Crystal Heart Wisdom III: Sovereignty, boundaries and the medicine shield

June 11, 2018June 14, 2018 ~ nicole

Boundaries define us. They define what is me and not me. A boundary shows me where I end and someone else begins, leading to a sense of ownership. Knowing what I am to own and take responsibility for gives me freedom. – Henry Cloud

Boundaries are a theme in my life lately. I’m witnessing those who are armored, keeping their hearts so protected against hurt; and then others, myself included, who have allowed ourselves to merge in various degrees with our partners and spouses; we no longer know where we end and they begin…. In either case, whether we need to let our armor down or unmerge, we need to rediscover our sovereignty.

When we honor ourselves by de-armoring or unmerging, we can begin to look closely and understand the essence of who we truly are. When we understand who we are as sovereign beings, we gain clarity about how we need to be in the world; what we need to have in our lives to embody who we are becoming; what we want to feel and experience, and what we need to do to ensure all that being, becoming, embodying and having.

On this deep, inner journey, we learn what we stand for. Sometimes it’s easier at first to know what we stand against, but the for is so much more powerful and transformative. When we know who we are and what we’re for, this defines us and becomes how we define our boundaries. This is where our inner power comes from.

A happy soul is the best shield for a cruel world. – Atticus

In Native American traditions, medicine shields are symbols of that inner power, those defining boundaries. They are “sacred, symbolic objects reflecting the personal vision and ‘medicine’ or spirit-guided inherent powers” (warpathstopeacepipes.com) of those who make and carry them. They hold the sacred intentions and even the soul’s path of the shield carriers.

A medicine shield is “seen” after retrieving a power animal on a vision quest or drum journey because the power animal is your inner power; its qualities and energies are yours to embody; and after interpreting your dreams, when spirit animals often come to visit. The shield is made of leather stretched around a hoop and then painted and decorated with sacred symbols to honor your spirit and power animals. It becomes a mirror of your highest self.

I know it’s time for me to create my medicine shield, for me to be fully in my sovereignty. May it be yours too…. I am so deeply aware of how we all need to set healthy boundaries; and so taken with the idea of creating a living emblem, a medicine shield, of who we are becoming and what we stand for, so we can be in our power and sovereignty, that I’m committed to creating a workshop series just for this. More on that offering soon….

Copyright ©2018 Soulscape Coaching LLC

An expedition to who you truly are, Indiana Jones style

April 18, 2017 ~ nicole

I have found my voice again and the art of using it. – Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

I went on an expedition looking for my soul gifts and along the way I found my voice.

I love when I hear young parents tell their children, “use your words” or “use your voice.” Encouraging them to use their voice is so unlike what those of us of a certain age were expected do; we were to be seen and not heard. Pair that with being told to “not” do so many things, or that what we did wasn’t “correct,” paralyzed not just our voices but our creativity. It raised “good” girls and boys, who possibly rebelled in more covert ways (I know I did), but it did not build women and men who felt they had something of value to say. At least that was my experience….

So, it’s been a lifelong struggle for me to find my voice, use my words and express myself. And now, after much revealing and healing, I can’t stop sharing my story and what I’ve learned because I know it has a purpose now: to guide, support and heal others.

Now, you may be asking yourself, what needed healing and how did I do it? The two are inextricably intertwined.

I had to question the beliefs (assumptions and opinions) I had formed about not just myself but life itself, and discover what was real and true.
I had to let go of expectations and wanting to control the outcome, which opened me to possibility and accepting uncertainty.
I had to acknowledge and face my fear of being shamed, blamed, unapproved of, rejected or disliked.
I had let go of aspects of my identity, and the persona I had created, that weren’t truly me or who I wanted to be.
I had to feel into what I truly cared about and valued, not what my family, friends or society thought I should value.
I had to move from a fear-based, scarcity mindset to one of abundance, which meant embracing gratitude, humility, acceptance, forgiveness, letting go, compassion, and unconditional love.
I had to understand the essence of who I truly am.

From the depths of this inner work–it’s true, you have to do the work, my friends–emerged my true, authentic voice. And much healing, some of which was super subtle requiring just a soft touch.

It was an excavation, almost an anthropological dig, and at the bottom of it was me! I’m not going to say that all that digging and uncovering was easy or not messy; it was, but the result has been absolutely life-changing, life-affirming and life-giving for me.

