Flash Sale on Course: Jesus & The Goddess

Enrollment Reopening: Flash Sale

I'm offering a flash sale through Jan 19 on my course: Jesus & The Goddess, Reckoning Christianity & The Divine Feminine and reopening enrollment for a limited time!

~this course is intended for women~

If you enroll today here's what you'll get:

+ Receive instantly two classes—over 2 and a half hours of stimulating material

+ You’ll be enrolled for the rest of the course and receive a weekly session direct to your email every Tuesday until February 9

+ Access immediately! Class One: A God Who Looks Like Me, Psychological implications when the divine is only male, recovery of our sacred feminine selves

+ Access immediately! Class Two: Alternative Her-Stories, Remembering the ancient priestesses & oracles, exploring “Christian” taboos of feminine power

+Starting this Tuesday receive the following weekly classes:

Jan 19: The Fall & Restoration of Sophia, Archangels, Archons & reclaiming our spiritual sight

Jan 26: Meeting Jesus Again, Gospel stories & Jesus’ relationship with women

Feb 2: Meeting Mary Again, The Gospel of Mary & other traditions of Mother Divine

Feb 9: Inanna & Ereshkigal, An initiation: becoming the queen of our underworld, becoming the resurrected woman

+ Classes include a centering meditation, optional homework & reading materials so you can take the work as deeply as you like!

Here's what some of the participants are saying!

"I am loving your teaching!"

"What a professional presentation! You really have the gift of teaching/speaking."

"I'm glad I can replay it because I'm going to watch again."

"I have really enjoyed learning! I feel like my whole life is better when I am learning and growing."

"I have listened to both once through and plan on listening again!"

Enjoy the rest of the course here: https://www.taraloma.com/new.../six-week-course-flash-sale

The light in me salutes the light in you

Namaste,

Jessica Zdenek

Founder and Director of

Taraloma Mystery School

Crown Chakra Activation Coming & How to Prepare

Introducing Taraloma Mystery School 2021

Introducing Taraloma Mystery School, a place for on-line learning and sacred community. My first course is called: Jesus and The Goddess, Reckoning Christianity & the Divine Feminine. This course will be an initiation into the Goddess mysteries for women who are curious about re-claiming our Christian roots in integrity with the divine feminine face of God. In history, Goddess culture has often been cast outside of Christian orthodoxy and put in the category of pagan. Plus we have this dark history of witch burnings and women banned from the offices of the priesthood. This course will reckon with historical challenges and spark new pathways for our spiritual thriving. We will explore the sacredness of the feminine essence of God within the biblical texts, revisit Jesus' teachings, meet Mary again, hear personal stories, and explore ancient histories with fresh eyes. Our gatherings will include centering meditations, embodied breathwork, and offer support in creating a personal connection to the divine mother within us all.

Future courses on deck at Taraloma Mystery School 2021 include: An Introduction to Jung, Prenatal Yoga, Transforming Trauma, and Intro to Astrology. Stay tuned!

6 WEEKS TUESDAYS 12-1:15 CT on Zoom

(join live or view recordings available to all participants)

Jan 5: A God Who Looks Like Me, Psychological implications when the divine is only male, recovery of our sacred feminine selves

Jan 12: Alternative Her-Stories, Remembering the ancient priestesses & oracles, exploring “Christian” taboos of feminine power

Jan 19: Meeting Jesus Again, Gospel stories & Jesus’ relationship with women

Jan 26: Meeting Mary Again, The Gospel of Mary & other traditions of Mother Divine

Feb 2: The Fall & Restoration of Sophia, Archangels, Archons & reclaiming our spiritual sight

Feb 9: Inanna & Ereshkigal, An initiation: becoming the queen of our underworld, becoming the resurrected woman

Is this you…?

• You were raised Christian or identify Christian and have some reservations or questions (or gaps in your ancient memories) about the divine feminine lineage and how it actually does not require you to reject your faith or Jesus.

• OR you experienced Jesus & Christianity as a part of your feminine oppression and yet something is calling you to sift through the bath water to find the baby again. You may have felt the pull to choose between the ‘liberated woman’ and the ‘faithful woman’—and yet—you can be both!

• You’re open to learning new perspectives on old religion

• You may be a mom or a wife feeling overwhelmed or isolated with quarantine, challenges of homeschool, housework, and looking for some stimulating wise women conversations to spark inspiration through the dark days of winter.

• You know the benefits of weekly intentional gatherings and may suspect that a small group of women can make powerful ripples together.

This is me…

I’ve been teaching yoga for the past seven years (a student for 19 years), enjoying the bhakti path of singing mantras, and studying the Holy Womb purification practice with Swami Sri Kaleshwar. I see clients through my spiritual business Taraloma Earth Temple where I offer private yoga instruction, energy healings, and intuitive readings (now on-line). I also speak and sing around town on occasion. I have birthed three kids, I’m a mom to five, mom of cats and guinea pigs, and wife to a computer whiz.

I’ve authored three books through Taraloma Earth Temple Publications: Detoxing God is a memoir where I work through being raised in a conservative Christian military family, and how rediscovering the Goddess helped me through some childhood trauma. My most recent book, The Circle of the Fall, Scenes from a Cosmic Tale, is a Greek styled imaginary adventure through time. And Paper Cranes is my first book of poetry.

I worked in The Episcopal Church of Chicago for ten years as a Youth Minister and Family Ministries Associate and taught creative confirmation classes, led sexual abuse prevention programs, and guided teenagers across the country on summer service work trips. I’m certified as a Dove Oracle Priestess with intuitive training, a level III Reiki practitioner, and 230 hour yoga certified. I am a graduate of St. Olaf College where I studied religion and majored in psychology and graduated cum lade. I’m also a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary where I received a Masters of Arts in Theology.

After my education, I began to feel like my head was disconnected from my body. I also began having night terrors. I started work with a therapist and through years of dream work and psychoanalysis I discovered the enlivening presence of the Goddess within which helped me heal in profound ways. At the time when I was working in the church I began to question why there wasn’t any divine feminine language in the liturgy and I felt I was up against some kind of ancient rift that happened when Mary Magdalene presented the red egg to Ceaser. I’ve been deepening my exploration of the divine feminine ever since and incorporating this work into my yoga practice and daily life. For such a long time, I felt lost in the wordless landscape of the ineffable, buried under some heaviness lurking in my body. Resurrection, I believe, is an ongoing work to clear, charge and expand the light of our own being.

I’m excited to offer this course, connect with other women on these topics, and share what I’ve learned along the way!

*Early bird prices through December 26. Registration Closes January 1.

A chat about the Aquarian myth

2020 Winter Solstice December 21 at 12:22 p.m. is the exact conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the early degrees of the house of Aquarius. This moment heralds “a new beginning” of “a new cycle of time”. So what’s the myth of Aquarius all about anyways?

Hail to the Queen of All Given Powers

I woke up to a fight between the children erupting in the living room. Oh yes, the moon is still in Aries today shining light on Eris goddess of chaos and Mars the god of war and Black Moon Lilith the great black Void, Yoni, and Great Mother Goddess—all of this squaring Saturn and Pluto. So if you’re noticing some intensity it’s in the stars!

And still there is grace. (Do astrologers talk about that? I don’t know. I’m new at this, and I’m used to writing more theological prose. I’m reminded that the muses hold both astronomy and theology as high priestess arts, but rarely do we blend them together in modern times—this is something I feel called to change. As I also feel called to lift our spirituality into a more cosmic expanse, even as we knit ourselves at peace with these bodies on earth.)

Speaking of priestesses, I’ve been reading the ancient work of Enheduanna, one of the worlds first poets. She’s a Sumerian High Priestess, who was the daughter of Sargon I of Akkad. Her writings date back to 2600 B.C.E. Today I read the poem, The Exaltation of Inanna, from the book Inanna, Lady of Largest Heart: Poems of the Sumerian High Priestess Enheduanna by Betty De Shong Meador.

Queen of all given powers
unveiled clear light
unfailing woman wearing brilliance
cherished in heaven and earth […]

Your hands seize the seven fixed powers
my queen of fundamental forces
guardian of essential cosmic sources […]

You lift up the elements
bind them to your hands
gather in powers
press them to your breast

vicious dragon you spew
venom poisons the land
like the storm god you howl
grain wilts on the ground […]

the Queen alone lifts her feelings
the Queen alone gladdens her heart
She will not quiet her rage […]

[For] that man cast me among the dead
I am not allowed in my rooms
gloom falls on the day
light turns leaden
shadows close in
dreaded southstorm cloaks the sun

he wipes his spit-soaked hand
on my honey sweet mouth
my beautiful image
fades under dust

[And so] the woman no longer speaks sweetly to her husband
no longer tells secrets at midnight
does not disclose
the soft whispers in her heart

[But] the Woman is as great as he
she will break the city from him
may her heart grow soft for me […]

The tale of Enheduanna being removed from her office of high priestess by force is likely historical. It harkens to the tales of the raping of the well maidens by Agamemnon, a harsh and violent sacred boundary violation against the earth and her priestesses who honored the sacred elements of creation. She names Lugalanna as the man who took over her temple rooms, spit in her face, maybe raped her, and to add salt to the wound, made fun of her sacred poetry. He tormented her, telling her to turn her priestess knife upon herself and too harm her own sexuality as other eunics had. For Inanna was known for celebrating her sexuality, and with a shift in power, there was arising a new power apart from honoring the earth and the goddess. And to separate from the power of the Goddess, desecration of the sexual organs became more widespread, even to have sacred sexuality and the temple practices disappear from the biblical and historical orthodox religions and praxis. To be holy was to not be sexual. Or rather, the practices of learning sexual discipline, pleasure, were no longer shared with the broader public. Or, these were old ancient possibly higher consciousness beings who shared with us their DNA linking our imaginations to theirs, to carry us through humanity’s dark ages.

