Life Is A Ceremony: Making The Everyday Sacred

Are you ready to live a more meaningful life filled with spiritual connection and connection to your heart wisdom? This week we’re diving into how to potentially make each day sacred through intention and sacred ritual. With her characteristic warmth and humor, Dr. BethAnne shares practical tools and ideas to help us slow down, connect to spirit and our intuition, and make meaning in our daily lives. She also shares stories of her experiences with ceremony and how the act of sacred ritual has supported her in finding healing in grief, facilitating personal growth, and staying connected to her deeper sense of purpose and heart wisdom.

Tune in next week for a new episode on Dancing with Spirit: Your Interconnection to All Things, where we'll be tapping into how to better understand our intrinsic connection to the energy, feel more confident in co-creating with Life and learn to see Spirit as our friend and partner for navigating life.

Resources Shared in Episode:
Learn more about Turtle Lodge HERE.
Learn more about Alice Grist's book on tarot: Dirty & Divine: a transformative journey through tarot

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Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright is a Licensed Psychologist, Spiritual Educator, and Akashic Records Reader. She is the author of the Award-Winning Lamentations of the Sea, its sequels, and several books of poetry. A psychologist with a mystic mind, she weaves perspectives from both worlds to offer holistic wisdom.

If you’d like to explore what your Akashic Records have to share with you to guide you on your path at this time, you can find more about Akashic Magic Sessions HERE. Alternatively, sign up for the monthly newsletter Akashic Magic. Each month offers a unique perspective on the current energies along with intuitive writing prompts! Members enjoy a free gift— a complimentary copy of  Dr. BethAnne's book, Cranberry Dusk— upon signing up.

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Transcript

Below is a transcript of the episode as generated by Otter.ai. (*please note, this transcript has only been edited to put in line breaks for easier readability and may contain errors where a word or phrase is lost in transcription.)

[0:35] Introduction to Episode

Aloha everyone, welcome to your heart magic. This is Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright. And I'm so excited yet again for this week's topic. I know I say that every week. But it's so fun to talk about these things. And this week, we're exploring the topic life is a ceremony. And we're going to be talking about the idea of sacred rituals and ceremonies and different kinds of ceremonies and how we can take the concept of ceremony and ritual and break it down in a way that feels applicable to us and brings it into our everyday life.

Not all of us have access to some kind of spiritual ceremony or something that many of us might seek out or be interested in. So how does that not matter? Like how can we live in such a way that we are intentional and ceremonial and sacred. So we're talking about all those things, I'm going to be sharing some of my experiences with this topic, which are fun. And I've got a fun story to tell.

[1:52] The Akashic Records on Ceremonies

But first, I thought I would start today with as always, I actually open the Akashic record on the topic Akashic records. And I just asked them, you know, like, kind of like just for a definition of what is the ceremony. And this was interesting, I'm just gonna read the free flow of information that was coming through. When I channeled the Akashic records, I usually communicate the information in one of two ways. If I am doing a voice reading for somebody, like I'm in person, or I'm on zoom with them, or I'm opening the collective records and doing an audio recording, I will speak it. So it will just be this free flow of information. If I am doing it for something like this podcast, usually what I'll do is write it down and kind of write down that free flow of information. So I don't forget what was said.

So this is written down. And my notes say anything done with sacred intention. Typically, a ceremony is some kind of:

A more formal gathering or an intention of setting aside a time and place to this is me not being able to read my own writing, to engage in the act of ritual, to facilitate healing, deeper awareness, knowledge and remembrance. Ceremonies often have a rite of passage, and a are composed of traditions, both old and new, passed down from the culture and traditions and the group. In spiritual settings, they are often done to facilitate an interaction and experience with Spirit according to the participants beliefs.

And then the other piece that came through was why do we do ceremony and it's to honor to remember to create meaning and facilitate experience. And they're often marked by some form of reverence or a sense of privacy or a sense of being contained by the ceremony itself. So that's our message, or our definition, as told by the Akashic records.

 And my experience with ceremony and ritual is that they really, it really is something done, there can be very formal kinds of ceremonies that somebody might go to like a full moon ceremony, or some form of a circle that meets or some form of a sweat lodge or something like that. Many different cultural groups have something ceremonial that they do. And rituals are often kind of the sacred things that might happen during a ceremony. You know, some form of ritual or tradition music that's played something that's passed around food that's partaking in there can be many different things that are ritual. Sometimes they can be referring to the same thing, but Sometimes they can be understood a little bit differently.

 For the purposes of our podcast. Today, I'm going to use it just a little bit interchangeably. I'm not super concerned with nailing down the definition of all of this, I'm more concerned with talking about the ideas behind it. And how can we use this in a way to empower our relationship with spirit, and feel empowered to engage in a ceremony yourself.

