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SPIRIT
LODGE
LIBRARY
Medicine
Wheel
Page
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(Main
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The 24 pages in this Medicine Wheel section are linked below
A Peek At The Gifts Of The Four
Pathways
By CinnamonMoon
There are four pathways to the center
of the Medicine Wheel…to Spirit and Oneness and back out
into the world. Each pathway has its own set of lessons that
we can opt to explore. Whether we are consciously aware or not,
these lessons come to us in life through our experiences as
well but a conscious choice to examine an issue or issues along
one or all of these paths brings about some very clear enlightenment.
Whether we’re going in toward center or out from it, Spirit
experiences through us just as we experience through Spirit,
this happens in the Oneness as we merge our awareness. So, where
do we begin? Well there are 3 stones along each of the 4 paths
so let’s take each stone one at a time.
The Path of Air from the outer rim
of the Wheel (like all the others to follow) has 3 stones. In
helping our inner spirit to evolve, we as humans must purify
ourselves to honor the spirit within us. This is a sacred process,
one in which we open the shell of the human body (figuratively)
or ‘Robe’ to expose the spirit and be naked in this
sense before Creator. In this mindset I am open to Spirit teaching,
shaping, and remaking me. This path cleanses and heals the mind
so our conscious awareness can rise up, so we can embrace and
wrap our minds around the abstract spiritual concepts that we
will be shown. The 3 stones along this path take us to the point
of Oneness within Air. This healing path then allows us to see
our Truths and shatter the illusionary misconceptions we’ve
held to…the ones that have either come to us misguided
or by family tradition and conditioning.
I remember in the Lutheran Church
I attended growing up how I had to take Confirmation classes
and become ‘confirmed’ in that faith. The classes
were mandatory both as a member of the church and by my family.
It was expected. But I was young, I did what I was told and
I didn’t have a choice in the matter or really understand
what I was committing myself to. I just did what I was expected
of me to do. Within the church the lessons and homework consisted
of biblical studies and a lot of memorization work. The Apostle’s
Creed is one that always stood out to me. And it’s not
that I was misled but I didn’t choose that for myself and
it always felt like I was being hypocritical not knowing if
I really meant what I was confirming myself to or if it was
just expected. I was confused back then, sorting my own feelings
about Spirit/God, and I had some real issues there. So my mind
and my spirit needed healing along that path. Those were my
reasons but we all have them along that line according to our
experiences. We have to come to a point where we face the facts
about what we’ve been told and then challenge those beliefs
that were instilled in us to either prove themselves or be dismissed…whatever
tradition (or not) that we come from initially. This journey
is about the purification and healing that we, as individuals
need mentally to embrace the essence of Spirit and our mental
relationship with the Creator and therefore all of life…All
Our Relations.
The Medicine Wheel seminars take
you into the details of these pathways but I want to give you
an overview here of what they’re like. I know that when
you journey into Air or work with your Guides/Totems from that
element that they bring you the illumination through experiences
of enlightenment, and I know in that you gain the wisdom of
that experience and then come back to the physical reality to
sort it and express it with clarity (assimilation and use).
We all do this. This is the ‘personal’ journey…the
spiritual path where we come from the mundane mind into a state
of Witness and recognize our own inner spirit…and its relationship
with the Creator. Here you will begin to see the spiritual path
your spirit is taking in life.
Air is the element of the mind’s
eye, true sight, as opposed to the human eye and the sight within
the physical reality. Conditioning from family, society, religious
traditions etc. captivates the mind and holds it to a belief
structure within those teachings. Through the Wheel you will
Dance and experience a level of truth, not all truth at once,
just some of it as you initiate to this pathway. Each time you
Dance these stones you will gain greater and greater depth of
insight into spiritual truths. This is going to affect your
journey toward Spirit and be the focus or theme of the path
at this time so it will be relative to you personally; and of
course your relationship with the world as you come back to
it.
Take a question with you, something
like: ‘What is my role, what is my path, what will it look
like, what will I look like, or what is my place in the world?’
Look into that question as you take this path and you will come
to see this simply as your part of the whole. As human beings
we all have egos, the ego says to us: ‘Make me feel special,
I’m somebody important, I have power, I AM’ and it
builds itself into an illusionary image of the false Self. This
is not our spirit talking and the path takes us to our spirit…so
we may be shown our place in the world and who we are in a humble
fashion. Then, as a part of the Whole and All That Is, we begin
to walk humbly with the Powers That Be. We see our role and
our Self simply as a functional part of that whole and the touch
we have on the world around us shows us the truth of the path
we’ve walked, are walking, and how we will walk it in the
future to serve. The simple Truths that we discover are ‘Clear
Truths’, there is no questioning them. In recognizing them
we come to that clarity of mind to see them for what they are
and we raise our conscious awareness, wrap our minds around
them, and can thus communicate them to others…walking our
talk.
