Art by Christian Schloe
Source: Ravenous Butterflies
“We are slowed down sound and light waves, a walking bundle of frequencies tuned into the cosmos. We are souls dressed up in sacred biochemical garments and our bodies are the instruments through which our souls play their music.” ~Albert Einstein
Art by Catrin Welz Stein
“My friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now. Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people. You are right in your assessments. The lustre and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking. Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is that we were made for these times. Yes. For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement.” ~Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Art by Sara Riches
“The black sheep are the artists, visionaries and healers of our culture, because they are the ones willing to call into question those places which feel stale, obsolete, or without integrity. The black sheep stirs up the good kind of trouble. Her very life is a confrontation with all that has been assumed as tradition. Her being different serves to bring the family or group to consciousness where it has been living too long in the dark. As the idiom implies, she is the wayward one in the flock. Her life’s destiny is to stand apart. But paradoxically, it’s only when she honors that apartness that she finally fits in. The world needs your rebellion and the true song of your exile. In what has been banned from your life, you find a medicine to heal all that has been kept from our world. We must find the place within where things have been muted and give that a voice. Until those things are spoken, no truth can find its way forward. The world needs your unbelonging. It needs your disagreements, your exclusion, your ache to tear the false constructions down, to find the world behind this one.” ~Excerpt from Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home, Toko-pa Turner
Art by DreamerWhit
“I dreamt last night that there were honey bees in my heart making honey out of my old failures.” ~Antonio Machado
Art by Autumn Skye,
Source: The Way of the Priestess
“You did not come to this life to get through life. You came to this life to follow your passion throughout the world. You came to chase your joy. You came to do the thing that you love doing so much that no one could pay you enough not to do it.” ~Teal Swan
Art by Catrin Welz-Stein
“The modern hero, the modern individual who dares to heed the call and seek the mansion of that presence with whom it is our whole destiny to be atoned, cannot, indeed, must not, wait for his community to cast off its slough of pride, fear, rationalized avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding.” ~Joseph Campbell, from The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Art by Varga Tomi
“Wolves and Women have much in common. Both share a wild spirit. Women and Wolves are instinctual creatures, able to sense the unseen. They are loyal, protective of their packs and of their pups. They are wild and beautiful. Both have been hunted and captured. Even in captivity, one can see in the eyes of a Woman, or a Wolf, the longing to run free, and the determination that should the opportunity arise, Whoosh, they will be gone…..” ~ CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, [WOMEN WHO RUN WITH THE WOLVES].
ART BY KELOGSLOOPS
“We must discover the power of love, the power, the redemptive power of love. And when we do that, we will make of this whole world a new world. But love, love is the only way.” ~Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
When I am among the trees, especially the willows and the honey locust, equally the beech, the oaks and the pines, they give off such hints of gladness. I would almost say that they save me, and daily. I am so distant from the hope of myself, in which I have goodness, and discernment, and never hurry through the world but walk slowly, and bow often. Around me the trees stir in their leaves and call out, “Stay awhile.” The light flows from their branches. And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say, “and you too have come into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine.” ~Mary Oliver (1935-2019)
Art by Séverine Pineaux
“I believe we have more than enough creativity to solve the problems of our times, but we have to make a perilous trek into the wilderness within to reclaim it. There is a stand of undeveloped jungle, a place of “indigeneity” within each of us, that can never be domesticated. It is a borderless land, beyond personality and convention, even beyond thought, where pure creativity arises. Like the signature song of a tropical bird, the spiraling of an arbutus tree, the evening scent of a jasmine bush, there is an essence in each of us intended to be expressed. Few make the trek into this creative wild, because the path requires great vulnerability. To come into our true originality, we must surrender the layers of numbness we use to protect our hearts.” ~Toko-pa Turner
Artwork by Pierre Artista
“I thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of lichens and seeds. I slept as never before, a stone on the riverbed, nothing between me and the white fire of the stars but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths among the branches of the perfect trees. All night I heard the small kingdoms breathing around me, the insects, and the birds who do their work in the darkness. All night I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling with a luminous doom. By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something better.” ~Mary Oliver
Art by Natasa Ilincic
Source~ Shamantube
DANGEROUS COATS by Sharon Owens
“Someone clever once said Women were not allowed pockets
In case they carried leaflets To spread sedition
Which means unrest To you & me
A grandiose word For
commonsense
Fairness
Kindness
Equality
So ladies,
Start sewing Dangerous coats Made of pockets & sedition.”