[5:25] Storytime: My Experience with Ceremony
 
And that brings me to my story that I want to share with you. So something really fun about this, and I didn't quite check the date. So I might be off. But I'm fairly certain that on April 22, of the year 2016, is when I attended what I would say, my first ceremony where I really went, because I felt called when I was going with a very sacred intention. That was the Full Moon in Scorpio of that year, and I'm smiling telling you this story, because as my week fell out, I usually create this podcast on a different day. But today, on this day, it is Saturday, April 22, of the year 2023. So same date, and here I am talking about something that happened back in 2016.

And at the time, it was April of that year. And I was about three and a half months into the loss of my brother brand and my passage of grief from that. And that was a change full time in my life. For me, I talk about it quite a bit. And I've written quite a bit about it. And because it was just one of those life events that really is forever changing. And something that I started to run into as I was dealing with my grief was because of my profession. And because of being a psychologist I ran a private practice. I was kind of dabbling in spirituality and the sense that I'd become a fairly proficient tarot reader. Sometimes I did her groups, I had helped to lead women's circles, most of that was pretty casual, nothing too formal.

But in some ways, you might say I was a ceremony leader, myself, or a healer, who created space or a container, in order for healing to happen. And that is also the intention of a ceremony, it's more like healing might be facilitated in a different way than it would in a therapy setting. Or what if I was doing like a women's group, and it was a talking circle or a Tarot night or something like that. But the some of the ideas behind it were the same, that somebody who is in need is able to go somewhere, and somebody who is willing to facilitate a space, who holds perhaps more wisdom than they do, at least on whatever they're facilitating the space about. They facilitate that space.

And through some form of talking through some form of sharing some form of engaging and sacred ritual, some form of alchemy, that happens where energy itself is present, and Spirit is present. And our spirit guides and angels are present. And we invite those energies, and particularly when we're being intentional about it, some form of change can happen. And those times, sometimes that change is very dramatic. Sometimes it's very subtle. We don't always know what will happen when we go into these spaces. Sometimes we leave and feel very healed. Sometimes they feel very raw. Sometimes we say Did anything happen at all. It's not about having an expectation of what it's going to look like. It's more about the willingness and having a willing heart to engage in that space.

And what I was running into is difficulty finding a space where I could go to facilitate a healing experience for myself. During the time I was grieving my brother, the hardest, and the raw, honest, you know, like it was so tender. When I was still so close to the heart of that wound, I was in the heart of that wound. I was, you know, three months out of kind of this tragic thing in my life and finding out that he died and everything was upside down.

And I remember saying to my husband, it's like I spend so much of my time scooping other people and I use that word. That's how I felt kind of like an ice cream scoop. You know, that was hollowed out and I would create spaces to kind of scoop and contain so that somebody could get what they needed. Find out experience themselves in a new way and then they would go off and do Take whatever they learned and maybe apply that to their life, I was having difficulty being scooped.

[10:07] Where Does A Healer Go For Healing?

I didn't have another BethAnne to go to I was living in Anchorage at the time. And if there was a group or something that would have been helpful, I wasn't in touch with it. I was very hesitant to go to traditional grief support groups, I think they're wonderful. I just intuitively did not feel that was what I needed. I felt like I needed something more spiritual. And I wasn't aware of anything like that. I did have a mentor at the time. And she was very helpful. She understood quite a bit about grief and had been through loss herself.

And I remember going into a meeting with her one day and saying, you know, kind of this is where I'm at. And I'm really struggling. And I would like to have an experience, like I knew that she'd done native ceremony and that she had led it. And I knew that she had been involved in Sundance saying, I didn't even really know what that meant. And I was really curious, like, how did you get called into all of these things? And I kind of asked her that question. And so she really casually said, Well, you are carefully actually, you know, told me about a place called turtle Lodge, which is a lodge up in Manitoba, Canada. And their primary purpose is really teaching traditional native ways, and reinstituting, many forms of ceremony and passing on the knowledge from the culture.

And she had some ties their awareness or something, you know, and so she kind of just put it out there, you might want to look into this and just see if anything connects with you. So I did.  And over the course of the next couple of weeks, I got online, and I did some research, and I looked them up, and I happen to see that they were running full moon ceremonies, it didn't know what the ceremonies were. And I saw that they had one coming up in April, April live, I want to say it's 2022 of 2016, I'll have to double-check that date. It was April of that year, right around the same time, because it was the Scorpio Full Moon at that time.

And I ended up long story short, or at least this part of the story short, I ended up feeling drawn to that. And it wasn't like I received this big message from spirit where it was like, you'd have to go to this thing. It was more like I was really intrigued by it. And I felt like there might be something waiting for me there. And I knew I needed something that I wasn't getting in my day to day life. And I couldn't figure out how to tap into myself. And I remember working with the woman who was doing my Akashic readings at the time, and I asked should I go to this thing? And the answer was like, yes, it will be important for you to go out at some point. But it might not be for the reasons you think.

And at the time, I that didn't fully make sense to me it does now. And I just remember being told one, since there are so many things that come across your periphery as a human, you know, it's true, there's so many offerings, so many things that are out there.