As Juno moved from it’s long transit in Libra into Scorpio, I found myself sitting outside near my medicine wheel. Actually inside my medicine wheel as I arranged a chair in each element and a table to bring them all back together. My husband was sitting in the Air sign and I in the Water, so I asked him if he would hand me the stone with Juno’s markings to me to move into Scorpio. I’m mindful of synchronicities when they happen and this one literally threw me on my butt, for as my husband handed me the stone, the seat in my chair ripped out and I fell hard on my a*s. Since there have been innumerable challenges rising in our home, as they are in many as we navigate the stress of 2020. Mercury is also conjunct Juno both are aspecting my natal uranus. I’m definitely getting an underworld initiation here. Like Persephone dragged off to marry Pluto, and with Pluto fixing to go direct on Sunday, we are all likely getting an underworld initiation.

In the ancient imagination, the underworld wasn’t like hell: a place you go to forever to be punished. It was instead a place that you went with eyes wide open to face a deep pain so that the miracle of resurrection and renewal could take place within your own body. The underworld was a place where death got transformed into life. Where egos and fantasies were slashed so that only what was beautiful and true remained.

Egypt fell. Greece fell. The Sibyl were the last remaining goddesses who drummed in the temple of Vesta before it fell to the Roman Catholic Church. The priestesses were allowed to stay if they renounced their sexuality and remained “virgin” and agreed to only channel male deities, and these eventually became the nuns. The ancient practice of channeling the earth was forbidden. As was any connection with the Pleiades, or Goddesses. One rebellious Sibyl hid in a cave and wrote oracles and left them outside. She was so highly regarded that her prophecies were taken to the king. What did the oracle want? Bags of gold (likely so she could survive outside of temple life). But the king refused. So the oracle burned the scrolls in his presence, as the people, horrified, begged the king to pay the cost. Much was lost, but what remained, and what he paid full price for, were oracles that did indeed predict the fate of Rome.

These stories awaken something ancient within me. I grew up in a church where male things were named divine, and female things were silent and taboo. Patriarchy indeed has a shadow, otherwise it wouldn’t be so threatened by the Goddess and her priestesses, or else her temples would still be around. But there was a time when it was understood that the Goddess was within the masculinity of the God and of men, and that the God was inextricably woven into the divinity of women.

“We who come of age within the basic assumptions of monotheism rarely think about how this paradigm infiltrates every corner of our psychological lives. It does not occur to us that our most entrenched values of good and evil, perfection and impurity, worthiness and corruption are strongly influenced by the splitting which male monotheism imposes on our socialization from birth. It takes a concentrated awareness to realize that this paradigm excludes all other possibilities, and to conceive that our most fundamental presumptions could be different.” Betty Shong Meador, Inanna Lady of Largest Heart

A guy friend who has worked in the church, and is spiritually deep in both his praxis and ideas recently confessed to me, “men don’t quite know what to do with female power.” As it may appear threatening, I mean Inanna herself was known to feast on the blood of her enemies—so were the Vikings, and the Old Testament God (and she’s like Old Old Old Goddess). This wildness of nature, this rage at boundary crossing we don’t always associate with what is holy, or with the sacred feminine. How the energy of Mary could be also seen in the expression of Durga or Kali.

Looking around it doesn’t take long to face that this is not the garden paradise planet this used to be. If we’ve been given a meek and mild picture of the Goddess for example in how Mary has been presented to us (more meek than lioness) then we’re missing an essential piece in our own healing—a conscious connection with our own instinctual rage at our own boundaries being crossed by modern day living on so many fronts, and likewise, the body of the earth being exploited, for we are made of earth, and intrinsically connected to the planet. If she is hurting, we are hurting.

Isis and Horus / Mary and Jesus. In the ancient world many saw the statues as interchangeable. They were likely of the same holy lineage, or Mary being a priestess of Isis, or an incarnation of Isis.

As a recovering pleaser and “fawner” to cope with trauma, I learned early on that though others could appease please the power structures and move up the ladder around me (father’s daughters and sons) I somehow kept getting thrown into the underworld. I was not a father’s daughter. I was strange and rebellious, and my mind wasn’t interested in machines or math, but beauty and art. And this felt taboo as one baptized into the Lutheran church. For Lutherans had overcorrected from the sin of catholic opulence and indulgence to the ideas that the divine was found in the “word alone.” Walls were left white and barren. Beauty was not included in worship. But even through the word alone, one can so easily speak from their disconnected head, without doing the lifelong work of speaking from the heart, or even deeper, the incarnational work that lights up from the sacral root to the rose flowering heart as the oracles did.

To try and “be right” is to be a liar. You can’t ever quite get it. You already are good. And this goodness circles around both the divine and human aspects of ourselves. Both our great moments and our failures. When the Bible says, “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” the spiritual principal at work here is humility. If you die justified in your ‘rightness’, you died defended and heart closed towards God. You die too closely connected to the idea of being God without relating to the human part. The real work is the work of the fool done in the darkness of human consciousness. Every move you make is a sin if you are not aware of how to have self control over every organ in your body, as a babe cannot help but use their diaper. Not one of us have the mind of God, though we have a part of it, not one of us knows everything. We are simply too young yet in our human consciousness journey. And yet pride arises. And many times, as I have experienced, pride comes to protect us. For the soul is divine. Yes there is a piece of us that is holy and innocent. And that part is married with decaying flesh—these earthy space suits we put on to experience walking on earth at this time. (What were we thinking?)

Carl Jung talked about overcoming this obstacle through the work of making a meaningful link between the (lower case) self and the numinous—the sychronistic moments when the divine breaks through the mundane linking the worlds. For often we think we are one with the divine, and we are actually only trapped in fantasy. Or we have become so deadened in the material world where the spirit that once used to entice us to wonder has long gone.

When you fully face the inevitable human predicament of folly, it is in humility that the soul can now be twined with the divine, and that is the secret of the true heiros gamos, sacred marriage. It is a marriage of divine and human within each of us.

I have had my own wrestling’s with death. A few times in moments overcome with heart pain, but no way to express it, I had taken a knife to my arm. This happened twice: once after I was raped in junior high. And another time just after I had my third baby and post partum depression symptoms were worsened by the fact that my husband at the time left me for a two week trip to Nicaragua. It was like those moments revealed the true weakness of the “Amazon Goddess” who lost from her tribe of women helpers, lost from the temple arts, grandmothers and aunties around to help support the gift of new life in the community, lost from a protector and guardian at a time when I was the most vulnerable I looked full into the depth of the fall of the goddess, and I didn’t think I could go on. As I read Enheduannas words these memories flooded back to me and I wondered: how long has this impending threat or “spirit” been pressed upon the priestesses of the Goddess to turn their sacred knives on themselves?

Something unlocked for me today. As the Moon is crossing Mars, and I’m having a Black Moon Lilith return, this ancient wound of the loss of respect, the loss of sacred space, the loss of sacred guardianship, and the repercussions of rape and how the Goddess energies we long for, just cannot be anchored in those conditions. How foolish it is to believe something like racism has ended with it’s history so close at our heels, so also that the sexes are valued equally, is only to be blind to the long battle. If you long for the Goddess’ soft beauty, and her secret heart whispers, but do not respect the elements of the earth and her sacred boundaries, then you cannot have the meek mild face you want. Instead the battle goddess shall set her face against you, and you will be locked out of the mysteries of her heart for you were found without honor. If however you are humble in this moment, then there is hope for further learning and redemption of the whole earth. Priestesses are rising again, and taking up the sword of discernment, of focus, and reuniting the Goddess Wisdom with the Lord’s will.

Many have learned to wear the mask of compliance—to please at all costs because we don’t like conflict, or we don’t know how to stand in our own power, or because we have truly lost ourselves and our souls on this long journey of waking up. I used to be afraid of my own anger. I used to feel so disconnected. Or when it would appear, I would use it to harm myself. Now I have learned to roar like a lion. I am very mindful of when my boundaries are being crossed. I am also very mindful of how common it is to still disrespect a woman’s boundaries and how even within the highest courts of law, balance is still being fought for.

I’m encouraged by the stories of Paul and early disciples singing in jails until angels broke them free, or of Buddhas meditating under intense torture of the state. All of the places where the divine power has gone to break the chains for us, to show us that there is no place on earth where we cannot be truly free within.

Historically it has been quite a long journey out of human slavery. While at the same time, quite a long journey out of the morning of human consciousness into the full light of awareness and the responsibility of owning our shadows, making space for our foolishness, and offering grace to one another for simply learning how to live with so much power as a young race.

The work of joining the sisters, as Inanna joined Ereshkigal and allowed her sister’s grief to kill her, and as Osiris also allowed himself to be cut into pieces by his brother Set, and his fragments spread out over earth, is also our consciousness work to join the above and below, the light and the shadow, the queen and the killer, the king and the killer. To be fully divine and fully human means awakening to this strange marriage before one is possessed by either pole: believing oneself to be too divine or too human. The sweet spot is in the heart of compassion, which you can’t get around without passing the Hathor Goddesses sacred cows on your soul’s return to the starry heavens.

In these times where we may see dying kings and their last grasps and manipulations for power, I am encouraged by the wisdom of the psalms: do not put your hope in princes or humans who cannot save. Or in the idea that if you see the Buddha walking on the street: kill him (or kill the illusion that the buddah is outside of you!) It is only by awakening to the truth of the divine and human co-mingling within our own bodies that any of us can find salvation. That, and also my teachers say: by the grace of a woman’s true love. If you have won one woman’s heart by your true love in this lifetime you’ll be in good shape when you cross over.

I love how in the poem above only the Queen can lift her own feelings. For this is a woman who is completely self-sourced. She need not some fleeting distraction or passing pleasure, or external savior. Her true life and joy come from the depths of her underworld journeys in which she has hashed out and experienced the mysteries of death and resurrection. Her magic comes from a place deep behind the veil that no man has lifted.

Inanna, lady of largest heart, may your fires of rage be soothed. May the injustices done against you be remedied. May you restore the people of earth and the communities of earth to your joy again. Blessed be.

Fall Offerings

Hello Everybody,

I'm still here. Maybe just a few veils deeper. Just feeling some ground beneath my feet as the kids are back in hybrid schooling and we are finding some new and fluid structure to this strange year. 2020 has been quite the spiritual initiation, yes?! I have taken comfort in a mentor's words, a reminder that we signed up to be here at this time. That our souls probably stood in line begging to be of service, boots on the ground, to help with a profound shift happening on planet earth at this time.  (What were we thinking, right?!)

