican agate and they serve to remind you of the life-force that pulses within you.

What might you find if you explore yourself with as much curiosity and attention as you might give to a forest, a plant, an intricately patterned stone? You may be led to a deeper understanding and appreciation of your intricacies of the gift of this life of yours.

Learn more about mantra meditation.

Take your practice deeper.

This mala will be available in the August Art Auction, which you can learn more about here. 

Sacred Comfort Mala

The edges of the world can feel sharp sometimes, and they can seep inside of us. The pink Botswana agate wraps you in a comforting and heart-soothing energy, which allows you to soften the spaces that feel rough, and re-find your own rhythm. The swirls within the agate and on the rainbow marble remind you that energy is always flowing and that is has the power to soothe. Soothing is not the same as removing. The edges themselves may remain, but your relation to them is capable of changing. How you hold yourself in the sharp moments of life can soften, which will protect you. The rainbow marble carries the same soothing energy but offers a little more weight, helping you to know what tangible actions to take to bring this comforting energy into your life.

Learn more about mantra meditation.

Take your practice deeper.

This mala will be available in the August Art Auction, which you can learn more about here.

Compassionate Trust Mala

To some you appear one way, to others you show up differently, but you know that you are neither only one or the other. You know you are greater and more complex than the sum of your parts. This mala invites you to step into a place of trusting the wholeness of who you are, so that in each moment you show up as your full self, even if you do not let all people see all parts of you.

The mookaite jasper invites you to ground into this sense of trust paired with compassion for yourself. The Mexican agate serves as a reminder that you are multi-faceted and can choose which parts of self you wish to highlight at any given moment. The rich colors of this mala remind you of the life-force flowing through your veins, growing stronger the more you can lean into self-trust.

Learn more about mantra meditation.

Take your practice deeper.

I’ve been wrestling with words, thoughts, and feelings over the last few weeks, as I know so many of us have.

As one of my teachers, Ericka Hines, reminded many of us during a recent town hall, we need to “be humble and ready to fumble.”

And so here I go, ready to build a way forward.

I will start by saying unequivocally that Black Lives Matter. Systemic racism is deeply embedded in our society and in societies around the world. It is not enough to be “not racist” – we must be actively anti-racist.

These beliefs guide who I am and the work I do.

***

In my last newsletter, I wrote about ritual. I wrote about finding ways to ground yourself and find a sense of rhythm. Rooted in Ritual began, and the world spun out more than it already had. I lost my sense of time, I lost my footing, though I mostly did not lose my rituals, and I’m grateful for that.

The truth is, the world has been spinning out, but something of this moment is asking us for more.

I sit here, weeks later, finally allowing myself to write to you even if the words aren’t perfect. I sit here knowing only that the work that we must do is not work for a week, or a month, or a year, but a lifetime. It is the work of being actively anti-racist. This shows up in all areas of our lives, and in all ways.

It is the internal work that we do to acknowledge the society that we were born into and to begin the long journey of unraveling it.

It is the interpersonal work of having difficult conversations with friends, family, and co-workers.

It is the external work of taking a look at the world around us and seeing it for what it is.

Think of it like a spiral that you continually travel, constantly changing your perspective and understanding as you learn and grow.

We cannot unravel and rebuild the world that has been built over four hundred years in a few weeks, nor a few months. That doesn’t mean we get an out though. It means we have to prepare ourselves so that we remain willing and able to do the uncomfortable and necessary work.

Over the last nine years, through many iterations, my business has always been rooted in creating change from a place of love and not fear, and in doing that work with a sense ease and not overwhelm. I ask myself, what does that look like now?

Love and not fear. This isn’t some spiritually bypassing statement that means we ignore the legitimate things to be feared and focus on love and light and hope it goes away. It is about rooting ourselves from a place of love. It is about not keeping ourselves small because we are fearful of doing the things that need to be done. It is about paying attention to our values and letting those guide us. We cannot scare ourselves or others into change. We make change because we want to love the world we live in, and we want those who we love (hint: everyone) to be able to live without the undue burden of fear.