So if something really connects with us, and we take note of it and say, Wow, I'm really intrigued by that, I feel like I want to go do this thing. Most likely, it's for us to do in some shape or form. Because think of how many things you don't connect with that you have zero interest in doing. So that's what came through in my Akashic reading. And as the ceremony got closer, and I did another reading with her, I was told some things along the lines of, you know, part of what you're doing this weekend is processing grief. And some of that grief might be bigger than your own. You might be processing grief for the collective and you're going for release and you really don't need to understand what all that means, you know, just kind of follow what's in you to go.

Now looping back to what I said, where I was at, in the time on my spiritual path, is I had some form of a specific expectation of how that weekend was going to look, I can't tell you what it is. I just expected I think, some kind of encounter with spirit or something to happen, like a superpower to open up for maybe intuition or like mad psychic visions or something like that. Or, I don't know, maybe I thought something really specific was going to happen in terms of my grief over my brother Brent.

And so when I received that guidance of like, yes, you should go but maybe not for the reasons you think that's what the Akashic was referring to. I kind of had a preconceived notion of what a ceremony was and how it might look. And you know, my present understanding reflecting back is that I really received what I needed this weekend, but it wasn't those specific things. I actually did have quite a bit of vision and a sense of intuitive gifts and insensitive counter Spirit, you know, and I had a lot happened that weekend.

But I just felt like I came home and felt like I am forever changed because I went and did this thing in Canada. It's something that is still with me. I'm talking about it years later, and the teachings and lessons that I learned there. And what it gave me are things I'm still using and bringing out into my life. So the reasons I went and what I got out of it were so much faster than what my human brain was able to think about at the time.

Having said that, I did do my best to let go of expectations. My mentor gave me some guidance. And she, I knew enough to know that when you go to ceremony, you should bring tobacco, not chewing tobacco, I didn't know that much like my first assignment was to go out and get tobacco, which is in that culture, it's an offering to spirit for prayers. And I went out to try and go get my first thing of tobacco, when I bought it, O bought chewing tobacco and brought it to  my next meeting with my mentor, I said, like this, and she says, Well, that would work. But really, you want like the loose leaf stuff that you roll?

Oh my gosh. So this became a whole thing. And I actually started to have a couple of dreams about how I should go get tobacco before the ceremony started. So I think I finally went into some tobacco shop and Anchorage. And I was like such a fish out of water. I had no idea what I was looking for. I probably look like a I don't know, a 16 year old and a liquor store or something like that. Like I was so uncomfortable. And I was kind of the person who's like, I would like one tobacco please know what to order. I didn't know like how formal it had to be. Oh, that was a whole thing.

[16:49] From Alaska to Canada: The Cabin in The Woods

But I got my tobacco I got myself ready. I booked this ticket. You know, I went up to Canada by myself from Alaska. I had looked up online places to stay. And I saw that there was like a big casino out there close to where it was going to be. But then there was like this lodge this cabin in the woods. And I thought oh, I should stay at that because it's like, that feels a little bit more spiritual to me than staying in a casino. And I get there I think I flew a lot of the night I rent a car I had to drive like 90 minutes or something like it was like outside in Manitoba out in the countryside.

You know, I finally like pull up to this lodge. I mean, talk about a fish out of water. And I realized that I am the only person staying there. And this you know, kind of long lodge with 30 rooms out in the middle of the woods. And like the main check in place was a building away that you had to walk to the middle of April. It was up north It was cold. Like it spring was slowly coming. But things were still icy. And like you can believe that like every horror movie I've ever seen where somebody goes to a cabin in the woods. So splashing through my my, I didn't even have cell reception, I had to pay extra money to try and get whatever some sort of roaming bouncing thing. And I remember freaking out and trying to get online and trying to like get into the casino and it was booked this weekend. It was booked that weekend. And I'm like, how was it booked for this weekend in April, you know, and how am I here alone and oh my gosh.

And it was in that moment that I really realized the ceremony started, I found. You're not just going for tomorrow night, the minute that you committed and you said I'm going to do this thing. The minute you started getting the wrong tobacco, having dreams about getting tobacco, taking the steps to do this thing. The ceremony started on one side, I knew that. Like that's what I was working with. I really started to understand that whatever happened at the ceremony itself was just as important as everything else that was going to happen the rest of the weekend.

And I got to I almost didn't go to the ceremony when the time came. You know, I got there a day early. I slept really hard that night. I remember waking up the next morning and this empty lodge really early because I fell asleep you know I hadn't slept it I fell asleep like at 6pm and like woke up at like 4pm or 4am in the morning.

And I remember looking up and turning the lights on there was these little Woods spiders all over my ceiling and you know, you're alone when you start talking to the spiders. And I'm like, Hey, if you guys just hang out up there and stay up there. I'm gonna be down here. And I won't do anything to you if you don't do anything to me. Oh man, I had brought some spiritual books to read. I brought my journal. If I went to the lodge, I could get cell reception. So at least I had some connection to home, but it was a lot of solitude. And it was a lot of alone time.