I left and spent a month in the woods this summer to recover and reassess my next steps after our unfortunate yurt fire. It felt so good to be connected to the trees, and to be at a high elevation, where mountain tops were at third eye level. Hours of quiet with nothing but the company of ravens, deer, wind, and woods to teach me. What I remembered was what it felt like to have an open heart. I cried a lot. I laughed a lot. I got more tender. And I got more tough. I wasn't going to give up a dream I had worked so hard for. And I'm happy to share that we have decided to rebuild <3. 

Thank you for considering making a donation to our Go Fund Me page to help with extra expenses!

Life can change so fast. And trauma can lock us up, in our bodies, in our minds, and in our hearts. It can bring us to a locked down place (literally) where we want to hide from the uncomfortable. And yet, the healing is found--as Brene Brown says, in leaning in and getting curious and facing that which makes us squirm: often facing very human aspects of ourselves. The practice of bringing spaciousness to our relationships where we have the courage to see and share "the stories we are telling ourselves" and how many of them are silly when we say them out loud, or simply untrue fantasies that served a coping purpose. The work on coming more into present time with one another is a gift I see this 2020 drawing out of us. With so many future unknowables, we are called to be present with what is. We are invited to gather in our humanity. Not fearing our frailty, but holding it tenderly, while continuing the work of weaving our unique divine connection. It's a practice to shift our perspectives away from the monkey mind and distractions of the world, back to the still calm center of the heart. 

Times like these call for courage. And faith. They call for heart.  The astrology for the rest of the year looks pretty intense. Like a pressure cooker (that has the potential to make us more brilliantly bright!) As the sun has slipped into the underworld and the days get darker from here until the Winter Solstice, I feel this is a time to go deeply within. To do our inner work so we can remove the planks from our eyes and see ourselves and one another more clearly, as beloved children of the One Most High. 

I encourage people to amp up their grounding practices. Whatever you've been doing to self care and stay sane: maybe do it twice as much! Up the meditation time. Make sure you're moving your body and spending time connecting to nature as she dances in colorful fall colors.  I've personally picked up my daily mantra practice and am charging and clearing my relationship with the element of fire as I also pray for people being affected by these extreme weather emergencies.  If you would like to start a mantra practice, set up a session with me and I can offer you some from my lineage of teachers to start. 

I will be here holding sacred space and doing new moon and full moon ceremonies. Heads up this Tuesday Saturn moves direct and makes a square with Mars, so some friction as the national speeches are scheduled. Also this Thursday is a Full Moon and Pluto will be going direct on Sunday 8:33 a.m., this may have us revisit energies that kicked off 2020. Pluto is about transformation, and Saturn is about structures on Earth, so keep your inner eyes on the prize. What would bring your heart more joy? What changes still need to be made to bring about a more helpful way of life for our families and the planet? 

Join me on FB live here at 9 p.m. Thursday for a full moon astrology report, ritual & card reading. (Full moon is exact at 4:06 p.m.)

I am now seeing clients remotely on TUESDAYS. My offering of remote healings and clearings may be a good support at this time. We find a time when you can relax, and I will do a remote healing session to help clear your chakras, boost your immunity, and clear your home. I am also hand drawing astral charts and offer a one hour reading. Tarot readings can also be done via remote on zoom. I'm open to doing remote yoga lessons too! Just let me know how I can support you at this time.

Take good care everyone,
Jessica 

---

Find me teaching hot yoga @ Mojo Fit Studios on the following days:

Tuesday 4 p.m. (Northside)
Friday Noon (West)
Saturday Noon (West)
Sunday 2 p.m. (West)
Sunday 4 p.m. Live Music w/ Jessica taught by KJ

I'm so excited to have brought a big dream to reality by stepping out to offer live music during a yoga class! It's something I always wanted to try and KJ was so supportive, she offered me a weekly gig! I'll be sharing healing mantras and original music as an offering to the community <3 

Save the date! November 1, Sunday from 10-Noonish I want to offer an on-line experience I'm calling Shakti Lady Light. It's All Saints Day, and the day after Halloween and the second full moon of October and just a week before the election. I'm planning on holding ceremonial space to remember those who've passed on, to guide women in meditations, chakra clearings, gentle movements, songs and prayers. Since we can't be together at a large venue this year, you can join me from the comforts of your home for a live experience. I'll have more details soon!

Enjoy this extended version of the sermon I preached at F-M Unitarian Universalist Church a few weeks ago on the topic of the Great Goddess.

May you be blessed with warmth in your home, 
Love in your heart,
Peace in your soul,
And joy in your life.

Namaste, Jessica

Replay: Mystic Fish Service One & Bonus: Lakshmi's 9 Circles of Protection

Reopening the etheric Goddess Temples on Earth again

Replay: Mystic Fish Service One
&
Bonus: Lakshmi's 9 Circles of Protection

Laksmi's 9 Circles of Protection:
Om Aim Kleem Sreem Om Maha Lakshmi Anya Namaha
1- Red, root chakra
2-Orange, sacral chakra
3-Yellow, navel power chakra
4-Green, heart chakra
5-Light Blue, throat chakra
6-Dark Blue, third eye chakra
7-Purple, crown chakra
8-Light Pink, Divine Mother/Oversoul
9-White (all colors) Divine Sacred Unity

Join us for another on-line gathering of Mystic Fish this Sunday, May 31 at 10 a.m.
Thank you for sharing this with other women who may be interested!
Get the zoom link (same as last week) and learn more here.

2020 Year of the Goddess & Her King

"The Star ~ Goddess of Hope" ~ A print of the original painting by Emily Balivet, 2013.

THE EPIPHANY
Stars in the sky
The sun is new
Born again from the darkest night
Christ light
Sacred Wisdom.
We open to receive
Light shining down to Earth
Make us new
Grant us hope
Lead us on the path of love
Until we find ourselves home
Among all that is sacred.

Happy Epiphany!

ASTROLOGY
We are all experiencing these intense astrological transits in different ways. For me, it feels like a grand compression. The kind of pressure that makes a diamond, that breaks you until you become unbreakable, or maybe just more accepting of always broken, deeply human. I’ve been feeling pushed to the core of who I am and I have been forced to face some deep emotions of my own and the collective that are coming up for healing. I’ve backed off of work and taken more time to go within and tend to my home and family.

January 10 is the Lunar Eclipse. Eclipses charge the next six months and bring about deep shifts in consciousness. (Our solar eclipse was back on Christmas.) Then comes the Pluto Saturn conjunction on January 12 at 10:46 a.m. in Moorhead, MN. As I feel into this energy, the image of Sheila Na Gig kept coming to me. She’s this creature that can be shocking, disturbing, silly, and blatantly open about her life giving yoni!

She reminded me that before Pluto was a Dark Lord of the Underworld, Pluto was the Goddess. She was the dark yoni. The cosmic egg. The void. The unknown. The place of death and rebirth. As Saturn moves towards this exact conjunction I’m trying to avoid the doomsday news (that’s always pushing us to more fear) and instead see this transit of a reunion of the Great Goddess and Her King.

Saturn is Father time. He can be cold and unfeeling about the structures he holds, sorta like Math classes for me growing up. Saturn energy is recovering from it’s own journey into AI and structures apart from the Goddess and the Sacred Elements as he was cast out with the Titans and the Old Guard when Jupiter took the front stage. But Saturn rules the structures of the cosmos, including those of the unconscious. And this conjunction is happening in the earth sign of Capricorn, with the Sun, Mercury-the trickster and transformer, Ceres-the Mother Grain Goddess, and Jupiter the heavy is sitting on the South Node of our collective past. May this conjunction bring conscious integration of sacred structures that hold the energy of love, and allow life to flow and flourish on the Earth again.

A VISUAL PRAYER FOR AUSTRALIA

HOLY WOMB MANTRA WORKSHOP
Stay tuned! We are planning this for mid to late February. We will offer an introductory teaching to Swami Kaleshwar’s work. Grant and I have been practicing these mantras for a year and a half now and we find them super helpful in clearing space, grounding, and healing. We’re looking forward to sharing more with the community soon!

PRIVATE SESSIONS AVAILABLE
I have cut back on my private sessions, I do have a few spaces still open:
1 PM TUESDAYS or 1 PM WEDNESDAYS

GODDESS CONSCIOUSNESS
I really enjoyed presenting some of my latest writings in a sermon at Unitarian Universalist Church in Fargo on Rose Sunday. Enjoy the video here.

The light in me salutes the light in you <3

Namaste, Jess

Mystic Mondays: Dig Deep & Consciously Choose

Shakti Lady Women’s Healing Retreat, November 2, 2019. Photo by @lostinfargo.

ASTRO WEATHER
Get ready for the powerful full moon on 12.11 at 11:12 p.m. this Wednesday night local time. The full moon is in the sign of Gemini. The Moon is at 19.52 degrees and the Sabian Symbol for 20 degrees Gemini is: A CAFETERIA WITH AN ABUNDANCE OF CHOICES. The full moon is happening in the 10th house of career, so maybe Mercury, who rules Gemini, will bring some changes in that direction. Mercury just moved into Sagittarius where he’s met up again with asteroid Lilith, the rage of the feminine for the cutting down of the life tree. “So we meet again.” What have Mercury and Lilith integrated since their last meetup a few weeks ago when Mercury transited the Sun? We shall soon see.

Everyone saying this is the most joyful full moon of the year, may possibly be full of it. Please consider that Venus is conjunct and squeezed between Saturn and Pluto at 20 degrees Capricorn. This may feel a little like a Persephone in the Underworld experience. Hopefully with her complete initiation (and our own) rebirth. Mars is also trining Neptune, steaming up those water warriors and ancient sea creatures.