Know that the excavation is necessary. Know that you don’t have to do all the digging alone. And know that those of us, who have gone on the dig before you, can and will guide you with unconditional love, support and maybe even a bit of wisdom. It’s our mission to do so. Indiana Jones style :).

Your voice is welcome here. So, let me know how this makes you feel.

Copyright ©2017 Soulscape Coaching LLC.

Our shy souls: approach with trust

November 2, 2016 ~ Nicole Gnutzman

Separated from our own souls. We end up living divided lives, so far removed from the truth we hold within that we cannot know the “integrity that comes from being what you are” – Parker Palmer citing Douglas Wood

The soul is shy” shares Parker Palmer in his book, A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward and Undivided Life, and rare are those places where it feels safe and supported and seen.

Many of us who care about, and have faith in, the soul believe we came into this world with a pure and perfect one, and that, over time, it hides in fear as the “powers of deformation from within as well as from without” distort it. Gosh, I would hide too if I was being tormented endlessly.

Fortunately, the soul is a resilient little (or not so little) thing, and it bides its time waiting for when it’s safe to come out “toward the light of [its] own wholeness.”

So, what makes for a safe haven for the soul? According to Palmer, it’s “a circle of trust” of supportive and loving acceptance, where we can finally hear our inner truth and listen to the guidance of our inner teacher. It’s where we can talk to the soul through a “third thing”: through poetry, story, music or a work of art that explores a topic the soul wants to approach ever so gingerly.

Gently approaching the soul can take other forms–through transformation coaching, where the coach builds a container of trust to approach the soul indirectly; through ceremony and ritual where we honor the wholeness and interconnectedness of life; through working with our dreams, which are messages from our soul; and through soul path work, which guides us to and through archetypal energies. The soul loves nothing more than beauty, metaphor, imagery, deep meaning, and purpose held lovingly in a sacred container. They are gentle and yet powerful ways to touch and heal the soul.

When approached too directly and before trust has been established, the soul runs away and hides, “afraid that [its] inner light will be extinguished or [its] inner darkness exposed.” So we must tread carefully toward it, honoring its shy nature, its innocence and its light.

My own journey with my soul has been a circuitous one. I could always feels its presence, its “still, small voice”and yet I tuned it out, wanting, and sometimes pretending, to be something that I wasn’t. Extrovert wannabe, who denied the beautiful gifts of her introversion; ‘perfect’ daughter, who hid her wild partying on weekends and got straight A’s during the week (until Calculus came along); and calm, cool, and collected corporate warrior, who was nicknamed the Ice Princess.

I chipped away at the ice for a long time, and as I got closer to my soul, my approach became less direct. My soul, in its small voice, insisted on it. So, through ceremony and my dreams, and opening myself to the slender threads she left for me to follow, I found a warm soul huddling deep within me.

ice-and-snow

Apparently, it’s not so little after all: it’s big and bright and yet gentle and sweet. It can be insistent and a wee bit demanding (I would be too if I hadn’t been listened to for decades), but it always knows what I most need.

I am now a proud, self-proclaimed introvert, who lusciously revels in her alone time, names her imperfections with glee (and laughs), and whose inner light has finally melted all vestiges of that ice…. Hmmm, maybe that’s why I had to move to California from Canada :).

Parker Palmer’s own journey to wholeness has taken a similar path, and I share with deep respect some of his wisdom: being divided from our soul “often seems like the easier choice” but “we pay a steep price” when living a divided life, “feeling fraudulent, anxious about being found out, and depressed” about denying our own selfhood. “A fault line runs down the middle of [our] life…divorcing [our] words and actions from the truth [we] hold in. That’s when things “get shaky and start to fall apart.”

His words touched my soul. May they touch yours in such a way that your soul peeks out from whatever it is hiding behind, and it says, “Hi there, I’m here, can you help me find my way back home?”

Copyright ©2016 Soulscape Coaching LLC

The sacred is even deeper within us

June 27, 2016 ~ Nicole Gnutzman

A [wo]man must go on a quest
to discover the sacred fire
in the sanctuary of [her] own belly
to ignite the flame in [her] heart
to fuel the blaze in the hearth
to rekindle [her] ardor for the earth

– Sam Keen

P1000364 I took the liberty of updating Sam Keen’s gorgeous prose about the sacred to include the feminine experience. When he wrote that piece many years ago, he believed that men were in desperate need of connection to the sacred. I would say the same is true of women, especially today, so we can regain and reclaim a deeper connection to ourselves.

