Less Thinking, More Happiness.

Love is happiness, what we love, who we love, our self love and our love for our dreams and destiny. That doesn’t mean that love is always easy, but when love isn’t easy we know it’s time to explore ourselves.  It’s time to apply our love to our own work.  It’s time for, less judgment and more compassion, less criticism and more forgiveness.  Less talking and more listening, less wisdom and more wonder.  This is not always easy, sometimes it is work to remember what we love, and learn how to love more.  We can learn how. The arms of love by Angeles Arrien, let us encounter a way to deepen our commitment to love.  This is what is needed at this time, for all of us.  We are all learning, but, if we can look at the arms of love daily, and begin with great or little effort to apply them, and then we can celebrate the ones that are strong within us.  We can be responsible for improve in the ones that need strengthening.  Love is the most powerful healing force in the world.  The arms of love are; acknowledgment, appreciation, gratitude, forgiveness, validation, laughter, and play.

When do I show or extend the arms of love?  When do I acknowledge when someone has impacted me through their actions or thoughtful words, through kindness?  When do I give gratitude?  When is it safe enough to be vulnerable, and show what I feel?  What does someone have to do for us to express our gratitude?  Do we thank someone for the smallest thing?  Do we have an ongoing list of what to do for ourselves and our loved ones?  Instead of how to be with ourselves and our loved ones…The arms of love are how we can be with ourselves and our community.  Can we give authentic gratitude, when someone has done something or said something that has touched our hearts?  Can we unfurl into intimacy, bridge two people or a group of people into a new unfolding and appreciation?  This requires honesty, about our feelings and what we want without attachment to the outcome.  We could say how we feel, or respond to what impacts us in order to take things in a more positive and beneficial direction.  We can start with gratitude, and what we trust about someone, share our feelings and if we need anything or not.  But, many times, it is simply saying I am deeply blessed by (Fill in the Blank).  You could say the friends in my life, the partner in my life, the meal that nourished me last night, my community, or that spring is reminding me of new life.  This creates a healing way and a blessing way.It is important that we extend the arms of love, especially when it is difficult.  Be accountable and responsible for what we have created in our relationships, maintain our curiosity and our willingness to grow in all our relationships.  Where are we unwilling to engage? And move from our compassion for ourselves and others.  Angeles Arrien also states, that the direct translation of cruelty is the conscious withholding of love.  Where do I withhold my gratitude or appreciation, forgiveness or validation?  Why?  And what for?  Withholding only hurts the withholder.  Although, it does harm to those in our environment, people move on and life goes on, without us.  The sad thing is that it is without our gifts, our talents, our clarity, and our love. There is an indigenous wisdom that says all people make mistakes and all mistakes are forgivable.  As Louise Hay says, “I help create a world where it is safe to love each other”.  Can we do this and not go into self isolation?  Wayne Dyer says, “If there is a choice to be right, or to be kind, choose kind”.  Choose radical honesty, with devotional compassion.  Choose the opening, the great opening to intimacy.  That only we can initiate.With Great Love in this time of Spring,Char Sundust

Men and women, women and men; moon and sun, earth and sky.  The masculine and feminine is within us all. 

Jung calls this the anima and animus, this is our deep sacred territory of how we experience vision and heart and the capacity to trust our intuition and our ancestors.  Jung also talks about something aboriginal people call the “Bush Soul” which is our animal or a certain kind of tree.  This “Bush Soul” is considered an innate and essential part of the human, soul, inseparable from the person themselves.  This animal or the tree acts as our ally and if we don’t have one we are considered lost to ourselves, our community and to our deep loved ones. 

What has happened to our natural instinctual selves our deeply human animal our instinctual selves. Our self trust our openness to the natural world.  What has happened to our connection between the anima and the animus.  Externally we see the reparation, but externally we also see the work that needs to be done.  What if we were to write an apology to instinctual selves?  I am sorry for all the times that I did not listen to my own true nature.  I’m sorry I did not speak up like a lion would, or fall silent like an oak tree.  But, what if we were to commit to use our silence and our voice for the benefit of all human kind?  We can normalize Love is Kind and release the belief that love is blind. 

We can always see when we are being trust worthy and loving and when we are being authentic in the world.  Actions taken inside and in nature, words said or unsaid in our relationships, its time for a new tactic, that of coming into contact with ourselves, with our science and our spirit, our intelligence and our heart.  Working together to say what’s true inside to ourselves to others with some compassion directness and tenderness. The simple act of extending love to ourselves, to all of ourselves that means every part.

In this time of winter what do you love about your masculine dynamic self?  What do you appreciate about your feminine and receptive side?  And how can we connect with the deep wild soul?  That wants to run like a cheetah, tear things apart, rest in the sun?  Run fast at record breaking speed and fall silent. 

How can we connect with the deep acceptance of who we are and not try to be who we are not?

