Crowrider: What’s Erupting? Welcoming Reactivity
I’d like to make a space for reactivity – a big, welcoming invitation for it. It deserves a space. So much of my personal and academic study has been focused on how to be responsive rather than reactive, to be consciously creative rather than unconsciously re-enacting the same repetitive story over and over. I still strongly believe in the power of waking up from reactive trance states and towards an awareness of how we are affected and the empowerment of choice. But, for this post I want to pause and just say I have a lot of new...
Read moreCrowrider: Remembering What I Value
This summer has been such a wonderful liberating time for me providing me with the space to really review and reaffirm my own dreams and recipe for happiness. After the pressure of four years of academic work and my current “all-but-dissertation” status – I started the summer under the effects of a pretty heavy and unrelenting internal taskmaster. I wasn’t having much fun, I felt lethargic and certainly wasn’t getting much work done on my dissertation. I knew something needed to free itself, I just didn’t know how or what. And then...
Read moreCrowrider: Diving into the Shadow – Unconscious Mother & Father Part II
Part II – The Shadow Father (also read Part I) With Pluto in Capricorn we are collectively challenged to let go of our limited agreements with the Old Father. On a collective level this means that all the systems, institutions, and structures of culture are breaking down. We are losing faith in Father Culture. We depended on Him, we believed in Him and now he’s drinking champagne on his yacht while his children can’t afford to go to the doctor! However, seeing Father Culture for who he really is, evokes a level of disappointment and...
Read moreCrowrider: Diving into the Shadow – Unconscious Mother and Father
Part I – The Shadow Mother Tomorrow, Friday July 1st, both the moon and the sun will be in Cancer, the sign of the Mother archetype, ruler of our inner world and our relationship to needs, dependency and belonging. On the same day, Pluto, ruler of the underworld, the principle of death and rebirth and deep transformation will be stationed exactly opposite the moon in the sign of Capricorn, the Father archetype, ruler of culture, order, and external reality. Uranus and Saturn are squaring both Cancer and Capricorn creating a marvelous,...
Read moreCrowrider: The Two Needs of the Soul
The body has just a handful of basic needs: water, food, sleep, and air. The soul, in it’s multiplicity, has a variety of needs – so many that sometimes trying to meet every individual aspect of our inner-being, when they are ALL raising their hands at the same time, is quite the challenge. But at the beginning of life, and in the foundations of our being, the soul really has only two basic needs: autonomy and belonging. Autonomy relates to the seed of individuality that lives within each of us. The Greeks called this the telos of the soul...
Read moreCrowrider: Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free
This episode of Crowrider Street is brought to you by: The letter: “I” The planet: Uranus The word: Truth Sometimes, when we listen to our inner guidance, the intuitive information we hear is not to our liking. On a smaller scale this can show up as the truth that I’m tired and need more rest, when my plan was to get more done in my day! I don’t want to rest! On a larger scale we may resist the reality that it’s time to change jobs, shift our relationships, or move from our homes. Simply put, we don’t like to LET GO OF THE...
Read moreCrowrider: The Labyrinth- Following the Thread of Imagination
The labyrinth is one of the symbols I’ve been exploring in my ongoing inquiry of the transitional/liminal phase of initiation (see previous blogpost for more on the three phases of initiation.) The labyrinth represents the maze of great confusion we enter when we have lost our identity. It is a twisting journey of discovery, transition and reclamation, the unrelenting longing to find one’s center or the Self – who we really are when we shed the limited outer identity. The labyrinth is also seen as a trap, prison, or obstacle, and...
Read moreCrowrider: The Questing Beast
A few weeks ago I spent a wonderful weekend with the mythologist, storyteller and all-around passionate soul Martin Shaw. He brought the story of Tristan and Isolde alive in the most animated manner. Emerald rings, broken swords, slain giants, blood, black sails and beating hearts pranced about our intimate gathering as he drummed us along the twisting path of love and betrayal illuminating the particular ways trickster announces itself in the human terrain of intimacy. There’s nothing that makes me happier than living inside of a story for...
Read moreCrowrider: What balloon are you holding?
I heard a wonderful parable the other day, told by a member of the spiritual center that I have been attending regularly, and I’d like to share it with you: A man gives one red balloon each to five children. The children stand together holding their identical red balloons, but their experience is not the same. The first child, as he holds his red balloon thinks to himself, “I don’t really deserve this balloon.” The second child holds his balloon protectively, looking over his shoulder with a scowl worried that someone will come and...
Read moreCrowrider: The Broken Bridge
I have discovered a key to crowlaborating with the great mystery, and aligning with our ephemeral human range of experience, is to locate yourself in your own mythic story. As a great lover and student of myth, and an innately symbolic thinker, asking for an image that helps me establish my place in the greater story of my life is something that has always been natural and helpful to me. When I can see that I am winding, blindly through the labyrinth, or on a quest for the hidden well, battling the demons at the gate of my longing, or...
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