Sacred Reciprocity

“Sacred Reciprocity” acrylic on wood by Amanda Lux

Today is mother's day and I am sharing this painting and a deeply personal story in honor of my self as a mother who is practicing what it means to be fully expressed, and in honor and reverence of our shared mother... Earth.

This painting is called "Sacred Reciprocity" but when I originally painted it I called it, "Ether of the Earth".

In Polarity Therapy, Ether correlates to the throat chakra and Earth to the root chakra. Every element contains all the other elements and the ether of the earth, in particular, is about how we create spaciousness in the densest of places. Ether is the place we enter into our body on our own evolutionary journey from spirit into matter, and earth is the place we find completion at the end when we are returned to the land. In this place where our beginnings and endings meet, we are both old and new. We are re-dreaming ourselves into being through everything that remains when we no longer inhabit our physciality.

Death and rebirth are intimately intertwined.

Earth is slow moving and so this painting came to me over several years time through a series of conscious dream journeys - or waking dreams- that only partially revealed their story throughout the creation process. About a week ago, however, this painting finally revealed its true meaning to me in a night dream that contained this very image. I did not recognize it as my painting in the dream at first, because when I woke up I felt strongly that I needed to paint it without realizing I already had. After several hours contemplating the meaning of the dream, I realized I painted this image a year ago and suddenly I understood how this dream (that came much later) was what initially inspired the vision precognitively but out of sync with time. This may not make sense to the logical mind but I know it to be true. Our dreams come from a vaster sea of experience than our waking mind can comprehend. They are timeless and yet always perfectly timed.

My dream last week was "seeded" or incubated, meaning, I was asking for guidance in my dreams around my office location where I offer energy medicine sessions and classes.

I moved my office 9 months ago to a bright open etheric feeling office in the middle of the loud city from a quiet womb-like cave in the earthen cob room in my home where I had spent over ten years. It was a big transition for me. It was a step out of the earth and into the ether. It was important for my journey to have more space so I could offer classes and group work in addition to one on one sessions.

But recently the land my family owns, where my art studio lives, had been calling to me in my dreams. It is located in the Steamboat Island area on ten acres of forest right on the water (which contrary to its name, is not actually an island so much as a cove). This land had been coming into my dreams and asking me to move my practice out there. I was afraid to make another change though, especially so much farther from my home office where my clients originally were used to seeing me on the opposite end of town. But already I was feeling like I had outgrown my new downtown office. I needed even more space and more than that even, I was finding that I really needed way more earth.

The dream was incredibly clear in its message and answered my question in the most profound way.

I was in an airplane that crashed into the water in a cove surrounded by islands that were connected. Before the plane crashed I knew that the earth had run out of resources and both the earth and people everywhere were dying. I was with a group of people who were fleeing, unsure if there was anywhere left to go. When we crashed I swam to one "island" that was city-like and inhabited but I was immediately and harshly turned away. I was told that there were only enough resources for the exact number of people who lived there and no extra.

So I left that island and swam to the next one which was wild and lush with greenery. It felt very abundant and ALIVE. I looked around and saw no people, but all around the island were the most incredible plants and trees that I had ever seen. Their root systems were visible to me through the ground and each one looked like a person that was growing into and out of the plant simultaneously. My first assumption was that everyone on this island had died of starvation and went back into the land in this interesting way. But as I observed more closely I realized they weren't actually deceased because they were breathing.

I stood there in awe tuned into the astonishing sensation that the entire island was breathing.

The people who lived there were not dead, and they had not run out of resources like the rest of the world. Rather, they had EVOLVED to become a part of the land so they not only saved the life of the land where they were but by becoming a part of the earth, it was sustaining them equally. They had evolved into a perfectly harmonious symbiotic relationship with the land and thereby they had saved each other.

When I woke up and journeyed back into the dream, I learned that this was the land on Steamboat Island and it was calling me to move my practice there, BECAUSE THE LAND NEEDS PEOPLE MEDICINE AS MUCH AS PEOPLE NEED EARTH MEDICINE.

Because of this dream, I have made the decision to transition my practice from the city to the forest. I will do this gradually part-time to create a bridge between the two. I have been listening to the land and it is informing me of a new way to approach my healing work so that I can incorporate this symbiotic healing connection between the earth and people.

As we honor mothers everywhere today, I am specifically sitting with my deep reverence for our shared mother, earth. I am opening the doors of my life to find new ways of honoring and relating, of sharing and helping others to tap into and develop this vital connection.

It is no longer a choice, but a necessity that we tend to this relationship.

We must remember how to receive the earth's medicine, remember that it is from her womb that we come into being and that it is to her womb that we return. And most importantly we must re-member ourselves and our connection to her so that we can also offer her our own medicine.

The medicine of our love and affection, attention and presence is what the earth is asking for.

Mothers have been martyred for far too long in our culture and almost every culture and society in existence for most of recorded history. If we wish to shift this dynamic and truly honor mothers for all that they are and all that they do, then we need to recognize what they give as invaluable. It is HIGH TIME that we not only take graciously from mothers, but we give back graciously as well.

That is what my dream is for the earth.

That is what my dream is for mothers everywhere.

That is what this painting is about to me.

Dreaming the earth back into health, dreaming ourselves back into balance, making space where there is none, breathing life back into the forests that we have stripped bare without asking, without honoring, without feeling.

Ether is the throat chakra and the emotion it assist us with is grief. We must be willing to participate in the grieving, in the losses that we have imposed on the earth and on mothers everywhere. We must be willing to move this through our bodies, the earth's body. We must be willing to move this through our throat centers and into full expression. This takes time. This takes courage. And courage and time are what the earth knows best.

As we tune in to the ether of the earth, we learn that we can be fully expressed, it is both safe and necessary.

We can show up with reverence and gratitude for all that mothers provide, and for all the earth provides.

We can be willing to listen to the needs of our mothers, be willing to listen to the needs of the earth, be willing to listen to our own needs and be willing to BE RECEIVED, equally as much as we receive.

The earth offers us so much abundance. There is more than enough for all. When we act from this place of enoughness, we are honoring both ourselves and the planet we belong to.

This is sacred reciprocity.

xoxo,

Amanda Lux

Amanda Lux is the Co-creator alongside Kelly Watkins, of the Elevation Hive School of Energy Medicine. They have over 20 years of combined experience holding impeccable space for thousands of individuals to find healing, inspiration, and powerful transformation.

Amanda is an artist, teacher and polarity practitioner with a successful private healing practice in Olympia, WA. She is a mother of two, a polarity life coach, hypnotherapist and Conscious DreamWork teacher who is devoted to sharing her gifts with as many wise souls as possible.

Check out her upcoming classes and events at Elevationhive.com