Jennifer Posada

Unforetold

elaine Thursday, March 6th, 2008

Notes from an Oracle, after one thousand readings in this lifetime…and as many other lifetimes as a tree has leaves…

or, on why I don’t predict the future…most of the time…

There are no promises in this life, and I wouldn’t change that fact for anything. The greatest thing my vision gives me is not a perfect view of the future…I would tremble at the thought…but a better view of right now. After all, the future is both written and unwritten, and the writing was both written long ago, and is at the same time just the extension of the pen stroke we are making right now. We are writing it, and looking ahead in the book is not going to give us answers about the future so much as clues to the present…where both past and future always reside.

The past and the future are glorious myths, and at the same time they are as real as the moment we stand in. They are not separate. The past and the future are treasure maps…and the treasure is this moment. The more we can claim the treasure, the richer and more beautiful the landscape around us becomes. Suddenly there is gold even in the ugliness behind us, and the things we fear could be yet to come.

When someone asks me a question in a reading that I can’t see the outcome of, I describe it as a “little curtain” that is closed. It isn’t that I couldn’t push it aside…it is that I never would. What is there is sacred. What is there is a mystery. That mystery is worth more unseen than it could ever be when pushed or prodded, or looked at prematurely. It is yet unformed, or not meant to be seen. It is not good to force the opening of a bud. Do we really want to know what day of the year we will meet our soulmate? Or what he or she will be wearing, or their name? Do we want to remove the mystery that we would find in all the ones who come before, whose names are different? We usually don’t want to know when we would die…why would we want a map of how we will live? Instead, we want to know how to live. Instead we want to know if we have a soulmate and will meet them this lifetime. The details are details and they are the secret and gorgeous artwork of the universe. We don’t need to know everything about how a flower grows in order to marvel at its aliveness. In fact, its exquisiteness speaks for it and tells us things we could never get from facts.

What we really want is confirmation…and to be gently led and reminded how to return to our own heart’s wisdom. For it is infinite.

The most beautiful things that happen in my life, and the most painful, I sometimes don’t even ask for guidance about. I just let them unfold. I know I will find out as I go along…and I love that achy, excruciating and yet unbelievably-alive process. Don’t get me wrong. I go for guidance on most things…and even when it isn’t about future outcomes, it is always like a ray of light on a dark corner. It is always like sun on my face. It is one of the most beautiful gifts the universe has given me, and all of us.

I just don’t want a map for absolutely everything. Sometimes I think there is nothing better than just heading right into the jungle, with all its dangers and revelations….or a city I have never been to…just to wander without a plan. Just to see what life might put in front of you that you could never have expected. Any other promise is just a ticket to a show that may never happen. Because you are the star. And you get to decide what show you would like to play. Nobody else can tell you that. They can help you remember who you are, but not who you will certainly become.

Because you are becoming. Any image of you is just a freeze-frame of a moving work of art. And if you could see the whole future life would lose some of its very most lovely qualities…spontaneity, creativity, serendipity, synchronicity, surprise, and wilderness….and blindness. Blindness? Oh yes. What would we know about feeling, if we didn’t have to reach out our hands and feel around in the dark when we can’t see? What would we know of the texture of our very own soul? When I was in Tibet and in a very bad way, I wrote in my journal that I didn’t think one could be a true Oracle unless they had trusted in blindness. Trusted not just what they had foreseen and been foretold, but also what they hadn’t seen or been told. Trusting all.

Can we love without knowing? And then love some more?

I am celebrating having done over a thousand readings in this lifetime, and adding that to an ageless past…this just another ring on a very ancient tree. I have seen that it isn’t what you learn about your life in a reading…it is what you learn about your heart that most matters. You may learn about your heart by asking about your life…for your life leads you always back to your heart. No question is too small…it is that it means something to you, and what it means that makes it powerful. Recently, communicating with the Sibyls for my upcoming workshop, they said, “the answer is in the question.” Always.

We know. We know just what we need and how to open to it. We just need to be reminded sometimes, when the pain of living gets to be too much. The heart just needs a place to feel loved and safe enough to let go, to unburden, so it can feel itself again.

We are Oracles to one another all the time when we just stand still and hear someone speak to themselves, and we are Oracles to ourselves when we give ourselves permission to be held. It is all so much more than telling a fortune…it is finding one.

May you be so held, and guided so purely…

With love in my heart,
Jennifer

The Wheel of Change

lady of shalottThursday, February 21st, 2008

Last night, as I watched the eclipse bathe the moon in her orange glow I said to her, “Thank you. Thank you for making me change, even when I didn’t want to. Thank you for slowly peeling away every shred of security I had, and making me find out how to live on new terms. Thank you for taking what I thought of my destiny, and scattering it to the winds to create a completely new design, that I had never dreamed. Thank you for making me question the last things I thought I didn’t have to. Thank you for truly making me naked again, and showing me what I still feared. Thank you for opening me up so wide that I can’t ever close down in any of the same ways again.”