“I call upon the oldest of old ancient feminine, the original Mother. I call upon Hecate, Calleach, Nana Buruku, Baba Yaga, Kali, Pele, the wise ones, the Crones to come marching in to surround our sister that stands in the trenches of the patriarchal halls of the “White House!” May the truth split open the skies & Oya, goddess of storms, blow through the lies and illusions of the old order & it crumbles to the ground. May all women across eternity, those living and those dead stand behind around below & above Dr. Ford protecting and guiding her heart & voice. May all female ancestors that were burned, sacrificed, raped by the patriarchy who believed their God gave them permission to do as they pleased, scream like wild banshees to destroy the story that is killing us all. May tomorrow be a new dream that is an old dream from a long long time ago, a dream where all of creation stood in the circle of life and was celebrated for simply being an intricate part of this great mystery of living on the skins of Mother Earth! Bonewoman.” ~Reda Rackley
Art by Autumn Skye
“DESTINY is a feeling you have that you know something about yourself nobody else does. The picture you have in your own mind of what you’re about WILL COME TRUE.” ~Bob Dylan
Art by Dimitra Milan
“The awareness of our separateness is what often brings on despondency and despair. We begin to think of our small human lives as inconsequential, even unnecessary, to the great diversity of things. If we let this awareness unconsciously drive us, our lives can become endless treadmills of desperation. Wishing to create a legacy, to make a mark, to create evidence of our specialness, we build from the lowly perspective of the drop. Forgetting our belonging to the greater ocean body, we become trapped in this cult of individualism, where nothing we achieve can ever be enough. But purpose, in its purest sense, is not that different from being an organ in a body. By themselves organs are useless—unless they work together, in their wholly individualized ways, to serve the greater body. We are not separate, but also we are. We are these completely unique individuals who are capable of infinite configurations of innovation and beauty, but we are embedded within and entirely dependent upon the larger ocean of allness.” ~Toko-pa Turner, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home (belongingbook.com)
Artwork by Gemma Capdevila
The Mexican Government Asked Street Artists To Paint 200 Houses To Unite Community.
“A youth organization that’s been known to use graffiti as a means of expression has teamed up with the government of Mexico to rehabilitate Palmitas, a town in the Pachuca district. Under the moniker “Germen Crew,” the group painted 209 houses, or twenty-thousand square meters of facade, into a single rainbow mural.
According to streetartnews, the impact has been extremely positive: 452 families, or 1808 people, were affected by this project, resulting in violence amongst youths being entirely eradicated. The group, whose name literally means “germ crew,” have made community involvement a priority, which could partially explain the good results.”
Beautiful idea. Love this so much.
Source: boredpanda.com
“The flower doesn’t dream of the bee. It blossoms and the bee comes.” ~Mark Nepo
Art by Christian Schloe
“They want us to be afraid. They want us to be afraid of leaving our homes. They want us to barricade our doors and hide our children. Their aim is to make us fear life itself! They want us to hate. They want us to hate ‘the other’. They want us to practice aggression and perfect antagonism. Their aim is to divide us all! They want us to be inhuman. They want us to throw out our kindness. They want us to bury our love and burn our hope. Their aim is to take all our light! They think their bricked walls will separate us. They think their damned bombs will defeat us. They are so ignorant they don’t understand that my soul and your soul are old friends. They are so ignorant they don’t understand that when they cut you I bleed. They are so ignorant they don’t understand that we will never be afraid, we will never hate and we will never be silent for life is ours!” ~ Kamand Kojouri
Art by Tomasz Alen Kopera
“Forget conventionalisms; forget what the world thinks of you stepping out of your place; think your best thoughts, speak your best words, work your best works, looking to your own conscience for approval.” ~ Susan B. Anthony
Love Your Solitude
“Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away… and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast…. be happy about your growth, in which of course you can’t take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don’t torment them with your doubts and don’t frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn’t be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn’t necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust…. and don’t expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.”
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
Art by Nei Ruffino
Source: Shamantube
“Difficult and painful as it is, we must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future. When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” ~Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.
Art by Thien Bui
“Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it’s a feather bed.” ~Terence McKenna
“There can be hope only for a society which acts as one big family, not as many separate ones.” ~Anwar Sadat
Happy Spring Equinox!
