Returning to Sacred Relationship: A Summer Solstice Invitation

The Severing We Have Forgotten

There is a wound that runs through the modern world so deep, so old, that most of us no longer recognize it as a wound at all. We simply call it normal life.

We wake disconnected from the rhythms of the sun. We eat without knowing the plants that nourish us. We move through days surrounded by other humans yet feel profoundly alone. We look to the natural world—if we look at all—as a resource to be used, a backdrop to our busy lives, or at best, a place to visit when we need to "recharge."

But this was not always the way.

For tens of thousands of years, human beings lived in intimate, reciprocal relationship with the living intelligences of life itself. The sun was not merely a ball of burning gas—it was Grandfather, the life-giver, whose warmth and light made all existence possible. The earth was not dirt beneath our feet—she was Grandmother, the great nurturer, the birther of all forms. Plants were not commodities—they were relatives, teachers, sacred beings offering medicine, nourishment, and wisdom. Animals were not lesser creatures—they were kin, each carrying instinctual knowing that humans could learn from.

And the human being? Not a lonely individual struggling through an indifferent universe, but a sacred manifestation of the Mystery itself—spirit in form, being and becoming, held within a vast web of conscious, responsive life. This understanding was not unique to one culture. Indigenous peoples across the globe—from the Americas to Africa, from Australia to the Arctic—lived within this same fundamental recognition: all of life is alive, aware, and in relationship with us. The medicine wheel is a symbol found in many indigenous traditions, and is not a symbol to be admired from a distance. It is a living technology of consciousness—a way of walking in alignment with the sacred rhythms of life, of remembering who we are and who we are in relationship with.

The Great Forgetting

When European colonizers arrived on these shores, they brought with them a worldview that had already severed its own sacred connections. The living spirits of nature had been reduced to superstition. The plants, animals, and elements had been stripped of their personhood, their intelligence, their right to exist for their own sake. The earth herself had become property—something to be owned, divided, extracted from.

This was not merely a difference of opinion. It was a fundamental break in the human relationship with life.

The colonizing mind saw the world through the lens of separation: human from nature, spirit from matter, self from other. What could not be measured, commodified, or controlled was dismissed. The sacred relationships that indigenous peoples maintained—with plants, with animals, with the dream of life itself—were labeled as primitive, childish, or dangerous.

And so began a systematic dismantling. Sacred ceremonies were outlawed. Children were taken from their families and forbidden to speak their languages or practice their ways. The knowledge-keepers were silenced. The sacred groves were cut down. The buffalo were slaughtered. The land was fenced.

But more than physical destruction occurred. Something was severed in the collective human psyche. We began to forget that we had ever been in relationship at all. We forgot that the sun rises each day as a gift, not an accident. We forgot that every plant carries intelligence. We forgot that we are held.

This forgetting is the root of so much modern suffering—the loneliness, the anxiety, the sense of meaninglessness, the desperate grasping for connection through screens and substances and endless accumulation. We are starving for relationship with life itself, and we don't even know what we've lost.

The Invitation to Remember

And yet—the sacred relationships have not disappeared. They cannot. The sun still rises. The plants still grow. The earth still turns. The dream of life still unfolds, moment by moment, whether we are awake to it or not.

What has been lost is our awareness. Our participation. Our reciprocity.

The sacred energies of life continue to offer themselves to us. They are our relatives, waiting patiently for us to remember. They do not judge our forgetting. They do not withhold their gifts in punishment. They simply continue to be what they are—living, intelligent, generous—while we stumble through the world believing we are alone.

The path back is not complicated, though it asks something of us. It asks us to turn toward what we have turned away from. To acknowledge that we do not know everything. To approach with humility, with curiosity, with an open heart. To listen before we speak. To receive before we take.

This is what ceremony offers—a doorway back into right relationship.

The Summer Solstice: Gateway to the Heart

The Summer Solstice marks the peak of the sun's radiance in the Northern Hemisphere—the longest day, the fullest light. In the Medicine Wheel, this is the season of the South, the direction of growth, vitality, and heart-centered living.