The Sun’s opposition degree for the full moon is in Sagittarius at 19.52 inviting the full light of awareness of the Sabian Symbol here: MEN CUTTING THROUGH ICE. The Sun is illuminating Athena asteroid, the Ancient Mother Goddess of Wisdom. So consider how wisdom cuts through the ice to offer you an abundance of choices. When we make intentions, it’s important that we also TAKE CONSCIOUS ACTION to support those intentions IN THE BODY. Get to the depth of what matters, and choose! There are many options. None is wrong. All things can be learned from. Notice where you’re giving your power away. Call it back. And move with intention for your highest good and the highest good of all. If you don’t know what to do, wait. That is a choice too, and advent is the perfect time to get still and keep watch. <3

On the full moon Chiron—the wound that just won’t heal—will go direct again. Maybe you feel like all these old issues have been coming up for review, a little teary, Chiron asks us to be brave in facing our wound, and has the potential to initiate us into our greatest gift. We may even become wounded healers ourselves. Learn more about Chiron from my astrology teacher, Lalita.

SAVE THE DATE
December 15: Sunday morning at 11 a.m. I will be speaking on the topic of Goddess Consciousness at FM Unitarian Universalism Church.

December 21: Winter Solstice Meditation, Music & Refreshments 7-9 p.m. Come over and enjoy some quite meditation in the yurt and intention setting for the year, followed by some Christmas music and yummy food and drinks. $10 donations welcome <3 Spaces limited. Please RSVP to me at jessica@taraloma.com.

January 4: Astrology for the new year 2020: Learn about your cosmic uniqueness & draw your own natal chart! Jess will lead everyone in a creative Astro adventure learning a little about how to Star Steer your new year ‘for your highest good and the highest good of all’ “ Jess will bring supplies for everyone to make their own chart.

Participants MUST have their birthday’s exact natal time & birth location and bring a cell phone.

Due to limited space and supplies, all sales are final for this workshop. Purchase tickets at Mojo Fit Studios.

January 12: Sunday 10:30 a.m. Meditation during the Pluto/Saturn conjunction in the yurt. $10 at the door or pay donations at the temple treasury.

ENJOY MY CHRISTMAS MUSIC

The light in me salutes the light in you,

Namaste, Jessica

Jealousy Medicine

I pulled this card from the Wildwood deck and it seems a fitting reflection on this day where Mars enters Scorpio, a realm of taboo subjects. Jealousy is a poisonous energy. It spoils things. It blinds us to the truth. It causes us to act out of our lower less developed natures. I’ve been reading Wisdom Rising by Lama Tsultrim Allione where she talks about the five poisons that afflict the human family: jealousy, ignorance, pride, anger, and craving. Each of these has a medicine, a way to transform the poison into wisdom. But first we often have to face the root of the issue: the illusions we cling to.

It’s still socially unacceptable to admit we suffer from these baser emotional states, and yet we can’t just stop doing it because our brain or society tell us to. Some of this is about the deeper issues of how we learn as humans. And for far too long learning has often been traumatizing, like soldiering. Forced. Random. Pointless. Distraction. Soul learning unfolds in its own divine timing and does not ask for one to submit their freedom or sovereignty for a paycheck.

All five poisons, Tsultrim says, come from one basic distortion: a belief that we are separate from Source, the ground of our being. Once we rest in that awareness—and yes it takes an experience, an embodied practice of meditation to learn how to sit and be—once we return to that awareness, we are free from the poison, free to stop repeating the cycles of pain from the past. But it takes practice and work.

Sitting and being is not something my ancestors and neighbors necessarily value. We tend to value productivity. For some with trauma, even sitting still can be traumatic. And while there is a place and an honor for swift right action, if we are not taking time to simply be after we are act, we run the risk of burnout, adrenal fatigue. Illnesses. Work till you die is what’s scripted.

I often heard sermons growing up about the dangers of meditation turning into naval gazing and selfish self absorption. Don’t be selfish is pretty deeply ingrained among the people who lived on the prairie and needed to rely on community in order to survive to the point of excruciating self denial. Busying one’s self by doing good deeds was lauded, even needed for survival.

In ancient times: ‘know thyself’ was valuable. Now maybe, hopefully, collectively, we are expanding to knowing self and knowing our neighbors too. But if we haven’t completed our self work (and honestly who has?) than we run the risk of abandoning self for others. Causing harm to self rather than others doesn’t fix anything, i’ts merely turned the first problem inward. This is an unholy martyrdom because it is rooted in a deep belief (maybe unconscious) that the true self is not even of value. And here’s where that illusion continues to create a lot of suffering in our world. Our problems are spiritual in nature. Who are we? And of what value is a human?

Jung taught us to be mindful of the polarities. And if there is a big push to one side, it may be a response to its opposite, rather than an integration of the center of awareness. The most stable place is actually the center—not the other side of the galaxy where I prefer to run when I’m triggered. Sometimes I can hear the ancestors from the past warning: we took it too far in our lives! don’t do that! So we go the other way entirely, when we just need to turn around and sort the seeds.

We became so locked up in the poisonous patters because we were rewarded for doing what was externally “right” and working to get our basic needs met. If penetration is valued, then receptivity is not. Maybe this goes deeper into the wounds of the male psyche than I am able to venture. If one becomes stuck in perpetually penetrating, the energy turns abusive: dominating conversations, talking to be heard and have power, over stepping limits of knowledge, overuse of resources, treating others as objects, maybe as unworthy as we truly find ourselves. How else could we end up with a world where sexually abusing children is so rampant? Externalization of pain. Denial of self. If there is no self, there is no one to be responsible. No self behind the mask. The human soul is in need of desperate healing.

If we stopped running—which is what trauma does— we could slow down to see what was really bothering us was this disconnection from the ground of our being. Then the healing can begin. Then the spiritual journey begins. I heard it said once that when humanity fell from heaven, it was an analogy of how we fell out of our hearts into our head. That’s the long road home folks. Back to the heart. And the heart won’t be forced open. Finding the right keys takes practice. Sometimes that may feel like the scariest most impossible thing. I’m still working on it. Usually when we are growing, and especially if we are also healing generational trauma, it is that daunting. We are going where no one has gone before. But we are not going alone. And we are not going away from the truth and we don’t have to betray our souls to get there. We are just sorting the seeds on the pathways of light back to the center of our being.

One interpretation for the word repent means: to turn around. Just turn around and face the ground of your being. All will be well. We do have to take action in our healing.No one can do it for us. But sometimes the only action needed is simply: be still.

Jealousy is an energy I’ve been trying to master for a while. I spent many hours and years working with counselors to unlock the troubles I was having at school growing up. Counselors would try to show me others were jealous. But I didn’t see myself as someone to be jealous of. I saw myself as weird. And lonely. And unable to escape the projections or make friends. Jealousy arises when we feel that something we need for survival is outside of us. It sets up attachments and cravings. I would find myself jealous of women who could hide their feelings better than myself. Jealousy erodes trust in community, and among the sisterhood. And yet, we still struggle with it.

Maybe I have been carrying a lot of dark karma from past lives. Maybe a woman is to blame for everything?. If it helps, do we become that for others? Do we agree to play out the illusions until the truth is ready to be received? I feel a deep healing for the sisterhood coming.

I’m sorry.
Please forgive me.
I love you.
Thank you.

Acceptance has been the medicine for me. If people are accusing me of anything, I practice accepting it. Maybe I am crazy. Ok, I practice and accept and love crazy. (Can be fun sometimes.) And then it dissipates. All the shadows ground back into the awareness that I am that. And if I can also love that then the poison is gone.

Working with the energy of jealousy showed me the wound, the illusion of separation, from the Divine Mother. Pain points the way to the medicine. The medicine we all need, is in creating that loving human connection again. It is possible. It takes faith. It is scary. But I believe we will all eventually find our way back to the heart. We will see how much suffering we created believing: I’m not worthy of that kind of love. And we will one day allow that love in to heal us in the most profound ways, if we choose.

Jealousy can become wisdom. All of the poisons can teach us the way back to love.

Mystic Mondays: Slow Down Goddess

Shakti Lady Women’s Healing Retreat Nov. 2 at Rustic Oaks. Photograph by @lostinfargo.

ASTRO WEATHER
The planet Mars is moving into Scorpio tomorrow. Mars rules Scorpio, and Scorpio rules the 2nd chakra, sexuality, sensuality, deep watery feelings. Mercury has been in Scorpio retrograde and is moving through some of the darkest phases of this retrograde transit now. Mars will be bringing his fiery energy out of the last degrees of Libra-where it’s always a challenge for Mars to stay in balance. Scorpio is much more comfortable for Mars to play in his domain of sexuality, passions, secrets and taboos. (Speaking of secrets: tomorrow the new movie by Wilcock is released: The Cosmic Secret).

ENERGY SHIFT
As potentially more dark and disturbing revelations abound, may this also be a time for our healing, particularly our sexual healing. I keep coming back to the word “grace.” It is the only reason I am here today. Not because I deserve anything. But because despite everything, I am, you are, we are all still divine kids of infinite worth. As the days grow darker until the Winter Solstice, this is a great time to slow down Goddess and do our inner work. Journal. Read. Bathe. Try some of the yoga poses below for hips and second chakra. Love yourself and your beloveds well. Note dreams and pull that awareness of your own shadow close with compassion.

Yoga series for hips, psoas, sciatica, and supporting 2nd chakra health.

SAVE THE DATE
December 15, Sunday morning at 11 a.m. I will be speaking on the topic of Goddess Consciousness at FM Unitarian Universalism Church.

The light in me salutes the light in you,

Namaste,
Jessica

Mystic Mondays: Shakti Lady Activation

Shakti Lady Women’s Healing Retreat: Goddess energy anchored <3

My heart is full this Monday morning. I’m so grateful for an amazing team that came together and helped make this dream of Shakt Lady: Women’s Healing Retreat, happen. Bravo to Sarah, Andrea, Randi, Grant, Nels, Indian Palace, Shanelle, Rustic Oaks Staff, and about 30 courageous women—many who’ve I’ve never met before— who devoted a day to our personal, authentic and collective healing. We are already brainstorming our next women’s retreat in the Spring!

