Gracefully relinquishing power
Blog by Lukas An old friend once looked me in the eye and, with all the seriousness he could muster, uttered words that have stayed with me to this day: “Those with power will never give it up voluntarily. It…
Category spiritual skills
Mothering our Spirits
Blog by Valerie Some days I feel like I am running a race from the moment I wake up to ensure I use my time carefully to fulfil my responsibilities with my family, around the house and garden, with the…
Calendar Year Reflections
Blog by Valerie Honour all ancestors – of land, lineage and spirit. Live in balance. This is a steady life’s mission. And even after years of this commitment, I can still feel profoundly torn at times, like I’m being called…
For the love of destruction
Blog by Valerie We recently revisited one of my favourite childhood movies with our daughter, Ferngully. I was reminded of the depiction of pure destruction and the power and joy of that aspect of our nature in the character of…
The Paradox of Healing
Blog by Valerie Years ago when I took a uni course on social psychology my main takeaway was that people who use positive psychology have better mental health than those who don’t. But, if a belief or mantra that has…
Parenting with Indigenous Science
Blog by Valerie There’s so much parenting advice, and so little I resonate with, so I thought I’d share my perspective. Parenting is about building relationships through developmentally appropriate leadership (which is related to a previous post on…
Darkness
Blog by Valerie “Darkness is the purest form of light” is a teaching I deeply honour from Tiwa Elder Joseph Rael – Beautiful Painted Arrow. He says this because out of darkness all colours and possibilities emerge, whereas white light…
Trickery of heartfelt words
Blog by Valerie Many of us are familiar with the four (or five) agreements concept of spiritual teachings Miguel Ruiz wrote about based on ancient Toltec wisdom. The first is: Be impeccable with your word. It is much easier to…
Spiritual Secret Sauce
Blog by Valerie Over the years I have observed a number of spiritual seekers looking for a ‘secret sauce’ solution to their lives – some kind of trick or program that, if they followed it, would lessen their pain and…
Clean & Dirty Pain
Blog by Valerie I recently came across the concepts of clean and dirty pain. This is a well written deep dive if you want to read it before I share my perspective. I’ll describe it as follows: Clean pain is…