“On this day in the Northern Hemisphere, we are in perfect balance between light and dark. Let us pray loving attention to the fragile sprouts of inner beauty which have survived the long dark of hibernation, despite all odds, to push up through the soil into the light. Let us honor the faith it has taken to believe in the invisible, upper world, where soon we will blossom into sprawling gardens overflowing with fruit. Let us hold our painful hearts with gentle hands today. Let us express our gratitude to the light that can only be found in the dark. Let us ask our vulnerability to shine radiantly with knowing that we are unfolding right on time.”
~Dreamwork with Toko-pa
Art by Christian Schloe
“Dismantle the masks, mental games, grips, and all other illusionary ways you might gather like wool to safely cushion your skin. Step into your world with all the truth, love, and courage you can. Freedom comes after constriction. Sanctuaries crave the open hearted. Amazing loves the vulnerable.” ~Victoria Erickson
Art by Christian Schloe
Dandelions, Few words are enough to disclose you, You lose your shield, now you are naked, Your mind is free but you are not afraid. Teach me.
Art and words by Aquasixio
“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.” ~Toni Morrison
Art by Rovina Cai
“Mass beliefs in the power of outside authorities are firmly entrenched in your psyche; they are strong and old, and somewhat like a redwood forest they too can be felled very, very quickly, raising many questions about the truth of who you are and why you place your trust outside yourself.” ~Barbara Marciniak
“There is a woman at the beginning of all great things.” ~Alphonse de Lamartine
Art by Miles Toland
“The world without spirit is a wasteland. People have the notion of saving the world by shifting things around, changing the rules, and who’s on top, and so forth. No, no! Any world is a valid world if it’s alive. The thing to do is to bring life to it, and the only way to do that is to find in your own case where the life is and become alive yourself.” ~Joseph Campbell
Berlin Street Art
“I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart.” ~Vincent Van Gogh
“One doesn’t want appreciation… one wants response. To tell you the truth, I don’t know what I want of you, or of anybody for that matter. I want more than I get, that’s all I know. I want you to step out of your skin – I want everybody to strip down, not just to the flesh, but the soul.” ~Henry Miller
“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – over and over announcing your place in the family of things.” ~Mary Oliver
Art by Dan May
“It is written in your blood, that you will fly. So let your heart bleed when it is struck by the tendernesses of life or the whirling thunderstorms – and let it burst open when it is drunk on too much pain. Everything unresolved, let it come. Do not hide. Do not bandage your heart half in shame. Let the tears rain from your eyes when all is stirred. Let the messy goddess emerge with dead grass still in her hair. The sky calls your wings. Let your blood respond. Soaring will come naturally, I promise. But for some reason we must fall before we can fly. We must hear again the song of our blood. It is blood we all share and the soil knows it as much as the sky. They wrote it all together.” ~SC Lourie
Art by Heather McLean
“The cost of not following your heart, is spending the rest of your life wishing you had.” ~J. Paulsen
“The most loving women are the women who will test you the most. She wants you to be your fullest, most magnificent self. She won’t settle for anything less. She knows in your deepest heart you are free, you are a God. Anything less than that she will torment. And, as you know, she’s quite good at it.” ~David Deida
Art by Christian Ward
“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.” ~John Lennon
Happy Birthday to one of my favorite people to ever inhabit this planet. His presence is forever felt.
Happy New Moon in Libra!
“A Black Moon occurs when two new moon’s fall in the same month. On September 30th, the New Moon will peak in Libra.
To have two New Moon’s in one month signifies a very powerful blossoming process and one that has probably been in the works for some time.
September’s Black Moon is filled with positive aspects and plenty of opportunities. In fact, the entire week leading up to the Black Moon and the days that follow it, are going to be extremely positive and peaceful.
The energy of this Black Moon is so supported by the other planets and it is very likely we will all be experiencing great epiphanies, opportunities and even, miracles.
In fact, this Black Moon is going to deliver an extremely positive force, helping us to manifest all of our greatest dreams, wishes and desires.
If you have been looking to change or shift something in your life, if you have been building new ideas or projects, this Black Moon is really going to give you an amazing push in the right direction.
Whatever has been troubling you, whatever has been shrouded in doubt and confusion may also become clearer to you around the time of this Black Moon.
If you are in doubt about anything in your life, you may find it beneficial to wait to see what energies and what opportunities the Black Moon brings you.
2016 is really a year of endings, and the recent Eclipses in September have definitely highlighted what needs to be released and what needs to be ended.