If winter is the time of seeding in the dark womb of potential, and spring is the time of emergence and new beginning, then summer is the time of fullness. What was planted is now growing. What was dreamed is now taking form. What was hidden is now visible, expressed, alive.

This is the season of the heart—not the sentimental heart of greeting cards, but the courageous heart that dares to love, to connect, to be vulnerable in a world that teaches us to protect ourselves. The heart that knows we cannot truly live in isolation. The heart that reaches toward relationship because that is what hearts do.

In the lineage of The Origin Teachings of the Delicate Lodge, the Medicine Wheel is understood as a living map of awareness and relationship. It teaches us how to walk in alignment with the sacred rhythms of life—supporting clarity, balance, and conscious participation in our own becoming and in the evolution of humanity.

The 20-Count Medicine Wheel introduces us to twenty sacred energies—the living intelligences that guide consciousness, community, evolution, and the cycles of creation. These are not abstract concepts. They are not symbols to be intellectually understood. They are our relatives. They are living presences with whom we are in constant relationship—whether we are aware of it or not.

For the Summer Solstice, we enter the South and Southwest of the Wheel—the directions of growth, heart, relationship, and the living expression of the Sacred Dream. Here we meet five of these sacred relatives:

The Five Sacred Energies of Summer

Sacred Plants (3): The Flowering of Life's Energy

The flowering of life's energy rooted in the Mother Earth. Sacred energy of growing life. Beauty, color, shape. Power of growth toward the sun.

Plants are among humanity's oldest teachers—beings of profound intelligence who have been growing, healing, and nourishing life since long before humans walked the earth. They know how to transform sunlight into food, how to heal wounds, how to communicate across vast underground networks, how to die and return. Indigenous peoples approached them with respect, offerings, and gratitude, knowing that a relationship exists—and all true relationships require reciprocity. The colonizing mind reduced them to products, stripping away their personhood and intelligence. To return to sacred relationship with plants is to remember: we are fed, healed, and sustained by living relatives who ask only to be acknowledged.

Sacred Human (5): Spirit in Form

The unique manifestation of the Mystery in human form. Sacred Spirit in substance, form. Being and becoming, manifesting potential.

Indigenous wisdom understands the human being as sacred—not because we are superior, but because we are unique manifestations of the Great Mystery itself. Spirit has taken form in us. We are the universe becoming conscious of itself, capable of love, of choice, of relationship. The colonizing mind severed us from this knowing—teaching shame about the body, suspicion of emotion, separation from community—and created humans who could calculate profit without feeling the cost. To reclaim our sacredness is to return the heart to the center, and to accept the responsibility that comes with being conscious, choosing beings.

Sacred White Buffalo Woman (13): The Teacher of Right Relationship

Sacred energy of collective consciousness that informs the plant kingdom's expressions of life. Power manifestation that is the human's first great teacher.

Before humans had words for wisdom, the plant kingdom was already dreaming it into form — growing, healing, flowering, dying, and returning in endless cycles of pure expression. Sacred White Buffalo Woman is the collective consciousness that moves through all of this: the living intelligence behind every root that seeks water, every flower that opens toward light, every plant that offers itself as medicine. She is not separate from the green world — she is its animating awareness, its power of growth made conscious. And she is our first great teacher, the one who showed us, long before civilization, how life sustains itself through generosity, beauty, and right relationship. To open to her is to remember that the natural world is not backdrop — it is instruction. It is wisdom, endlessly offered, endlessly alive.

Sacred Dream of Life (7): Reality Unfolding Now

The moment-by-moment expression of perceived reality that has as its source the Great Mystery. Human consciousness opening to and expressing the mystery of life.

This very moment—reading these words, feeling your body, noticing the quality of your attention—this is the Sacred Dream. Indigenous peoples understood that reality is not fixed but dreamed into being through the mysterious interaction of consciousness and existence. We are not passive observers of a mechanical universe; we are participants, co-creators of what unfolds. Colonization brought a different dream—one of conquest, extraction, and control. To awaken to the Sacred Dream is to ask: What is life expressing through me right now? What dream wants to be dreamed through my existence?

