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A Sand Spirit Speaks

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Sand Spirit Insight card #31

Perhaps you’ve seen my Sand Spirit Insight Cards. I thought I’d do a little free teaching about how they work by posting some of my own experiences. So here’s the card I drew today and the little story of what it says to me.

Today I’m sick, and I’m also sick of being sick! I’ve had a problem for over a year with getting over viruses that stick like a quicksand that pulls me down. I’m not into laying low for another couple of months, even though I’m trying to be patient. So I asked the Sand Spirits for some advice.

This card #31 is an image I photographed horizontally; that is, the way I’ve always viewed this card is the view that would be rotated 90 degrees. Since this software is still new to me, I couldn’t figure out how to rotate the image. So, let’s work with what seems to be firmly in place, even though I don’t want to see it that way!

When viewed in my “normal” way, I’ve always seen an eye with a tear falling from it. Sometimes that is a gentle hint to accept grief that I may be not willing to feel. That’s what I thought was up here when I first picked the card.

Now that I can’t turn it, and am forced to look at it “through a different lens,” (serves me right, I suppose) I see a seed. The stone that was formerly the iris of the eye is now a seed planted in the earth (or planted within me, perhaps) that seems to be radiating energy out into the ground that is containing it. A drop of water (which I suppose could also be a tear) is penetrating its space, bringing it nourishment.

Hmmm. So there is a seed within you, Pam, the Sand Spirit says. And it is radiating energy into the very ground of your being, even though all that is invisible to you. And, this is a time for that seed to receive nourishment. It needs the “water” of pure emotion, the moisture and juiciness of Spirit. So don’t be dry and brittle just now. See if you can keep the soil, the ground within you moist and receptive. The seed will appreciate it. And by the way, the seed is YOU! The seed is your essence, which is after all, what you are wanting to bring out from within.

The important question is, what do YOU see? You may see something completely different in this image. If so, what is the form or figure and what is its message? I’d love to hear from you!

Tags: Essence, inner landscape, perception, Photography, Sand Spirit Insight Cards, Self
Posted in centering techniques, Guided imagery, Imagination, inner landscape, managing change, meditation, nature as mirror, Photography, returning to essence, self-healing, spiritual practices, Uncategorized, women's empowerment | 2 Comments »

Solstice images

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

Desert Solstice

Golden grasses,
brittle branches breaking underfoot,
hidden water,
last leaves gripping black mesquites.
In this desert
things are dying.

Quail bedded down
burst forth as I pass.
Surprising red plants flow along the wash.
The thrill of my own breath moves faster,
echoing the rising wind.
In this desert
something new is coming.

Cells fall away in me,
brittle old ideas breaking apart.
Old juices lay hidden away, reserved for drought.
I change every day, now faster and
in the dry, arid places of me
things are dying.

An explosion of wings breaks through my soul.
Colors appear, flowing through my center.
My life force quickens
as a storm gathers within me, promising flow.
In this desert within,
dark with winter,
light is coming.
                          Pamela Hale, 2009

And you? How do you experience winter and solstice time in your outer landscape? How about your inner one? Does nature act as a mirror for you?

Tags: centering, death, inner landscape, new life, non-attachment, perception, Photography, poetry, Self, solstice, spiritual practice, ups and downs, winter
Posted in conscious evolution, death and new life, Guided imagery, inner landscape, nature as mirror, Photography, poem, returning to essence, self-healing, solstice, Uncategorized, weather, winter | No Comments »

Teeter totter

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

Ever been on a seesaw? I’m not just talking about when you were little. How about in a relationship where one minute you’re up and the next you’re oh-so-down? How about in our economy where a couple of years ago you were way up there on Easy Street and now you’re wondering if you could end up down on Skid Row?

Every spiritual tradition teaches that when we can give up our attachment to these conditions, these poles of up and down, we are freed and enlightened. Easy for “them” to say when you’re on the seesaw! How do you do it?

Today it occurred to me (dizzy from the descent from up to down) that the only way to find stability on a seesaw is to go toward center. The center is the fulcrum, the support, the still point. It must be sturdy and securely positioned in the earth for the seesaw to be safe. It is what needs to be maintained first.

How do you maintain the center support? Well, for one thing, you have to just pay attention to it. I forget sometimes to just ask how my center support is and whether it needs maintenance.

Then I ask myself what kind of maintenance it needs. One day it might be meditation. At other times a walk on the earth works best. For me, solitude is essential. Yet there are those days when there’s nothing like a good friend to reminds you you’re not crazy. Finding my sense of humor is always a relief. Spiritual practices are meant for maintaining the center.

So when you’re up, that’s great—and we know that we will eventually come down. And, being down is also a temporary state. Being human, it seems we are a seesaw and are influenced to a degree by the changing “weather” outside us.

And, we are the center. We are the fulcrum, the still point. We are the essence and we are connected to the earth.

When we find our center, we can tolerate ups and downs and keep our balance. At least we can as long as we keep the part of us alive that is forever the child—and remember that this journey is really play.

Tags: centering, centering techniques, Essence, Flying metaphor, managing change, meditation, non-attachment, Photography, relationship, seesaw, Self, sense of humor, spiritual practice, spiritual tradition, transitions, ups and downs
Posted in centering techniques, conscious evolution, death and new life, Guided imagery, managing change, Photography, play, returning to essence, self-healing, spiritual practices, Uncategorized, women's empowerment | 2 Comments »

Opening

Monday, November 30th, 2009

Welcome to the newly renovated Through A Different Lens website!

I am excited about beginning to blog—an informal format where I can offer thoughts, photos and observations—and receive your comments and ideas in return. What a great frontier the Internet is for worldwide communication!

Re-writing and re-designing my website has provided me with an opportunity to stop and really take a look at where I am in my life, what I truly desire and what I want to contribute. The process has not all been easy. I wanted instant clarity, instant answers, instant changes. I wanted to DO it.

Instead, I’ve been sentenced to take my own advice. STOP, my insides said to me over the summer. Breathe. Wait. Not nice words for over-achievers trained in a masculine, “doing” culture. But I promised myself that I would not take one action or make one plan until it truly bubbled up from inside. Fortunately, finally, much has bubbled up. The results you see are not very different on an outer level than what I’ve been doing in the past. But the inner re-focusing has opened up new territory for me, and I know that will be visible before long.

My own process makes me think of the interview of Andre Agassi I heard on NPR about his new memoir, Open. He gave a lot of credit to his trainer, who turned out to give him advice that reached far beyond the physical plane. He said he needed someone to give him a new lens for seeing his own life, and that the book is one result of that process. The title, such a great pun, implies that Andre has opened, and that a new spaciousness has opened inside him. It was audible in his voice. I offer him this photo of an ancient temple, now open to the sky.

Tennis was my sport too, in a much tinier way than Andre’s, and for me it was also all about doing, proving, accomplishing. I gave it up because I finally realized I wasn’t having fun. When I let that go, new things opened for me.

I invite you to think about what people or practices or processes serve as lenses for seeing your own life anew. What or who invites you to stop, wait, look and open?

It is my fervent hope that in this website and in these blogs you will see and read and consider new ways to open, to be more awake, to stir the soul inside you who longs to come forth and be seen.

I will sign off with Namaste—the thought that the light within me sees the light within you, and when that happens, we are one. Even at a distance.

Namaste.

Pam

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Welcome to Through A Different Lens!

Monday, May 5th, 2008

Click Image To View Gallery!

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