Intuitive Illuminations from an Everyday Mystic…

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” -Albert Einstein

Finally the lazy days of summer are heating up. For many, this is a quieter time and our days get slower and less burdened. For others, it is a busier time, in this case our sacred space, our self-care time becomes all the more important. Whichever way you experience this time of year, this article will help you to practice better self-care and open a door to knowing yourself in a different and perhaps, fuller way than you presently do. This article will offer ways to notice the impact of the four sacred elements in our lives, and in ourselves. This technique offers a way to deeply notice what you feel in your heart and gut, while hopefully bypassing the tendency to lead with the rational mind. Our Western culture, and increasingly, many parts of our world, are overburdened by the need to diagnose everything. The theory goes like this, if we can identify good and bad behaviours, moods and feelings, first by labelling them, then we can hope to fix them. While this societal predilection may initially help us to feel like things are known and understood, in the long run it can leave us feeling trapped with an increasing need to fix things we feel are going wrong in our lives. It can make us prone to label ourselves in a way that doesn’t honour are innate inner tendency toward health and wholeness. This increasing Western tendency to pathologize the behaviours of everything in our path, from an over excited child to our cat’s weight gain, can leave us feeling unsettled and like there is nothing right, or unsullied in our lives. In this scenario we slowly become less able to simply feel our feelings; instead we judge them. We busy ourselves with divvying up our lived experiences into categories, such as good or bad, right or wrong, black or white, chosen or forsaken. I see this in many of my clients who struggle with the idea of handling unknowns. Many times. things just are choices we have made are in the past. When we try to justify their worth through what we do, and what we think, then the simple world of clear feeling and gut-felt knowing can become a rather murky place. If we stay in the place of trying to justify our actions, we never allow ourselves to be in the present moment. We are never liberated. A lot of my work with clients, and to be fair, sometimes with myself too, is to get them to feel instead of think, and make clear choices instead of equivocate. This can be quite a new approach for them. And so, while they may understand the concepts of feeling and clear doing intellectually, this is different than coming from a heart space or knowing in your gut what action to take next in your life. When we have lived on autopilot for a long time and made choices only with our rational mind, we may find that we have slowly become disconnected from our heart, and that our choices no longer feel right and cease to honour our Soul’s deeper journey in the long run. In this article, I am going to offer you a set of tools to work with that hopefully gets you out of this place of overvaluing the mind. This is, instead, a place of feeling, deep sensing and deep noticing of the natural world. First, I will ask you to notice what you notice, and second, to feel what you feel, first outside of yourself, and then inside. Many of you may be abstractly familiar with the four sacred elements. This is not a foreign concept in new thought and new age circles. The idea of earth, air, fire and water having an effect on our behaviour is also the basis of many forms of alternative medicine. From the Indian understanding of the Doshas, to the Native American idea of the four directions, this framework underlies many indigenous people’s healing cosmologies. In this article, I will offer hands on ways to notice which of the four sacred elements are most active in you. This alchemical home may be the place you feel most naturally yourself. It is clear that our bodily systems reflect the four Sacred Elements. Our bodies are the fleshy vessels which hold our vital life giving organ’s intact. In this way, they reflect the energy of mother earth. Our bodies are composed of around seventy percent water which reflects the element of water. Our bodies oxygenate our blood so that it can be cleaned and recirculated which represents the element or air. Lastly, our bodies create energy for us by metabolizing our food to make more energy. This refuelling powerhouse embodies the fire in our system. While we can see how our body’s physical processes are clearly made up of expressions of the four sacred elements, what may be less obvious is how our bodies mirror these elements in more subtle ways in our emotional lives. We all have different emotional temperaments, needs and ways of responding. These actually have a lot to do with our energetic types. Whether we identify with earth, air, fire, or water, understanding the instinctual nature of our energetic type will feel, in a sense, like coming home. Someone who has an earth type temperament, (often, but not always, a Taurus, Virgo, or Capricorn) will, when the type is balanced, have a very earthy way of responding. These folks are innately drawn to what is testable and knowable with the five senses. They are likely to be most concerned with issues of the body, finances and creating a secure home. It may be harder for them to stretch beyond this way of acclimating toward their environment and themselves. And this way of acclimating will likely be their respite in times of stress or overwhelm. In Jung’s Meyer’s Briggs work, these folks are sensate and this is the way they most naturally look at things. When earth types are unbalanced, they may not be able to move themselves out of