The Truth experienced is not recognized
by the mind only, it is also recognized by the heart so it is
that balance we strive to hold to measure the clarity of that
Truth. We feel it in the heart at the same time we see it with
our mind’s eye.
The Path of Fire brings us to experience,
where the Path of Air brought us clarity and mental healing,
the Path of Fire is where we seek to know that clarity and healing
personally and embrace it with our heart’s trust. It is
in the world around us that we discover the ups and downs, the
joys and the disappointments. It's where we find our faith and
ability to trust in life and in Spirit. Illusions shatter in
Fire when we've walked through our trials and sometimes the
heart has to find new faith. Sometimes an experience lends us
faith when we are weak or feeling a victim and things take a
turn of conquering fear to find strength. Then our conviction
through courage comes forward as we learn to take another step,
reach a little further, explore a little deeper and discover
wonders. Walking toward the center from the outer rim of the
Wheel the first stone we encounter is Growth.
Growth is about evolution, about
learning and understanding life, coming to know our relationship
to the world around us and all it contains. This means that
relationships on many levels come into play. Thinking of the
people you've crossed paths with or the experiences you've had
you can look back on your life and see your reality as it pertains
to your understanding of life. What conditioned you then? What
conditions you now? What will condition
you in the future? The world around you holds many different
influences and ideals are sometimes something that can take
form while at others they are illusionary concepts. In the latter
case reality will eventually take us by the ear and through
Fire to burn away the falsehoods…a process that can be
disappointing, crushingly painful, or simply an ah-ha moment.
We change as we grow, life evolves
and changes around us. What may once have held sway over our
conceptualizing may no longer hold importance or validity. Sometimes
the truths in life serve us for a time to regulate the stage
we're at and as we evolve those truths can change. Change ushers
in new concepts and experiences to contribute to our evolution,
to the BE-coming of who we are based on those experiences. This
path will help you see how you've grown through the past, how
you are growing today, and what you need to experience to grow
tomorrow. Understanding your growth process is important as
it allows you to embrace the lessons with a higher awareness
and move through them with that understanding. As Fire represents
youth on its journey of growth to maturity, our lessons along
this path help us to mature.
We take our conceptualizations from
Air and move into the experiences of bringing them into being
in Fire. It's where we learn to do, to reach, to accomplish
things in life moving from one comfort zone to another or one
level of awareness to another through physical participation.
We might begin our first job, make a career change, try something
we've never tried before here and we'll make mistakes along
the way so we can grow from them. If we don't learn we will
learn that we repeat our lessons because they will continue
to cycle through our life until we do. We continue to make mistakes
until we learn what we're doing wrong, chose to correct that,
and make a change. This path is life's experiences and taking
them to a level of spiritual understanding on the other side
of the experience itself.
The issues you addressed on the path
of air would continue to be addressed here to achieve that fullness
of understanding. In this manner we’re learning to be responsible
for ourselves, much like the teen learning new boundaries or
experiencing new freedoms and having to be responsible for the
consequences of the decisions or choices he or she has made.
If mom and dad are not watching over one's shoulder that freedom
connects the teen to their free will. What will they do? What
will they explore? What advice will they follow or will they
learn something from Fire the hard way and be burned in the
process because they choose to ignore good advice? Once burned,
twice shy. Whether we're a teen or an adult, we all experience
hard lessons sometimes and it is this path that helps us cope
with them and grow from them…we still do this through the
physical act of hands-on exploring. (Again, the Medicine Wheel
seminars in the course section of the study center will share
much more detail on this aspect with you.)
The Path of Water leads us to understanding
ourselves and then ourselves in relation to others on spiritual
and emotional levels. Water is home to the Great Smoking Mirror
where we either hide from ourselves or clear away the smoke
and face our truths to heal. It is home to the Moon and all
reflective work, the surface of water being like a mystical
mirror when the moonlight shines across it and we begin capturing
visionary landscapes to explore. Here we hold what is sacred
within life and the experiences that have caused us pain emotionally
or spiritually wherein we've experienced or caused pain in others
that needs healing. It is this path that will teach us what
we need to understand in order to bring that healing about.
