How to Bring the 5 Elements of Feng Shui to Your Door

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In Feng Shui your front door represents your life purpose and or career. It’s important to have the five elements to balance the energy that goes into your space. This doorway has four of the five:

  1. Wood – in the material of the door;
  2. Metal – in the color grey of the stone;
  3. Water – in the color black of the knockers and mat;
  4. Earth – in the plant, and in the square shape on the door but is missing the fire element.

An easy solution would be to place two red flowering plants like a geraniums on either side of the front door.

The Spirituality of Our Pets

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Years ago while in Lyon, France, I stumbled onto what the locals told me was a “healing” well. It was named after my favorite medieval saint: Saint Guinefort.

In the thirteenth century, a Dominican friar, Etienne de Bourbon was preaching near Lyon, when he heard during confession that many of the local women had taken their children to Saint Guinefort. Etienne had never heard of this saint, and wanted to learn more, so he investigated.

Much to his surprise, he discovered that Saint Guinefort was actually a dog . . . a greyhound, in fact. As the hagiography of Guinefort goes, he was a dog on a large estate. One day, when his master and mistress had left the house, a snake entered into the castle and began to approach the baby’s cradle. Guinefort attacked and killed the snake, and was badly hurt himself in the fight. He stayed to guard the cradle, and so when the parents returned, they found the cradle knocked over, and both dog and cradle covered in blood. Assuming that Guinefort had attacked the baby, the lord killed him with his sword—only to find the baby safe and unharmed, and the corpse of the serpent torn to pieces. Realizing their error, they made a shrine for the unjustly slain Guinefort, and began to venerate it. Etienne was none too impressed with the locals’ veneration of a dog as a saint, so he made them destroy the shrine and burn the remains of Guinefort—but that apparently did not end the cult of St. Guinefort, because it survived all the way into the twentieth century. If this story seems familiar, it may be because a version of it is found in the Disney film, Lady and the Tramp.

Animals have been the spiritual companions of humans since the beginning of recorded time. The earliest indication of the spiritual significance of the human-animal relationship can be found in the 20,000 year-old cave wall painting of Cro-Magnon people.

In many if not most cultures, animals have served a variety of spiritual functions: They have acted as guardians and shamans, and have appeared in images of an afterlife. Many ancient creation myths depict God with a dog.

That animals touch us in a deep and meaningful place is not a new phenomenon, but one that pervades the history of the human-animal relationship. Throughout history, they have offered us something fundamental: a direct and immediate sense of both joy and love. We recognize that animals seem to feel more intensely and purely than we do. I know I yearn to express myself with such abandon and integrity.

In having a relationship with our animals we can recover that which is true within us and, and through the discovery of that truth, find our spiritual direction. Simply, animals teach us about love: how to love, how to enjoy being loved, and how loving generates more love.

They teach us the language of the spirit. Animals can’t “talk” to us, yet they communicate with us and commune with us in a language that does not require words, rather feelings. They help us to understand that words can be limiting. Animals offer the unique opportunity to transcend the boundaries of our human perspectives; they allow us to stretch our consciousness toward an understanding that enables us to grow beyond our narrow viewpoint.

I see animals as the spiritual guardians or keepers on the planet. They never lose their awareness of themselves as spirit and their innate connection to all of life. Of all species, humans appear to need the most education to master their existence. Humans, unlike most animals, struggle with their analytical complexity and fail to see or even acknowledge themselves as spiritual beings.

I think Will Rogers sums up my feelings perfectly when he said, “If there are no dogs in heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.” Indeed and some day, I look forward to meeting St. Guinefort.

Reality Shows and Men’s Rite of Passage

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“We cannot, today, recreate the original ‘wilderness man’ in shape, form and habitat. But we can recover him, because he exists in us. He is the foundation in spirit or psyche on which we build, and we are not complete until we have recovered him.” Laurens van der Post

It seems most of the men I know are watching reality shows like, “Survivor” or “Survivor Man,” programs about living and existing with no food, no shelter and no fresh water. I would rather watch paint dry than watch something like this, but it occurs to me that there is something missing out of these men’s lives, something primal, perhaps it’s an initiation experience, an ancient ritual no longer present in our modern world.