And the ceremony itself was that night. And there are some things around that day that happened. But I was really scared to go. And I almost didn't go, like I'd already received so much from the trip itself, that I almost talked myself into being like, you know, what, BethAnne this was the ceremony, you showed up, you prove to spirit that you can do it. You know, you are already learning, you're out here in this cabin alone. And, you know, some part of me overrode that and was like, You didn't fly all this way to get scared to walk into this thing you need to go like get yourself there and walk into this thing. I didn't even know what they were doing.

I didn't know if I was going to a sweat lodge. Or what you know, I was prepared for a sweat lodge ceremony. That's not what it was. It was a water ceremony. I wore the wrong clothes, I was told usually food is partaking in after. Nope, everybody ate before, everybody knew somebody. Once I got there. It was in this like beautiful building that has been constructed and designed according to some sacred traditions, native traditions, everything holds a meaning, you know, at this lodge, and again, fish out of water, I did my best to talk to people. Everybody was with somebody I was there all alone. It ceremony didn't start till about two hours. And everybody was chatting and catching up. And you know, some people had come in from Manitoba, who'd heard of it, a lot of people were native background, I did not fit in at all. Everybody was kind to me. But it was a very foreign experience.

[21:38] What Happens At The Water Ceremony...

And the ceremony itself was a water ceremony. It was a moon ceremony centered around the moon. And I'm going to skip over some of what we did during that time. Because if you ever feel drawn to the shall seek it out yourself, it's not really my wisdom to share. What I can share is that part of the ceremony was a talking circle. And when we got to me, and it was my turn, I was so close to crying so hard that I almost couldn't speak. And I realized that I'd really gone all that way to give some of my grief over my brother to this space to the sacred water. And when teaching that I did learn that I'm happy to pass on I think it's so beautiful as we were taught that the moon itself, grandmother moon, that every 28 days, when she's full, we can release to her like whatever we're ready to let go of.

And so at the end of all of it, you know, there is a fire ceremony and the keepers of the fire, you go and you cast this packet of tobacco and your prayers into the fire and it represents the release, and you kind of let go of whatever you're ready to let go of. And you know, so much of what I was ready to let go over some of the worst of my grief over Brent. And after the Talking Circle before he went to the fire.

There was a really sweet, sweet young woman who came up to me her name was Justice. It's all I remember about her and she gave me her sacred rattle, which had obviously been used quite a bit. And she said she got the guidance to give it to me.  And that if I could like go in the woods and like wail and scream and just like get it out that I really needed to go do that. I'm really beautiful. And after the fire, I got my car and like drove back to my like little lodge in the woods. There were other individuals there that night. And it was a little bit it was really beautiful.

The next day, I had a lot of intuitive information come in, I had a lot of dreams that came in. I wrote a lot of mystic poetry. I really had some profound experiences that that did happen. While I was still there. I learned that no matter how far you go, your grief does go with you. And while I felt like I released some of my grief, it's not like I felt transformed. You know, even spirit does not do the work of grief for us. It's not Spirits work to do. It is our work to do as humans to process our loss and to learn how to make peace with it and carry it and grieve over it.

But I did take to heart. All that came through that weekend. I still go back to my writings from that time and will study them and think about what did I learn?
And on my very last day in Canada, I think I had four days there I'd had it. You know, I think I woke up on a Sunday morning. The ceremony was Friday night. I'd gotten there on a Thursday afternoon. So I had been at this little lodge Thursday night by myself Friday night. I think there was some people Saturday night there was one or two people Sunday everybody left and they like took off and where I was at was like out in this rural community with all these beach towns. that are in the summertime, I really populated it's by all these lakes. But it was pretty scarce in the winter. And it wasn't the summer season yet.

And I realized that I was going to be spending another like night alone there. Because I left I think the next morning to go back to Alaska, and I was like, no, no more. And I got myself to some restaurant with Wi Fi, and like got a hotel or booking.com and booked a hotel by the airport. And I remember going and dropping up my rental car, like walking over to the airport and having some like nice rum and like getting pasta, you know, I think I got like a glass of wine at the time or something like that, you know, it just was like, okay, all I have to do tomorrow is like walk back across the street to the airport and get on that plane.

[25:45] Making Sense of the Whole Experience

But even that was part of the ceremony. It was almost like I'd been in this other world, and this other worldly place. And I'd had these intense encounters with spirit and all this time in solitude to vision quest, and to meet aspects of myself that I weren't aware that was there and to understand and learn more about the moon, and to trust the energies and essences that came in. I mean, I later learned that spiders are the spirit guides of writers, you know, I mean that every little thing that happened that weekend was so meaningful.

And when I really broke it down, I really could see that there was multiple strands, multiple weaves of beings and energies from the spirit world that were meeting me there and supporting me. And even that last bit was almost like this chance to like start to come back to reality to like, go into a nice hotel to be around people, I had a very grounding meal, you know, I was able to kind of start to put both feet back into this world. And I really saw that, wow, this was almost like this four day ceremony from Thursday to Sunday that I did I left on Monday morning, and how beautiful I had all these different sections of it.