The sacred strips us bare of all pretension, beliefs, and assumptions if we let it. It humbles us. Its fire burns away the things we need to let go of. And it is from that fiery, empty place that we can rediscover our inner sanctuary, the sacredness of our soul, and life-affirming connection to ourselves and to the natural world.

My first experience with being stripped bare and made empty by the sacred was in personal cacao ceremony. I cried like a baby while it opened up depths within me that I didn’t know existed.

We all know that chocolate is sacred on our tongues and in our tummies, but in its more raw form (cacao) it has a long tradition of being revered, celebrated, and used in ceremony by indigenous cultures in South and Central America, the place from which it first came.

cacao elixir

Cacao allowed me to find that place inside of myself where the sacred resides, revealing hidden parts of me and my connection to life, and set me on my soul’s path. I’m quite sure I wouldn’t have been so intent on finding my soul’s path if I hadn’t opened myself fully to it.

Cacao ceremony became a practice for me, not a daily one (it can, as you might imagine, be quite stimulating), but certainly every few weeks. It brings me back in touch with the sacred like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. I am so enamored of its power to reconnect us to our deeper selves that I offer it in one-on-one sessions as well as at retreats or when I’m invited to share it at group gatherings.

Many of the beautiful women with whom I have had the honor to share cacao have said that they experienced profound, heart-opening realizations. My own experience has been one of deep insight and wisdom, unconditional love and compassion, and healing. Although, it hasn’t always been all love and light; cacao opens us up to our darkness too, but in a healing way, so we can become whole again.

When I began this work with cacao, my dreams became much more vivid and profound as if I was tapping into the sacred in all aspects of my life, both waking and sleeping. The richness of dream language is astonishing in its ability to cut to the quick of things. It’s as if the picture it paints is made up of tiny puzzle pieces that we have to rearrange into a new, more meaningful picture we can understand and truly see. If we allow it, our dreams change our perspective; they open us more fully to our inner wisdom.

The sacred wisdom of ceremony and dreams reveal that the sacred is even deeper within us. And we have yet to plumb its full depths. As Robert Johnson, the eminent psychotherapist, wrote in his book, Inner Work: Using Dream and Active Imagination for Personal Growth, “every expression of the unconscious–whether dream, imagination, vision, or ritual–proceeds from the same reservoir deep within. And everything, therefore, works together.”

Learning to work with our deeper selves–our unconscious–through ceremony or dream work, gives us, according to Johnson, “a deep source of renewal, growth, strength, and wisdom. We connect with the source of our evolving character; we cooperate with the process whereby we bring the total self together; we learn to tap that rich lode of energy and intelligence that waits within.”

We touch the sacred fire even deeper within us.

The sacred is within us

June 20, 2016 ~ Nicole Gnutzman

Your sacred space is where you can find yourself over and over again. – Joseph Campbell

There is a place within us that is sacred. A place that is whole and holds us, open and spacious, loved and loving. But, being creatures ensnared in an increasingly unnatural and external world, we forget that it’s right there in all of us.

It never actually goes away; it just gets a little bit lost, or rather we misplace it like our keys, leaving it haphazardly in an incongruous place. And we very much need it (and our keys)! If we just could put it in a bowl by the front door, maybe we could find it more easily and hold on to it. Maybe that’s what we need: a vessel to hold our sacredness and a practice to remember it’s there.

So, how do we return to that sacred place within us? How do we reconnect to our deepest selves? How do we create a vessel deep enough to hold what’s most sacred within us?

We all know when we’ve touched the sacred in ourselves. Too often it’s while we’re on vacation–probably about day five–when everything that we’re holding or juggling or denying simply falls away. Suddenly, we look around and the world looks brighter and yet softer. We are filled with a sense of wonder at its beauty. We feel more open, spacious and loved. THAT is the sacred.

We all want more of that feeling, but, as we know all too well, it’s fleeting. The glow that comes from that sacred place that we’ve reactivated begins to fade as we gear up for re-entry into the crazy outside world. The glow more than fades, it dies.

There are certain places within nature that call up the sacred within us. A rushing waterfall in the midst of a forest, an isolated beach with waves crashing on the shore, a preternaturally calm and glassy lake at dawn. What each of these sacred places evoke is a silence within us, one where we can touch and listen to a deeper part of ourselves.

