Change To Wellness by Linda Hellman

🧜🏻‍♀️

In Japan, Zen gardeners purposefully leave a fat dandelion in the midst of the exquisite, ritually precise patterns of the meditation garden. In Iran, even the most skilled of rug weavers includes an intentional error, the “Persian Flaw,” in the magnificence of a Tabriz or Qashqai carpet…and Native Americans wove a broken bead, the “spirit bead,” into every beaded masterpiece.

Nothing that has a soul is perfect. When life weaves a spirit bead into your very fabric, you may stumble upon a wholeness greater than you had dreamed possible before.

― Rachel Naomi Remen. You can find My Grandfather's Blessings: Stories of Strength, Refuge, and Belonging, here: https://amzn.to/46OGRYz

image | unknown

As we prepare for the new Moon in Cancer this evening at 10:52 PM ET, it is a time for closure, completion and preparing to set your intentions tomorrow... A time to think about what you would like to manifest into your life. Thoughts and intentions are powerful, especially when set with the new Moon.
For those with June, July or August birthdays, it would be a good time to get your personal Solar Return reading to look at what’s instore for YOUR year ahead… .com

💛 credit: Unknown

A Mary Oliver poem to revisit this week. 💛

"Mysteries, Yes" from "Evidence: Poems" by Mary Oliver, Beacon Press (2009)

People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the *rapture* of being alive.

― Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

image | Michael Aboya

A man asked Gautama Buddha,
"I want happiness."

Buddha said,

"First remove "I,"
that's Ego.
Then remove "want,"
that's Desire.
See,
now you are left with only "Happiness.”

John Baskin ❤️

Fear has its place
and it has its cage.
In the body
fear catches the breath
numbs feeling
disconnects from source
separates self from body
increases the heart rate
tightens the chest
activates fight or flight
and creates dis-ease.

Fear has its place
and it has its cage.

As much as one likes control
there is so much one cannot control.

Fear creates false security
through control.
Systems that become more authoritarian
do so because of fear.
Bodies that tighten,
constrict and contract
unconsciously
or consciously
do so because of fear.

Fear has its place
and fear has its cage.

Inside of the realization
that one is not in control
is healthy fear.
The kind of fear brings with it
a wave of tears
The kind of fear that
pushes water to the surface
from the stagnant pond
so that lotuses can once again bloom.

Sometimes it feels as though there is no ground
that's where lotuses in the pond
come in as gentle reminders.
some roots rise up to the surface
from the softest muckiest boggy floors

how can something so dank and dark
create such beautiful blooms?

Fear wants to be nurtured
she longs to be comforted out of her dark deep cage.
Sometimes, just placing a hand on the belly
and breathing
and saying,
I am afraid
is all that it takes
for the waters to rise
and for new life to bloom.

the Wild Matryoshka 🪆