Oriah Mountain Dreamer

The urge to blame someone- anyone- when our plans are disrupted or things go badly is. . . . well, it’s human, but often not very helpful. Years ago, running…

Oriah is the author of the international best-selling books: The Invitation, and The Dance, and The Call (published by HarperONE, translated into eighteen languages.) Her much loved poem “The Invitation” has been shared around the world. Trained in a shamanic tradition, her medicine name Mountain Dreamer means one who likes to find and push the edge.

It strikes me that this is often a choice we have to make because life includes discomfort in a myriad of forms: grief, loss, uncertainty, anxiety, physical pain, trauma, etc. But it also includes laughter, joy, love, caring, creativity, ecstasy, belonging and all that good stuff. And if we want to be awake enough to feel the latter, we will encounter- and feel- at least some of the former. Don’t get me wrong- I am not glorifying pain. I continue to explore ways to have less pain and more energy. But a solution that eliminates pain while taking away the sense of participating in life is not, for me, any solution at all

Oh I know what you’re thinking: How could resentment- that nasty, sticky, often covert anger that drains us of energy and blocks access to joy- ever be a gift?

Self-love spills over, ripples out to include others. The same can be said for self-hatred and self-abuse or neglect. That too spills over, contaminates those around us, ripples out into the world. I am not suggesting that we remove ourselves from life or others until we have learned self-love. It is often the world and others that teach us about love of self and others.

“I have always thought of courage as the willingness to let the deepest longing of my soul grow larger than any fear that might arise” Oriah Mountain Dreamer

What is this strange reunion, this homecoming to someone I did not know I had left?

I write from where I am, as truthfully as I can- although I don’t always share everything I write (that sound you hear is a collective sigh of relief from my sons and ex-husbands.) Today I tried several times to write and this is what came

In our largely secular culture you don’t hear words like heaven or hell or sin very often. For as long as I can remember I’ve thought of heaven and hell as inner states, not literal places. When I was seventeen I wrote in my diary that I thought sin was that which came between me and my sense of a living loving presence (God) that was larger than but always with(in) me. I could pretty much stand by this today. I didn’t know then that the origin of the word sin meant “to miss the mark” but I think I was intuiting a meaning that was in alignment with this etymology.

This seems to be some kind of key to living a happy life: recognizing what is “just weather,” that which is beyond our control and will inevitably will change. Sometime when we prepare for “weather” (the uncontrollable) we guess right- we have our umbrella handy when it starts to rain. And sometimes we get wet. Either way, it’s just weather.

For the first time in my life, I am living alone. Thirty-eight years ago, when I moved to Toronto to go to college, I shared a home with five other students. I lived alone for a brief time after finishing college, but quickly became involved with a man and moved in with him after only nine months of solo living. No regrets- I was, after all, twenty-three. Young love and hormones were influencing my choices. Eventually, we made two beautiful babies -my sons- together.

Well, I had some time to lie around this week- literally. A week ago, I picked up my watch off the dresser next to my bed and threw my back out. Two chiropractic visits, one doctor’s appointment, a few muscle relaxants, and many epsom salt baths later, and I am no longer shuffling around as if I’m one hundred years old. All very humbling and more than a little enlightening.

How have events in your childhood affected your psyche and shaped your present strategies in life? Oriah Mountain Dreamer shares her journey and states it is only you who can give permission to acknowledge the existence of your wounds.

Who gives us permission to live our own lives? We Do! says Oriah Mountain Dreamer and what do we have to do to truly give ourselves this permission?

Here’s the question Oriah Mountain Dreamer is holding in her life: How do we go through what feels like unbearable pain (loss, grief, sadness, fear, terror) without closing or disconnecting from our hearts?

What do I really want? Waiting for someone to ask you? Oriah Mountain Dreamer asks you to stop waiting for someone else to ask the question and instead take responsibility by asking yourself.

How do you define Joy? Contentment? Happiness? Oriah Mountain Dreamer searches for metaphors to evoke the experience of joy to contribute to a dreaming world that is vivid and real.

All work and no play makes us what? Oriah Mountain Dreamer shares her struggles with play and why she believes it is so strongly embedded in her nature and nurturing. Rest assured Oriah is doing her part in grooving out her place in the world of fun.