Medicine Wheels–Bringing the Sacred into Form

Can you recall an experience that touched you so profoundly you’ve kept it close to your heart like a treasure since? Perhaps, even more treasured moments than one if you live a blessed life. These gems are points in time and space where the Sacred entered and shaped a Grace for you. Can you feel it even now as you recall again?

A seeker of the Sacred I am… since age 17 when I left society for street life. That was some 54 ;years in the past, and I built my first medicine wheel over 40 years ago… seeking the Sacred originally to ground my “being” back into the body after a high speed, head on car collision–a death experience, if you will. Truly, I knew nothing about medicine wheels at the time. I was five months into healing a severe traumatic brain injury and four months into learning how to live with type 1 diabetes. I couldn’t figure out what store would carry screwdrivers…. but I could still feel the harmonies of the death experience from that collision, and the feeling often had Guidance flowing through its sensation. the guidance said, “Build a medicine wheel.”

A what?!

I went to the library and found a book with a picture. Then I went to a beach–plenty of them on the San Juan island where I landed–and gathered fist sized rocks. A dozen at a time I carried them a couple of miles up to a bluff where I felt the harmonies sing approval. And I built. No smartphone to use as a compass, I got a real one to mark the directions and, following the picture’s image, I built.

For three years, my life wove around hikes up to the bluff where I prayed and listened and followed what guidance I received to come fully back to this world. I recovered enough to rejoin society after a few years… still always with a prayerful reminder of this supporting sacred space in my heart. Continuing the Sacred seeker journey, I traveled the world to meditate at sacred sites like Machu Picchu, Oracle of Delphi, and the Sphinx, etc. worked and trained with thought leaders like Haleakula Hew Len, John of God, Jerry and Esther Hicks. and many more… seeking always to deepen a sacred connection with life. Working as therapist, a meditation teacher, a social services director and then building a successful online travel agency… all while continuing to deepen in the Grace I received in the building of this beginner’s medicine wheel. After 30 years, I returned to live in the Northwest and went to visit that bluff that brought me such a sense of connection to Divine Support and discovered that, not only was the wheel I long ago built still there, it was bigger and stronger and clearly had had many hands participating in sustaining its Sacred Space. I could still see the smaller fist sized rocks I’d carried up the bluff on the bottom layer, and my heart still sings in the memory of this moment.

What makes a medicine wheel so multidimensionally powerful? The answer is an eternal unfolding for me. I know its form is ancient, and tribes throughout history built them to connect to create Sacred Space and connect with the Divine. This is information that can be found on Google. The experience–the mystery, if you will–of this connection requires engaging the pattern to access its divinity. The pattern? It’s a cross shape surrounded by a circle. The center of the cross is also the center of the circle, and end points on the cross align with geological compass directions, South, West, North, and East. This is the form. The mystery–the magic of connecting with the Divine–that comes with the engagement. And I’ll share more about that in a bit.

Did I fully understand at this point how my devotion to this build and my continued practice of prayer with it over the course of those three years created such a strong support for me as I journeyed through so much life? Not at this juncture. Nope.

In 2017, during my final visit to Casa Dom Inacio in Abadiania, Brazil, I experienced a kundalini awakening during a six hour meditation, and this activated a deep physical, emotional, and mental breakdown into breakthrough experience that continues… What do I mean by that? I got really sick, and none of the medical professionals I consulted could figure it out. By 2021, “wit’s end” was an accurate description of my emotional/mental/physical state. I prayed, and the answer came… build a medicine wheel. My physicality could not manage the hiking devotion of my first build. This one, my partner helped collect and place the pattern and often joined me in prayerful practice. I learned more on this second build. For example, intention placed in the center of the wheel holds the synergy of four energies combined. I learned of deep wisdom held in the Grace of medicine wheel prayer, and I discovered the voice of Mama Earth whispering love and holding me in love in this sacred space.

Daily practice for a year. In 2022, I awakened on a full moon birthday (March 18) to a vision of me sitting up in a chrysalis and a Voice declared, “Time to move.” Three weeks later, we owned a new property, five acres adjacent to a 20 acre forest in the low foothills of the Cascade Mountain range. Of course, we built a medicine wheel… even before we moved to the property… to honor the Sacred support given so generously.. And, soon after we moved onto the property, we began another medicine wheel in one of the pastures… only to discover the wheel had south, west, north, and east points that were different than the first one we built. We had just discovered (and proved) there is a ley line (or Dragon line if practice Chinese cosmology) running from Mt Shasta and Mt Rainier through the forest and our property on its way toward the sea between Alaska and Russia. Wow.

transformation, awakening

We’ve built three medicine wheels, so far, along the Dragon line through our land. We tend them with prayerful practice on the solstice and equinoxes as well as new and full moons. There is a powerful emanation from Mama Earth through them, and I experience them to focalize my own sense of connection with these energetics… but, even more importantly for me, there is such a loving and kind transmission emanating from the center of the wheels. Standing in the center, after praying in each of the four points, is quite a magical opening into the world of Sacred Grace.

And the practice can be as unique and individual as you want it to be. Any ceremony/ritual that opens the heart, mind, and body to Nature’s Principle and Her generous love works. Whatever inspires a sense of devotion and connection with the Divine… that’s perfect. If you live in an apartment, it can be built on an altar or in a plant pot filled with earth. It’s all about the intention, the geometry, and the prayerful practice, You can see in the altar example, the geometry can be simple… even metaphoric.

And, finally, remember…. we are the center of our own medicine wheel. Our spine is the vertical axis, and the four points flow in the energetics of our field. My home is in the center of a circle of Cedars. I like to stand in middle of my drive and connect with the Cedars at the south, west, north, and east points at sunrise. Adding this to the practice of building medicine wheels does, for me, makes seeking the Sacred as simple as being fully present in my body.

Medicine Wheels bring the Sacred into form. If you feel called to join this path, I am SO happy to be of help. I love you. Thank you.

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