A Druid’s Guide to Connecting With Nature, Part VI: Nature Reverence

The Druid's Garden

Respect. Honor. Reverence. Admiration–these words are often used to describe people, in our lives, afar, or in history that we hold in high regard. But these same words can also be used to describe many druids’ feelings towards the living earth–plants, animals, oceans, rivers, forests, trees, natural wonders, insects, mycelium–the soil web of all life. The world is a wonderous, incredible place, and those of us who follow a path of nature-based and nature-rooted spirituality recognize this. Reverence is having deep resepect for something, treating it with value and worth. Those of us who are drawn to druidry and nature-based spirituality inherently have reverence to the living earth–it is part of what sets us on this path and encourages us in this direction. But as we deepen our spiritual connection with nature, I believe that our reverence also deepens over time.

A beaver dam in the early fall at Parker…

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A Druid’s Guide to Connecting with Nature, Part I: A Framework

A Druid’s guide to connecting with Nature – Part I: A Framework

The Druid's Garden

A lot of people find druidry because they want to “connect” with nature. They want to attune to nature, feel part of it, gain knowledge and wisdom about it. But what does “connecting” to nature look like in practice? Going out in the woods and feeling good? Knowing the name of trees? Walking with sacred intent in a natural place? Spending time in nature? All above the above? And so, over the next few posts, I want to spend more time with the concept of “connecting to nature” and share some strategies for what people can do to connect with nature in a multitude of ways.

As I’ve written about earlier, part of what I see as the core of druidry as a spiritual tradition is the work of “connection.” In that post, I talked about connecting to nature, connecting to the spirit, and connecting to the creative practices as…

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Freedom From Within

By Kingsley Dennis

varo

The real tragedy of our time lies not so much in the unprecedented external events themselves as in the unprecedented ethical destitution and spiritual infirmity which they glaringly reveal.

Paul Brunton

Continue reading “Freedom From Within” →

No Self Is An Island

By Kingsley Dennis

‘No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main’ … John Donne

‘For eternally and always there is only now, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end.’ … Erwin Schrodinger

self

Whether we like to admit it or not, we need other people. Other people in our lives help to teach us about who we are. Their actions and attitudes are like a mirror that reflects to us not only aspects of human behaviour but also facets of our social conditioning.

It is said that our most dominant feature as humans, and similarly our most ignored facet, is that when we are speaking about other people, or things, we are actually speaking about ourselves. Because of this blindness we actually need other people in order to project ourselves onto them. And then perhaps in some moment of clarity we will gain the insight that our descriptions of others are in fact descriptions of ourselves. It is through our social environment and connections that a light may eventually shine back at us.

Continue reading “No Self Is An Island” →

What They All Have in Common . . . New Moon in Aquarius

By Brana Mijatovic, Ph.D.

Take a look at the crystals in this email: what do they have in common?

You guessed it — all are offbeat, original, unusual . . . one could even say — physically impossible — and yet that is how they naturally developed!

What they have in common is that they apparently did not get the memo on how to grow in expected ways, like other crystals . . .

This is how you may want to think of yourself after this New Moon / partial Solar Eclipse in Aquarius.

This New Moon / partial Solar Eclipse in Aquarius is on Thursday, Feb 15 at 4pm encourages us to open up to

new ways of thinking about our hopes, wishes, and dreams

expressing ourselves in all the ways that make us unique

change in how we view and how we build the supportive structures in our lives

investigate the possibilities for communicating our ideas at a larger scale

looking into new ways through which we can spread progressive ideas

envisioning a creation of communities that will promote greater awareness of all that is beneficial for humanity

working together and collaborating in new ways for higher ideals and a greater good

Crystals to help with these are Herkimer Diamond, Moldavite, Chevron Amethyst, Chrysocolla, Clear Quartz (Scepter formation) . . .

A Druid’s Meditation Primer

The Druid's Garden

In this time as the light is coming back into the world, the time surrounding Imbolc, I find myself often going deeply inward for healing and strength and turning towards meditation as a guide for spiritual balance. This deep winter period is, of course, coming on the heels of the frenzied holiday season where many of us get burned out by the amount of hustle and bustle. Further, many of the demands of modern living, particularly for those working wage-earning jobs, require us to move faster, be always “connected” and present with new technology, and have an increasingly fast stream of information pouring in and out of our heads. This can lead to long-term drain on the spirit. In this quiet time of the year, amidst the snows and frozen earth, various meditation techniques allow for rest, centering, and rejuvenation.

The quiet that nature provides…

Meditation offers us…

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Taking up the Path of the Bard III: Practice makes Perfect

The Druid's Garden

“You have so much talent” or “I’m talented enough” are powerful statements, statements I hear on a regular basis from those who long for a creative practice. The idea of talent can cause an incredible amount of inaction, of people not feeling they are “good enough” to even try. I see this, in particular, with the visual arts. But the first time you put pen to paper, if you aren’t Picasso or Monet, you might as well forget about it. This larger cultural ideal, of course, seems at odds with the druid tradition where Eisteddfod and the channeling of Awen are central to our spiritual life. In the druid tradition, creativity isn’t about producing something of commercial value or high quality, its about the channeling of creativity for spiritual purposes. But for those coming out of mainstream Western culture with all of the cultural baggage, this can be difficult to…

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