And absolute relief washed over me. I felt like I made it…like we all made it. And when the moon returned in her full white glow, I had never seen her look so new. So fresh…so alive. The February moon has been known as the “Chaste Moon” or moon of Purity and Purification. I could feel how these energies engaged during the eclipse. And entering into the new after being dredged through watching the crumbling of the old again, was a luminous experience.

Many people think that I somehow don’t go through growth experiences anymore, or have any material that comes up to be worked on. I always have a giggle over that. It is, in fact, my edge of growth and expansion that makes me so able to be of assistance to others. I have found this to be true of the stories of most deities and guides as well. It was their human journey and struggle that set them so incredibly free, and has made them such an invaluable resource to so many. I think my human experience is always giving me new frontiers to explore and find creative and powerful energy within. It is a place we are both bound and free to discover, and I prefer to feel free about it whenever I can.

Reflecting back on the energies that have come up in the last few weeks for me, from the vantage point of being in the post-eclipse energies, I am humbled. Situations have already come up since then that have revealed even more to me about tiny places I have been storing emotional energy needlessly…or harboring subtle fear. It is as if I am seeing all of them all at once…so now I can do something about them. I know I can do better, and will feel that much freer now that I am able to.

Because I want to be free…as free as I can be right here on this earth. I want to truly live a life in which I fear nothing. Nothing. I don’t want to let absolutely anything bother me that I don’t need to be putting any energy into at all. I want to not hold energy around things in the past which can then trigger me and be carried into my future needlessly. None of it…none of it…matters that much to me. It certainly doesn’t matter more to me than my freedom, my peace, and my joy. Because this is the new earth…and we can start living on it whenever we are ready to leave the old one behind. I don’t want to live by the credo of an old world within me in which I ever made myself smaller out of fear of any kind.

So I thanked the eclipsing moon because I knew there was power in the painful material that had been coming up for me…the inhibiting and stifling emotions and fear of loss. And that power was the real gift. Because as soon as I saw through the illusions being presented, their energy was freed to become potent life-force that I can now place anywhere I wish in my life, in my body, in my heart. That power gave me wings, more than I had ever had before. As it always, ultimately does for us all. We are all only bound as tightly as we will finally be freed.

I thought about the people around me and how I choose to receive their energies at all times. I can either be indoctrinated or liberated in each moment. I can chose to adhere to any energies that are not my own, or resist them, or finally find that liberation to do neither. To not lean too far in, nor resist. Just to be exactly where I am. To be proud of where I am, even in the midst of what seems so very muddy, because it is…in essence always…taking me somewhere more beautiful than I have been before. It is perfect. It just takes patience and trust as we are led there along paths we are afraid are taking us nowhere. We are never going nowhere. There is always something else further down the road waiting for us, and a reason we had to take that path, including all the detours, to get there.

I am still pretty green right now, with the new energies beginning…but I wouldn’t change it a bit. I like being green. It is full of potential and innocence and lacks self-protection. I don’t want to protect myself anymore, because I don’t want to believe that I need to. Self-protection is built in. There is no need to overdo it. So I am green…and excited. Still slightly nervous, but not in a bad way. Just alive. And feeling. And open. Something good is coming.

May the same be true for you in this new dawn…

In Great Love,
Jennifer

Total Eclipse of the Soul

circeFriday, February 8th, 2008

Weren’t we just here? Overwhelmed by waves of intensity strong enough to drag us down into the undercurrents of the primordial ocean…

Wasn’t it just yesterday that we were watching a full white moon turn red in a sea of stars? I know, I know. For many of us it is always this intense, but if you have been seriously questioning your sanity lately, ready to sob one moment over nothing at all, and laugh harder than ever the next…if you are lonely, even in good company, and then swing to spaces where you would never feel alone even when totally isolated…if you are finding yourself more and more while everything you thought you knew about yourself is falling away…then welcome to the heart of the eclipse energies that are pouring in as I write these words.

I am often catching onto things late, ironic for a prophetess I know, and it was the eve of the recent solar eclipse (the evening of February 6th, pacific time) before the energies had reached such a feverish pitch that I had to figure out what was going on and found out about the eclipses. Now, we sit, once again, between eclipses, in wait, change and preparation for the full lunar eclipse that will fall on the evening of February 20th.

Each set of eclipses, like many other astrological and natural occurrences, brings its own energies of change, and they are always catalysts and catharticly so…they invite in new energies of change often so profound that they overwhelm our systems, which in these times have usually just began to adjust to the last burst. They press us to split at the seams and reconsider our limits and understandings. Sometimes they just completely break us, or blow us apart, in a way we never thought we could handle, or would be able to recover from. And yet we do.