ASTRO NEWS
On November 11—next Monday— the planet Mercury will pass in front of the sun and earth exactly. It’s a rare moment, and one that I’ve heard brings new forms of communication, revolutionary ideas and an expansion of human consciousness. This is also a double eleven day, a number of balance between the divine masculine and the divine feminine, a number of balance within ourselves and all of creation. Mars is also currently applying a tense square to Pluto, with potentially explosive energy, so make sure to ground, exercise, and work to express feelings of anger and rage that come with feeling injustices of being stuck in any systems out of balance. Conscious rage works with wisdom and passion for justice and liberty for all.

SILVER TRIGGER-GODDESS CHOICE POINT & RETURN TO BALANCE
As we considered this weekend: what are the impacts on the human psyche in a world where for thousands of years divine things have been attributed with masculinity, and feminine things have been seen as less? You get a repression of the Great Mother, people forbidden to worship the Goddess or connect with the earth as a living being, women burned at the stake and shamed for using their intuitive abilities, men shutting down their feelings, people soldering on as slaves to the dollar trying to survive, women acting like and siding with men against other women in order to survive, the raping and pillaging of the earth, demonization of native people, production of goods valued over care for creation. To name just a few.

Gold has often represented the masculine essence of radiant sun-like nature, and the moon and silver has long been associated with the feminine essence of reflecting solar light, and the mysteries of the dark interior nature of the fertile womb. It used to be, when the Goddess temples were opened, that silver was more valuable than gold. The energy lines of the kundalini are often represented as balanced silver and gold. For too long, gold has been out of balance with silver, the masculine out of line with the feminine. This leads to a population that has lost the ability to be receptive and open, to hold space, to be and value creativity, and instead one that is more aggressive and overstepping the natural boundaries.

On November 11 humanity is invited to purchase silver as a symbolic conscious action representing our collective commitment to recreate balance on earth through honoring of the divine feminine silver and balanced divine masculine gold.

JOIN THE MASS MEDIATION FOR SPIRITUAL BALANCE NOVEMBER 11
Cobra and others have organized a world wide meditation and choice point opportunity on this day. Take some time on November 11 to meditate on balance of the divine feminine and divine masculine. You may also meditate on the circle of the Divine Mother’s Holy Womb in which we all dwell. You can look at a mandala, or place silver coins on each ring of the mandala to symbolize our call upon Divine Mother’s spiritual essence and purifying containment. Please use your own discernment. I have gone deep within and this resonates with me, which is why I am sharing. I believe the amount of silver recommended to purchase was 3-5 grams. Coins rather than jewelry is recommended. It’s not enough for us to simply wish things better. Human development and community building requires conscious choices.

May the sovereignty of the land, and of the Goddess, and the true Kings who pledge to serve love and protect the Earth and the innocent return to us quickly.

SAVE THE DATE
December 15, Sunday morning at 11 a.m. I will be speaking on the topic of Goddess Consciousness at FM Unitarian Universalism Church.

The light in me salutes the light in you,

Namaste, Jessica

Mysitc Mondays: Shakti Ladies Prepare for Healing Retreat Saturday (Are You Coming?)

Yesterday’s new moon in Scorpio feels like an initiation into the eerie depths. Scorpio rules the dark, taboo, hidden, secrets, sexuality, unconscious and shadow. It takes some intentional work to prepare ourselves to receive the wisdom bubbling up from our depths, otherwise we keep running and distracting ourselves from anything that is uncomfortable or threatens to upset our neat and ordered view of reality. Scorpio season is a time to investigate what’s been going on below. It’s a time when Persephone returns to her husband Hades/Pluto of the underworld, when the life of the earth pulls inward and literally goes underground. Celts believed this was ‘thin space’ a time when the veils between the worlds were thin. They made huge bonfires to remind the Spring to come back. Treats were left for ancestor spirits traveling through (so they didn’t play tricks on those they visited). Energy workers are feeling a huge breakthrough between what has been unconscious and hidden, and what has really been going on behind the scenes. Last night I had a premonition dream of something that actually happened today. The energy feels eerie. Perfect as we approach Halloween.

On Halloween the planet Mercury goes retrograde. A lot of people warn about communication issues, technology breakdowns and car repairs. I tend to love Mercury retrogrades and see them as a time to be introspective (an introvert’s delight). There’s a stellium of planets in Scorpio now including Mercury, the Sun, the Moon, Venus and the asteroid Athena, Goddess of Wisdom. Scorpio is ruled by passionate Mars, and Scorpio also rules the 2nd chakra, the genitals, sexuality and sensuality. The asteroid Lilith is also conjunct Venus in Scorpio. Lilith asteroid #1811 is connected to the deep feminine rage at Gilgamesh for cutting down the life tree and causing the Goddess to flee from Earth (as I wrote about in my book The Circle of the Fall). I’m feeling an end to all this disembodied disconnection, and a reckoning with the rulers of the earth, and those who truly honor Gaia and are ready to welcome the Goddess’ return.

As I prepare for my Shakti Lady event this Saturday, I’m feeling all these threads of my life being woven together, a new wholeness emerging out of the strange chaos that has been my life. Clarity about my past and how it has led me here to do what I’ve always dreamed of doing. Something like yoga church. Something spiritual that doesn’t abandon the body or women’s intuition. Something that honors the earth as something more than just a duty to care for, but as a living being to tune into with reverence.

We have about 10 more spaces (which means we have almost 30 participants joining us so far!) Save your spot among us! (Shuttle available from Fargo Airport to retreat site for out of town guests.)

SHAKTI LADY: MEET PRESENTER RANDI

Randi is a teacher and is currently studying to be certified as a pre and post natal coach. Through her own personal experience of losing two babies, Randi has been called to be a light for other women. Her story of courage, bravery and perseverance will encourage other women to know there is light beyond trauma.

“Even at the grave, we make our song. Alleluia.”
-Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, Burial Rite

The light in me salutes the light in you!
Namaste, Jessica

Mysitc Mondays: Descending to the Goddess

Photo by Nels @Lost in Fargo

I read an energy report yesterday that said this next week is going to feel super intense for many of us. I put these reports in a bubble. But as the season heads into the darkest time of the year (and the new moon) and we approach the threshold of Samhaim, I know the thin spaces are approaching. There is definitely some intensity to the rest of this month. With the Sun ready to meet many other planets in Scorpio, and Mars to enter Scorpio for the first time in two years, and Mercury continuing to reveal deep secrets and taboos going retrograde on Halloween, it’s always good to find find extra time to ground, be introspective and get in nature.

Taking the time to learn how to sit quietly with yourself can be some of the spookiest activities you may try this Halloween. For to look inward is to find the root of what our imaginations are casting upon the world. And when we have those Ah-Ha moments of enlightenment it often (for me) comes with a dreaded realization that there is no one else to blame but myself. So I have to reorient and hold this projection that was much easier to cast off. Sometimes that’s a lot of energy to integrate. Then the realization that there is no one here but me (in my sphere of what I can control). And then: there is no place I could go apart from divine “for even if I go into the depths of Sheol, even there You are with me.” (Psalms). And so I go into the dark, even into the depths of hell knowing that “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.”

When we walk the spiritual path, it’s the demons who fear the light, and sometimes we have to recognize how much light we have to use for the greatest good. There is no more time for hiding it under a bushel. I feel this time is ripe for us to unveil the masks of illusion that have kept us thinking this light we bear as humans is in anyway worthless or powerless despite all the challenges we face at this time.

When we peer into the dark and realize that the dark has been taking note of us and waiting for us to receive the gifts we have often cut off and not received yet. The dark has often been demonized, along with women, the yoni, the moon, the night, the unconscious, dark skin, and the earth’s mythical creatures like Pan- to name just a few. While that initiation to behold our depths and become truly conscious (as Brené Brown teaches) of ‘the story we are telling ourselves’. This can feel shocking at first, like lighting striking in The Tower card in the Tarot deck, it also is the only way we can truly face the truth, grow in consciousness, and return to right relationship with the earth, with ourselves, with each other and with the divine.

If you have ever struggled with the tension between wanting to be good and not wanting to be selfish, but are often confused about that boundary between serving others at the expense of your own sanity and self care, or maybe you find yourself slipping into playing the martyr, or overly helpful to a fault, than this conference is for you. We will be tapping into the resurrection power of the feminine, and holding safe space for women to face the power of our depths and rise together stronger.

Calling all souls who are ready for this divine feminine initiation, on this All Souls Day 2019 <3 <3 <3 Spaces Limited! We have about ten more spaces. Is one for you?

MEET SHAKTI LADY ANDREA

Andrea will share her story of love and loss after walking through terminal illness with her father and how that lead her down the path to death and grief work. She will discuss the sacred calling to death midwifery and the deep need to discuss death, dying, grief and loss. Through her own facets of grief and loss she has come to have a passion to hold space for those who are processing the many emotions and physical struggles that accompany grief. We will also be doing a releasing project centered around our own individual loss.

the light in me salutes the light in you.

namaste, jessica

Mystic Mondays: We Belong to the Earth

On this Indigenous People’s Day I give thanks for all First People, people of the earth, people who love the earth, people who defend the earth, people who walk with the wisdom of the earth. I give thanks for the grace and dignity and courage of the First People who’ve sustained centuries of violence due to the sickness in the human spirit, and the roots of self hatred that separated us from resting and receiving the love of Mother Earth for a time.

As a scandinavian woman with Viking ancestry, I know my roots and privilege come from conquerors. And I also know my body is of the earth, and my soul is of the stars. To reconcile the divide or the lack of self recognition that happens in the act of conquest, is to go deep into a human wound. The natives often spoke of an endless hunger that affected the white man. As if a mad spirit had overtaken him and he was set to consume. At some deep level, this is the consequence of unspeakable human traumas.

Though various strains of Christianity included a justification for the domination of women and the earth, that is not the good news I took into my heart. (I am still so grateful to have been at Standing Rock when religious leaders confessed our sins to the natives, asked forgiveness, said we were wrong, and burned the theological document of Manifest Destiny that asserted it was God’s will to give this land to white people.) There has always been a deeper message in my Christian heritage, a message of love that rings out through all the ages: welcome strangers, show hospitality, feed the hungry, care for the sick, and love your enemy. Before we blame Christians for everything, let’s sort the seeds on which versions of Christianity were just wolves in sheep clothing.