Many traditional cultures escorted their young men into the world of adulthood and the sacred through an elaborate series of rituals. These rituals occurred in space set apart from the rest of the community and took place over many weeks or months. Preparation for initiation was often extensive and included witnessing the ongoing life of the people and observing the qualities displayed by men of spirit. Underneath and holding up this initiatory process was a deep and abiding relationship to nature and the spirits of the place. This passage was also rooted in a nearly endless succession of generations that had come to learn the necessity of such a transition.

The awareness for this is essentially universal: a process of intense focus, communal reflection and immersion in the natural and supernatural worlds must shape a man’s soul. In other words, to become a man, certain gateways needed to be crossed in order for that territory to be fully embedded within the man.

An additional value of initiation for modern men concerns the need to reestablish a link with the wild. Some say this constitutes a regression to the past, while others see it as an opportunity to sanction a letting go of restraint. While these two options are intriguing, they are nonetheless far from what is being advocated. Thoreau said, “In wildness is the preservation of the world.” It is precisely this wildness that we are in search of, one that fosters an authenticity that is most like nature. The depth of conditioning that we are shaped by is immense and the levels of crippling self-consciousness that results depletes a man until he lives a life, as Thoreau also said, “of quiet desperation.” The world is in great need of men who live genuinely and who are willing to stand outside of consensus reality and speak words of truth.

Initiation experiences are archetypal as well as deeply spiritual. They have been a part of the human journey for thousands of years and act as a rite of passage. This experience represents a very specific archetypal journey meant to challenge you to discover unknown power with in you. Extreme conditions are either chosen – as in going on a Walk About when a young Aboriginal man comes of age, or presented to you through unseen life events such as illness, accidents, family death, divorce or any other life circumstance that starts a person on this extraordinary experience. As is often the case today, most people do not even recognize that they are on an initiatory experience, as it is a spiritual journey hidden within the chaos of ordinary life. In fact, chaos is required for our lives to unfold.

These reality shows demand that the people confront their own weaknesses or be consumed by them. You can only come to believe in the power of your spirit – and the Spirit – by needing that power yourself to survive. Then you can speak about that power with respect and reverence, and the Spirit will assist you because you understand how to pray with humility.

Maybe these reality shows are worth seeing. Well, if you’re a man anyway.

Embracing The Goddess in All of Us

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“The hero, whether god or goddess, man or woman, the figure in a myth or the dreamer of a dream discovers and assimilates his opposite either by swallowing it or by being swallowed.” Joseph Campbell

May, our fifth month. Named after the Goddess Maia the eldest and loveliest of the famous Pleiades constellation known as the “seven sisters.” According to mythology Maia was the goddess of spring, causing plants to grow, symbolizing youth, life, rebirth, balance, love and sexuality. She is responsible for our word majesty.

I remember first learning about the Goddesses when I was an undergraduate student taking courses for a theology degree. Goddesses in mythology predated Christianity by thousands and thousands of years. The great Goddess, before she was split into many different forms, is one of the most ancient symbols historians and archaeologist have discovered, dating as far back as 30,000 B.C. when the first sculptures of bone, ivory or stone appeared.

The Goddess. The divine feminine. Her energy has been represented through out time in goddesses such as the courageous and fierce Egyptian Isis, the outstanding Greek athlete and huntress Artemis, or the brainy politician and warrior Athena. She has been the sensual lover like Oshun from West Africa, or a promoter of prosperity like the Hindu deity Lakshmi.

What’s important is to cultivate a connection, not necessarily to a particular female icon or ancient deity, but to the divine feminine energy and that mystical consciousness. Divine feminine energy does not have to take on a particular shape of a goddess. It can be found deep within most world religions, alternative spiritual traditions, current events, and most importantly in your own life. The divine feminine resides in each of us.

The meeting with the goddess energy represents the point in our lives when we experience a love that has tremendous power; it’s all encompassing and unconditional. It’s the union of opposites, and may take place entirely within the person. In other words, the person begins to see him or herself in a non-dualistic way. This is a very important step in the process of finding a life of balance, and it often occurs when we find another person that we love completely represented in the yin and yang symbol.