Like Osiris, pieced back together by Isis, we find our disparate parts and create new life from the remains. We give birth to the inner Horus of our spiritual royalty and transcendence. Oh, but aren’t we tired of breaking, falling apart, being re-created! And the feeling of unraveling into ether as our foundations crumble, again and again and again. Finally, we begin to build on nothing but light. This is where we are headed. And we will be broken over and over until there is nothing left that is breakable.

What this crushing force eventually leads us to is the unbroken song inside…the diamonds only revealed from the coal by pressure. Yes, it aches. It makes the mind wild and the body hurt. It also unleashes moments of freedom and ecstasy, ultimately, that are outside of what we may have ever known we could feel in human form. We are eclipsing ourselves, at the soul level…and we may be afraid that we won’t even recognize ourselves on the other side. But we will…just barely and yet completely. We will know ourselves as more beautiful and free than we have ever imagined. And we will get there on a sometimes-exquisite, sometimes-brutal surf.

If you can catch just a glimpse…a tiny glimpse of the brilliant stained-glass light that is waiting right under the pounding of our hearts…it will somehow feel worth it. Worth it to get up each morning and face ourselves in the many mirrors…to do the grocery shopping and the small talk and the billions of moments we go through the motions with a broken heart, holding on for the sweetness again. The sweetness that eludes us too often, or is followed by a bitter taste.

I can only tell you that if you ride the waves enough, rather than avoiding them or holding them at bay…you will become stronger, not weaker. You will begin to ride them so well that eventually even the tsunamis don’t scare you. And that, my friends, is a very big deal…to not be afraid of a wall of water that could consume you like an ant. But you can only be that fearless if you have nothing to lose. And you can only have nothing to lose if you have lost everything that can be lost…and found yourself, and everything that can never be lost, on the other side.

Yes, all this brought forward by the rotation and orbits of the planets. Yes, it is inherent in everything. And it will only keep coming. But the universe wouldn’t dish it out if it didn’t know we have all the tools to handle it. After all, we are the universe. We know what we are doing. Just hold on to the boat when you have to, and don’t be ashamed of the moments that you have to hold on…it is just what is required sometimes to make it through. And then, when you get the impulse and you know the time is right…just let go.

Do the things you love, that inspire hope and joy in your heart and body. They will get you through the long nights that stretch even into the days sometimes. Give yourself all the understanding you can…and begin to dream about what you are becoming, as all that you once were dissolves away…

With Great Love,
Jennifer

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Read Jennifer’s message from the last eclipses by clicking here and scrolling down

Fearless

lilithWednesday, January 23rd, 2008

I have heard my heart tell me before that every single action, every thought, every impulse word or feeling….is rooted more either in love or in fear. Though a situation or circumstance may incline us toward coming from one or the other, we always have a choice. We can always stop and ask ourselves, in any moment, which we are being led by. Fear is a powerful leader, but it is never stronger than love when love is chosen. We are bred and cultured to give ourselves to fear, almost out of self-defense, ironically. Like keeping an enemy close. We are told this is smart, and tough. We epitomize being tough…all the way until it breaks us down, and brings us to our knees. And then we learn about real strength…every time.

What do we really fear? Most people who fear real poverty and hunger will never experience it. And death is only the dissolving into something exquisitely grand. Most of what we fear truly we already have known…loneliness, emptiness….oblivion. It is like we hold onto the fear in hopes that it will provide an antidote somehow if we are ever bitten again…that we will build up an immunity. But all we are doing is keeping the poison alive inside of us. The poison that numbs our hearts, and holds us just a hair’s breadth away from the things we truly yearn for.

We shut down risk, and vulnerability. We seal off the exits and channel down the rivers, into swallowable trickles of the very life-force we are dying for. Passion hurts. Aches. Illuminates everything.

When I wandered down the temple hall that would change my life, I had no idea I was about to meet old friends who had no form. I didn’t know that the voices I somehow knew would begin to speak to me, in that inner sanctuary that waited for me at the end. And the first question they asked has haunted and held me ever since…”is there any room for fear in complete trust?”

No. There just never is.

Every time I am afraid, or even just anxious, I ask myself this. The idea of complete trust floods over me like a healing balm. It is always there. All of the sudden everything comes into perspective, and I know, without a doubt, that everything is happening exactly as it should…and the rest…the rest I let go of…because all of the sudden my hands are open, and I’m not holding on anymore.

I want to live as this open hand. I want life to move through and around me the way a waterfall rolls over your skin when you reach inside it. Nowhere to go…just sensation. Like a flower…beautiful without anything to prove, or hide from.

In the recent Oracle Transmission, the Egyptian God Thoth asked how life might look if we had absolute trust…if we knew, without any doubt, that everything would happen exactly as it should, no matter what. It’s almost as if just the thought brings on this deep and total exhale, body and soul. Suddenly we can stop trying to hold everything together, and pave our paths with such effort and strain. Suddenly there is nothing else to do…but let go, but relax…but free-fall. Suddenly, without much effort…we are fearless.