I love what Wayne Dyer says, “don’t chase what you don’t want”.  Is what we are chasing feeding the balance conversation between the receptive and dynamic in our natures.  Are we nourished by our connectedness with nature, with the rain, with the touch of the wind and the devotional sun break in the clouds.  This is a time to go deep into our own true nature and start a conversation with the unbroken and unknown within ourselves.  Like it’s a grand spelunking adventure in search if some treasure found deep inside and in the trees and ferns outside our back door.  It’s time to allow the truth of our treasures to shine into the world.  Our humanity is beautiful, sacred, a gift and so is any conversation between a man and a woman, a woman and a woman, a man and a man.  But, especially between any human being and their soul.

These are some suggestions to deepen into our true nature in this season of winter

* Spend time with the elements invite a new relationship to emerge.

* Recognizing them in you and you in them.

* Give gratitude for the life they lend you, honor your dynamic active nature notice where your vision has come into reality.

* Balance that with the magnetic receptive nature what have you truly received what guidance have you received and in what ways has that consistently taken your life to more positive and beautiful places.

* What animals allies, beings in nature have most wanted your attention?  This is one of the ways the soul speaks to us through the symbols animals and beings in nature that we most love. 

* Notice… read about what you’re noticing (the animal, the tree) Attention is a form of devotion, noticing is way of retrieving ourselves and a way of becoming whole. 

Many blessings during this winter season,

In Beauty,

Char Sundust

Hello Every Beautiful One,

I have the great pleasure and honor in my mentoring and teaching practice of working with many beautiful elders in my every day work.  My eldest student is in her 80s, my youngest student is eight wise and wonderful years, and then all those who are in-between.  Something beautiful I have witnessed in my classes is how those of us in-between find delight, derive meaning, and gain beauty, wisdom and clarity through these diverse age groups.  We all have so much to offer one another through our experiences of life, whether we are young and experiencing something for the first time or still learning (which is really all of us, all the time,) or have some level of mastery at what is taking place.  We are truly here to enrich, pass down knowledge, and create a better world together.

There is a song by John Prine that I have loved since I was a child “so if you’re walking down the street sometime and you spot some hollow ancient eyes, don’t just pass them by and stare as if you didn’t care, say hello in there, oh…”  It’s surprising that we don’t say hello in there.  It’s not only with elders, we see it in every age – shoulders hunched, head down, fulfill the day’s agenda, check everything beside the dotted line leading to more work, all without the very reason we have come here: to love, to learn about love, to connect with these sacred people, these amazing miraculous events that walk by us…other human beings like us.  All human beings are equipped with feelings, intuitive natures and experiences.  Every time we pass someone by we are missing out on an adventure.  A thrilling, hair-raising, often ecstatic multiplicity of story-telling and wisdom that could change our lives in a more brilliant and beautiful direction; even if the whole exchange is nothing more than a smile, a nod, or a wave it adds vitality, energy, aliveness and connection to our world.

Something I’ve noticed in my travels is a natural pull to mentorship and wisdom – here in the states and abroad.  In Mexico the elder builders work with the younger builders, and delight in passing down an artist’s true craft.  You hear them in one another’s homes laughing; see them at one another’s celebrations for their children or their grandchildren.  They know one another; they care for and about one another.  In Japan, the honor and respect given to those who have more experience, whose eyes have seen many things, whose fingers have woven the dreams or demise of many things in a long life, those hands are held and that wisdom is honored.

In indigenous traditions they say “oh, they have no ears right now,” when someone cannot listen.  It is simply a statement.  “Oh, they’ve lost their ears, they will find them.”  In this western culture we say “Oh, cat got your tongue?”  Which really means, “my voice has been lost,” or “I don’t have the courage to say what is so for some reason.”  Angeles Arrien calls this weak heartedness.  In her book The Four-Fold Way, she talks about the different kinds of love: love between colleagues, between a student and teacher, between mentor and mentee, between counselor and client, love between friends, life partners, lovers, and between a parent and a child.  It seems we all have our eye on the lover and sometimes the child. Meanwhile, many of our elders are in sterile rooms with electric beds and strangers tending to them, while they remain waiting, silent, wise.  We do not have an eye on the teacher, mentor, student and often times not on the friend, and less than is necessary on the simple extension of love towards ourselves, the sharing of love with others in an empowering way, even sharing what we love in our simplest daily actions.

In many traditions our loves and our gifts are noticed when we are very young by someone else who carries these gifts.  Now, we have apprenticeship and internship programs for everything from doctors to electricians.  I know for many of us much is missing when we won’t talk to anyone or listen to anyone else.  We miss all this delicious perspective, all these different views to add to our own discernment and joy.  We cannot afford to perpetuate isolation which suppresses the basic human need of touch and gaze and soul.  Experience gives us pause to gain a loving or grateful perspective, our heart’s perspective on our lives.  This is the gift of our friends or mentors, our families, our elders, our children.  May those of us in-between remember to nod, smile or gaze, find our ears, find our voices, find our hand and reach out or even say “hello in there, oh…”

In Beauty,

Char

• First Year Circle - Spiritual I.D.- Begins on Thursday, September 15th at Bastyr University in room 186. Class begins at 7pm. Please arrive early to check-in.