We see our old patterns and we can then see
what our role was in that pain, choose to change the pattern
and avoid receiving or causing pain in the future. In this process
we can go through layers of regression to dig through our experiences
and work our way back to the source of that pain. Knowing where
we started that pattern of behavior allows us to see where it
needs to initiate the change. Here we gain our balance through
finding our inner courage and strength to walk in conviction
of knowing we are right. When we can walk with that conviction
(our truth) we can be true to ourself, to Spirit and to the
world around us, to all those others with whom we have relationships.
We are assessing the experiences
of life that we have just passed through with Fire and now we're
adjusting to those lessons. In this we learn to be discerning
in our choices, to understand spiritually with the deeper inner
journeys of the spirit, the path we are to walk in life, how
we're to walk it and why. You can see at this point ‘why’
the focus is on yourself rather than others. The deeper you
take the enlightened understanding the better you understand
yourself…and in that others. So later you’ll apply
it in the world around you but you must walk the path toward
Creator first to know the way in and navigate your way back
out into the world. Water is the element of maturity and the
harvest season so we are maturing through the harvesting of
our experiences by taking this path to the center. It's where
we come when we want to understand ourself inside and out. That
understanding helps us see where we stand in the world around
us and in relation to others. How we want to walk our talk basically.
The Path of Earth is like a culmination
of exploring the Path of Air, Fire and Water. It’s here
we come to the wisdom of the heart. Here we learn what sustains
us and how to share that with others from the heart. At times
our hearts may need cleansing in order to remove gunk that has
gathered there through time. A clean heart is important as we
step forward in the world to share and so the first wisdom gained
is that of the value of Cleansing. The quantity of the heart
and what we give or share from it is not nearly as important
as the quality of what it has to offer. A clean heart, as I
said, is important to begin with. A clean heart is a healthy
heart, and we would seek this path to rid ourselves of impure
ideas or toxic waste that we carry in our bodies by learning
the lessons that cleanse and sustain us along those lines. Here
we find our sustenance in healthy outlets, in the give-away
and what we can share with others to help sustain them. We explore
all that Mother Earth offers to assist us in 'sharing the wealth'
or the treasures we have discovered. Clothing, shelter, nourishment,
tools, and our wisdom are the things a loving heart will share
to assist others. A clean heart is an unblocked heart and we
seek this path when our hearts become blocked or hardened.
Here we come to rid ourselves of
waste…mental, physical, spiritual, or emotional waste.
The heart does not need to become a compost pile. It needs to
be clear and open as a sacred place from which we can extend
ourselves to the world around us. This is the element of change
wherein we experience the death and rebirth cycle. Here we look
back on the journey we've made be that a season or a year or
a lifetime and we draw from all that we know to share with others.
We've learned to be the spiritual warrior, to fight for what
is right and to pick our battles. We've learned what is not
worth fighting over and through our discernment we can walk
away from foolish battles others try to start. We have learned
to see those who are striving to walk in a right manner, whatever
tradition or whatever their path may be, and assist those who
need our help, who strive for themselves.
We have learned the energy signatures
of the 'takers', those who take and deplete not giving back,
of those who look for the easy way through life. We’ve
learned the energy signature of those individuals we should
offer to teach, showing them how to sustain themselves, we give
them sustenance in that way. Is someone cannot accept our help
we learn to be tolerant that they are seeking a lesson in sustenance
the hard way or from a different teacher. A tolerant heart does
not find fault with others but it does discern the 'how to give'
and it does not waste its generosity where it will do no good.
This doesn't mean we're cruel to others, nor are we selfish,
it simply means we may have to exercise tough love at times
and learn to readjust our pattern of giving at the moment.
Through these four paths we have
the balance we need to resolve our issues, heal ourselves, grow
strong, evolve and make a difference. We can Dance them anytime
we choose, and we can take our confusion or troubles to the
Wheel in this way to resolve matters and transform our lives
as well as our place in the world. Do check out the series of
Medicine Wheel seminars if you’re interested in furthering
your studies.
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Libraries
are on this row
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INDEX
Page 3
(Main Section, Medicine Wheel, Native Languages &
Nations, Symbology)
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INDEX
Page 5
(Sacred Feminine & Masculine, Stones & Minerals)
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©
Copyright: Cinnamon Moon & River WildFire Moon (Founders.)
2000-date
All rights reserved.
Site
constructed by Dragonfly
Dezignz 1998-date
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