prescribed ways of doing things. Their lives can, too easily, become very routine, monotonous and heavy with three dimensional concerns. It may be harder for them to stretch toward the future or to flex the power of their imagination. Air types are thinkers in the Myer’s Brigg’s Typology (often, but not always, Gemini, Aquarius or Libra) When they are balanced these folks will respond in a very airy way. These individuals are innately drawn to an objective, impersonal, and rational way of responding. They make their decisions based more on noticing the changes around them. Think of the way air is invisible and you only know of its presence after the fact. Like air, they are often affected by what will allow them to move. They are excellent at knowing when the time is right to act on something, like a business deal, or making the next move in a relationship. However, their lives may often have episodes and they may feel less connected to a whole. These people are less inclined to know when they should have stuck with something. They are inclined, more than any other type, to change their outer surroundings when they get restless. They themselves are very changeable as well. They ‘change with the wind’ might be a popular adage for air types. When the type is unbalanced they may overthink things and be unable to move forward in their lives. Fire types are intuiters in the Meyer’s Briggs typology (they are, most often, but not always, Aries, Leo or Sagittarius). These individuals gain intuition based on noticing and investing in what they are most passionate about. When this type is balanced, they gather this energy and passion through their imagination, insights, and following signs toward manifestation. This person perceives situations based on the big picture. As fire is their element, they are impatient, spontaneous, and can get very excited when noticing broader possibilities coming to fruition. Imagine a tiny fire catching and spreading, becoming emboldened and hotter as it burns. When this type is unbalanced, they may struggle with patience and have to channel their considerable passion and energy in positive ways. When the energy is untended, they can feel ambitious and feel like they cannot manifest quickly enough. They can tend toward burnout, becoming a human doing, if they don’t re-fuel their fire. Water types are feelers in the Meyer’s Briggs typology (they are often, but not always, Cancer, Scorpio or Pisces). These individual’s most often gather information through their feelings about their environment and themselves. They make decisions based on their sense of values and their emotional connection with others. When this type is balanced, they have innate abilities to help others feel nurtured and cared about. They can go deep with their ideas and feelings and are very perceptive. Think of a clear cool reflective stream. Or think of a deep pool of water and the healing energy that is felt and present when you dive in. When the type is unbalanced, they can be too fluid, caretaking too long at the expense of their best selves. They can have trouble, too, with figuring out their boundaries in a relationship. Because they base their reality on momentary feelings, sometimes they can feel very passionate about something before it is warranted, or imbue it with more meaning than others. Noticing deeply how each of these elemental energies ‘show up’ can provide you with clues as to where your alchemical or elemental home base is. The best way to determine where yours is, if you don’t get an immediate sense of it by reading these descriptions, is to actually go out into nature and invite the elements to speak to you. Take a walk in the woods, sit by the river and watch the light play on the water’s peaks, sit and stare into the burning embers of a fire, or take a brisk walk when the wind is blowing hard. Now notice which refuels you and helps you feel safe, connected and more like your whole self. This is your alchemical home. This is the place of ultimate comfort, deep healing, and returning for you, and it is different for each of us. Is your elemental home earth, air, fire or water?  Cultivate your relationship with this element. For instance, if you need more balanced fire, intentionally light a candle while you think about the fire qualities in you that it evokes. If you need to balance your earth, sit with your back up against a huge tree and imagine its roots extending into your body and anchoring you to mother earth. Imagine this grounding going on in your body while you feel protected and centered in your deep self. If you need more air balancing, imagine doing things more spontaneously and seeing the effects whose source seemed invisible and once unknowable shifting your life in a direction quickly and indisputably, like the air moves. Feel this movement in your life. You may find, too, that it helps to evoke certain elemental qualities for various types of endeavors and projects. If you are embarking on a new phase on your life’s journey, perhaps returning to school, or switching careers, it may help to work with the element of air. If you are connecting more deeply with your spirituality and seeking to follow your intuition more deeply, it may help to evoke the energy of fire and imagine your passion leaping out around you in little flames that catch and spark other images to life with their energy. If you are welcoming a baby into your life or purchasing a home, it may be a wonderful time to meditate on the elements of earth and feel that sense of connection and support as you ready your new space. If you are wanting to strengthen and deepen your bond in a relationship, take two glasses and fill one with water, now poor the contents of one into the other and repeat the process as you visualize the