For additional information or to register email or call the office at 206.440.8886.

• Second Year Circle - Making the Truth Visible – Eagle Circle - Begins on Saturday, September 17th at the NEW Sundust Oracle Institute school in Greenwood.

The SOI school address is:  8312 Greenwood Ave N., Seattle, WA. 98103

2^nd year class is from 10am to 5pm on Saturday. Lunch options are available in the neighborhood yet bring a sack lunch if you choose. Please arrive early to check-in. 

• The Third Year Clinic: Integration of Shamanic Visionary and Healing Skills Through a Clinic Teaching Environment - Flicker Circle - Begins on Friday evening September 30th at the NEW Sundust Oracle Institute school in Greenwood.

The SOI school address is:  8312 Greenwood Ave N., Seattle, WA. 98103

3^rd year class is a weekend long intensive. Class times begin on Friday, September 30^th in the evening from 7pm to 9pm, Saturday, October 1^st 10am to 5pm, Sunday, October 2^nd 10am to 5pm. Please arrive early to check-in. 

For details on these offerings, please visit our Classes page.

This is a weekend intensive on the facilitation of ceremony for the 4 major initiations of life.
Birth, Death, Weddings/Commitments, Coming of Age/leaving home, it is a great honor to be called as a conduit for the mystic third as the container for
the blessing, vision and beauty, that comes with transitions of this magnitude.
This is a weekend workshop for those who feel called to be ceremonialists and celebrants. We will explore rituals from different traditions to assist others in creating a fulfilling, rich, and authentic ceremony whether it be a celebration of coming home or of life.

Dates: September 9 10, 11

Format: Friday
evening 7pm-9pm, Sat & Sun 9:30am to 5pm

Cost: $425/weekend. What to bring: sack
lunch, journal.

Registration:
• Send in the attached form with your deposit of $100 by September 2nd to reserve your space.
• Send in your deposit of $100 by August 25th to receive a 5% discount.
• Send in your full payment by August 25th to receive a 10% discount.
• Full payment due by the day of event.

Friday, July 29 7:30 - 9pm

Getting to the Heart of the Matter

$25 Students of Char, $42 All others Register Now! 

We all want to get to the heart of things. The heart of our work, our relationships and our ability to have an abundant life complete with meaning, satisfaction and growth.In this evening talk with CHAR SUNDUST we will be exploring how to connect the heart, the spirit, and the intellect in ways that apply our intuitive, intellectual and soul gifts into the physical world to bring us cohesiveness in our lives so we can see the differences we want to see.

You can find all the information on this class by visiting our “Classes” page here.

Registration and deposit is due by September 1st.

Early Registration is due by August 15th. Discounts for early registration are available.

Spiritual I.D. – Intuitive Development through
Shamanism: The First Year Class / Circle

The guidance of the heart always brings us to Spirit work with Spirit understanding the innate intuitive and visionary ability across cultures, peoples and continents. In this 9 month intensive class you will learn:
• How to access your intuition.
• How to set clear boundaries in everyday reality.
• How to access a creative sacred life as a practitioner, leader, doctor, therapist, gardener, mother, father or a minister.
• How to access helpful Intuitive skills and personal development skills.
• Symbolic language.
• Visionary work for self and others.
• Shamanic journey work to direct and help others, self and community clarify purpose and extend healing and inspiration.
• Developing medical intuitive skills and recognition of Clairvoyant, Clairsentient and Clairaudient skills.
First Year Circle begins each September and completes each June.

This is a weekly class on Thursday evenings from 7pm-9pm. There are approximately 34 classes, with several breaks, during the year.

First Year Circle also includes two retreats during the year - the Dream Retreat during the year and an Initiation Retreat to complete the year. First Year Circle also includes one full day Saturday Intensive workhops on Protection.

Classes are from 7pm - 9pm each Thursday at Bastyr University’s main campus in Kenmore, Room 186.
Saturday Intensive is held in Seattle, and both Retreats are held outside of Seattle.

First Year Class offers a reduced price for currently enrolled Bastyr Students, Bastyr Alumni, and Students enrolled in Colleges or Univesities.

Earth Wisdom – Listening to the Wisdom of the Earth

7:30-9pm,  A special Earth Day evening talk at East West Bookstore Seattle

 Register at East West Bookstore, in person or online. Where do we go from here?
Our world, the people in it, the animals and plants and elements are always teaching us. Many of us have a transpersonal relationship with the earth. But as listeners and stewards, members of community and family, how do we personalize our relationship to the earth and what she is telling us anyway? How can we be aware of symbols, signals, and clear messages that she is constantly showing us? And be a part of a spiritual and physical solution?