Calling Our Spirits Home: Gateways to Full Consciousness.
Epilogue
What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the winter time. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the Sunset.
⏤Crowfoot’s dying words, April 1890
As the writing of this book closes, I find myself on my own particular path still. I do not know completely where it will lead. I have no expectation. Yet, I do have unstinting expectancy as I experience Consciousness rising up ever more profoundly to meet me. As I breathe life, life breathes me. The path sometimes folds back on itself and takes me over the same ground to find deeper meaning. Path and purpose increase in clarity.
Some years ago as I drew my first deep breath toward awakening, I lived where I found few kindred spirits with which to share experiences or to answer my questions. After a few attempts to communicate the upheavals and subsequent openings that were beginning in my life, I was met with looks one would give an alien. I became silent. Thus, confusion and isolation became my attendants. Over time, I found many others who were on similar journeys that proved to me that I was not psychotic. In fact, I was entering the state of grace and protection that Seekers experience. I set down these stories and my own conclusions to provide you with a map. Also recognize that the map is not the territory. Just as I did, you will enter the forest by your own path. It will unfold in your time, not mine. In the stories found in these pages, you may find various levels and meanings that I have not yet discovered. That is so much the richer for you because, as the Zen saying goes, when the student is ready, the teacher will be there.
Stories are often our teachers, as much when we tell them as when they are heard. Remember that life is in the echo. As you come forward to tell your own stories and find community in the sharing, we all have stronger voices and our collective Spirits return home to the hearth.
⏤Carla Woody, Winter Solstice 1999
All events described in this book are true. Some of the names have been changed to protect the privacy of the people involved.
Bio
Carla Woody is a spiritual mentor, writer and visual artist. She is the founder of Kenosis, an organization based in Prescott, Arizona, supporting human potential since 1999 through life enhancement coaching, retreats and spiritual travel programs working with Indigenous leaders and healers in the US, Mexico, Central and South America. In 2007 she founded Kenosis Spirit Keepers, a volunteer-run 501(c)3 nonprofit organization to help preserve Indigenous traditions threatened with decimation.
Table of Contents
Part I. THE NATURE OF THE JOURNEY
Chapter Two: Awakening to Consciousness
Part II. INVOLUTION
Chapter Three: Cultivating Mindfulness
Chapter Four: The Masks We Wear
Chapter Five: Things Buried Deep and Tended Well
Chapter Six: Bootcamp for the Soul
Part III. EVOLUTION
Chapter Seven: The Seasons of Our Times
Chapter Eight: Staying in the Field
Chapter Nine: The Un-Namable Sacred
Chapter Ten: The Pilgrimage Home
Permissions: The author has given great effort to locate copyright holders of any material other than her own that have been quoted in this book, and regrets if any have been inadvertently overlooked.
Calling Our Spirits Home: Gateways to Full Consciousness
Copyright 1999 by Carla Woody. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced in any form without written permission of the publisher. Inquiries may be directed to: Kenosis Press, P.O. Box 10441, Prescott, AZ 86304, [email protected].
Also by Carla Woody:
Standing Stark: The Willingness to Engage. Read in Illumination Book Chapters.
Portals to the Vision Serpent. Coming soon to Illumination Book Chapters.