GODDESS • MOON • SUN

Author & Artist: R.R. Shakti 

Pachamama, near and dear.
I feel you here, now.
​Respectfully, I stand in the place of my ancestors and elders. I am your daughter–descendant of the Earth and Sky. 
The people of the Andes Mountains are my brothers and my sisters. Like they have done for many centuries, I invoke your fertile wisdom. 
As the hurricane swells and the rainforests burn, please forgive my destructive tendencies. 
May your image nourish my heart fire–my deepest desire to give. 
As Mother of the Sun and Moon, please show me where to share my creative energy and what to let go. 
Let it be so. 

You can use this prayer to remember the Creative Source as she pervades all of Nature, including you. 
Remember the seeds you planted at the beginning of the year. 

• How does your garden grow, now?​
• Are you living in the light of your highest intentions? 
• Do the deepest desires of your visionary heart align with your daily actions? 

Honor the teachers and guides who have brought you to this point. 
Revisit the shadow spaces within you.
Illuminate the truth. 

• Are there weeds that need your attention?
• What are those weeds? List them. 

Examine those habits, activities, and relationships that would usurp your creative resources. 
Tend your blossoms with care. 

Take note of how far you have traveled.
Remember where you are going. Activate it in writing: 

• Where are you going? 
• How will you know when you are there? 
• What will it look like? 
• What will it feel like? 

Honor the wisdom that speaks through your heart. 
Honor the guidance of your emotions. 
Honor your unique gifts. List them. 

As the sun shines without discrimination or shame,
do not dim your light for anyone or anything. 

MYTH & MYSTIC • GODDESS • MOON

Oh the Honey Moon! 
Bask in the sweetness of June with the Nigerian goddess, Ọṣun, who reminds you to honor your senses. 

Stories that inspire this Honey Moon optimize the objectives of my entire Eleven Moons journey. She calls me back to sky gazing, and reminds me to center within the lunar cycles, for optimal stability. She says, "Feel your body child. Listen and feel."
Inside the Laskhmi Moons, Ọṣun beckons me to honor and celebrate the beauty, blessings, and blissful sensations of this human experience. There I re-encounter my greatest powers with renewed inspiration.

Here’s a little loving caution, from experience: 
Denying the pleasures of your creative brilliance is denying your most radiant health, joy and wholeness. It limits your capacity for profound Love and true freedom. So, once again, I invite you to remember that you are the Creative Power of the entire cosmos. This time, with the playful messages of Ọṣun. 

Pause. Soften. Take a deep breath...Something huge is coming up. In the words of the Icelandic singer, Bjork: “It takes courage to enjoy it.” Creative freedom begins when you embrace your heart's pure delight despite your fears or feelings of insecurity. Escape the cultural wasteland of filtered reality to tap the eternal reservoir of your authentic beauty and unlimited joy. 

Once and forever, At the beginning of time the supreme deity, Olódùmarè, sent divine spirits to Earth to complete the mission of creation. In the Yoruba traditions of West Africa, these gods are called orisha. 

​Olódùmarè sent sixteen male orisha and one female to Earth. Her name is Ọṣun, “the sweet source of all good things." 

The sixteen male orisha set about organizing the new universe.
Striving for perfection, the male orisha used intellectual fires, mighty stone, and brut force winds to create the natural world. 

All the while, they completely ignored Ọṣun. They thought her powers were messy–too erratic, erotic and fluid. They worried she would bring chaos to their heavily ruled order. So, frustrated by their dismissive behavior, Ọṣun left her brothers and went to live on the moon. There she watched, from above, the male orisha at work. 

She witnessed the whole catastrophe as the gods endeavors failed. Despite their strength and intellect, their world was jsut not livable. Epidemic plagued the earth. All the created beings became deathly ill. The plants and trees withered up and healing rains refused to fall.
The orisha returned to Olódùmarè with the disappointing news. 

Olódùmarè looked around for Ọṣun. When he saw that she was not with her brothers, he said: 
“What have you done?” 
“Don’t you know you can never succeed without that one who cures all ailments with her sweet and sensual waters.” 