Ease and not overwhelm. We are in a moment where overwhelm seems to come as a given. We are inundated with information. We convince ourselves that we need to throw everything we’ve got at every problem right now, today, without wasting another minute. And then what happens? We burn out, and fast, and the work that we need to be doing goes undone.

To be clear, this work is not easy, but that does not mean that we cannot set up an element of ease for ourselves.

With all of this in mind, I find myself circling back to ritual, to rhythm, to grounding, to preparing ourselves so that we can keep this work up for days, and weeks, and years, to come.

I ask you to take time this week to think about what this looks like for you. Because without this foundation, the learning, questioning, introspection, and ongoing action that our world needs from us right now will certainly overwhelm us, and we cannot, we must not, go back to how things were.

With Love and Gratitude,

Xandra

Listen. For the sake of listening. Not everything is about answers. Listen. Do not seek to be anywhere else in this moment. Listen and do not fight or recoil from the sounds around you, whatever they are. Melt into them. Listen. It can be about that. It does not have to be seeking answers to questions sacred or mundane. Listen. I hear the bird chirping and I think of how animals live their lives with purpose and wonder if they live with pleasure too. If they do, I think it is more about basic instinct need for pleasure. We, humans, are cursed with thought, and we get so lost there that we lose our ability to listen. To listen to the natural hum around and within us that lets us sink into a pure place of being or that alerts us if danger is near. Either way, we are past being able to simply be or react/adapt, and we get lost in the static, in the unnecessary noise.

And how do we exist in this world, the one we were born into, and at the same time find our way back? In part, it may be that it takes time, like a learned re-evolution. It is maybe like the idea of unsuicide in The Overstory by Richard Powers. Of being and teaching through being. How can I square my desire to be surrounded with books with my desire to be kind to this planet? Listen. Listen. Listen. Do not try to do or figure out next steps or a plan. Listen, and notice what you hear, even if it’s nothing, even if it is the hum of machinery, even if it is your own heart beating within your chest, even if it is your breath. Listen.

To listen without needing to do is such a challenge for us humans. And it is essential. Listen, if you will, if you can, in different places, and practice passive noticing. By passive noticing I mean not trying to do or solve anything, not trying to get from point A to point B, but by being aware, simply for the sake of being aware and alive in this moment. A wave of sadness is coming over me, like a reverse sunrise, and that is okay too. I do not need to attach reason and explanation. I do not need to build up a million stories of why. I can notice it, and be in it, and know that like a cloud or a wave it will pass, and it may come back again. Listen. Simply listen.

Retrain your body to take in, to absorb, without needing to do anything about it. Be a baby bird in a nest, still unable to fly, dependent on another for food. Your only job is to be in the nest and listen. Sometimes that means listening to your own chirp or the chirp of the others in your nest, and in this way you discover your voice. Listen to your voice, again, without the need to do anything other than listen. Yes, ideas may come to mind. Visions, questions, possible paths. Hold them gently and keep listening. Do not take any of them as musts.

Listen. You may, at some point, hear the greater existence all around you, the very hum of the earth. Listen then too. Do not rush up from your seat into a frenzied doing. Do not allow your mind to be tricked into thinking you have it all figured out. Listen, and do nothing other than listen. Listen for the pure sake of listening. Let listening, not answers or more likely more static and confusion, be the goal.

Let listening be the raft and the water and the wind and the self.

Listen, I do not have answers. Neither do you. We are fumbling and stumbling through this life as best we can. What I ask of you, if you are willing, is to try to quiet the static. Notice the static as clutter as much as physical things, or files on your computer, or food stuff your body does not want or really need. How do you quiet the static? You listen. You listen into it and through it and beyond it. You immerse yourself in the moment of where you are and do not try to tell yourself that you need the ocean or the forest or pure silence.