Now, this Black Moon is going to be helping us all to awaken to these endings, accept them and perhaps also feel liberated by them.
Overall, the Black Moon is going to bring an extremely positive force and is going to help all of us to change directions in our lives in some way.
This is definitely a welcomed change and one that is going to help us finally bring a close to all that we no longer need. This is going to help us spring forward in the right direction with clarity and positivity and will help us all to feel a burst of fresh energy and inspiration.
Pay attention to what transpires for you around the Black Moon, for it is sure to be guiding you towards your highest path.”
~Tanaaz, excerpt from Forever Conscious
Gamble everything for Love, If you are a true Human Being. If not, leave this Gathering. Halfheartedness doesn’t reach into Majesty. You set out to find God, But then you keep stopping for long periods At mean spirited roadhouses. Don’t wait any longer… ~ Rumi
Art by Ira Mitchell Kirk
“All that makes you fragile and fierce and clever and powerful and wounded and creative and layered and thoughtful and moody and spiritual and wild and damaged, can be described in one single word: lovely.” ~Beau Taplin, Lovely for all that you are.
Art by Shirae
Happy Full Moon and Lunar Eclipse!
“The Lunar Eclipse in Pisces is an emotional high tide. It makes me think of being on a surfboard, scudding across a beast of a wave as the crest begins to fold and you’re wondering whether you’re going to stay upright or be flung head over heels by the force of the water.
The Moon is in a tight conjunction to Chiron which means we are very sensitive to being hurt. In Pisces we are wide open with no defenses, especially as the Moon squares warrior Mars.
In fact, it may be the case that we are pushed to let down our defenses and really allow ourselves to feel.
Chiron is both the one who wounds and the one who heals the wound. The wound itself is the way to healing – like cutting open an infected sore until it bleeds clear…knowing that sometimes the path to healing must begin with a painful cut…
And our part is to surrender, to accept that healing is needed and necessary, to put trust in the universe that what comes is for our benefit.
There is something sacred about this painful process. The Gods haven’t abandoned us, they are carrying us. They are the giant wave beneath our feet…”
~ Leah Whitehorse
Art by Josephine Wall
“She was a galaxy, not one planet, she was a forest, not one tree. She was an ocean, not just one river. But the world had taught her to close and be as small as could be. But she woke up one day, longing for that little girl. Who knew she was living in a small corner and not her entire inner world. And so she slowly unlocked each door, deciding she wanted to play, live, go wild, no longer hide… And that girl was finally free, the one who carried a dancing universe of galaxies, forests and oceans inside.” ~S.C Lourie
Art by Irene Hardwicke Olivieri
“Life is truly what we choose to make of it. I believe that amazing things in life are the result of our unique abilities to imagine and work boldly towards results. I believe in the inner child inside of us and the amazing power of the universe who simply awaits for our ability to entrust in it.” ~Edi Santos
“Sometimes Life gives us no other choice but to do the impossible. To boldly reach across the veils and bring back a vision that has never before been seen on this earth. To breathe life into new forms of expression that catapult us beyond the reach of all that is familiar, and beyond the understanding of the family or friends we once relied upon. To disconnect from the safety and security promised by all inauthentic paths, and forge a new connection to the world of Spirit from which all is sourced. To keep leaning up against that vital and swirling edge of chaos that most certainly will dissolve us, yet at the same time holds the key to our rebirth.” ~Azra Bertrand
Artist ~ unknown
“Much more surprising things can happen to anyone who, when a disagreeable or discouraged thought comes into his mind, just has the sense to remember in time and push it out by putting in an agreeable, determinedly courageous one. Two things cannot be in one place.” ~Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
Graffiti Bruce Lee Street Art Mural – Trails1
“We have a natural tendency to assume that a remarkable chemistry between two souls is confirmation that they are meant to be together for life. In the heat of profound feelings, it seems counter-intuitive to imagine ourselves separate from a beloved. But chemistry and longevity are not necessarily bedfellows. Just because we feel earth-shatteringly alive with someone doesn’t mean they are supposed to be our life partner. They may have come for a very different reason—to awaken us, to expand us, to shatter us so wide open that we can never close again. Perhaps they were sent from afar to polish the rough diamond of your soul before vanishing into eternity. Perhaps they just came to give us new eyes. Better we surrender our expectations when the beloved comes. (S)he may just be dropping in for a visit. Is the kettle on?” ~Jeff Brown
Art by Tomasz Alen Kopera
“I think that we are like stars. Something happens to burst us open; but when we burst open and think we are dying; we’re actually turning into a supernova. And then when we look at ourselves again, we see that we’re suddenly more beautiful than we ever were before!” ~C. JoyBell C.