ease of the emotional connection growing between you. There are many ways to work with elemental energy in your life. You can have fun creating rituals to evoke the expression of these elements in and around you. The possibilities are endless, and the way to know if the energy is in alignment is to check in with the level of engagement and commitment you feel with the process. If you are feeling stuck too much in your own energy, a great way to shift the energy is to stretch yourself in the direction of the elemental place you least understand. A great way to figure this out is to notice how the element shows up in your language. You may find you have judgments about the element you least understand, and they will show up in the way you speak about the type. Examples of this are thinking someone is full of hot air, or saying someone is an emotional sponge (water), or saying someone is like a volcano, ready to explode (fire). In this case, it is sometimes helpful to imagine the positive qualities of the type. This is likely where your unexpressed shadow energy lies. We are often most annoyed by those who embody something in ourselves that we don’t want to look at or express. So, if you are a fire type, imagine what it would be like to be able to cry without judging yourself? If you are an air type, imagine what a sense of deep grounding and rooting would feel like in your life. Change happens when we openly embrace other parts of ourselves without judging it. The first step to becoming aware of the ‘other’ place in yourself is by taking notice of what you don’t easily notice. Or you may notice a fear of or tendency to push away from a certain element. I will share a few examples of this: I used to work as a nanny for a family that feared having me take their little boy out for walks. The mother wanted their infant cloistered in front of the TV, feeling he was safer this way. When I expressed my concern to the parents about the child getting out for some fresh air, the mom said, “I’m scared, l feel as though a huge wind is just going to sweep him up and blow him away.”  Now this was a young family who were very much trying to make their mark in the world. The father was in school, the mother was trying to land ‘the’ job that would make her a success in the eyes of the world. They had an unacknowledged fear about their next move in the outside world and projected that onto their young son. Instead, they wanted him surrounded by what they perceived to be a safe, three dimensional earth energy. I also recognized this tendency toward unbalanced air energy in myself several years ago. I was in a really stuck place around moving forward with several choices in my life. My alchemical homes are fire and water. And for me, earth is something I need to notice and be aware of. Air was so non-existent at the time that I had to realize I didn’t recognize the energy at all. It was spring and I noticed people talking about all the beautiful blossoms on the magnolia and flowering cherry trees. I had to admit I had not noticed them at all. At the time, I didn’t look up at the sky. My visual field was always the ground… I almost had a sense of plodding along. Before I made these changes, my life had become a drudgery, defined by an over- abundance of what needs done. I was mired in earth energy. Recognizing the beauty of these blossoming trees was the first step in looking up, out, and forward in my life. This simple realization ushered in a huge shift toward air energy in my life. Soon afterward, I was able to leave a relationship that was going nowhere and apply to graduate school. Who would have thought such a big shift would happen by something as simple as noticing the wonderful aroma of these spring blossoms carried on the wind, beckoning me toward future, sweeter dreams. We all have different emotional temperaments, needs and ways of responding. These actually form the backbone of our elemental energetic types.So, whether you are identifying your elemental home for the first time, or creating a ritual to invite a certain element to more deeply become your active place of intention, or whether, like many of us, you are faced with too much of your own type and need to shift the energy and embrace the unknown to make changes in your life, I invite you to play and have fun with this process. The final barometer for the truth a story tells is in the slow a-ha’s you get by turning in and noticing all parts of yourself; all expressions of earth, air, fire and water. You will understand so much more about yourself by turning in and tuning into your own resonance and inner knowing. This comes from listening deeply to the language the four sacred elements speak through nature and within the nature of you. July’s Gem is: Chiastolite. This lovely stone looks as though it has a cross from olden times on it. Imagine that the lines represent the outer world and the inner self. Where they bisect is an expression of how these two energies co-create with one another. This stone will help you open up your connection with both the natural world, as well as your uniquely human nature. Many wish to connect more deeply with this instinctual earthy part of themselves. Chiastolite opens up the portals to do just this. This is a pragmatic stone which allows the emotional and mental sides of the self to exist harmoniously. The affirmation Gem for July is: I allow myself to connect deeply with all aspects of mother earth and trust that this connection will open up natural deeper pathways in myself. I will allow myself to align with this co-creative energy trusting that it will help me grow in and through nature, as well as the nature in myself. I trust that this change is taking place in me. I hope you enjoy exploring the Four Sacred Elements! Views:]]>