I once heard a teaching that Creator divided up the races on earth and gave each an element to tend, learn, protect, and grow. To the Indigenous people Creator gave the element of water. To the white man Creator gave the element of fire. And it was to each race to perfect the nature of the elements util they could be joined together again as one.

To the white man Creator askes: perfect tools and technology to serve the greatest good of all. What would a sacred technology look like? One that blends care of creation with human innovation? It would require the healing of a great divide, and the ability to see that everything is connected. For what we do to another, we do to ourselves. If we are harming another, it is because we are hurting ourselves. Sacred Tech wouldn’t run oil lines through sacred land. Sacred Tech wouldn’t disturb our wellbeing with dangerous 5G waves, or cancer causing gene alterations to our food and medicine supply. Sacred Tech would preserve and protect all the sacred elements of nature. This is the next level up challenge for the white man, this is the holy grail. Don’t just say you care, courageously make it so.

In some ways our races were created to hold sacred opposites, and yet humanity often stumbles into warring with the stranger rather than greeting one as a guest, as a sacred teacher and future family member.

Though people may stir up ideas about the world ending in fire or explosions, do not let the human imagination be overcome with such fear (or failure). For it may be that we are just shortly to discover the secret that restores the balance of creation.

We are all made of the same sacred stuff: Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Ether. What chains but that of a broken spirit, a broken heart, a loss so great that only madness was left to roam wildly and consume? How does the white man awaken to his deep hunger for God? Can he find his way back from his traumatized mind to the quiet Eden of his heart? How does he allow himself to take off his armor and receive the gentle love and devotion of the earth again? I have faith that this human developmental stage of externalizing our internal condition upon the world will one day soon come to an end, along with any energy that uses conquering in order to prove manliness or power (which is another form of trauma and suppression of personal vulnerabilities). What does humanity need most at this time and who is willing to focus their hearts and minds unwaveringly to solidify peace on earth again? I trust there are warriors of the heart making themselves ready for this shift.

On this day, may we each remember our own ancestors who though human, did the best they could with what they had. We pray for their healing. We remember those long ago ancestors who belonged to the earth. We pray for those who may have come to earth fleeing other catastrophes unbeknownst to us. And we hold fast to the promise that the earth shall return to a heavenly garden, that one day all nations will gather again around The Tree of Life for healing.

May the sacred balance return. Blessed be.

In preparation for the Shakti Lady Women’s Healing Retreat, I’ve been thinking a lot about Carl Jung and his healing work through dreams, and sorting through what to include in my lecture. I realized with my new astrology skills, I could run his chart. I was blown away by what I discovered! The more I felt into his chart, the more I saw him as an archetypal figure and a mentor for this next age of Aquarius and what that might look like for humanity moving forward. Enjoy this 20 min video reflection!

EARLY BIRD PRICES END TODAY!
TICKETS $55 all day
Tomorrow Tickets $97

Receiving the Gifts of Shakti
By Sarah nather jacobs

By now, we are all aware that we embody both aspects of feminine and masculine energy. But all women also balance the polarities of woman AND nurturing mother. How can we wield the double edged sword of taking care of our needs as well as the needs of others, with balance and grace? Sarah Nather Jacobs will explore the gifts of the Goddess that are available to all, and we will activate and awaken Her divine gifts within our kundalini shakti. She will tell the story of the Goddess Oshun and her symbolism of her power and gifts, and how they relate to humanity and women in general. We will also meet Adi Shakti, and connect our deep feminine circles of truth together. Read more about the retreat here.

october 14: last day for early bird prices!

The light in me salutes the light in you,

Namaste, Jessica <3

Mystic Mondays: Discovering A Love that Outlasts Evil

Last week the Sun crossed my natal Pluto, which is next to my moon in my twelfth house of Libra. In Whole Sign Astrology, the Twelfth house has to do with the psyche and the unconscious. And conjunct my Pluto is an asteroid called Alice. When my astrology teacher, Lalita Karoli pointed this out she said: Jessica you’ve been down the rabbit hole. Yes, yes I have. I felt called to share in the video below some visions and dreams of old that I hope will be of service to the collective as we are sifting through fake news and doing our deep human healing.

Pluto is at the outer edges of the galaxy. Pluto as Lord of the Underworld is often confused or conflated with Lucifer, but remember that it was Jesus that descended into the depths and conquered death (Lucifer didn’t want to descend), and before Jesus, it was Inanna who took the path of descent, the Queen of Heaven, The Great Mother traversed the void, who dwells in the cosmic yoni that may pull any man in to face fears of being overcome by the feminine. (Orgasm in french means ‘little death’).

With the sun shining on the deep depths of my psyche and the rabbit hole and the collective unconscious I began to feel panicky and stuck in the underworld. I accused my partner of tricking me and trapping me. All very Hades things to do. Could I face my own Hades? Could I do this initiation this time? The truth is there is an aspect of ourselves that does trick and trap and pull us down. Sometimes we trick ourselves into believing things are fine when they are not. Or we trick ourselves into thinking things are terrible when they are not. Sometimes it’s all about our perspective. And what is truly ‘terrible’ to us. Ultimately the Trickster character was never kicked out of the realm of the divine for it always tricked everyone into a more marvelous happy ending then anyone could possibly imagine.

The way through is the way of the wound. If I want to heal myself and stop repeating whatever kind of unconscious traumas and dramas keep spinning through my life, I have to face those things I would prefer not to look at. Trauma changes the brain. And while some may label that a disorder, trauma also offers its own sort of gifts. For me it seems I have suffered many lifetimes of broken heartedness. The work of healing and opening my heart is an everyday practice. Some of us find ourselves at a place where we fear to slow down and look into the dark, or descend into the body for the grave fear that we might not ever get back up. If we started opening up, the dam would break. Things would pour out of us that we wouldn’t know what to do with. Sorta like pandora’s box.

Love has many layers and it’s always beckoning us deeper. I love my husband and I know he loves me. But still, love scares the shit out of me most days. Our relationship has challenged me to look at all the ways in which my heart has shields over it. In trying to release I’ve learned, I can’t force those shields to go away. I have to build a relationship with what is being protected and defended against and why. I have to face my fears of being vulnerable and receptive and deep fears that I may not be worthy to receive love. Cognitively I know this to be false. But the body remembers, and the issues in our tissues have much to say.

There was this cliff I kept falling off of in my mind. This place I would go where I would just scream through new layers of low, of lost hope, of dread. Ultimately I had to come to a place where I landed in the hands of the divine. Where I could feel that this holy presence was real and not just an imaginary security blanket. My illusions of separation from the divine had to go. My work was to embody this divinity and recode those voices of shame, unworthiness, that kept me closed down. I had another breakthrough last week.

One of my major fears was continuing to experience heartache through the fear of betrayal of my beloved. I was externalizing the source of the problem. I recognized that I had this little victim within still placing blame upon the men who raped me or took advantage of me or made me feel worthless and like disposable trash. Part of my healing was recognizing those part of myself that may have agreed to experience those things. Why would the soul choose this? For the very reason that Jesus embodied the ultimate human experience: death as a criminal in a most gruesome way: in order that even this might be redeemed. In order to reveal to humanity: love has no bounds. It can redeem everything we’ve ever experienced. Sometimes I wonder if souls want to experience the opposite side of pain they have caused in a past life. Sometimes it takes a lot for a soul to feel ready and worthy to return to a meaningful connection with source. No one can force it. We all have a choice about how and when if ever to do that.

I read the story of Quan Yin as told by Kaia Ra in her book The Sophia Code this week and it helped something click for me. The story is Quan Yin had been brutally gang raped, her family murdered in front of her, her village burned. Something within told her to run to the woods and she escaped and wandered mad and animal like through the forest for years until a man showed up. He had come to help her heal. He was human but also made of light. In another lifetime she had done the same for him. He watched with compassion as she wrestled to receive his love, to accept compassion for all within her that had been wounded. Sometimes for those who have been most wounded, it is love that we lash out at. How could someone else be so loving, when we are in such agony, so at peace when we are in pain? This man’s love opened up her deepest insecurities. She destroyed the altars he built for her soul. She lashed out in rage at his kindness. His patient presence allowed her the time and space to move through her anger and grief and to find the utmost compassion for every piece of herself. The most powerful thing any of us can be for anyone is a compassionate presence while the pain runs its course. She finally returned to her peace. Since learning about her, I have felt her presence softening my own heart when I call on her.

Quan Yin, artist unknown

When one of us learns something, we learn it for the collective. We know in a new what what is truly humanly possible. Quan Yin had a destiny to become the Great Mother of Compassion for humanity, and her initiation was to first find it for her very human frail self.

I realized in my pain I was still putting the shame of sexual misconduct upon the masculine. I was externalizing something I couldn’t hold or have compassion on for myself. For when I was younger I experienced what it was like to be put in the “slut” category in junior high. It was a dark place filled with tons of projections about what my peers both desired and feared. I was none of it, and all of it, not myself and yet called to be a bigger self than I had any idea that I could be. This old slut shame was still hanging on. For anyone who’s experienced this or interested in helping girls recover I would recommend Emily White’s book, Fast Tribes and the Myth of the Slut. It seemed now that I was the one pointing fingers and trying to unconsciously shame my partners in order to make myself feel secure. I had swung the pendulum. The opposites had been experienced. I could release them now.

I wonder: can I forgive pedophilia? Can I forgive rape? Can I forgive the men who have believed themselves so unworthy of love that there only way to get affection was to take it? Is there anything in this whole creation that is truly unforgivable?

There is an energetic gateway in the heart, and when we open up and heal the shadows in the heart, purging out jealousy, unworthiness, and shame we find ourselves home again in the ground of our being, which was always good; it was just a lot of illusions that distorted that truth for a time.

Some people think because there is evil in the world that God is not good or not real. But I believe that God is so good that God allows evil to run its course, until it finally wakes up in the arms of love again.

Time is grace. Grace for all of creation to run its course and discover that love is patiently waiting for us whenever we feel ready to finally accept it. When we no longer fear death, death of our ego, death of control, death of any kind, we do brave things for love. For then we come to know that it is love that will outlive all that comes against it. Wherever we cannot have compassion upon ourselves or others, we are still in a place of judgement and that is not love.