When we are fearless there is nothing left to resist. We can surrender completely. For once, and every time, it feels like everything…everything…is really going to be alright. And then there isn’t anything to figure out…we just know.

May what you know be like the strongest currents in the ocean that absorb everything else, and may that tide carry you into an almost-unbearable sweetness that begs you, until you submit, to let go and trust…fearlessly.

love,
Jennifer

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Rainbows Inside

jen posadaTuesday, January 15th, 2008

When I was about seven, my grandfather gave me a microscope for christmas. I wasn’t very excited. Of course, I didn’t have any idea what the heck it was anyway. It didn’t have colors, or hair to brush, or wheels to roll along smooth wood floors. It didn’t seem to be a very good toy. But then I figured out what it did…and I got a little bit obsessed. I fell in love with looking at things up close, and with light shining through them. There were slides of plant life…seaweed and moss, blood and organisms. On the slide they just looked like colored blobs…but through this magic instrument they became entire worlds, within worlds. They never ended. They were iridescent, translucent…luminous. They had geometries, and voices, and journeys to take you on. And yet they had nothing to say…no doctrine, no promise. Just beauty.

The best of all, though, were the two plates of glass that you could place anything you wanted inside to look at. One day, I put one of my hairs inside. And I was blown away. I found something unlike anything I had ever seen. I found rainbows, on fire. I found luminous copper flashing gold and yellow glints into forever. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

I looked, and looked. I wanted to look forever.

This is what we really are. Unnamable rainbows beyond exquisite, beyond beautiful, beyond words. We are light behind glass and color, aching to shine, and be seen. Most of all, by ourselves. If we really and truly knew our own beauty, we could never feel ugly, in any way, ever again. We don’t realize that the bigger picture we long for, is often found by looking very, very closely, at ourselves…carefully, deeply, with plenty of warm light to illuminate our essence. Otherwise, all we see is a lifeless blob of color, pressed inside the glass of this strange human life.

In order to see this dimension of beauty, in ourselves and all things, we need an instrument…like my microscope…which gives us perspective. We need to be willing to open up to the other levels of vision and sensation. We need to peel the protective layer off the screen, that makes everything look more dark, and dull, and heavy. We may feel exposed, but we will actually be stronger and clearer than ever before…

The instrument is the heart. The true heart, when open, sees the truth and beauty of everything. It sounds beautiful to open the heart, but it is much more the brilliant and burning and terrible experience only adventurers would be willing to undertake. For it feels like taking your life in your hands, and casting it to the winds. It feels like putting your faith in nothing, and everything. It feels like trusting something you can’t possibly explain, or even understand. We have to let go of understanding, to let go.

When we set these rainbows free, they change everything we feel and see. We stop trying to change what is outside of us, because what radiates from us already does that for us. We, in fact, begin to trail a rainbow behind us, and lay one out before us, everywhere we go. It is not a beauty we have to seek and obtain, but one we already possess. We just have to find out how not to fear it. It holds, in its very humble hands, all the answers to all the prayers we think we have made in vain. It may speak a language we have never heard…but it also understands everything we have never been able to put into words.

They say we only use a tiny percentage of the power of our brains…and this, I often feel, is how little we know of the enormity of our beauty as well. It is a mostly untapped resource, inhibited by outside impressions and deeply held shames. They are the things we put in a box under a floor board and tried to forget, but what we have really forgotten is that they are treasures. If you blow off the dust you will find gold. Just hold it up close.

Just hold it up close…

hold it up to the light.

May the rainbows slip out of the tips of your fingers and the glints in your eyes, and in doing so, make you the finest mirror in which to see your own gorgeous and radiant beauty.

Love,
Jennifer

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Remembering Yourself

oceanSaturday, January 5th, 2008

We are exposed to so many influences in this world… overstimulated, yet ironically at the same time, often undertouched….

Sometimes we have to make a space around ourselves and find a place within or around us to retreat, so that we can find our own perspective again. For only the true perspective that comes from the heart can really help or guide us. The only influences of true help or assistance from the outside are the ones that point us back to our own hearts, or illuminate something therein.

Today, on a simple drive to do a routine errand, I did not realize how very much was on my mind until I was held suddenly still….arrested momentarily…by the ocean outside the window. In one second…even shorter, in a single instant, it entirely restored my clear perspective. It was like looking directly into my true soul right in front of me. It was beautiful, and turbulent, and beyond reproach. It was beyond assessment, comparison, judgement….it was epic, fear-dispelling, ancient, and wild. It was endless, and complete, and true. We recognized each other, in a heartbeat. And my heart synchronized again, with everything pure and good and right inside of me. Because even a small space of doubt feels large when we are closely wound with our own rhythms. When we feel everything…

Then it becomes like a beat that is just a little off, or something that doesn’t sit right…no matter how long we try to make it, adjusting, and fidgeting, and waiting. We realize, at some crucial moment, that it is just time to move on…not the right place or context for us to thrive.