[27:01] How To Cultivate Everyday Ceremony In Our Lives

So that was my experience and my introduction to ceremony. And since then I did a couple more native type ceremonies during my time in Alaska. And since I've moved to Hawaii, it's evolved more, you know, these days, there's nothing formal that I've been through. I'm very interested in the idea of how do we bring sacred ritual and ceremony into the every day. And that just feels like a nice place to stop my storytelling for now and just dive into some principles that might feel really helpful.

If you're sitting there saying, Oh, my gosh, like, I love this idea. This sounds so cool. How can I cultivate this? Like, what can I do to like find this in my life. So let's talk about some ideas on how to do that. And if you are going to engage with ceremony and ritual, like just some perspectives that to have that just might be supportive. So first of all, I just kind of call this part of the podcast, do it yourself ceremony.

And I should actually start with saying that there are formal things out there where somebody else has set them up, and you do not need to like, go to Manitoba, Canada, or whatever your version of that is and go do something as extreme as this, this was a very special time in my life. That is not something that's necessarily accessible for everybody. It's not something that a lot of people will feel called to or want to do. I myself don't feel called to something like that right now at all, like kudos to 2016 me, but like 2023, BethAnne- I'm good.

You know, but if you feel called to something like that, or there's something happening at a local yoga studio, there's a sound bath, there is some sort of women's support circle, there's a moon circle, you see something happening online, and you say, oh my gosh, like there's a lot of spiritual leaders will sometimes do something around the full moon. You know, there's this Full Moon group meeting on you know, X day, I'm really intrigued by going by all means, if it's on your radar, and you can go, go, let somebody else hold the space and just kind of be a participant and whatever it is, and be open and curious.

So if something comes on your radar, and you want to create your own version of your ceremony, weekend or evening or whatever, be creative, do what calls to you. I feel like one of the most important things that I would impart is you don't have to be special to do these things. You just have to be willing to learn and to be teachable and to have a humble heart and to be open to doing it. And if you are averse to something, you know, like I had a couple of people after the fact tell them me how cool the moon ceremony was, and like, oh my gosh, that's so awesome. Like, I wish I could go or I could get some friends and go. And you could do that.

But I've often found that if you don't feel connected to it yourself, and you're going, because somebody else wants you to, and you're really resistant to it, it might be something that the person has a hard time receiving from. And for myself, I knew that I needed to go do this thing by myself that it wasn't meant to be like, bring a buddy, and you know, have a make a weekend out of it, you could, you know, friends could go do a retreat, they could go do something together, that might feel really right for them. This isn't about right or wrong. It's just about knowing your own heart on the matter. But I want everyone to feel empowered, that if something speaks to you, and you're like really intimidated by it, or say, Well, I'm not this or I'm not that. But Spirit is speaking to you and you feel connected to it.

As long as you are entering in a space where you feel really humble, and you know that you're going to be welcome there. Like I knew that the moon ceremony at Turtle Lodge was open to everybody, because it actually had on the website, like open to everyone. You know, if it had said for you know, tribal only, I wouldn't have gone as a white woman and showing up there. That's not my cultural heritage, I respect it. But it's not mine to to teach, it would not be my place to be there, I would very respectfully try and seek those teachings out else how, in a very respectful way that honored their tradition, if I if I had felt felt called to it and couldn't go. So you know, make sure it's appropriate.

[31:44] DIY: Make Your Own Ceremony
 
But outside of that feel empowered to go do something, your relationship to spirit is your own relationship to spirit. And if something is speaking to you, or calling to you in your heart, and you feel connected to something, you don't have to wait for permission for somebody to come along or tell you that you're ready, or that you're spiritual enough, or that you're enlightened enough. That's not what this is about.

It is about really engaging with our hearts, following our heart wisdom and following our heart wisdom into spaces that can help contain us to help create some kind of experience with spirit with healing with whatever the intention is, so that we can have an experience that's more expansive, and have something that feels sacred, and learn something in that space and live in a way where we feel more empowered, and we feel brighter, and we feel more ready to rock our heart magic. So if you're called go, if you just want to create your own, that's what we're going to talk about. And the thing that I would say with that is anything can be a ceremony, and I'm going to give you some ideas of what you can do.

First of all, you can do a seven day little ceremony. I once had this idea for a group I never taught it, but it was going to be like a Monday through Friday group, maybe even a Monday through Sunday. And it was going to be sacred ceremony bringing sacred ceremony into the everyday or sacred ritual into the everyday. And what I was gonna do is just have this group meet and just jump on a zoom call for like 30 minutes. And during that time teach them if you don't know this, like every day of the week is named after like some kind of god or goddess they're associated with planets, there's numbers associated with them, there's colors, there is a lot of legend and lore behind the archetype of each day of the week.

So Monday is like moon day. And moon day is associated with most of the goddesses of the moon. And the colors that you might wear are things like light blue, or green or pink or pearl. The gemstones are like Pearl and whatever the ones that are associated with the moon, I want to say the numbers are two and seven. But I haven't looked it up in a while. So I might be wrong on that.