Sacred Kachinas (17): The Forces of Change

Sacred energy manifestations of awakening consciousness emerging from combinations of patterns and cycles. The energy intelligence force behind the many manifest expressions of life.

Life does not move in straight lines. It spirals, cycles, and surprises—and just when we settle into comfort, disruption arrives. The Sacred Kachinas are the forces of change, redirection, and evolutionary guidance that shake us awake when we have fallen asleep. Indigenous peoples cultivated relationship with these forces, understanding that disruption is not punishment but teaching. The colonizing mind seeks to control change and manage uncertainty at all costs—a battle that cannot be won. To open to the Sacred Kachinas is to surrender the illusion of control and ask: What is life teaching me through this?

The Path of Reciprocity

These five sacred energies—Sacred Plants, Sacred Human, Sacred White Buffalo Woman, Sacred Dream of Life, and Sacred Kachinas—are not distant forces to be worshipped from afar. They are relatives to be lived with, day by day, moment by moment.

And like all true relationships, they require reciprocity. We cannot only receive. We cannot only take. We must give back—our attention, our gratitude, our care, our willingness to live in alignment with the sacred.

This is the original way, nearly forgotten but not lost. The plants still offer their medicine. The human heart still knows how to love. The teachers of right relationship still speak to those who listen. The dream of life still unfolds for those awake to receive it. The forces of change still arrive to move us forward.

What has been severed can be rejoined. What has been forgotten can be remembered. What has been lost can be found.

This is not about appropriating indigenous culture or pretending to be something we are not. It is about recognizing that the sacred relationships are the birthright of all human beings—indeed, they are what makes us human. Every culture once knew this. Every lineage carries seeds of this remembrance.

The healing is not to become someone else, but to become who we truly are: sacred humans, held within a web of sacred life, capable of love, of choice, of conscious relationship with all that is.

A Ceremony of Fullness

On the sacred peak of the Summer Solstice, we gather to enter the season of fullness, vitality, and living expression.

The heart of this ceremony is encounter.

Through five shamanic journeys, you will be guided across the threshold of ordinary awareness into direct meeting with each of the five sacred relatives of this season — Sacred Plants, Sacred Human, Sacred White Buffalo Woman, Sacred Dream of Life, and the Sacred Kachinas. Not as concepts to understand. Not as symbols to contemplate. But as living presences, as the relatives they truly are.

Each journey is an introduction — or a reunion. A moment to stand before each sacred energy and say: I am here. I remember. I am ready to walk with you. And to receive, in return, whatever they have been waiting to offer you.

This is how relationship begins. Not through information, but through presence. Not through study, but through meeting.

The Pilgrimage Continues

The ceremony itself is a doorway, not a destination.

What opens on the Solstice will be carried forward through the three months that follow — the full arc of summer, the season of growing, of heart, of living expression. In the weeks after the ceremony, we will walk this pilgrimage together, in community, developing practices that deepen and tend each of the five sacred relationships we have begun.

We will share this journey in a living circle — a group where experiences, practices, questions, and discoveries are offered and received. Where no one walks alone. Where the relationships kindled in ceremony are fed by companionship, by witness, by the courage of others who are also remembering.

This is not a course to be completed. It is a way of walking — together, in reciprocity, with the sacred energies of life themselves as our guides.

Summer will be our teacher. The five relatives will be our companions. And the community we form will be the living web that holds us as we find our way back home.

Join Us

Online Event Summer Solstice Ceremony: Introduction to the Medicine Wheel & the Sacred Energies of Life 

Saturday, June 20th · 7:00–9:00 pm EDT Investment: $75

To register or for payment information, email: shamanicfirereiki@gmail.com

Or register directly via Eventbrite: Click here to reserve your place

You Do Not Walk Alone: Meeting the Sacred Energies of Life

Many of us move through life believing that courage means learning to walk alone.

One of my clients discovered something very different. For privacy, I will call her Rachel.

Rachel is a thoughtful and capable woman, yet again and again she found herself holding back from stepping into new experiences. When life invited her into unfamiliar territory—whether in her work, her relationships, or new opportunities—something inside her would quietly retreat.