Knowing they had made a huge mistake, the orisha apologized to Olódùmarè. It is not me, said the Great Ruler, who needs your apology.
Go and ask your sister for her forgiveness and for her help so that together, you can create a sustainable world. 

The spirits went and found Ọṣun on the moon. Before they could even finish their concession, Ọṣun embraced them with her grace. She sent her magic love to fertilize the Earth, pouring cascades of fresh water unto the parched and crusty ground. Her rivers sparkled with nourishment and healing power. Every living being was refreshed and revived. And that is how Ọṣun became known as Yeye (mother) of all people.  
​

Stories of Ọṣun originated in the African Yoruba culture of Southern Nigeria. They arrived to the Americas via the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Today, myths of the orisha may be heard throughout North and South America.

Like the Hindu Lakshmi, Ọṣun is an archetype of sensuality, abundance, wealth, art and love. She is the mysterious presence of fertility and joy that springs forth from the waters of creation. She is the goddess of attraction, seduction and compassion; a mystic who transmits the secrets of the universe through dreams and divination. Ọṣun communicates and is communicated through stories, symbols, and rites. Her nature is as fluid and amorphous as the fresh water through which she travels. She overflows with beauty and dynamism. She is often capricious and unpredictable. 

Ọṣun invites you to treasure the soft powers of sensuality and pleasure. She reminds you that the peace and freedom you desire  won’t come from the forceful fires of your judgements or perfectionism. Your creative power lies inside the sweetness of your commitment to Love. Invest in self-nurturing compassion and self-care.   

You have come to this Earth to express your Self as you. You are the only one who can. When you step into the realization of your miraculous beauty, you begin to embody your full courage and compassion. 

Be open to feel all the feels. Enjoy all the sensations that this human experience has to offer.
You are here for a reason.

​Embrace every moment with sensual delight. ​

MYTH & MYSTIC • GODDESS 

MYTH & MYSTIC • POETRY • TANTRA

​Once and forever, in fact before time, the heart of the universe was singular and all alone.
There was no thing–no matter, no color, no shape–just the formless expanse of infinite bliss.
Without form, it was unbound. Beyond movement and measure and sound.
No limitations and no constraints, the heart of the universe was absolutely free.
This ocean of fertile emptiness at the center of nothing
(and beyond the beyond)
has been called Paramashiva, which means absolute auspicious stillness.

This auspicious stillness
(the motionless heart of the universe)
​lacked nothing because it had nothing to lack.
There existed no subject for an object, and no object to track.
There was no one to know one, and nothing to know.
There was no with-ness, no witness, and nothing to show.
And there, at the silent center of no-thing, there arose the first hunger
– the inexplicable desire to become.

It was the urge to experience be-ing, to dance the dance of self-exploration.
The heart of the universe yearned to be conscious; to know itself as someone because
There can be no dance without a dancer...

​The first hunger to become
appeared as an impulse, a shakti, a manifesting power and the will to create.
From that impulse arose a pulsation like the tick/tock of a cosmic clock, turning singularity into duality:
silence and sound,
dark and light,
past and future,
day and night,
subject and object in conscious flow.

There was someone to be known, and someone to know–a dancer, a witness, and a glorious show.
The desire to become is the desire to be with;
to be in dynamic relationship.
Because it takes one to know one.
So the story of creation is the first great Love story:

​The one absolute reality, hungry to witness itself, became two:
the divine duality, Shiva and Shakti.

Shiva is the formless field of infinite potential, holding space for the creative power.
Shakti is that power–creative energy in motion.
Together, they dance in the delight of their separation.
Their impulse to become became pulsation; became continuous vibration; then
through the music of the Universe
became creative emanation, as all things poured forward from the One.
Weaving a web of sounds and shapes and colors, Shakti becomes–Herself–a mandala of patterns and sensation.
She becomes and she becomes and she becomes again, without end...through the dance of desire and realization.
And all of this becoming brings more delight and inspiration.
It is the creative power of universal consciousness at play.
It is the triumphant display of boundless potential taking form for the sake of being known.
It takes one to know one.
It takes two to make a third.
Through the manifesting power of the cosmic word, Shakti informs the infinite forms of the myriad and countless things. She is the sun and the sky, the vast cosmic sea. She is the moon and the shadow of memory. She is the atmosphere and the ocean. She is the spark and soot of the fire. She is every word and every thought: every song and every bone. She is all things manifest and all things waiting to be shown. She is the source of the second hunger; she is the desire to be known.