So I ask myself often: can you have compassion on that? On that? On that? And wherever there is a no, I know exactly where to focus my healing work.

join us for a healing retreat by the red river

Mystic Mondays: Get Ready for October Magic

Blessed Moon Day!

The sun is in Libra, this is a time of finding balance, still the sun’s nature just wants to shine as big as it can, and yet the light is waning. It’s time to turn inward and reflect on the deepest truths and root out the deepest illusions.

Consider: How full is your inner peace tank? How long are you able to sit with a still mind? How much time are you taking to slow down? Are we learning to nurture our bodies? Are we becoming more aware of our addiction to distraction? Are we hungry for more inner peace? Or are we afraid of what may be stripped away from us on the path to peace? I invite you to take some time this week to slow down, wander, get lost in nature, hug a tree, gather fall leaves, go to a meditation class, go within. The truth lives there in a way that only YOU can express the best.

Enjoy this oracle sharing & astrology forecast for the week <3

SHE IS ONE

There is a sort of woman
Who is always virgin
For she is One in herself
She needs no other for completion
She is at peace with her essence
She has healed the unconscious wounds
Put upon her by culture
And ancestral traumas

She does not betray herself
For country, family or lovers
She chooses what is true
In the fiery flames of her soul
Incarnated in a body
That she as stopped rejecting
And learned to care for
Stopped treating as object
And learned to honor her instincts
As sovereign

She feels and expresses
With no scientific proof
She needs no proof
For she lives
And that is proof enough

She of the moon phases
She the truth that dances
In and out of consciousness

She who chooses her own nature
Over any external pressures to conform

She who is Virgin
Goddess
And Lover
In ONE

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The Circle of the Fall: Scenes from a Cosmic Tale

By Jessica Zdenek

Buy on Amazon

ENJOY SOME FALL READING
A cosmic tale of betrayal, loss and rekindled love involving a cast of characters who span the ages working to resolve the theological issues of The Fall and the split between Heaven and man and woman on Earth. Written in play like scenes with dynamic dialogue, Jessica draws on Gnostic lore and Goddess wisdom reimagining the story of how the Divine Feminine fled the Earth plane when Gilgamesh cut down The Tree of Life. But now the Goddess is back to draw a line in the sand with patriarchy in order that The Tree of Life, the sacred marriage bed, may be restored and the new age of peace may begin.

The light in me salutes the light in you!

Namaste,
Jessica

Mystic Mondays: Autumn Equinox

Photo by Nels @lostinfargo

Harvest time is here. A time of reaping. A time to balance the scales and reap what we’ve sown. Today I was full of rage, and then tears. There is still much out of balance in our world. I sat outside in my backyard with a cup of cacao and made a sacred fire. I wrote my anger on paper and burned it with tobacco and frankincense. I know I feel more than what’s mine. I feel into timelines and lifetimes. I feel into archonic structures and human oppression. I feel into the blackness of no feeling, the iron cold edges of Saturn’s sickle. When time is up things have to balance no matter how anyone feels about it, the sacred structures of the universe must stand. Still there is so much being dissolved, so much falling, so much clinging yet to what we think we know.

I’ve been silent for a while. Feeing. Watching. Seeing. Going deep into my own issues. Searching for the medicine. I’m ready to speak again. I’m committing to practice sharing oracles on Mystic Mondays! I’m excited to share weekly astro weather, reflections, yoga, and other kooky authentic expressions for your weekly inspiration.

This week the asteroid Lilith is in the early degrees of the watery sign of Scorpio which rules the second chakra, our sexuality. Lilith asteroid is associated with primal feminine rage. Rage that the life tree was cut down. Rage for all the centuries of injustices done to the earth and humans. And especially rage for the rape, domination and control energy that has been perpetuated for far too long.

We’re seeing that rage played out in the media with all the coverage of ‘climate change.’ And while our awareness of the need to care better for our environment is critical, the political machine churns on. Indigenous people have been teaching us about how important care for the earth is for a long time, but now the media has (allowed? directed?) a white fiery young woman leading the charge. Yes she’s inspiring. But what is the machine using her for? Who’s handling her? And how can we be sovereign agents of caring for the earth without being told what we have to worry about next? They tell us: fly less, eat less meat. But does this campaign really have the earth’s highest good and all her creatures at the end? Or is it another agenda of mass distraction while we continue to march towards self destruction? All the while Bill Gates is trying to figure out how to block out the sun, our skies have strange chem trails, and our food is being sprayed and our bees are dying. The point we are all considering is: why is it changing? Are we being drummed up to be afraid of one more thing? Or are we being taught how to grow our own food, how to make peace? Are the folks with the money ready to stop their big pollution businesses-or are we going to trickle the blame down to that person who’s not recycling? Is the climate changing because the earth is now moving through a part of the universe that has more photons—more light— and so it’s causing everything to heat up? Or is it because we are not caring for the earth. Maybe it’s both. What’s crucial is that we learn to trust our own instincts again, and be sovereign agents of change that our souls have come here to be.

Lilith asteroid is presenting sitting on my natal Uranus which is in opposition to transiting Uranus, which means I am really feeling the electricity of rage throughout the ages. I know you sensitive men want us women to be soft, but there are times for us to release, stomp our feet into the earth and say: ENOUGH.

I invite you to join me in a little ceremony to bring balance to these times: chants Kleem Ra Ra and Dheem Ra Ra to heal heart pain and remove negative energy <3.

Enjoy the fall colors and retreat with me by the Red River. Listen to inspirational speakers, practice gentle yoga and meditation, connect with your soul and other women. Tickets available here.

Have a blessed week <3
The light in me salutes the light in you,

Jessica

Yeshuah & Pluto, Reckoning the Sacred Goddess Structures on Earth

Some struggle with faith because of the issues in the religious establishment. I used to think it was all completely nonsense and out of touch with real problems on earth. But when the Holy Spirit descends upon you and opens your eyes to the other realms, it’s hard to go on unbelieving. It’s also hard to bring the mystic into traditions that have long lost the value of the feminine expressions of divine.

Though I am not working in the church anymore, (I do embodiment ministry outside now) I spent years trying to make a difference from within. What I learned was that the resistance to the divine feminine is still very strong in the church. I had to choose between staying true to my heart and staying true to an ‘orthodoxy’ that asked me to keep my women’s intuition turned off. The deeper I dig into the rabbit hole of the history of the Goddess, the deeper it went. I lost a lot to stay true to my heart, to not abandon Her anymore.

Since the burning of Notre Dame, “Our Lady” a long history has been revealed linking the church back to pre church times to the cult of Isis. Isis was the great mother before Mary. Her statues of her holding her son Horus were later seen as Mary and Jesus. Mary was not just a common name, but used to connote priestesses of Isis, and it is likely that both Mary the mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalene were such powerful women who held the secrets of sacred womb wisdom. Magdalene was wealthy enough to fund Jesus’ ministry. She was also probably doing energy work the whole time in the background. She also has a gospel that didn’t make it into the bible—it was hidden, as she was, because her teachings were and still are a threat to the establishment. We are taught to fear the Goddess, and there is a reason, she is a threat. As my friend Meggan says in her new book, it’s the Christianity we haven’t tried yet.

These women knew how to practice parthenogenesis and create life from their own wombs without a man, but with prayer and a connection to the heavenly realms from which they called spirit down to incarnate on earth. This is the potential of a human woman. To make her womb holy. To call down the divine to dwell within her. To create and give birth to divine life. A woman used to know (and some of us know instinctively) how to have holy sex. But many of our wombs have been targeted and wounded and even our mother’s aren’t able to teach us how to work the mysteries of our wombs. For many of us, we don’t know the anatomy of our bodies or how they work. Or we were raised by the male gaze without any sight of Our Mother Goddess. We were raised to see male things as divine and female things as less than divine. We were raised on lies.

While mother Mother Mary became fixed in our imagination as virgin, and the Magdalene fixed as the whore, we have survived an eon of feminine crucifixion. To this day we are waking up to remember how to honor both sides of the feminine: the virgin one in herself woman, and the sexual which is sacred.

Women’s wisdom was buried as the powers of empire coopted Jesus’ teachings. Still his teachings are beautiful and inspirational. His preaching on women’s equality were radical in the days of Rome where shunning women in public was common, where women were property of the Pater Familias. Part of the pain that we are healing is the fall out of daughters turned against mothers, sisters against sisters, denial of ourselves in order to survive under a toxic patriarchal regime. It’s time for the noble feminine to rise and take her rightful place on earth again.

Rape has been a program to systematically traumatize the human population. Sacred sexuality has been denied to us. We have been raised in shame. The shadow Vatican uses little boys to control the “oracle” which they took down as they took down the Goddess, took down her temples, forbid women’s wisdom on earth, and built churches on top of these ancient holy sites.

The asteroid Yeshuah is conjunct Pluto during Holy Week. You can’t make this stuff up. As we remember Jesus’ descent into death on earth this week, so also it is seen in the stars. I think of Jesus visiting Pluto like going to visit an old brother. The Christed energy reaches to the outer edges of our galaxy, just as Christ descended Divine Consciousness all the way into human form and into death.

Pluto is the realm of the Underworld. Also named Hades, the Husband of Persephone, who was the mother of Dionysus—also an underworld fella. Pluto can be all that is deeply internal as well, our deep secret longings, and sexuality. Dionysus was demoted to be less than a god when the church removed sacred sexuality from its teachings and instead insisted that only celibacy was sacred. This broke the sacred polar energies between man and woman from anchoring on the earth. Our life force was used as food for the shadow communion that needs to feed on human trauma to sustain itself. The book of Enoch tells how Jesus descended into the realms of hell and broke the gates that prevented souls from leaving this plane. We have been told this is a prison planet for recycled souls. That the fallen angels came here and raped the women of earth. Hybrids were created. They are still being created. I have seen the warehouses in visions and dreams of where military groups use clones for experiments and then slaughter them all. Those of us who have had our eggs stolen are energetically connected to that which is a part of us. Those of us who are sensitive can feel the great traumas that are being done to life. (The stealing of female eggs and wombs is a real thing and native women are targeted because of the purity of their line). The red egg Mary Magdalene holds reminds us all that life, and particularly a woman’s life and womb is the holiest of temples on earth.

