Creating Altars

A couple of months ago, I wrote about creating altars. We engage in this process for each RiseWell retreat. For some of you, this is a continuation of a practice you’ve been engaging with for a while. For others, it is new. 

Altars represent ritual. They represent a mindful, intentional and physical space where we can connect with what is important to us in a deep way. People have been creating altars for centuries. All world religions have symbolic objects and images that are revered and used for prayer and contemplation. However, altars do not need to reflect religious beliefs. They can be reflections of who you are in any given moment. Having tangible objects gathered together and reverently organized creates an actual location and a reminder of what is essential to us regarding our values, beliefs, aspirations and intentions. We can visit our altar at any time. We can create regular rituals to be with our altar. We can add to them, take objects away, journal about them and use them to help us access the energies that support us to live and thrive as the humans we most wish to be. Altars can reflect the energies of a moon cycle, season or any natural cycle, helping us to attune to natural rhythms. They can reflect meaningful life experiences like births, deaths, endings, beginnings etc. They can reflect both our outer and inner worlds and, by doing so, allow our experiences to be visible and feel more real.

An altar can be as simple as a beautiful candle placed on a piece of fabric that is meaningful to you, or a flower in a special vase. It can be as elaborate as a large tableau of objects, art, icons, artifacts, heirlooms, plants etc. that lives in a permanent space in your home. When I travel, I bring a few objects to create a pop-up altar in a hotel room or a friend’s guest room. Sometimes, I bring nothing and wait till I reach my destination to collect objects to create an altar that will support me in my new location, even if only for a day or two. Altars can be stable or fluid. I prefer fluidity so that my altar reflects the changes I am going through and can bring in new fresh energy. 

You can work with an altar in many ways. Sometimes, I just light the candle (I always have a candle on my altar) and sit quietly. Sometimes, I pick a daily oracle, tarot, or one of my SoulCollage® cards to place on the altar for that day. Sometimes, I re-arrange my objects, clean them, or move some objects to other places in the house so I can see them better. If I am spending a lot of time cooking, I may bring a stone, a crystal or a card with me so that I can glance at it while I work. 

Altars are sacred, but you get to make the rules about how you work with your altar and how your altar can work for you. Please join me for one of my free SoulCare Moon Cycle or Seasonal Cycle retreats, where we create and share our altars. The experience of sharing the special and unique objects you have chosen, as well as witnessing the objects that others bring, can be deeply nourishing.

Take a Moment

By Lea Carla Abrams

Check your momentum

Take a moment

To breath slowly

And feel how it makes your fingers tingle

Be still

Take a moment

To breathe again...

And feel the curl of your spine soften and stretch

Hold warmth in your hands

Take a moment

To breath deeply

And feel the heat seep into your muscles, veins, bones

There is always something more to do

There is always something more that’s wonderful

There are always more moments to cram full of more stuff

There are always more people needing more of you

There is always greater and greater muchness in every moment

But you do not need to do or be more right now

Take a moment

To be inside the you that is more than enough

Without a thought

Without a word

Without an action

Take a moment 

To know that

And be that

And then…

Take another moment

And another

And another

And another 

And another

And…

Rest

Rest. Something about writing that word, putting a period after it, making it a sentence, feels right. Rest. Like the word No, it holds a deep and penetrating meaning. Like the word No, its meaning is dependent on the perspective of the speaker or the writer. 

I decided to take a dive into what Rest meant to the leaders and writers of the transformative change and personal growth world in which I am associated. I looked through my many books and looked up the word Rest in the indexes. Nothing. Words such as mediate, sleep, breathe are there. But where is Rest? Thoughts about building practices of breathing and meditation are numerous, but what about a “practice” of Rest? Then, I discovered Tricia Hersey’s book ‘Rest Is Resistance’.