That is why you are here,
to step beyond fear
and make yourself known.

The creative power of the cosmos, in her play, hungers to be realized in the most unique way.
She wants to be known as you.
Bound by sound and form and sensitivity, Shakti stands (as you) at the threshold of reality and revelation. She peers into the empty void and calls into the heart of the universe:
“Who am I?”
In the silent way of auspicious stillness, Shiva answers: You are. You are the Soul Artist.
You are the music of the cosmos–the dancer and the dance.
Your own creative impulse is the evidence: You’re the beautiful consequence of a long chain of unfathomable sonic glory.
You are the whole, entire story.
You are the seed that was planted, and you are the fruitful show. You are the knower and you are the one whom the knower wants to know.
You are the very heart of the universe, standing at the threshold of revelation, looking back at itself in wonder. After eons of unfolding and myriad expression, you are here. Look through the mirror of your third eye and you will see: 

“You are me.”

You will see me in the empty space, between the moon and sun.
You will see me and know that you are me and we are one.
Formless in the womb and returning to the tomb, you are the eternal witness in the void.
I am the fear inside your heart’s desire; the terrifying darkness beneath the sacred fire.
I am the peace and the freedom you most crave.
You will discover me in waves of striking stillness,
under the blaring chaos of the human chorus.
You will know me as the unstruck sound of nature’s rhythmic song; and meet me in the field, beyond all judgements of right and wrong.
You will know me when you know the Love before beginning and with no end:
With the passion of belonging, with the touch of skin to skin; in the face of a new baby, and with a lover’s death; at the center of the turning wheel, with every passing breath.
When the groundlessness of everything makes you feel alone–you’ve roamed cycles of creation, and your still looking for your home.
Once the truth of your existence forces you to face the end, and you’re clinging to the edges and you’re searching for a friend...
As you scatter your love’s ashes, when you fall onto your knees. When the war is far from over, but you hear the heart-felt pleas of longing.
They say, “When can we finally be one?”
You will yearn to remember who you really are, beyond your limitations, sensitivity and scars. After countless stars have come and gone, you will crave eternity.
Because I am that and because you are me,
you will know the mystic hunger: the desire to be free. –the desire to be One with the One reality.
So go into the wild, and you will find me there, with the sacred river flowing through my loosely knotted hair. I’ll be sitting in deep silence at the summit of your heart.
Inside the still point, at the epicentre of the dance, my skin smeared in ash.
I’ll be wearing tiger’s skin and the wings of a crow.
You will see me and you’ll know: I am the freedom that you seek.
And I have been with you, right inside you, every single step of the way.
The peace you ultimately crave is, in fact, your rightful home.
Wake inside the dream to find you’ve never been alone.
You are the Love beyond all opposites.
Your Love will reunite us with a numinous kiss into a sacred marriage of timeless bliss. At which point, you will return to the absolute freedom of auspicious stillness.

You will be gone, gone, gone,
(beyond the beyond).
​And I will be no-thing without you.

​So then, we will begin, again.

MYTH & MYSTIC • SOUL STORIES

Myth is story that gives life meaning.
Personal myths are the stories of your own life; the stories that build and support how you view the world around you...and who you think you are. The bones of your personal myth are the raw data, unbreakable and unchanging. They are the real and observable experiences that make up the foundational details of your memories. When you are empowered, you know that you are the only one who can make meaning of those bones. This is the story of La Loba (the Wolf Woman).
Like you, La Loba is a bone collector.​

MYTH & MYSTIC • SHADOW STORIES

 If you want to be completely whole, according to Jungian Psychology, you must realize that you are more that your finite ego. You must become aware of the unconscious contents of your psyche that influence your choices, relationships, and behavior.
When you shed light on your shadows they cease to have power over you. Once you free yourself of the need to hide your wounds, you will become healed. When you pay attention to the emotions, desires, and urges that wait in the roots of your psyche, they will cease to haunt you.
Confront and transform what limits you with profound courage. Expand beyond even your greatest fears!