Our physical bodies too can reach this sacred place through sports, dance, singing, yoga, running and meditation. The expansiveness we feel is both an inner and an outer one. Our vessel gets really huge before it contracts and shrinks and collapses in on itself. Ultimately what we are all seeking is a held expansion.

When do you feel fully connected to yourself? What is your way of touching the sacred within?

Find it, feel it and fold it in to yourself. Say to yourself over and over again, “I want to hold on to this feeling,” until it becomes a mantra.

Creating a vessel or container to hold it (a “bowl by the front door”) is a way of reminding ourselves that it’s there and needs to be filled. I literally have a bowl by my front door where I place stones and shells I gather when I go to my sacred place at the beach. I touch them when I’m starting to feel disconnected from myself. Your touchstones could be anything. A picture on your fridge. A talisman in your pocket. A mantra you repeat to yourself.

Sometimes, if I’m truly honest with myself, even my touchstones are not enough to fully bring the sacred into life. It becomes a glimmer rather than a prolonged glow, and I’m reminded to make more time for those things and places that bring me back to myself. To know that I need this in my life in order to feel whole is humbling.

On my soul’s journey, I have discovered other deeper ways of touching the sacred– creating an altar to honor, and remind me of, the sacred that inspires me with its beauty; accessing sacred wisdom through ceremony; and understanding the messages of my dreams. It’s there that I find what’s at the root of my disconnectedness, the cause of my sadness, and most importantly, the way home to the sacred and to myself.

In my next blog post, I’ll go deeper into these awesome catalysts that allow us to access, expand and extend the sacred within us. Let’s keep that sacred glow alive.

Twin dreams

May 3, 2016 ~ Nicole Gnutzman

I dreamt–my Canadian English is showing–of twin girls twice. About two months apart. What is it about twins and the number two?

In the first dream, they were clad in black robes (a bit scary) and in the second they were in a basement (a Jungian therapist would have a heyday with that) and I could not get to them because I was blind–clearly I was not seeing something.

In dream analysis, when a dream figure or scenario recurs, it means the dreamer has not understood and integrated the message of the dream. Dreams tend to exaggerate for effect. In other words, if we don’t get the message the first time, the next dream will be even bigger, bolder, and always more dramatic, so we pay attention.

So, I played around with the idea of twins. First, I’m a Gemini. It could be related, but this felt deeper and more significant. After all, the twins were either clothed in dark robes or in the darkness. Geminis tend to be more lighthearted than that.

Darkness, in the Jungian sense, connotes the world of the unconscious, the shadowy aspects of ourselves that we tend to ignore, repress or negate. Hmmm, there could be something there.

A bit intimidated by that and not really wanting to go there, I thought of Castor and Pollux, the twin brothers in Roman mythology, who became the constellation Gemini, but they are the wrong gender, well, only wrong in that they weren’t female. No aha’s there.

Perplexed, I decided to drink some cacao (I’ll be writing a post about my passion for raw cacao soon) and reflect. It was early evening and I decided to sit out on the deck of our cabin nestled in the redwoods. As I sat down and took the first delicious sip, two black buzzards (known in South America by the more majestic name, Condor, which I quite prefer) circled above me soaring and floating on the wind. Their twin flight was so devastatingly beautiful that I began to tear up. And then just as suddenly as they came, they were gone.

And do you know what? I made no connection whatsoever in that moment to my dream. It wasn’t until I told my husband, Scott, about the buzzards, ahem Condors, and he started laughing that I made the connection. Again, twins in black, only this time they were “clothed” in feathers and appeared in real life.

What came to me next in my cacao bliss was the concept of duality. Not duality in terms of good and evil, but rather in terms of emotions or states of being: joy and sadness, innocence and what? What exactly is the opposite of innocence? Wisdom? For an adult, yes, but, in the case of children, the opposite of innocence is a term I will loosely call, “grownupness.” And the twin girls were clearly children–about the age of nine or so.

And then it clicked. When I was nine, my father became very ill, suffering from kidney failure. He lived, but was on dialysis for many years until he finally received a kidney transplant. And everything in our lives changed. It felt as if a part of him had died. And a part of me. The joyful and innocent part. I had to grow up very fast.

The message that I deciphered from my dreams was that I needed to acknowledge and reclaim all my twin feelings to feel whole again. There is such awesome beauty in that.

Dreams can be such wonderful teachers, showing us where we are and where we need to go in terms of our self-development. My twin dreams became a beautiful gift to my soul.