At my altar recently, I heard: The power of Blessing belongs to everyone. Use it well and often. Let it arise in a heart rooted in the Sacred Land.
Soon after that, I went up into the Jemez Mountains, to a beautiful place by the river where my family used to camp when I was a little girl. (I’d sleep right on the ground in my sleeping bag, without even a pad between me and the earth.) I received this from the beings of the land there:
How to bless: You root your feet in the ground, all the way to the sacred fire at the center of the earth. Then you find the place behind your heart where there’s room for the hand, or the paw or the flipper, the talon, the fin or the wing, from whatever being is there to participate with you in this act of blessing—because there are plenty of material and spiritual beings around who are happy to help bless. So you root your feet in the ground, you put your head up in the stars, you find this place behind your heart—it involves opening your back both physically and energetically—and let this hand or paw or flipper, or whatever it may be, hold and support you back there.
And then you summon up and let tumble out of your heart, everything having to do with love and good will and joy and happiness, and truth, pleasure and delight, and humor, faith and trust. And it all tumbles out of your heart toward the one you are blessing. While you’re breathing, of course, and while you’re opening the front of your heart also, letting your heart be totally open in the front and totally supported in the back, by your own back and by this being that is supporting you from the back. So it’s both a physical process and a metaphysical one, and a process of gratitude and fun, but it’s very serious also. It’s having at your command the greatest, deepest, highest joys of all the worlds, and offering those freely to whoever, whatever, wherever you’re blessing.
And the blessing is also a blessing of yourself—this is actually what makes it a blessing—because it immediately becomes a circle, a return, a reciprocal cycle, not just one-way. It’s a circle of blessing, and it augments your heart more and more every time you bless. You’re mediating this blessing energy and also receiving it, and you’re standing in perfect faith and perfect calmness the whole time you’re doing it. You’re standing in your trust of the divine forces, of divine Light, as reflected through the earth, through the sacralized, sacramental matter of the planet, as well as all the spiritual realms, through the moon, sun and stars, and through all that is.
These words, besides being beautiful and poetic, have opened up a whole new Gaia-centered spiritual practice for me. As always, it’s good to begin by centering yourself, lighting a candle or burning a little sage, or simply taking a moment to sink into your deepest self. Then, it’s certainly not hard to find something—some human or non-human person, some situation on Earth—that could benefit from some blessing energy. And the great thing is that you benefit too! This is the way Gaia works!