I'm making this podcast on Saturday, Saturday is named after the gods Saturn and something on Saturn day that you might do to honor that connection is to do something where you like do a chore or do your taxes or do something where you are Kind of just you know, Saturn itself is the archetype of doing things the hard way, and discipline and hard work. But there's also wisdom there. So I'm making this podcast on a Saturday and I'm sharing my knowledge and I'm making that my offering to Saturn and maybe I'll fold some laundry later and then I'm going to have a great Saturday night and you know, chill and do fun things. You don't have to do it the whole day.

But that was my idea is days of the week and working with whatever energies numbers colors were associated with that day and just seeing what happened? How is Moon day different than Tuesday that's Mars days governed by the planet Mars. Tuesday is a day where, interestingly enough, a lot of people use that as a day to release programs books, podcast, you know, and Mars is associated with taking steps initiative action, or will Wednesday's Mercury day, you could do seven days of the week and make that your ritual and say every day, let's say you don't know this information. Awesome. Set aside time every day for seven days and look up, what does this mean, make some notes in your journal, and then choose one way that you want to honor that energy that day.

So if you were to do this on a Monday, and you've kind of found out all the stuff about Monday, maybe you'll say, I'm going to take some time today and work with the moon, maybe there's a ritual you do around that. Or maybe if it's Tuesday, you just say I'm going to stay really aware of my actions today, and how I feel called to act. If I feel at all aggressive, do I feel assertive, I'm just going to be really aware of power today. There's no right or wrong to this. It's all about intention, and all about bringing this meaning and this intention into the every day, and we make it sacred through our intention. So we're not just mindlessly wandering through the day.

[36:22] Tarot & Nature As Sacred Practices

Here's another really fun one. That's fun to do. I got this from the idea from Alice grist, who wrote a book on the Tarot deck. And I'll drop the name of the book and the resources in the write up of this podcast, I cannot remember the name. But she had the suggestion in the book to go through the deck and do a card every day for 78 days. And that was a great way to learn the deck. And I think she did it in order starting with the major arcana and then breaking it down into the sweets.

So I chose to do that for 78 days back in 2019. I think it was. And I did it a little bit differently, though, I just did a random shuffle. And so every time I drew a card, I would discard it and put it into the pile of I've already seen that card. And then every day I would do a shuffle divided into three re stack it and I set this intention that may these cards line up to my life over the next seven, eight days, may I receive the exact card I need on the exact day. And I'm going to trust what comes through.

That was one of the funnest little ritual ceremonies I've ever done. It was so interesting, I can't begin to tell you how many cards perfectly echoed things happening on those days. And I know the Tarot I read, I just had never done a challenge like that. And so I did make it ceremonial. And part of what made it ceremonial is I develop my own little ritual around it, you know, here's how I'm going to do it. I'm gonna do the random shuffle every day, I put my intention into it, all you have to do is give it a little bit of structure that will help make it feel a little bit more formal, whatever you're doing and your Do It Yourself ceremony.

And when at the end of it, what was really fun is when I got down to like the last 10 cards, and I know the deck so well that I knew exactly what cards I had left. And I was like what will be on what day. And what was also so fun about this is this challenge saw me through the Soul ceremony 2019 into 2020.

So it ushered me into a new year, and I was still had like maybe like 15 cards left, you know, as we were going into the new year. And so that was really fun to like, What card did I get on December 31? What do they get on January 1, and how did those energies and those teachings intersect with my life at the time, that is a fantastic one to do.
 
The other thing that you could just do is just go out into nature and make your own ceremony. You know, go out into nature, take an hour, go sit by a tree, maybe you bring some spring water or something like that. Maybe you make an offering. Maybe you got some loose leaf tobacco and you will offer it to the tree and say like May the prayers of my heart be heard and you know, think nature for supporting you. And maybe you just set the intention of receiving what you need and that time and just meditate or journal or do something like that.

You know, it does help to have a sense of like start finish an end to these things, which is why often in what I was taught native ceremony they often eat at the end. That's the celebration, but like I said, and the one that I did, it was all backwards. You know, and I did I will tell you all this when I came back until my mentor what happened and how lost I was and disoriented. She said Well, sounds like a good ceremony to me back then. You know and what I really learned from some of the teachings that she taught me and some of the things I was learning when I was working with her back in Alaska It is that part of why it's so necessary to, for me, at least to have been so uncomfortable and out of my comfort zone is I was very vulnerable, I had to be dependent on spirit.
 
You know, staying out in a cabin in the woods, I prayed probably a lot more than I would have, if I was at a casino and could have wandered down to the dining room and been around people, I still would have been mindful if I'd stayed somewhere else. But I would have felt more comfortable around people. If I knew exactly what tobacco to go get and where to get it that was comfortable for me, you know, part of what happens in these things is connecting to spirit connecting to the light connecting to the mysteries, and whatever form we understand them.

[40:02] The Space Outside of Our Comfort Zones

And so oftentimes, is something that travels us enough out of our comfort zone, so that we are more willing to connect more receptive, we're more open, we're more humble, because we're not in our element. So that was one of the reasons that it had to be so extreme, I think for me, is so that I really was shifted into this place of vulnerability and receptivity. As I said, part of my problem was always being the organizer of spaces, organizing women organizing groups, I was the tarot reader, I was the psychologist-- you know, Spirit knows what we need.