Saturn and Pluto are at the south node in the fourth house of Home, Family and Ancestry. Yeshuah is here, all applying pressure to restructure Earth in the sign of Capricorn. Bigger changes are coming. Keep your hearts open. Be willing to see the shadows, so you will rejoice when the light comes. Keep your lamps trimmed and burning.

Our Lady was on fire this week. While sad to ever see any sacred site destroyed, I am feeling it as a sign of a great clearing and transformation, ashes from which the phoenix will rise. I feel more love available on earth. More wisdom for those with ears to hear and eyes to see! Many women were burned outside of that church. Many mysteries are still hidden from us. Many technologies have been used against us to keep us from realizing our potential. There is actually laser technology that can be directed at a woman’s womb to change the DNA of her eggs into birthing even a different species or a hybrid human. It’s important that women remember how to keep their wombs holy and safe from this technology or any other technology being used against us unknowingly. (I am grateful to offer ancient Holy Womb teachings now to my clients.) We need to be aware that programed life forms would like to feed on us, that we be aware that fallen angels are still raping us, that we be aware that the sex trafficking industry is connected to this and that humans are being treated like cattle to alien races that have not developed the ability to live from their hearts, and therefore their race is ending, so they are literally grasping for us to get into heaven’s gates.

It is important for us women to develop the dignity and self love to know beyond a doubt that we are worthy of protecting, and to have sacred men stand beside us and agree against the powers which seek to destroy us.

We are waking up to the fact that we are a people ruled by psychopaths. Many wolves in sheep clothing are among us. Many humans without activated heart chakras. Jesus and the Mary’s taught about activating the sacred heart in the human family. It seems this is a technology that is powerful enough to launch eons of war against the Goddess. Even creating shadow armies and giving them her name Isis.

Cobra (www.theportal.blogspot.com) has released intel revealing shadow Jesuit propeganda to get women to shave their armpits because it affects our hormones and makes it easier for darkness to come between man and woman. Watch a few minutes of TV and it’s easy to see how this programming of women to dislike being a woman, or dislike being a wise old woman, or to stay like a meek, subservient, little girl who serves the toxic patriarchy is rampant. It is by design. Not by accident. Humans are not intrinsically as evil as we are raised to believe. Please no more human bashing. We will make this through with compassion.

Sacred Female boundary making is a long forgotten skill that is not taught or encouraged in our culture, quite the opposite. We have not been taught because we don’t even yet know the power of a women’s womb to program our communities. If women’s wombs are traumatized, we will program trauma. If every woman’s womb had joy in it, there would be no more environmental problems on earth, there would be no more war. So peace on earth will begin in the women’s wombs.

We have to learn to see with new eyes that we are not at war with one another, but with an alien intelligence (call it AI) that is bent on destroying organic life. As long as we continue to choose to give away our power or harbor negative attitudes about what it means to be human, we are infiltrated.

Humans are divine children. We are precious. No matter what we have done. No matter how many illusions or mistakes we have made while here on earth. Love is always standing by, waiting for our choice to accept our divine inheritance.

Don’t let the media decide that the fight is between a choice and a right. We get to have both. My womb is a sovereign holy space. therefore, as the priestess of this womb, and the tender of this portal, no one is allowed to desecrate this place: to rape, or force medical choices. These are what we are up against. Female sovereignty is not anti male. It’s anti AI. It’s anti slavery. It’s anti destruction of the earth and the sacred. Please see the players at work to divide and conquer us. Together we stand as the sacred chalice and the sacred blade, the sacred opposites, the staff and the globe, the one and the zero. Let us find the sacred opposite and dance.

When I am meditating now, there is more love and light flowing in than ever before. It’s ecstasy. The police keep showing up at my home while I am meditating. I am being shown that I am being watched. I am pressing into fears of being taken. I am surrendering to the divine unfolding of this time. The angels are near.

There are people walking on earth who are literal zombies. People who are remote controlled by AI and black magic. Times are crucial. Humans are gifted with the ability to send away from earth what we do not want here. Please learn to clear your space and your home and be aware of when you take on energy, thoughts and agendas that are not yours. Much of this is coming through our devises right now. There are ways to close any dark portals that are roping into you or your home. I work everyday to close them. It is a lot of work and they hit us hard frequently.

Jesus has come to me in many dreams. For some he is too closely connected to religion to even touch. For me, he is my main source of spiritual guidance. His message of love resonates still. His teachings and his spirit live on. He, like many bodhisattvas, lifts the human spirit and reminds us what we are capable of. “All these things and more, you can do.” It’s time for us to learn how to do miracles. To heal. To send the demons away. To call in the Christ light.

The sisterhood of the rose is an ancient lineage of teachings. See if you remember them in your DNA or deep knowings. See if you can work your life force to flow from the base of the spine to the heart. For me it has taken a long journey of not inhabiting my body to living in my anxiously running mind (due to trauma), to falling a great descent, to rising again through many trials and initiations, blocks and tests. I have failed time and time again, and yet the ultimate test is to believe that even still, nothing can separate me from this love. You do not have to earn it. It truly is a force that I would not want to stand against. Pick your side.

The times are intense. Beware of the fascism, the thought police and the feeling police. Our greatest power as humans is to feel into our hearts, to create. No AI algorithm will be able to predict our moves of love <3 May love live on and on <3

May these days and all the days forth be holier and holier.

2019: Leaping with Faith, Holding onto Hope & Cultivating Joy

As this year comes to a close I’m happy to report: I’m glad THAT’S over!

Svaha! We release what is no longer of service to ourselves and the highest good of all beings.

Since 2012 our world seems incredibly strange and intense on the world stage and in our personal lives. Changes are happening rapidly—where as several generations ago, people expected to live the same lives as their ancestors today we are expected to change and change fast. These are the days of innovation, high speed internet and a movement towards slow food. Systems are falling. The news is aggravating. Tensions around the planet are ripe for massive transformation. Old issues and soul lessons are pressing in on us. Some of us are diving deep. Others are running faster the game of distraction and fragmentation. I personally feel called to root down into the earth, to slow down, work hard, go deep within, serve my community on purpose, cultivate peace and compassion, and to keep my hopes high as the stars.

This year I plunged deep into my wounds and the locks around my heart chakra. I was so afraid to face the ways in which I was closing down to love in order to feel safe, even if feeling safe was simply an excuse not to grow. I looked at the ways I pushed people away to protect my hurting heart and really dug into the karmic roots of that pain that was manifesting in my back in all sorts of uncomfortable ways. I spent a lot of time weeping for the pain in the world. A lot of time praying. Today I’m amazed at how much more life force is flowing up my spine through those old blocks and activating my crown chakra and inspiring so much creativity. I’m so grateful for the practice of yoga and all of the fascinating lifelong wellness gifts it offers. I have enjoyed sharing the gifts of yoga through my personal business TARALOMA EARTH TEMPLE for four years now! The past year I have been meeting with clients in my home living room (Blue Lotus Studio) and expanding offerings to include reiki, mantra practice, oracle readings, and creative healing sessions. I’m excited to start meeting with clients in our new yurt!

This summer I said yes to marriage again. Yes to more scary but fun adventures in cultivating a loving healing home and all the hard work that requires. Yes to working out my issues with another human and the practice of loving our perfectly flawed humanity. Yes to being a motherly figure to five kids and standing in the fire to create new routines and healthy lifestyles together. We plan to marry this June.

The Circle of the Fall: Scenes from a Cosmic Tale

By Jessica Zdenek

Buy on Amazon

In the fall I finished my third book! I love the experience of taking time to be still and let the words flow. This work helped me dig deep into the shadowy aspects of humanity and shed light on places I needed to practice more compassion. It’s a story about true love. About falling. About a great loss. And a great redemption. I hope you enjoy it!

I’m letting the lotus unfold slowly at TARALOMA EARTH TEMPLE as we integrate our new family and find ways to weave our gifts together. Mr. G, My Lord, Grant-ma, G bear… I love this man. He has such a tender heart. He cares so deeply. He works so hard to support everyone. He lost his job right before Christmas. It was time for a change. We both felt it coming. It’s taking a lot of faith to trust that things will work out when you’ve lost $90,000 a year and full benefits. We are living in big faith right now.

Both of us feel called to lead sovereign lives. This means right livelihood—as in I can support myself and my family by not harming myself, my family or any others while also not f**king up the planet—basically caring for ourselves, others and the earth. It seems pretty simple, but it’s actually quite a work for all of us right now. There’s a lot of pressure to sacrifice yourself for others. A lot of years of not wanting to be selfish and to do the right thing. A lot of rewards for working at a job that really is soul sucking and destructive to the family and our community. It’s time to go after the other green (Earth care!) and get off of co-dependent systems that are not sustainable. Also, no one should be a slave to the dollar. We all need means right now to provide for our families but no one should have to work at a loss of soul or sovereignty. Employers who want to own your body, force you into unhealthy habits, grind you down and throw you out before you’re old enough for retirement is just not what we’re saying yes to anymore. We want to create win/wins. We want to work for soul growth, Earth care, ethical technology, healthy families, healthy communities. And we want to cultivate joy. We are changing sandboxes.

In 2019 Grant will be partnering with me and offering more creative healing services at TARALOMA EARTH TEMPLE including reiki, men’s drumming circles, and renting out our new yurt for the community to use for an Airbnb and small wellness events. We are also excited to start growing lots of food in our yard and to become more self sustainable. Grant is also starting his own consulting business as a Digital Shamanist (he really can do magic with computers!) and he’ll be available for local and long distant contract work. Thank you for keeping him and our family in your thoughts and prayers during this transition!

And if you feel called to support us, please consider making an end of the year donation to the temple <3 We are dedicated to offering creative wellness services to the Fargo-Moorhead area.

Thank you so much.

Donate

We wish you a miraculous 2019, full of faith, hope and joy! May humanity find our sovereignty, know our soul worth, and work together to create a world that serves the highest good of all. We can do this!

The light in me salutes the light in you <3

Namaste, Jessica