If you really want to know who I am…just watch me dance. Not just any dance but the kind where the beat has overcome everything else, and only the essence remains. That is the place, beyond words and depictions, where I find absolute freedom and expression. And though there are so many outlets for me…writing, sound, music, speaking…dance includes my body. It offers me complete surrender. And there is nothing…not one thing…to prove. There is no outcome, and no conclusion, and no sought-after resolution. It is complete, like the ocean…like our true soul.

Sometimes only these elements…the windy ocean or an intoxicating beat, can bring us back to the place where no labels apply and no impressions matter but those made when our soul presses up against the universe. And that is all that is left. We all seek reflection, as it is natural to our being, but it is where we seek reflection that makes all the difference in how truly we can find ourselves in it. So often we walk around with the fragmented self-image made by years of outside interpretations of who we are. We make a patchwork quilt of the passion and the guilt and try to stay warm underneath it, when really we have a fire inside that can keep us heated always from within.

But we need reminders, like oxygen to keep our inner fire burning bright…so we don’t lose sight of the true moon like a moth flying endlessly and painfully around a lamp and ignoring the nearby open window and the skies. We need to locate what makes us feel real in order to build the inner strength again that it takes to decide who we are on our own terms instead of someone or something else’s. Sometimes this means we need to remove ourselves, if only even for short periods of time, from the influences that cloud our inner voice and make us feel unsure. We need to be able to step back, take stock, get clear.

We need to hear the wind, and find out what it says when we let it blow right through our ribs, and there are no other noises to cover up that song. We need to find what is revealed when everything else disappears, or grows quiet…or dark. And though we sometimes have long periods of this in our lives, it doesn’t have to take more than an afternoon…or ten minutes…or a drive by the ocean on a windy day.

One winter I lived for a month on a small island in the middle of the mediterranean, and the winds would start blowing every evening, shaking the doors and the shutters all night long. I would stand sometimes, at twilight, looking at the endless-seeming seas, and feel that the winds had traveled from europe, and africa, and the middle east, and were all melding and becoming one in the air of this magical place. I felt the perspective of being right in the center of, and yet far-enough removed from everything. It was like a pause button had been pushed on my life, and I was standing in mid-air…without falling. We always have this inner sanctuary, touched by all and yet freed from association with any, but by free choice and invocation.

May you find this island inside…these true reflections, and sources of ever-present deep remembering.

From my heart to yours,
Jennifer

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Trust the Blossom

blossomSunday, December 30th, 2007

Here it comes…a new wind…again and again. We have a new chance with each breath, and each rising moment, but only on rare and special occasion do we really realize it. We grasp truly and fully the moment and all its potential for complete renewal and rebirth, and it is a miracle. A miracle that is always waiting at our fingertips, and yet sometimes seems so very far away. The more years that pass, for many, the harder it is. “Just wait until you are my age…it is so much harder to start over…”

And as children we were like goldfish, or like dogs…each arriving moment a new adventure. Nothing but potential, interrupted only by the impositions of the world around us, slowly creeping into the way we saw ourselves and everything else. But no matter what age you are, how hardened or soft you are, there is a place in each of us that is totally untouched…by time or pain. A place that knows everything about any rebirth we could ever want, and is untainted by the past or impressions of the future.

I have met twenty-year-olds who are afraid of change and new beginnings, and sixty-year-olds who are willing to drop everything and step entirely into the unknown. The soul is the deciding force, and it is braver than our fears, and more powerful than anything we’ve been told. You have to really know who you are in order to not be swayed by who others say you are…your mothers, sisters, friends, brothers, associates, billboards, the public…anybody else. The people who have known us for a lifetime, and those who are just taking a first glimpse or will never even see our face. Nobody can decide who we are but ourselves.

Identities are comfortable…and sometimes even great fun, but too often we grow into them and around them and soon we think we would die if we detached because our roots are wound so intricately through them. We think we are them…we think we would become nothing without them. Our statuesque forms would dissolve into sand and dust and be carried away on the wind. Oh, but the freedom of being nothing…and riding the wind. Stone becomes heavy, and one form eventually can’t do justice to the thriving, writhing, ever-changing heart of our being.

We may be afraid that the form we have in our lives…the structure, is what keeps us from spilling out into everything and losing all we love to utter dilution…but what it opens to us is the oxygen for the spark of new life to ignite. We know when we are avoiding this destiny because nothing will seem to take light in our lives anymore, no matter how much work we put into it. What is dampening our light might be the place we live, or the house or space we reside in…it might be the job we are holding or the company we are keeping. It might be a relationship or a marriage. It might be family we are over-responsible for or friends who no longer reflect us. It might be the activities or groups we are a part of, or even a system of belief or label that doesn’t fit us anymore. When we identify and free up these energy-investments, new life force refreshes within us and creates bounty, health, and creative power to be released in our bodies and experiences. We will start to see ourselves, and our lives, differently.