And so Spirit knew exactly what I needed was to like, really knock me off kilter and be like, you're not in charge out here, you know, so we're gonna move you way out of your elements. So you know that you're partnering with us, and you're dancing with us, and you're meant to talk to us, and you are out of the stream of your normal life. So you're more receptive and your consciousness is expanded. And you are just so much more open to these messages that you might miss, if you fall too much into the groups that you're used to. So Spirit will give us what we need. And that is important to remember, when you think about doing what calls to you, spirit will meet you there. So please feel empowered to create your own thing.

The other one that I was going to share as you can do a monthly intention, every single month, you can say for you can do it for the next well, I guess we're into the second quarter. But a lot of lot of people will hear this right at the end of April or in May, if you are a regular listener right now on the podcast. So set an intention for the month of May or the rest of the second quarter. And say, you know, my intention during this time is I want to heal blank in my life, or this is something that I'm actively working on, I will often set an intention for each month.

And some of my sacred rituals that I'll do at the beginning of a month is all sit down with my journal, I will gather all the people that I tune into the different astrology notes, different energy forecasters, I've got about five or six that I follow, including the Akashic records and what I'm picking up and you know, my own calling and my work. And I'll make notes and my journal of here's all the major planetary transits going on. Here's the different energies, here's what you know, this spiritual teacher over here has channeled, this is what this person is saying. These are just trusted sources where I like their work. And I've seen good integrity in them over time.

 And then I'll set some goals for the month and say, What would I like to accomplish this month, I try and make them realistic. I saw that it's not like I want to make a million dollars the month of May. But more like, I'd like to see an increase and financial flow. I'm actively working on this issue right now. I'd like to release it. And I'd like to feel more healed with it. By the end of the month. I'm really confused about this in my life, I'd like to see more clarity around that. I'm training for the half marathon in June in the marathon in September. So here's my running goals, like all kind of break it down to all areas of my life, you know, from work, to business, to relationships, to emotional to all of those things to spiritual. And then I might pick a word or a phrase to set the intention for the month.

So my intention for the month of April was focus on your vision. And whenever I've gotten lost, I kind of will come back to that and be like, how is this serving you and focusing on your vision? And if it's like, well, that's not at all, you know, that brings me back to a touchstone my mantra for March was stay in your magic. So that's a little ceremony I do for an entire month and the ways that I engage and that is through my little acts of ritual, my journaling, I'll check in with my intentions. I will look at how am I doing and then at the end of the month, I usually will do a little bit of a closeout where I say thank you to the energies that showed up this month. I'll write my journal what did I learn for April? You know, I will start to look ahead towards May.

[44:59] Release Expectations, Stay Humble

So there are so many ways that you can do this. Again, it's not about what you do, it is about the intention that you bring to what you're doing. A couple more points I wanted to make. And that is release expectations around what will happen. I mentioned this a little bit earlier and my own experience, and this is where many of us get stuck, we have an expectation of how spirit is going to look.

And when that expectation isn't met, we think that nothing happened, or that we're not intuitive, or that we didn't do it, right. Or sometimes we fall into comparison and say, look at so and so over there. You know, they're talking to the angels and interpreting astrology and standing on their head and juggling dancing monkeys with their foot effortlessly. What are they doing that they're so spiritually gifted, and I'm not getting what I need at all.

Yeah, so Spirit knows exactly who we are. Your guides, your angels, the energies that you work with, all of that loves you and knows what you need for your journey at this time. They know what your life path is, they know what your soul purpose is, they know where you need healing.

They know where you don't need healing, maybe you're not meant to stand on your head and juggle monkeys and you know, be some super famous Vedic Astrologer or something like that. Maybe you're meant to walk a completely different journey. Maybe if you got what you thought you wanted, it actually might not be interesting to you after a while, because it's not what your soul signed up for. So there's an element of trust here and releasing expectation.

And that actually ties in with something else that I wrote down, be humble, there's an element of humility, when we go in and expect it to look a certain way and say, This is what I need. And I think I'm gonna get it. There's not as much humility there is going in saying My intention is for healing or clarity. Or I know I need to let this relationship go. But I haven't been able to I'd like the next step. You know, and then being humble and trusting what shows up.

There are things that I've done, where I thought I got absolutely nothing out of them. You know, I've gone to something that somebody else has created over the last however many years, and it didn't resonate well with me. And then I would realize after the fact that I still received what I needed. Maybe you all I received was, Well, why didn't that land with me like what wasn't resonating, and I came into my own truth in a deeper way. Or I just realized, gosh, they're just doing it a little bit differently. And that's not quite what I feel drawn to.

[47:44] No Dogmas Allowed

We have to trust that we will receive what we need at any point in time. And that spirit knows what's right for us. And that all of its magic, all of its sacred, that there's not some better than or less than, and that kind of ties into the idea of no dogma allowed is what I wrote down.

