Sacred Space

Are you living in chaos?

Do you or your kids have trouble sleeping? Does your home or property feel chaotic? Are your pets nervous, jumpy or reactive? If so, your home probably isn’t anchored and integrated properly with the local land and nature spirits.

Consider the sensibilities of ancient architecture and land-oriented construction (some of this is still practiced in contemporary Earth-based cultures). Structures like the Egyptian and Mesoamerican pyramids, burial mounds, Stonehenge, temples and places of energetic importance were built intentionally aligned to ley lines, solar cycles and the stars. The doors of certain structures faced East, to receive the rising sun. All of these were vitally important factors in deciding where and how to build temples, set up inípis and establish villages, in order to align most beneficially with the Earth grid.

Modern architecture has different priorities. As many homes as possible are squeezed onto tiny lots. Original trees are ripped out to make room for buildings. Mountains are flattened. Waterways are redirected or dammed. Buildings are positioned wherever it is convenient to build, not where they are gracefully aligned and integrated with the existing grid of Earth power. (I won’t even get into the concrete foundations and electrical interferences.)

When we spend so much of our time inside isolated structures that are misaligned and disconnected from the Earth grid, or live in places where the grid has been disrupted through human activity, it is a natural outcome to experience anxiety, insomnia, chaos and dysregulation.

Happily, working with the land and nature spirits to grid and anchor your home can make a big difference. After advising someone about how to connect with local land and nature spirits, she reported a huge shift in her dog’s behavior. “Since I moved to Costa Rica last year, my dog has been very nervous and anxious. When I started making offerings and connecting to the land, she became much more relaxed, and now is confident walking through the jungle with me.” In this case, her dog’s anxiety was not something we were trying to address, but it was one of many beneficial outcomes from her connecting to the Earth grid and building relationships with local nature spirits.

Here are some ways to create more peace, health and relaxation for you, your kids, your pets and your home:

  • Assess the existing Earth grid and ley lines on and around the land where you live, and grid your home to these currents of energy.

  • Locate and connect with/make offerings at local living temples and sacred sites.

  • Connect with the local guardian nature spirits, make prayers and offerings, and ask for their support and blessings.

  • Use altars, plants, crystals and other features in your home to recalibrate your space to the Earth grid and ensure harmonious alignment in your temple.

  • Take your kids on neighborhood nature walks so they can meet the local nature spirits. Teach them how to make offerings and ask for blessings, protection and help so that they feel safe and relaxed.

Do you want to…

  • …create functionally purposeful allyships with local nature spirits to support your spiritual practice?

  • …build lifelong partnerships with powerful natural allies and receive deep initiations into their mysteries?

  • …confidently invoke the nature spirits during your meditation or ceremonial practice?

Sacred Ecology begins July 26. Register now!

The Medicine of Space

When we create spaciousness for ourselves, we can relax into BEing and presence. We can expand to fully embody all parts of ourselves. We can be as big as we actually are. We can welcome in new energies and remain balanced through dynamic shifts.

I’ve been keeping relatively quiet for the past couple of months as I sit with some very significant changes that are coming up in my life and my work. I won’t go into too much detail now as it is still crystalizing, but suffice it to say that everything (one-on-one work, teaching, programs, etc) is getting an overhaul. The way that I am moving through it with a greater degree of ease and grace than I could otherwise is... spaciousness.

Even so, the overhaul has brought on some anxiety. The inner voices share their doubts:

“Am I committing entrepreneurial suicide by switching up my offerings all the time?”
“What the heck do I think I’m doing?”
“Am I kidding myself?”
“What if this is way too far out for people? What if nobody is ready for this? What if nobody gets it?”
“How can I make all these massive changes without shooting myself in the foot?”

Those are some of the highlights, but you get the idea.

I just returned from a week-long trip to Sedona, AZ, where I experienced a great deal of new energy and catalysts, set some changes in motion and received some profound medicine. One of the highlights was a visit to the Grand Canyon.

I had never been to this particular sacred site before, and as I approached the canyon rim, I felt myself start to tear up. I could feel the energy swelling up out of the exposed layers—ancient and constant in its power. Moved beyond words, I wandered off by myself to stand on a cliff edge and feel the potent waves course through my body. The Grand Canyon is a giant portal, and the amount of raw power and potential held within each grain of sand is palpable.

“This is the kind of healer I want to be. I want to be this spacious, this ancient, this solid, yet mutable.”

As these realizations formed in my mind, I felt myself expand enough to accommodate the Grand Canyon within my energy field.

“I AM this spacious. I AM this ancient. I AM this solid, this mutable.”

No matter the direction my work takes from here, the kind of space I hold for myself and for others is that deep. The kind of container I set for transformation is that wide.

I sat down to write in my journal, tears continuing to blur my vision. I had no idea what I was writing, and only discovered after I read it later that night that I had written a declaration—a prayer to the Grand Canyon herself:

I AM big enough to hold you.

I AM strong enough to serve you.

I AM patient enough to learn from you—the lessons in each stone and grain of sand.

I AM ancient enough to remember you as flat, scorched Earth that gave off the sharp tang scent of new metal, fresh from the fire.

I AM small enough to curl myself into each pore in your cavernous walls… tiny wombs where crystals and magic are born.

I AM quiet enough to hear the stories that have been buried in your layers for aeons rise up as they are freed by matter dissolving into air.

I AM raw enough to feel the currents of wind stirred by Raven’s wing.

I AM humble enough to kneel here, to know that I have died here and to surrender my bones to you to compost into soil.

I AM embodied enough to feel that you are big enough to hold me.

I AM wild enough to want to scream and chant and howl and sing and fill your canyons with my prayers, but subtle enough to know that a whisper will suffice.

I know that there is space for you in my bones, in my cells. I feel my body drinking in your familiar magic. Make me ancient. Help me remember. Support me in crumbling away all the surface layers to reveal the parts of me that were present for the birth of this and other worlds. Instruct me in how I may better serve. Teach me the ways of timeless presence. I fill myself with you. I AM reverence. There is no room here for anything but the Truth. I see my blood on your walls. Let me lie here and dissolve.

This is the kind of spacious timelessness that constitutes the Void. In this reality, no healing work is needed because nothing needs to be “healed.” There is no need to fix, to change, to alter or adjust. There is only BEing and presence.

Within that spaciousness, all things are possible. When I hold the medicine of the Grand Canyon in my body, the doubting voices immediately become silent.

I invite you to examine where you can breathe more spaciousness into your life. In what ways can you allow more BEing and presence?

Many blessings!

Michelle Hawk Shaman Portland Sedona Reiki Master Healer Teacher