You listen, as an animal would, to the environment you are in, and you listen well and also softly, gently, not grasping. You feel the rhythm as part of you, and if there are answers you need, and if there are answers you are ready for, they will appear as if in a clearing, because the static no longer hides them. You can see them for what they are – no more, no less.

Listen. Not for a way to save or change anything, not yourself or the world around you. Listen. This may do nothing for the minutiae humans have filled our days with, but it will gently reawaken who we used to be before we turned thinking into a curse.

The words begin to unravel, perhaps because I know that for now, until I have more practice, the static will seep back in and maybe take over for a while. That is okay. That is nature. When I can, when I remember, I will guide myself back to simply listen. And I will meet myself in that meadow of listening for its own sake. For the listening that brings me back into alignment with the world beyond what I can hear, see, and touch from a place my body inhabits. Listen. Listen.

I started what felt like dozens of poems as I was falling asleep, like shooting stars they appeared out of the dark, but my arms were too tired and I did not get them down on paper and I need a better notebook for moments like that because I felt absolutely flooded with them and I do not know if they are still floating around in my brain or if they are dissolved, words pulled apart again ready to be reused, like a deconstructed poem made with a magnetic poetry set.

That liminal space between awake and asleep opens doors to secret places and sometimes, I suppose, the secrets want to be kept as they are. If I try to grasp at what these poem seeds were I do not think I would do much other than wear out my brain, and so I will move on and create new poems seeds and maybe one day I will recognize one, or maybe it will appear, disguised by waking hours.

I capture many poem seeds, some turn into saplings, some grow strong and hardy roots, some wither on the vine, and some, like those of the night, vanish before they have been seen, before they can be harvested, but they reach out and touch me anyway, because I wake with the knowing that they were there, that they visited. And I live with the hope that one day, if they are ready, if they so choose, they will come again. I need a better net for catching them, like a child awaiting sighting of the tooth fairy.

Liminal spaces, yes, and here I sit awake and somewhat bleary-eyed and I write of the stories that do not want to be told, and I write of how my mind works, and I learn the futility of grasping and so I move forward, always, though sometimes my heart tugs my eyes to the past. It is a balancing act, this moving forward and looking back. Looking back can be like looking down and you can lose your balance, stumble, fall into the darkness of tangled memory, and struggle for moments, days, weeks, years, to regain your footing and resume your march forward without the burdens of the past.

And the cycles continue – those of night and day, of seasons, of planet turning, no matter how fast or slow you live your life, whether you find yourself stuck in one moment for eternity or you recreate and reinvent yourself with every breath. And all the possibilities between those poles, like possibilities and existence of all there is between the north and south pole. Such vast diversity, life, experience, this brilliant planet holds.

And up to the stars we look and cannot even begin to fathom all that the universe holds. And a few poems began spinning their webs last night, within the brain that resides in this body, that controls the hand that writes these words and there is a universe inside of me too, and it is the same, and it is all connected, dreamlike, in ways both tangible and unseen. And the words spill out now, flowing like river into sea, without thought, with pure, deep, knowing and oh if I could write like this forever but

I know the moment passes and I will awaken out of this reverie of language into the day before me with its space and its tasks and its love and its hardships and all of it comes welcome because it is fodder for new poem seeds that may appear in the liminal space tonight, that may be caught on the page if I am ready or may float away again if they are not.

And all is well because the muse is here, inside me, with every breath, whether she is asleep or awake. That I do believe. And there are moments, like this one, when she gifts me a glorious bounty and I bow in reverence and gratitude and my hand does not tire and the world falls away and here I am, and nowhere else, and for that moment, however long it lasts, I am present to it above all else and I am nourished by it and live this way more fully than when I grasp and try to understand the pile of thought, of action, of everything in the outer world.

Here, with my words, I find an inner calm, and I prepare myself for all the poem seeds that come my way….