Part of her longed to expand her life. Another part of her felt afraid of entering spaces where she did not know what—or who—would be waiting. Opportunities passed. Possibilities closed. Her life remained safe, but small.

This showed up in many ways, but especially in her relationships. When it came to meeting men, Rachel rarely allowed herself to enter new spaces or experiences. Instead, she tended to date men who felt familiar—men who resembled what she already knew, even when those patterns were not truly serving her. The unknown felt too risky. Again and again she would say, “Something inside me becomes afraid when I have to step into new territory.”

One day during our work together, something unexpected appeared.

As we explored what happened inside her when she faced new situations, she suddenly described an image she had never noticed before: a small girl walking alone. The girl was quiet and cautious. She wanted to explore life, but she was deeply afraid of entering unfamiliar places by herself. What she wanted most was simple—she wanted someone to hold her hand. But in her inner world, there was no hand.

For many of us, this image is painfully familiar. As children, when we entered something new—a classroom, a crowded place, an unfamiliar road—we reached for the hand of someone who loved us. That hand gave us courage. It did not remove uncertainty, but it reminded us that we were not alone.

Yet as adults, life asks us to walk into new territories without that visible hand. A new relationship. A difficult conversation. A public presentation. A life transition.

And so many of us carry the quiet belief that we must face these moments alone.

But what if that is not true?

The Moment We Remember

During that session with Rachel, I began sharing something that has shaped my own life profoundly: the understanding that in the Medicine Wheel teachings, we are never alone.

In the lineage of The Origin Teachings of the Delicate Lodge, we are taught about the Sacred Energies of Life—twenty living intelligences that participate in the creation, evolution, and sustaining of life itself. These are not abstract concepts or symbolic ideas. They are relatives.

Sacred Grandfather Sun. Sacred Stars. Sacred Collective Consciousness. Sacred Ancestor Spirits. Sacred Great Teachers. Sacred Grandmother Earth. And many more. They are not objects or distant forces. They are living presences that participate in the great web of life—and we are part of that web.

Most of us move through life believing we walk alone, or perhaps only with other humans. Yet the Medicine Wheel reveals something much deeper: we are surrounded by sacred relationships that are always available to us.

But these relationships are not automatic. Just as we build relationships with people, we also develop relationships with these sacred energies over time—through attention, respect, and conscious connection. And when we do, something begins to change.

Developing a Relationship with the Ancestors

Over the following weeks, Rachel began developing a relationship with one of the Sacred Energies of Life: The Sacred Ancestor Spirits.

The Ancestors are not simply memories of those who came before us. In the Medicine Wheel teachings, they represent the timeless flow of life informing life—the wisdom and presence of those whose lives continue to support the unfolding of the present.

Rachel began speaking to the spirit of her grandmother during quiet moments. She would sit with her, remember her, and slowly open herself to the possibility that their relationship could continue in a different form. This was not something immediate or automatic. Like any relationship, it unfolded over time. Little by little, she began to feel something subtle but real: a sense of warmth, presence, and quiet support.

Then one day she faced a situation that would normally terrify her. She had been asked to give a large presentation at work. Standing in front of others and speaking openly felt like entering one of those unknown territories that frightened the small girl inside her. Normally, she would have tried to avoid it. But this time she did something different. Before the presentation, she spoke to her grandmother. She asked her to accompany her. Not as a memory. Not as imagination. But as a relationship she had been nurturing.

As Rachel stood up to speak, she felt something unexpected. She was still afraid.

But she was no longer alone. She later described the experience as if her grandmother was standing quietly beside her—steady, loving, and supportive.

Her voice trembled at moments, but she completed the presentation. And afterward she said something beautiful: “For the first time in my life, I entered something frightening without needing to hold a physical hand—because I knew I was being held.”

Learning to Walk with Our Relatives

The Sacred Ancestor Spirits are only one of the twenty Sacred Energies of Life in the Medicine Wheel. Each of these energies offers a different kind of support, wisdom, and guidance.