In her book, Hersey makes the case for Rest as a necessary practice in order to resist “Grind Culture”and reclaim the lives we’ve lost to overproductivity, dehumanization and oppression. She created The Nap Ministry as “a balm” against this. In her work I see the hope for establishing Rest as a way of life. It is an acknowledgement that we are indeed ‘Human Beings’ not ‘Human Doings’ and in order to be our truest, kindest and fullest selves and thrive, we need Rest. 

So, I’ve been experimenting with this idea of Rest and seeing how it fits, or doesn’t fit, into my life. I started with some of the obvious ways to include Rest into my day. When I feel overwhelmed (which is often) I lay down or curl up with heavy blankets and a heating pad for ten minutes. When I drive to the grocery store in the afternoon, I park, put my seat back and listen to music for a few minutes before getting out of the car. I pause more, before making a decision or saying “yes.” These behaviors are challenging enough since they disrupt my learned patterns of pushing myself to my limits. But, then, I started to see the more subtle ways in which Rest can support me. If I can Rest in the moment during a conversation I feel more connected to the person I am speaking with. When I take a more restful approach to eating, my meals are more enjoyable and probably more nourishing. Yesterday, when I could have been watching the inauguration of a president who is sure to move us into a time of strife, discord, hate and peril, I chose to Rest, not so much as a way to avoid, but rather as a way to prepare and gather the strength I know I will need to meet this new moment. And, while doing so, I found my strength, not through my anger and reactivity but through the words of Dr. King who, yesterday, was also being celebrated. 
Rest, I find, is a choice, a decision. Like love, or any other choice or decision we make about how we want to be and who we really are at our core. If we can all begin to see Rest as a necessity for life, like water, food and shelter, maybe we can lean into the years ahead of us with renewed purpose, agency and, yes, hope.

Here in Arizona, the winter changes are subtle. But winter is here. It is here in the cool mornings and the cloud streaked skies. It is here in my body which seems to need the warmth of a bath and a few extra blankets. It is here as the “snowbirds” descend on my new desert home with license plates from Minnesota, British Columbia, Wisconsin… It is here in the afternoon chill of a swim and my desire for a bowl of stew or soup in the early evening. Unlike in the Northeast, where winter hits savagely at times, here it is a whisper. But it is here.

For those of you who were able to join me for my first Self Care Seasonal Solstice Retreat, it was wonderful to see all of you and welcome in the light together. You were from three countries, three continents, ten states, six time zones and…five generations! Ahhhh the beauty of zoom! 

One thing we did together was create altars to support us through the season. Even some of you who signed up for the retreat but were unable to join, created altars on your own. Here are a few pictures of some of these altars that you so graciously shared with me:

Altars can serve as visual and tactile representations of your inner experience, your outer intentions, what is important to you and where you currently are on your soul journey. The items you include in your altar, their placement and the relationship they have to each other can depict deep truths about yourself. Keeping an altar through the season, changing it according to changes you experience as time passes, can help ground and connect you to these deep inner truths. 

For our Solstice altar we used the following prompts to help us choose the objects to include:

• Dark - a time to see and embrace the shadows

• Light - a time to shine our light and let the dappled light in

• Nature - a time to allow seeds their dormancy

• Letting Go - of the old. Letting In the new

• Rest - a time to rest our bodies, minds and spirits

• Self-compassion - a time to look inward with love

• The body temple - a time to tend to our bodies

• Forgiveness - a time to forgive ourselves & others

• Clarity - a time to see more clearly

• Tenderness - a time to allow for grief & openheartedness

• Care - a time to offer comfort to others

• Hope - a time to remember that spring will soon be here

• Intention - a time to set our intention for the new year

I invite and encourage you to create an altar of your own, and if you already have one, to see if your altar needs to be “altered” to better reflect yourself and your needs in the moment.

Please join me for my January Self Care Moon Cycle Retreat when we will be working with our altars to dive into the experience of winter, rest and how the cycles of the moon reflect our well-being.