A return to the Goddess is not about an association with a biological gender; rather it’s about embracing the tension of opposites in a healthy, conscious and balanced way. Our individual wholeness is dependent on balancing each within each of us.

Our western culture’s over-identification with the masculine has lead to a neurotic drive for power. We see obvious manifestations of this in civil and international wars and in a culture that emphasizes competition and materialism over family nurturing and family connection. We see it in our dominance over the other life forms and in the systematic destruction of the environment.

There are no models for anything that is going on today. The old models are not working, and the new have not yet appeared. This is our present challenge. It is up to us to shape the new existence. Perhaps we all can strike a balance by embracing the Goddess energy and bring much needed balance to our fractured world.

The Goddess Maia embodies the remembrance and possibility of a beneficent universe and a reawakening of our hearts. She helps me to imagine a world full of abundance and the possibility of living in harmony with one another and with our planet. She reminds me that there are places that run deep enough that all the conflicts at the surface of life become mute. There are currents of empathy that surpass even the most intense disagreements. There are depths of understanding that open when we get to the very bottom and deep center of ourselves.

Healing with a Shamanic Journey

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The essence of truth sits at the edge of every story and the story is what connects us and allows us to help each other to heal and to find peace. My healing tale includes not just healing my physical body, but also the journey of recovering my spirit with the ancient therapeutic use of a shaman practitioner.

My hope was that shaman could help me with the spiritual imbalance I was feeling from the trauma of having melanoma skin cancer and four surgeries on my face. I met a shaman years ago while traveling in Peru and learned that shamanism is the oldest healing spiritual practice dating back 30,000 to 40,000 years. It is a complex phenomenon and the practitioner is considered a messenger between the human world and the spirit worlds. They treat ailments by mending the soul and thus restoring balance on all levels. The shaman enters other realms to obtain solutions and their techniques illustrate that the core shamanic experience is really simple, timeless and universal.

After a trusted doctor and friend referred me to a shaman practitioner in Santa Fe, I anxiously drove there, arriving at the end of a winter’s day, when it was almost dark. A light snow was falling, the air was moist and cold and the sidewalk mushy under my feet. Right as I was about to knock, through a big, wooden, brown adobe door came the most expressive eyes. They were the color of dark blue sapphire; the color of a river hurrying to join the great ocean. And like the ocean they were iridescent, a true blue, with little specks of gold glistening through them. They were full of warmth.

Dark hair with her head held high, she waltzed by me with effortless saunter. Five foot seven, willowy and a face cut right from the pages of a men’s magazine. Something radiated from within that immediately put me at ease.

She had a kind of understated beauty; perhaps it was because she was so disarmingly unaware of her beauty. Her white Irish skin was completely flawless. She was all about simplicity, making things easy, and helping me to relax. Perhaps that is why her skin glowed so, it was her inner beauty that lit her eyes and softened her features. When she smiled and laughed I couldn’t help but smile along too, even if it was just on the inside. To be in her company made me feel like I was outside being warmed by the summer rays.

Acting on the concept that you can’t heal what isn’t there, this beautiful shaman explained that we will journey together to find and bring back the soul parts that are needed to make me whole again. She would also be looking for a guardian spirit who is willing to come and give me power to restore balance and harmony.

I lay down and she started playing a drum, which shifted my awareness and consciousness. At times the sound could be as quiet as a tiptoe or as loud as a roll of distant thunder and the reverberating sound echoed deep within and awoke my inner spirituality giving me back the rhythm of my life. This profoundly personal journey taught me that I am both here and there: both ordinary and divine and to celebrate the meaningful mystery of illness and healing. To celebrate the very existence of me.

After I returned home I witnessed the most incredible metamorphosis-taking place inside of me as I learned to shed the pain, grief, sadness, guilt, fear and anger of cancer that was ravishing my body, mind and spirit.

There is so much less of me now: less ego, less anger, less envy, less desire, less attachment. But there is more of me: more love, more joy, more compassion, more inner peace, and more gratitude. I understand now that spiritual healing doesn’t mean the illness never existed, it means the illness no longer has the power to control my life. I have the ability to endure, with the right attitude, whatever crosses I have to face in my daily life. And to rise above them.

Michelle Cromer