Sacred Grandfather Sun illuminates our path. Sacred Stars restore perspective and timing. Sacred Collective Consciousness connects us with the evolving awareness of humanity. Sacred Great Teachers guide us toward maturity and responsibility.

When we begin to develop relationships with these sacred energies, we are no longer navigating life as isolated individuals. We begin to walk in relationship with life itself.

We learn how to listen. How to ask for guidance. How to receive support. And how to offer our participation within the great web of life.

A Spring Invitation

On March 20th, during the Spring Equinox, I will be offering an online ceremony where we will begin exploring and developing these sacred relationships.

Spring is the season of awakening, illumination, and new beginnings. In the Medicine Wheel, this time of year invites us to enter the East and Southeast directions connected with vision, clarity, guidance, and the emergence of new cycles.

During this ceremony, we will come into relationship with:

• Sacred Grandfather Sun — the life-giving illumination that reveals truth

• Sacred Stars — the vast perspective and timing of cosmic intelligence

• Sacred Collective Consciousness — the living field of human awareness across time

• Sacred Ancestor Spirits — the timeless flow of life informing life

• Sacred Great Teachers — the guiding intelligence that matures consciousness

Through teaching, reflection, and shamanic journeys, you will begin to meet these energies not as ideas—but as relatives.

Because life was never meant to be walked alone.

Join the Spring Equinox Ceremony

Spring Equinox Ceremony: Introduction to the Medicine Wheel & the Sacred Energies of Life March 20 · 7:00–9:00 pm EST · Online

To register or for payment information, email: shamanicfirereiki@gmail.com

Or register via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1981546361509?aff=oddtdtcreator

Sometimes the most important step we take in life is simply this: entering the unknown while trusting that we are supported.

Rachel is still learning to walk into new spaces.

But now she knows something she did not know before.

She does not walk alone.

The Mirror Effect

Walking Through the Valley of the Dead

There are valleys we do not know we are walking in.

We think we are simply meeting the wrong person. We think we are unlucky in love. We think we love too deeply or choose poorly. But sometimes, without realizing it, we are wandering through the Valley of the Dead — the quiet terrain where old love still lies ungrieved.

When Leticia came to me, she was tired.

Not the kind of tired that sleep resolves. The kind that settles into the bones, the kind that comes from reaching for something again and again and feeling it dissolve in your hands.

She spoke first of her current partner.

“He is kind,” she said. “He works hard. He says he cares about me. But when I try to talk about something deeper, something that matters to me, he changes the subject. Or he becomes quiet. Or he disappears into work.”

She lowered her eyes slightly, softening the truth even as she spoke it.

“It is not terrible,” she added gently. “It just feels… lonely.”

We continued walking together. As we continued, other stories surfaced. An ex who could never quite commit. Another who was charming and affectionate but emotionally closed. One who celebrated her beauty yet avoided real intimacy. One who admired her strength but withdrew the moment she needed comfort.

Different faces. Different voices. Different circumstances.

But the same quiet distance.

I did not name the pattern immediately. Initiation cannot be forced. What was needed was recognition — and recognition must arise from within.

Recognition came when she described yet another moment of reaching and feeling him retreat. I asked softly, “Does this loneliness feel familiar?”

She responded quickly at first. “Relationships are complicated. Everyone has limits.”

“Yes,” I said gently. “And yet… does this particular loneliness feel familiar to you?”

The room grew still. Something shifted in her breath. Her eyes moved inward, searching not for an answer to give me, but for something she had not yet allowed herself to see.

“It is strange,” she whispered after a long pause. “They all feel the same.”

We sat in silence, honoring the opening.

“Not the same on the surface,” she continued slowly. “But underneath. It is like I keep meeting the same man in different bodies.”

There it was.

The mirror had turned.

“Why do I keep choosing men who cannot meet me emotionally?” she asked, not in frustration this time, but in dawning awareness.

And that was the beginning.

Patterns in love are rarely accidental. We do not consciously seek what will hurt us. We are drawn to what feels familiar to our nervous system, what echoes the emotional climate in which we first learned what love was.

