The Elephant In The Moon

We know, where have we been? There were some major happenings in our emotional and spiritual journey that required our attention, and now we return from a long break to find all of us in the growing phase of the lunar cycle and love portion of the LEAP program. We had a bit of a lapse in our writing skills from the heart, and didn’t feel it would be right to give you something that was not from a direct loving light. Life choices and our spiritual progress can feel like a lot of work at this stage, and we have to find ways to push through. We found our home filled with an elephant or two and they were dying to be let out and talked about. So as we reminded ourselves this past week, we remind you to keep a forward motion towards growth, even when you feel the heavy burdens are slowing you down. Reward for your efforts will show and it will all come together in time.

We do not practice any religion but we respect and admire vast elements of many beliefs. There is a Hindu God – Ganesh, which many people refer to as the “remover of obstacles”, which is true, but he also carries out the task of placing obstacles in your way when you need it. You can find his familiar multi-armed, elephant-headed figure all throughout India and Nepal.

Constantly creating, we’re sometimes so distracted by our latest positive endeavor that we ignore the elephant in the room lingering from the past. Since most of us have not found complete stillness of our minds yet, our mind is firing multiple times per second. We fill our minds with new ideas, judgments, fears and thoughts all at once. We can be extremely talented at making new things happen and pushing towards new goals and conveniently forget to deal with the lessons of the most recent negative experience. Growth is not about deflection or avoidance of the negative, but the acceptance of bad situations and the strength gained from the depths of the despair involved in them. For us, we moved into our new life with divine intention towards our soul’s work and giving back to the spiritual community. We created this new life with less bills and let go of old luxuries and settled into a simpler, more planet-loving life. However, we still have commitments and requirements for this life. We still have some bills and lifestyle requirements that can create stressful moments for us when faith should prevail. But in our shadowy bliss of the new, we found ourselves creating distractions away from the stressful, negative attributes our new life had to offer. We love what we are doing far more than anything else we have ever done, but nothing is without its challenges.

This past week was a slow-growing one for us with a few things looming heavily. We have been trying to open things up for our retreats and for Souls Converge to really take off and be our main focus. We took a job for a local winery to make ends meet, and it was hard work. It did provide for us to pay our bills so that we have internet, our website, gas, food and our home. We were exhausted after this work and couldn’t get a post out, or we didn’t want to is more like it. Our low energy and lack of motivation to do anything but sleep, was not a place in which we wanted to write from. We were tired, imbalanced, and not in a place of great faith in our hearts. LEAP is such a huge commitment that we chose, and we knew we had to push through. Any form of a Ganesh would have been well received to assist in loading case after case of wine onto pallets or just sort out thoughts and emotions. Perhaps Ganesh was there, watching us struggle and placing this obstacle of money and work in our path as divine intervention. There are many things we cannot control, but in a constant process of creation, you are an active architect. Our mistake was continuing to draw up plans before we had a clear view of the land on which to build on.

Buildings are only as strong as their foundations. Plants and trees only as strong as their roots. So it only makes sense that our quality of growth and strength comes from how grounded and balanced we are. What have we done to make ourselves healthy and not brittle, susceptible to breaking? What do we eat to contribute to the imbalance? What is not grounded that we engage in – tv shows, fast food, venomous people, and hurtful thoughts. When you begin to really look at what you are including in your daily process of living, you find the weak parts of your structure and it can open your eyes to how YOU are contributing to the weakness of your overall being. The judgements placed upon our society, and spiritual choices are disappointing at times. A simple notion towards a vegetarian diet can make others judge the power of the person choosing it. When you think of an elephant don’t you think powerful and strong? And yet we find another thing Ganesh is a symbol of – the first chakra. According to Kundalini yoga, Ganesh also resides in us as the “base, or foundation” of support.

We encourage you to find a stillness in your heart for a moment and feel this time of growth. Address any lingering issues you may have. Release them from you and you from them. Send out loving light with compassion as you watch them float away. It takes courage to face these things head on, and it will probably hurt. Just like those pesky leg pains in the middle of the night – when you get them, you know you’re growing. Find a strength in that and you will become a more balanced person from it. We are working with you and alongside our grand moon and her effects on us. Just a tip: the next time you feel an elephant in your spiritual “room”, (pink, white, Ganesh or otherwise), walk right up to it with a full heart and introduce yourself. You may even find yourself thanking it for the assistance in supporting your foundation of growth.

With full hearts and wishes for growth,

Lonny & Kristen

Click here for meditations and exercises for this phase.

