LARIMAR: First the Fire; The fire of volcanoes creates islands in the midst of the ocean’s ceaseless churn. I was born of fire, Larimar reminds those who don’t see beyond her swirling layers of turquoise blue and sea green. Look below the surface emotions and find the fire within the water. Fire creates earth, solid ground from which new things can grow. When you’re drowning, or simply ready to claim your own space — a place to make a stand or a private island paradise — Larimar will help you find your core fire, the values that ground you. And, Larimar counsels, when you can’t fathom the motives of the people around you, look beyond their water to see their fire. This is where you’ll find true understanding.
RITUAL: Unmask Your Fire: Passion is a fiery emotion. It’s a hunger, a drive. It warms and consumes. Sometimes we mask passion with less incendiary feelings. Have you ever felt the need to put aside your passions to be sweetly loving or cheerfully present? Understand what’s hiding your own fiery core by constructing your emotional mask so you can look at it and understand it.
Gather images that represent how you think you should feel, or the ways you sometimes behave that feel out of alignment with your core values. Perhaps you wear a business suit everyday when you’d prefer jeans or feel like your handwriting should be small and neat when you want to scrawl. Find images that show this outward-facing-self.
Grab a piece of cardboard and cut it into an oval with holes for your eyes. Now, glue the images onto this mask. Observe yourself. How does it make you feel to wear it? Be open to the idea that at some point you may want to safely burn this creation, giving up the emotions and illusions that dampen your flame.
REFLECTION: Fire and Water: Sometimes we wallow in our own emotions: chewing the cud of our anger, joy and sadness. We recycle these feelings, showing them to friends, examining them from all sides.
But a big passion — whether it’s a love interest or a project — burns all of that away. Our internal fire evaporates the water of our emotions. How much time are you spending replaying a minor tragedy in your mind or reenacting a conversation or disagreement? Can you use your emotional rumination to diagnose whether or not you have enough passion in your life?
“If you have passion, there is no need for excuses because your enthusiasm will trump any negative reasoning you might come up with.” Wayne Dyer
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TURQUOISE: Find Your Way Home: You can always find your way home, Turquoise assures. And she should know; she has traveled by caravan across the Silk Road and escorted royalty on the byways between life and death. turquoise is a way finder and companion for when the path is unknown or feels treacherous, whether in real time or in the shadowed lands of journeys and dreams. She offers protection to the parts of your psyche that are lost, scared, or hidden away. There is a tension to being human, to having a yin and yang aspect (which occasionally conflict) leaving you simultaneously wanting to stretch your wings and never leave the nest. Turquoise gets it. Go and grow, she whispers, I will help you find your way home.
RITUAL: Call Yourself Home: When the ancients looked at Turquoise, they saw the endless blue of the sky. And yet this sky stone was birthed from the belly of Mother Earth, and so speaks of balance, wholeness, and the knowledge of totalities. Turquoise helps us reclaim what’s gotten lost or left in the “sky” — the parts of ourselves endlessly traveling the spirit realms because they feel unsafe in a body or unwanted in our skin.
Stand with your feet hip-width apart, your toes anchored in the dirt and your head lifted toward the heavens. Picture the color of Turquoise, a mottled blend of earth and sky. In your heart or with your voice, say, I call myself home to myself.
Repeat this mantra, meaning it with your entire being. Journal on the images or body sensations you have, allowing your thoughts to flow and unfold.
REFLECTION: Nest or Novelty?; The human spirit exists in dynamic tension between the desire to put down roots and the passion for exploration; nesting versus novelty. We love our creative comforts and the familiarity of home, yet we are easily bored and always on the lookout for the next adventure or a better version of our current reality. It’s our gift and our curse. We harbor a secret desire to throw it all away and then feel guilty for letting that seed of destruction grow in our hearts.
What is possible when you release guilt and fear so you can examine all aspect of your desire?
What happens when you accept your tensions and desires, that seem to conflict, can be used to create balance?