When we have felt stuck in our routines or circumstances, the world becomes a well-walked path through barren-seeming fields under a grey sky. Day follows day and little things get us by…the color has slowly drained out of so many things by then. At those times the ground feels hard and unyielding. Looking down we may find only one reason for hope…a fistful of seeds clenched in one hand. For the seeds are always there when we are ready to seek them. They won’t feed us yet, and they won’t give us the color or vitality right away that we are yearning for…but they will give us one thing: promise. Just feeling them and putting them into the ground…even only with a half-hearted scatter, will begin something new we can wake up in the morning to watch for. This is the work. The only spiritual work I know…to begin to believe in oneself and take steps of courage toward flight on the wings of our everyday lives. My spirituality lives as much under the touch of my fingers as it does in the other realms…for they are one…like siblings separated at birth but never really parted.

For even as we watch and wait for the seeds to make something green, and to grow into something wild and wonderful, we are trusting the blossom. We are believing that no matter how things look along the way through the growth process, it can all be redeemed by the final revelation that waits in the heart of the flowering. And we cannot know this revelation in the days before, we can only trust. It is hard to build a house on trust. Most people prefer hard ground…even the fruitless kind. But a house built on trust can never fall down. It will never crumble until we are ready to level it and start over again. It is like walking on water, or across hot coals. There are no sure promises in this life, so we might as well attempt to trust the ones that float by us like mirrored bubbles, weightless leaves, ethereal petals, feathery snowflakes, dreamlike spores. They carry a secret strength for those who have reasonless faith.

You, beautiful soul, can be anything you want to be. You can decide what you want to be called, what you want to do, who you want to know, what you want to wear and what you are not. Be bold. Why not? This life is short and what matters more than being all that you are? Everything that really matters in your life will organize around you. You are the central sun and you are being asked to trust your own gravity. Otherwise you forget yourself and are drawn to the gravity of something else to revolve around. We have to become the center of our own universe if we are going to become everything. And we have to be fully ourselves before we can lose ourselves freely in the bliss of oneness. This is what it is to contain continuity…the great eternal body or enlightenment. It is not to deny who we are, but to find out who we really are.

I have seen the end. I know it is like the center of a rose. I know it only holds new life…and the kind of beauty that makes you cry with the movement of your heart. Don’t ask me how I know. I cannot tell you. It cannot be told. You know too. In a way you can’t describe either, and in a way that you often may doubt or ignore…but it is there.

When you think about your new year, consider freedom. Ask yourself how free you could possibly feel this year and for the rest of this life. Consider trust, and how your trust in the universe could be renewed. And contemplate, if you will, how to love yourself more…and more…and more. Decide who you would like to be, who you were before you were told otherwise…or have never had the chance to be, or have yet to discover…and then give yourself permission to become it. Let it be an experiment more than a commitment…a new playground when the rest of the world is telling you to get serious and bear down. Get back up on the swings and kick your legs until you think you have definitely hit another atmosphere and are either going to crash and fall or fly. Slide down and don’t worry so much about your landing because you know it will always be only a few feet off the ground. Get in the sandbox and get all your clothes dirty without caring. Make things just for the sake of making them. Climb the monkey bars and feel the heaviness of your weight, and the strength of your muscles…and don’t be afraid to hold on…or to let go. Give yourself to the resistance, and the release, as you feel.

Trust what you feel. Let it be okay. All of it. Open your eyes to a new day, to a sweet rebirth that is all your own. Breathe deep. Throw it all away and make the story untold again. You will find your power there. You will know you truly are one with the creator, and all creation. May your coming year, and all time to follow, be sprinkled graciously with the kind of laughter you forgot you could make, the moments that wrap your heart in absolute splendor, and the luminosity that lights the heavens with tiny, bright flames. May you be loved, more and deeper than ever before, and may you be astounded by your own beauty in ways you have never been before.

Happy New Year….
Love,
Jennifer Luna

Looking for some ways to celebrate a new start? Visit Jennifer’s list of “Rituals for a New Day

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Three Pomegranate Seeds

pomegranateFriday, December 21st, 2007

“And sometimes I have that dream
where I eat three pomegranate seeds,
and the juice is the color of my blood,
and we all drank together,
and spoke
of the flood…”

from the song “Lost Soul Friends,” by Jennifer Posada

It is the longest night of the year, just beginning, as I write you these words…within hours of the solstice, and days of christmas and a new year…

My life, though beautiful as ever, has recently been touched by loss, of many kinds, which have ricocheted through my being like birds barreling against glass windows in search of freedom. Heading toward the only light they can see, with faithful hearts. Finding, finally, surrender as the last open door to the liberation they seek. Trusting in the dark when all light failed.

Tonight, trying to find another entry I had written about persephone, I began to read my own words and found solace and deep, profound healing within them. This is why I don’t call what I do “my” work, because it is so far beyond me, and belongs to all of us. When I speak, it is just an echo of the voice of your heart telling you what you already know. That is the true gift of an Oracle.