The Swarm

Watching the National Geographic channel the other day, I came across a series with Will Smith called Welcome to Earth. One of the episodes was about how many animals survive by functioning as a unit. There is the wildebeest migration, birds creating amazing configurations as they fly in unison, a species of bees (40,000 of them) who huddle together and shift their position like dominoes to protect their hive. Some features of this phenomenon stick with me in particular. No matter how many there are, they stay close together. They also don’t stay too close that they are touching, almost like they intuitively claim and respect personal space. Most amazing is how these animals function as if they have one mind. As individuals they would never survive, but together they thrive.

This Welcome to Earth episode is called Mind of the Swarm. Staying close together seems to keep the group connected. Allowing for a little space maintains their individual integrity just enough so they can function as an important contributing member of the swarm. Of course, it is instinct and not thought that allows creatures to behave this way. But maybe we as humans also have instincts that we have hidden buried under our thinking and conscious minds. Maybe if we can somehow access these instincts, or intuitions, we can discover (or recover) our true natures and in that discovery find ourselves and each other in new and healthier ways. 

As American humans, we cherish our individuality as if it were our only identity, as if needing others is an admission of failure or weakness. At the same time we cling to our “tribe” to help shape our ideas and ideologies. We are committed to both but for all the wrong reasons. The individual, in many animal species, is essential for the group to function. In turn, the tribe keeps the individual animal alive. It is the dance of survival. We, however, seem to be in a dance of cultural and existential demise. What can we learn from these animals that might save us?

If we become a swarm what might that look like? What might that feel like? What might we gain? Maybe we would become more purposeful because our reason for existing would be clear. Maybe we would strive to be our best selves in order to do what is best for each other. Maybe we would feel like we belong. Maybe we would create tribes for the purpose of survival, thriving alongside other tribes doing the same. But we don’t create swarms. We create movements and systems that separate, demonize and protect ourselves from one another. Animals create swarms for protection as well but swarms do not attack other swarms. They co-exist and even share habitat. Yes, they may eat each other to survive by attacking individuals in the swarm, but by doing so they also maintain an ecological balance. Where is our ecological balance? I do not think we have one since we continue to take, destroy, consume and rage war against everyone and everything that is not us. When you watch that swarm of birds, there is a rightness and beauty about their behavior. They do not mindlessly follow one leader in the hope of a better life just for themselves. In a swarm there is no one leader, there is maybe the one that is first and then another one takes that place and then another and another. The same for the one who is last. They do what is necessary to keep the swarm functioning. They adapt, sense, connect and sometimes sacrifice themselves for the good of the whole.

As we continue to yearn to belong, to be seen as special and important, to fear others who have the same yearnings, maybe we are missing something that could fix this. Maybe we need to look at the animals we live with on the beautiful and tragic planet to show us a new way. Maybe being a swarm is the beginning of an answer. 

A Poem for This Time

There is no leaving now

only a sitting silence

that will fill this void

like a death of someone

Well loved

That anticipatory grief 

makes you believe it

Won’t happen

Can’t possibly happen

Still breathing means hope

Hope is with those of us who

still find rainbows and unicorns

under our pillows, and we are willing

to fight to bring them into the light

And cut the sarcasm

Cut the clueless moaning and groaning

threats of leaving cause it’s broken.

You are not broken. I am not broken.

We’ve turned our “I don’t knows” into

reasons for not trying to fix it

To understand and let the disagreements 

Bring us closer together rather than miles and oceans

continents, worlds apart

There is no leaving now

If you do, where will you belong

If you do, what will we do in your absence?