Art by Heather McLean
“From the moment we are born, people tell us that the world is like this and like that, this way, that way. It is natural that – for a certain period of time – we end up believing what we are told. But we must soon push these ideas aside and discover our own way of living reality.” ~Paulo Coelho, Warrior of the Light
“The time is now for transformation. It is a new era and we are poised with the opportunity to bring in a new consciousness, and co-create a new reality. Why? Because the light within each of us has been turned on, and it’s our job to turn that light on brighter and brighter until all false thought forms dissolve in the light of our Truth.” ~Dr. Michelle L. Casto
Art by Cameron Gray
Happy Full Moon!
“The September 13-14th Full Moon falls in the sign of Pisces and holds the potential to be deeply transformative and illuminating.
This year the September Full Moon is also referred to as the Harvest Moon, as it is the last Full Moon before the Equinox.
Harvest Moons are always cleansing, so if there is something you no longer wish to take with you into the new season, this is the perfect time to release and let it go.
Falling in the watery sign of Pisces, this Full Moon is a sensitive one and may trigger unresolved or unexpressed emotions. We may also feel deeply sensitive and find it hard to not absorb the emotions of the world around us.
While this level of sensitivity can be difficult at times, under this Pisces Full Moon if we allow these feelings to come and go as visitors, rather than trying to control them, we may discover that our emotions, whether they come from us or not, have a message or a lesson for us to appreciate and learn from.
Pisces energy also rules over the feet, so if we find ourselves feeling too emotional or sensitive, grounding exercises such as walking barefoot on the grass or even taking a moment to acknowledge how our feet hold and support us may bring some relief.
The symbol for Pisces is two fish swimming in opposite directions. Although they swim their own separate ways, they work as a team and are connected through a spiritual cord. Using their intuitive senses, they can see through each other’s eyes and know what the other is thinking, feeling, and experiencing.
One fish swims in a downward direction, reminding us to stay rooted and present in reality, but the other swims in an upward direction, reminding us that there is so much more to life and realms beyond this one.
We need to root ourselves to the Earth and be present in this physical reality that we live in. But, we also need to remember that this life is temporary, filled with unknowns, and not entirely what it seems.
The best way to navigate through this Full Moon is to be open to new information and to remember that life is a constant journey of learning.”
~Tanaaz, excerpt from Forever Conscious
Art by Christian Schloe
Happy New Moon!
“The August 30th New Moon falls in the sign of Virgo and is the perfect time to start a new project, welcome in new inspiration, and to be open to changing aspects of your life that have become outworn or overplayed.
August’s New Moon also falls in close proximity to Mars, Venus, and Mercury, so these three little helpers, all in Virgo, will be adding to the experience of this New Moon.
Mars is the strongest energy that surrounds this Virgo New Moon. Mars represents the sacred masculine and is all about action, energy, motivation, and getting things done.
This New Moon is going to offer up all of this to us and will be a highly motivating and recharging time! If there is a project we are wishing to get off the ground or something we are looking to speed up or add some steam to, this New Moon will help push things along.
Venus is also close to this New Moon, bringing creative and loving vibrations. Her presence will make this a very romantic New Moon and the perfect time to go on a first date or to add sparks to an existing relationship.
There is a lot of energy to this New Moon but it all flows harmoniously, and will be a lovely way to wrap up the high vibrational energies that have been on offer all through the month of August.
August has held the potential to be a turning point month so if you are feeling like your life could use some fresh inspiration or motivation, if you have been feeling a little stuck or stagnant or resistant to change, set an intention or take a small action under this New Moon in order to seal this energy into your life.
The cosmos offer the energy, but we have to be the ones to take it and integrate it into our being. This energy only exists as a potential unless we step forward and make the most of it.
August has been a high energy month and it signs off perfectly with the harmonious Virgo New Moon. Under this bounty of energy on offer to us, take what you need, set your intentions, and remember- you deserve all the happiness, abundance, health, love, and joy the Universe has to offer.”
~Tanaaz, excerpt from Forever Conscious
“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way… As a man is, so he sees.” ~William Blake
“Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.” ~ Martin Luther King Jr.