When I was little, I used to love to look at myself in the mirror while my father combed my hair. There was a full length mirror on an armoire in my parents room. I used to be told I was vain, but it was nothing like that. I was fascinated. I was intrigued. I couldn’t believe that the image I saw in the mirror was my form…the form that was providing the vessel in this world for everything I felt inside me. I knew it wasn’t all of me. I knew about the vastness of the universe, but I also saw it in my body…in my own eyes. I could see it everywhere else too, but I knew if I could see it in myself I would never lose sight of it.

We find our power in the most unlikely of places. The places we are afraid to seek because we think it will look wrong, or be wrong somehow. We look for it almost everywhere, but within. We are afraid that to find our power we would have to trust ourselves implicitly, and we aren’t sure we can do that. What else should we trust? For if we are the divine, then there is no further search. When we give over to our own power and wisdom, we free it to be as grand and as true as it really is.

When the Goddess Persephone tells me her story, about her visit to the Underworld and how she became its Queen, she tells it as the journey of finding her power…an experience without which she would never have known her own depth…her own gravity…her own blindingly beautiful light. We need, sometimes, a long dark night to find our light again. It becomes so bright when everything else has faded away. This is why Persephone ate the pomegranate seeds, why Morgaine ate of the food in the faery world, why Eve ate the apple and why Pandora opened the box. What is life if we cannot explore everything that we are, and find our light and power within it all? Isn’t this transcendence? Isn’t this the kind of enlightenment you could never chart a path for? The only path to beauty is one in which we stumble sometimes, and I wouldn’t want to get to heaven, in this world or any other, without scraped knees. And I think, to see forever, you have to climb and fall out of some trees. You have to drown in a few oceans, and find out what sinks and what floats, and you have to forgive yourself, and forgive yourself over and over and over again.

You have to lose a few friends and sometimes have blinders taken off before you are ready. You have to expand and expand…and contract and contract. You have to stay loose, and fall asleep, and wake up somewhere you’ve never been before…with no tools left. You have to be ready for anything and prepared for nothing. And all the while, you have to find the very bottom surface of your being…and run your hands along it, and let it cradle you when nothing else in the world is soft.

I wouldn’t take anything back. I have done and seen so many things already in this short life, and in the countless ones which came before, often spread like photos across the long floor of my heart, and I wouldn’t pick up any of them and throw them away. Because I would not really be seeing their gift. I don’t want to recreate moments of challenge until I see their gifts. I want to dive into the ocean of chaos that the ancient Egyptians knew about, and hold my own vibration….forever.

For that is all we have when everything else we know dissolves, our own vibration, and if we can really get to know it and let it sing through in our lives, we will have every resource we ever need. We will feel held in every moment, and our flame will always burn bright. For we always know the answers, if we but trust them, and better still, if we even trust the times we don’t.

Thank you life…thank you universe…for filling my heart more than I could handle and letting it break…over and over. Thank you for whispering in my ear, every second of every day, that everything is going to be okay…even when I don’t think I can hear it. Thank you for making me strong enough to be brought to my knees, and weak enough to fall apart when keeping it together would cost more than I want it to. Thank you for giving me the courage to trust myself, even when the message on every sign post points me in all other possible directions, so convincingly, like the enchanted woods of alice in her wonderland. Thank you for taking away everything I thought I had, so I could find out what remained.

Thank you for putting honey underneath every shameful shadow in my heart, so that I would know I was doing the right thing when I found its sweetness. Thank you for asking me to become something I have never been, so that I would know that I am everything, and for always, and forever, giving me the choice.

Thank you for letting me remember, on the darkest of all nights, the power and the potency waiting beneath my fears, and the beauty that will rise from within it. Thank you for never letting me become something I am not for someone else, and for giving me the ability to know it, at whatever stage, when I am wearing something that just doesn’t fit me. Thank you for giving me the strength to take it off in the rainy night…and run. free.

And thank you, when I am misled by illusion and falsity, for gently and relentlessly, turning my head back to the place where I can see myself. Because if I have ever felt ugly, you have shown me that I am beautiful. This is why I can show others.

Thank you for the ashes. Thank you for the pomegranate seeds, and for letting me eat of whatever fruit I have ever needed to. Thank you for holding my hand, and for letting me hold my own. I love you life. I love you universe. You have already given me every gift I could ever ask of you…on this long night, for any christmas, or any new year full of more utter devastation and ecstasy, sweetness and sorrow, doubt and trust…and most of all for the hope, and grace which guides me through it all.

May your solstice be marked by the unforgettable fire of beauty and the healing peace of total absolution. May it make room for the light to reenter your life, more powerfully than ever before, and may your power find its truest home at the center of your being to be shared with all those who cross your blessed path. Know that you are loved, beyond any possible measure and more than ever in the moments you think you are not. Keep faith and light many, many candles. I hold you in my heart.