A Full Moon’s Expectations

The full moon is a great phase to allow for meditative time outside. During this portion of our LEAP (Love, Enjoy, Appreciate, Play) program, we are in the appreciation phase. Choosing more of the color purple and like tones. Incorporate it into the next few days and it will help your energy to focus inward. It is a great color to implement into gratitude for future desires of attraction. It harnesses the soul’s power and sense of knowing.

Walking is structured to bring clarity, and we find that clarity breeds appreciation. We encourage you to be still in the beautiful surroundings you can find just outside your front door. Feel the amounts of appreciation that come out of the natural moments occurring every second, even when we are not present. We would suggest rubbing a drop or two of Young Living’s Gratitude blend on the region over your heart, and have it keep you present as you experience all the wonders of nature. For more on our take, and exercises during the full moon you can refer to our past blog “Appreciation For Super Moon”.

We had a special guest in our home and visiting our property this week, (which will be open for retreats soon). He is a man going through a life change, (as we all are). He was looking for something – perhaps direction, (as we all do from time to time), and was hoping to find a bit of clarity here. Which was ironic, as we have had some cloudy weather in our growth lately. Not the kind where you don’t know your path, but the kind where you know exactly where you need to be, can see it clearly, and yet there are HUGE obstacles blocking your way. So we found ourselves at a bit of a block, but were attempting to roll with it. When our house guest came on so sudden, we were absolutely delighted to have him. True to form, he came bearing gifts of outside ideas and a fresh look at what we have to offer others like him. It’s funny when you are so focused on a single path or outcome, you have no peripheral vision. There could be many other ways that are easier and more clear but in your overwhelmed state you can only see what is in your direct line of focus. Sometimes you just need an outsider to snap you out of it and say, “Hey, look over here!”

And that’s just what our house guest did. More specifically, he lead us on a path to discover a great image we take for granted everyday. There is a tree off in the hill next to our property, so tall and out of the ordinary that it cannot be ignored. This tree is widely known to be thousands of years old and a couple hundred years ago was struck by lightning. Nature’s force made all the top branches and top portion of the trunk curl down from the center in all directions, affectionately naming it, the “Umbrella Tree”. We have many hikes available to us here in all directions and we sometimes even go 6 miles down the road for one hike in particular, but we had never tried this one and it is right off our back porch! Our house guest was completely focused on getting all of us to the Umbrella Tree, and so we all made the trek.

And a trek it surely was, but no time was spent enjoying the Umbrella Tree itself. We were all in a very heightened vibrational state and felt very in tune for finding it. We had grand existential ideas of meditating and enjoying it’s energy once we reached the hollowed out trunk. But after spending over 2 hours roaming around lost, we finally gave into the fact that our perception of where we were was very off, and it was best to just head back home. We were very, very turned around to be lost for that long having just walked just off our back porch, and up the hill a bit.

When we finally got back home, there was the tree, towering over all the others on the hill top staring down at us over our bonfire. The tree seemed to be saying, “I never moved, I was right here all along.” So it begs the question, “Were we ever really lost at all or were we just on a different path?” The Umbrella Tree is very clearly there – looming through our kitchen window even as we write this, and we were meant to roam without ever reaching it. At one point, we were at the very top of the mountain and looking all around, thinking how could we miss something so grand? But the funny thing about perspective is that, when you finally get some, it never looks the way you expected it to. So maybe that’s it, stop expecting things to look the way we think they should and we’ll be fine. What we think “awakening”, “spiritual growth” or “ascension” is suppose to look like just distracts us from the bigger goal. If you come for one of our retreats, you’ll find, (as we did), that our greatest hike is right here next to us. No need to go off searching, it was here all along, we just needed someone to stop and point it out to us.

The full moon is just like our Umbrella Tree, it towers over us and gives direction but can’t hold our hand. The energy can be quite overwhelming when we know where we’re going, even more so than when we don’t. Knowledge does equal more responsibility. And when we are finally blessed with the clarity or enlightenment for our path, we can’t be discouraged by the work envolved in getting there. We must find a knowing in our hearts that we’ll find a way. If we can find strength to move from a place of our own enlightened being, regardless of it’s cloudy moments that even a full moon can’t help, we open up to the path of finding ourselves. And just when we think we’re really lost – we’re not. We are exactly where we’re supposed to be – If we can embrace the energy of the here and now, we can embrace ourselves.

Wishing you great abundance and growth!

~Lonny & Kristen