As we descended further into the valley, her childhood began to speak.

Her father had been physically present but emotionally distant — steady, responsible, but unreachable in tenderness. She loved him deeply and learned early that if she did not expect too much, she would not be disappointed.

Her mother cared for her, but through criticism. Praise was often followed by correction. Affection carried an edge. Leticia learned to perform well, to be strong, to need little.

There was no soft place for her feelings.

So she became masterful at not having them.

She learned to listen before speaking, to support before asking, to give before receiving. She became the emotionally generous one in every relationship — attentive, present, patient. But she had never learned how to sit with her own sadness, how to honor her own need for celebration, how to ask without fear of being “too much.”

And so, without knowing it, she was emotionally unavailable to herself.

The men were not the wound. They were the reflection.

Half-presence met the half-presence she had toward her own pain. Emotional distance echoed the distance she maintained from her unmet needs. The loneliness she felt with them was the loneliness she had carried since childhood.

To heal this is not to blame our parents. It is to walk consciously through the Valley of the Dead and kneel beside what was lost.

Leticia had to mourn. She had to mourn the father who could not meet her in her tenderness. She had to mourn the mother who could not soothe without correcting. She had to mourn the celebrations that went unnoticed and the tears that were swallowed in silence.

Some things she will never receive from them.

That truth is painful. And sacred.

Because what we cannot receive from them, we must learn to offer ourselves.

This is initiation into life.

Leticia began to practice something radical. When she felt sadness, she did not distract herself with work or caretaking. She stayed. When she achieved something meaningful, she paused and celebrated it privately, allowing her body to feel the fullness of it. When loneliness surfaced, she did not rush to text a man who might not respond. She placed her own hand on her heart and breathed.

Slowly, she became emotionally available to herself.

And something unexpected happened.

Emotionally distant men stopped feeling magnetic. Their half-presence no longer felt like chemistry. It felt incomplete. Her body began to recognize the difference between longing and intimacy.

Every relationship reflects the way we love ourselves. Not as punishment. Not as destiny. But as intelligence.

If we silence our needs, we will not be heard. If we abandon our feelings, we will feel abandoned. If we remain half-present to our own heart, we will meet half-presence in others.

The mirror is not cruel.

It is precise.

The Valley of the Dead is not a place of despair. It is where old love patterns are laid to rest. It is where we grieve honestly. It is where we stop chasing familiar wounds and begin choosing aliveness.

When Leticia rose from that valley, she did not rise with a new man.

She rose with herself.

She rose knowing her own emotional landscape. She rose able to sit with her sadness without abandoning it. She rose able to name her needs without shame. She rose no longer magnetized by half-love.

And that changed everything.

This is the Call to Awareness.

It is not about blaming the past. It is not about judging your choices. Nothing is wrong with you. What repeats in your life is not evidence of defect — it is evidence of a pattern waiting to be understood.

Every repeating dynamic in love is an invitation. An invitation to turn inward. An invitation to grieve what was not given. An invitation to become emotionally available to yourself.

And when you do, the field of love shifts.

If, as you read this, you recognize yourself somewhere in this valley, know that you do not have to walk it alone.

Part of my work is to guide women through these landscapes of recognition and mourning, through the quiet places where old patterns are laid to rest and new ways of loving are born. This is not about quick advice or surface strategies. It is about initiation into a deeper relationship with yourself.

If you feel called, I invite you to begin with a gentle conversation — a free 20-minute clarity call where we can explore what patterns may be asking for your attention.

·  Schedule your free 20-minute clarity call here: https://www.loveintowholeness.com/service-page/free-20-minute-consultation

And for those who are ready to go further, I offer a private ceremonial immersion called The Unbinding: From Wound to Wisdom in the Way You Love — a four-hour guided experience where we map your relational patterns, honor the grief that lives beneath them, and open the doorway to a more alive and sovereign way of loving.

·  Learn more about The Unbinding 4-hour retreat here: https://www.loveintowholeness.com/the-unbinding

The valley is not the end of your story.

It is the threshold.

With much love,

Elizabeth Alanis