Love,
Jennifer Luna

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Broken, Open

godiva smallMonday, December 10th, 2007

And what would we be…if nothing ever came along to break the hard shells that build up over the heart? If nothing came along to re-break and re-set the broken bones, and the aching soul, so that a deeper healing could take hold?

We spend our lives avoiding pain, and yet it finds us. On the sidewalks and the billboards…from the mouths of the ones that love or dislike us, from the faces in pictures. It finds us when we least expect it, and when we know it is coming, just the same. It brings us to our knees…and when our hearts are strong our bodies still may fall. It brings us down when we have forgotten the smell of the earth, and lifts us up when we are already to high to find oxygen enough to breathe.

We can be anywhere in the world and find it. We can hide, and it will creep into the places we have sealed away. It will burn us, but it will eventually sanctify us in a way I can never name. When we have long ago lost our breath, we will find the heavens waiting…and the stars shining around us like a treasure we never could have hoped for.

We cannot heal this world, but we can take a tender hand to our own broken hearts…and begin there. We can look at ourselves the way we would have looked at Isis when she lost Osiris, or Magdalen when she lost Jeshua, or anyone who has lost someone or something they love. We can remember that we are the child of the heavens, and we are adored. We can treat ourselves with that adoration, and as we reach out to ourselves in an act of love and bravery, others may feel a bit of that hope and light reach them…like a wave around the world.

We still have suffering in this world. Yours, and mine. Strangers and friends. But beneath this suffering there is a golden earth emerging…a place of light bright enough to heal all wounds, and redress all pains…a love that is the only thing more consuming, and more pervasive. Give it to yourself. Others will be touched. We are all connected in such a quiet, perfect way. And yet our wholeness is so complete within. We are the sanctuary where the flame is always lit over the lake.

Never fear that you don’t do enough. Just keep enough fuel to sustain your flame every day, and through the night, and trust all that is meant to find you will see that light, on its journey home to you. You are not lost. You are a flower in the protective, loving hands of god. You will only ever fall hard to be broken, and only ever ultimately be broken in order to open, and you will only ever open in order to find that you are more of a beauty than you ever knew before.

With all my Heart,
Jennifer Luna

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Through the Cracks

thisbeSunday, December 2nd, 2007

“There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets through.”
Leonard Cohen

There is a perfect moment many of us wait for. Perhaps it is warm and we are loved, and we feel beautiful in that moment…so beautiful. We feel that when we have overcome our flaws and filled up our cracks, we will be made golden and whole, and all will be right within and around us. It is a mystical moment that seems to drift in a slightly heavenly realm just out of our reach most of the time, like a kite we hold the string to…forever connected to us and yet rarely touched.

I think the place we need to touch is as close as it can possibly be, and while it is certainly in our hearts it is also as near as the surface of our skin…and as tangible. It is perhaps within the total redemption of the body that we find that absolution and possession of the soul. Maybe if we stopped seeing anything ugly about our image in the mirror, we would stop finding it in our hearts, and feel overcome by our own radiance. We can take either door to our own beauty…through the heart outward or the body inward, but the route of the body is the less proclaimed. We think the gateway of the body will distract and deceive us, but when we think this we know it not.

Do you ever have those days when nothing seems smooth? Everything seems to come with a rugged edge or a jagged seam? It becomes a bumpy ride over a landscape of nothing but those seams, as the parts of our lives seem to be roughly patched together. The days that we feel like a cracked jar that has been glued back together too many times, about to crumble at the smallest of pressures…

We want to escape from the cracks and the runs in the fabric, but when we flee we do not hear what they are telling us. For they are not our enemies but manifestations of our own being, coming to share with us something. They have wisdom and even healing within them. They can sing.

We just have to be courageous, and so patient. We have to get really close to the walls between ourselves and what we are keeping out, or in, and listen to the voices of the places that are crumbling. They will tell us why, and show us what is beautiful under what seems like nothing but ugly decay. They will let the light in. They will reveal to us the ancient writings on the walls that tell us why they were built in the first place, long before we can remember. They will remind us.

If you wish to do this and are experiencing challenges of any kind in your life right now, take an evening to yourself and find a quiet space to be. Make the space feel intimate and like it is very much your own. Bring a journal and candle if you like, and listen to what comes out of your pen. Don’t judge it at all if you possibly can. Let it be mundane, or desperate, dull or electrified. Keep listening when you think you are done. Gently push yourself to write more, to listen more, and to trust the voice that begins to emerge from your heart.

Know that you are beautiful beyond measure. Beyond comparison. The golden moment of your perfection is the moment you embrace all of who you are, cracks and all, as part of that unfathomable glory and exquisite grace. You are a moving, walking, breathing piece of art, whose heart beats through all things, and finds ways to open any door you wish it to.

With my Love,
Jennifer Luna

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