I had no intention of writing a second post the day after my first. But, yesterday was our election and this morning the world feels different, and so do I. It is not that a Trump win was completely unexpected. What is new for me is how I am experiencing this moment. I already had that moment of dissonance, years ago, when I woke up to embrace the reality of the first woman president, only to find that the unthinkable had happened. I inoculated myself against this feeling for this election, so when I bolted upright at 2:30 am and checked the news only to find the prediction that Trump had won Pennsylvania, I was not confused or shocked. I sat quietly for a long time, letting the reality wash over me. I’ve become better at this. For most of my life, I lived in a state I can only call Pollyannaish Dissociation, easily slipping into my own fantasy world of believing that what could be and what made sense to me was actually the truth. This state of being both protected me and imprisoned me from being my “true self.” When my life took a plunging turn, over four years ago, into what I can only characterize as an abyss, I began my soul-searching journey of waking up to reality and to the role I play in creating that reality. I tend to think that maybe this whole country, or at least half of it, is also in this state of Pollyannaish Dissociation, believing that fantasy is reality, although this sounds too benign to characterize what feels more like evil than just fantasy.

Fast forward to now, sitting on my bed in the wee hours of election night. I did not think, “How can this be?” or “This is the end,” or “We will now live in a dictatorship,” or any other cryptic thought that I could be thinking. Instead, I felt a sure and creeping feeling that…I have work to do, that in some way I will matter. It is a feeling of resolve. It is a knowing that still half of our country did not vote for him, that I am not alone in the depths of my own despair, but deeply connected to millions of people who want the world to be a better place and understand that the way to make that so is not to blame or hide under a rock but to connect with our core beliefs and with hope, to connect with like and unlike-minded others to bring our common humanity to the fore in order to heal and thrive. I am keenly aware that the inner work I have already done was, and still is, the essential ingredient for allowing me to be in this open-hearted space where I can (here we go again) bring my “true self” into the service of creating bridges, alliances, friendships and, yes, love for our world. When Obama was elected I had a palpable and embodied sense that our/my work was done and he would bring us forward. What an oversight that was. It will never be done, we will never be done. We will forever be a work in progress, as individuals, communities and as a country. 

To me, Trump’s win is a message, actually many messages. People are in pain, afraid and feel neglected and marginalized. People are desperate to be taken care of. Most of us feel unseen, unheard and unwitnessed. Misogyny, racism and bigotry of all kinds are fueling our decisions and our relationships because we are stuck in fear and negativity spirals. What is the antidote? How do we rise well from these times? We need to connect with our deepest soul truths. We need to create spaces where we can be seen, heard and witnessed and do the same for others. We need to listen, really listen, to the realities and truths people are experiencing that have brought them to this moment when they feel the only way out is to make a person like Trump our leader. We need to learn to sit quietly and also listen to our hearts. And, we need to share it all, our lights, our shadows. We need to be curious and willing to change our minds. 

I am learning that at the root of all of this is love. Marianne Williamson says, “we are all in recovery from something.” Recovery is about coming back to love. It is about finding our way home together. If you join me in this striving I think there can be hope.

Welcome to RiseWell and thank you for visiting. Creating a business and a website and all the thought, tech-savvy and frustration that goes into making decisions and watching them take root, or fall flat, is like the fine art of baking. Those Christmas cookies never look quite like the picture, and my cakes, although delicious, look more like a kindergarten project than the Ina Garten picture that inspired me to make them. But, I  persevere, and I’ve become known as the “baker” in the family regardless of the optics.

There is also a feeling of “coming out” into the world that creating RiseWell has ignited in me. All over this website, you can read about how important I think it is to show up authentically and as your full self, and here I am, trying to do just that and feeling exposed, a bit of an imposter and looking at my cozy bed and wondering how long I have before I can get under the covers and hide. But what I know is that all of this is entirely o.k. These feelings are part of being that full self. And…it is also o.k. to get under those covers for a while just as long as, at some point, I come out.

So here I am, out from under the covers, my full self, a little wobbly, but here. My main purpose for writing this Musing page is to share with you my own process of coming out, fully and authentically. I hope that by these admissions of my human strengths and frailties, I can be of service to your process of being and becoming more human. I am not yet sure what will arise here; probably rants, poems, some pictures… Consider this my first rant. And…welcome again to RiseWell. I hope you will find some of what you are looking for, here.