You know, this isn't about doing things because they're become rote or automatic. If somebody's doing it that way. Most likely, it doesn't feel sacred anymore. It just feels like they're taking steps because they think they're supposed to and somehow they're trying to like earn merit, you know, with spirit and Spirit knows our hearts. We don't have to earn merit through the stuff that we do grace and unconditional love are already granted like they just are. Those exist already as unconditional energies that are part of truth and part of who we are. We don't have to earn it if it feels like it should. It's not, it's a shouldn't, you know, and if something feels stale, or like you're going through the motions, that's an invitation to stop and to really engage with why is this like not resonating anymore? Maybe I've outgrown it, maybe it's time for something new.

So this isn't about again, going having to be super spiritual, having to do things right. Having to like, be like, I'm really cool with ceremonies. I've done this before. I'm an old hat at a sound bath. You know, I know where to put my yoga mat. It's nice when we've done things and we're comfortable psychologically, that feels good for us because we don't like feeling awkward and like we don't know what's going on. At least most of us don't. I don't, you know, maybe some people out there are a little bit more adventurous and they're cool kind of being like I feel like you know, an awkward T Rex right now trying to hold a China cup and drink tea. That is an uncomfortable feeling for me.

But when we are in that uncomfortable space, and we're out of our element, there is just so much more room for spirit to meet us because we've released this preconceived, no question of what it's going to be. And we're really outside of the normal mold or pattern that we're in. So no dogma, no expectations, and we trust the alchemy of what shows up.

[50:12] Life As A Ceremony

And that brings me to my very last note that I made today is that life itself is a ceremony. And I think that is the beautiful thing that many of us so often forget is, there's a lot of life that is not super fun, unless we set an intention to make it more fun or bring it bring joy. You know, a lot of life is not spent on the mountaintop having that moment where we've achieved something, or we're seeing everything come together, or we're getting exactly what we want, how we want it, when we thought we were going to get it, most of life is not composed of that.

There are many, many shades and colors, and some of them are more pleasing than others. And some of them are really hard to go through. And a lot of life is spent either like on the in the valley or on the side of the mountain or sort of in the metaphor, cold woods, where we might not always have the best view of things. So the mountaintop experiences come and the times that we can see more clearly they do come. But there's a lot of time that we're kind of feeling lost or just in the mundane and the day to day.

And it really is up to us to figure out how can I bring meaning to my life? How can I bring something sacred? How can I bring joy, spirit intention? Like how can I make this meaningful, so that I am ascribing meaning to the time that I have, instead of waiting around for meaning to always happen, it will happen, the big moments will happen. Sometimes we have a day that feels like a throwaway day, and nothing great happened. And we were in a bad mood the whole day.

You know, my philosophy on that is just to exercise and being human, not a big deal. But overall, all the stuff that I do in my normal life on a day to day basis is because I want my life to feel meaningful. I want it to feel creative, I want it to feel joyful, I want to feel empowered to track the moon cycles, and learn and teach myself astrology. Because I wanted to know about the Zodiac cycles, I want to feel empowered to go participate in something, even if it's out of my comfort zone. If I feel called to do it. I want to feel empowered to learn about things that speak to me and to make up my own rituals and traditions and ceremonies and put that intention around it and really be in my sole sovereignty so that my life feels more sacred.

And maybe every single day in a week doesn't necessarily feel sacred. I'm laughing. I just had the worst week all's good in my world. But it's so much stress. It was the most challenging week in 2023. And I'm laughing because there was a lot of stuff this week that did not feel very sacred or meaningful. But I'm taking time this weekend to reflect on like, what did I learn? How did I grow? How did this even teach me some of the things that I'm working on? I want the sacredness, so I'm going to bring that into my time this weekend, and kind of use some of the things that I do for grounding, and pull my cards and do the things that speak to my heart. And that felt ceremonial and ritual like to me, because that infuses the meaning and this very whirlwind stressful week. So I want us to feel empowered.

And like I said, Life is the ceremony. If you think about ceremony, as this container, this thing that we engage in, to experience, to heal, to transform, to learn to grow, to gain awareness and to learn about tradition and to pass up possibly pass on knowledge or gain new knowledge. Life itself is the container for that to happen for us as souls. So life is a ceremony. And the more we permission ourselves to think of it as such, the more we feel empowered to bring those elements into the day to day and really feel like we're rocking are Sacred Heart magic.

[54:21] Coming Up Next Week

All right, that wraps us up for today's podcast episode. Next week, we are talking about this is my working title, dancing with spirit, your interconnection to all things that is subject to change. But we are going to be talking about the topic of our interconnection and really partnering with spirit. And how do you feel how can you feel empowered right now like everyday to walk out the door and be like spirit is my co pilot and my co creator and really realize your relationship with spirit and feel like you have permission to really kind of Rock your spiritual magic and be in that connection. 

So we're going to be looking at ideas around that and whatever else wants to come through and present itself to us. All right, with that have an amazing week. I look forward to next time and until then--

Be well be love. Be you, and be magic.