Tending the Fire: An Illuminating Journey of Synchronicities

By Tricia Lee Nickel

p> Tending the Fire encourages us to be intensely loyal to ourselves and give our gifts while we are on earth. We are creators, and imagination is one of our God tools. We have a drive to be creative, to partake of our godness through the DNA of every cell. Outside the human body, creativity lives in the astral realm of consciousness. This is a realm of psychic phenomenon, telepathy, and clairvoyance. When a dream or a symbol is speaking to us, we can watch for a gut, heart, or inner-word response. The mind is the thinker, not the feeler. Feeling is a major component in creative discovery. To be a creator is at the heart of deep understanding of our roles in cosmic unfolding. Tending the Fire guides us through ideas, transformation practices, and celebrations to stand in our light and live joyfully.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Apr 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9781504349390

Tricia Lee Nickel

Tricia Lee Nickel, MA, MFT, experience includes fifteen years as a college instructor with an emphasis in transpersonal and Jungian psychology. Tricia works as a licensed marriage and family therapist, hypnotherapist, astrologer, and facilitator of women’s spirit groups and has published numerous articles covering astrology, mythology, shamanism, and psychology. Tricia’s interest in consciousness studies, art, and healing the psyche and planet brings her great joy. Tricia lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, California.

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Copyright © 2016 Tricia Lee Nickel.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-5043-4938-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-4937-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-4939-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016901299

Balboa Press rev. date: 4/13/2016

CONTENTS

With love to the ancestors, angels and archetypes whose unconditional love and support keep inviting me to live life on Earth joyfully. Thank you every day, for wake up calls, gentle heal your life nudges, and invitations to live with heart, meaning and presence.

Chapter 1.   The Fire in the Cosmos - Beginnings on Planet Earth

Chapter 2.   Our Journey on Earth - Tending The Fire: The Physical and the Metaphysical

Chapter 3.   Ancestors, Native Teachings, Shamanism - Interconnected Web of Life: We Come from the Stars And Return to the Stars

Chapter 4.   Mother Earth - Tending our Garden, Moving Through the Seasons, Giving our Gifts and Talents

Chapter 5.   Spirituality, Peri-Natal, Matrices and Birth-Death-Rebirth Archetypes

Chapter 6.   Our Life Journey - Jung and the Individuation Process: The Journey of Wholeness, Body, Mind, Emotion and Spirit

Chapter 7.   Tending The Fire with our Families - Creating, Meditating, Celebrating Together

Chapter 8.   Bringing our Stars Down to Earth - Finding and Following our North Star

FINDING JOY IN PARTICIPATING FULLY IN YOUR LIFE

My granddaughter, Emilia, ignites joy in my life every time we are together. One day Emilia snuggled close to me on the couch and asked, Ama, why are we here on Earth? Good question, I responded. We are here on Earth to play, to enjoy, be with our families and to share our gifts, talents and skills that we brought in. Emilia smiled the biggest grin I have ever seen! Sparks of love and heart energy seem to dance around us when we are together. Her light and love have inspired me to share life experiences and illuminations on creating, meditating and celebrating our lives as we Tend the Fire here on Earth.

The powerful and tender poetic voice of my friend Drew Dellinger inspires me, I feel like the ancestors brought us here and they expect great things. They expect us to say what we think and live how we feel and follow the hard paths that bring us near joy. They expect us to nurture all the children.

GRATITUDES

Immense gratitude for my sons, Dale Duncan and Doug Duncan

Dale creates beauty from the heart and hands in song, wood and family. Your essence appears to me as a walking prayer with your feet on the Earth as your spirit aligns your mind and heart in magnificent ways. Your wisdom shows up when it is most needed. Dale surfs the big light and water waves!

Doug creates every day with profound creative knowing, high energy, deep awareness, compassion and actions for family and friends. Doug’s unconditional love and support in communication have transformed my viewpoints many times. He brings an awareness of the power of thoughts and words and the consequences of their actions. Doug shows up!

Gratitude and hugs for Martita, Emilia’s mom, and Michael, Doug’s partner.

Gratitude for my east coast families. Thanks for all the get-togethers and wonderful meals.

Gratitude and applause for my transformational circle of women. My body, mind, heart and soul flourish because of your loving presence on my journey – Jenna Ferraiolo, Galen Friend, Janet Kaufman, Summer MacCool, Suzanne Rainford, Stacy Shulenberger, Sheila Traum, Eileen Williams, Diane Wilt.

Gratitude and heart felt joy for Quinn Patricia Walker who Tended the Fire with me on many Mondays and Saturdays in editing and preparing the manuscript. It’s been a joy to welcome Quinn with flowers when she comes over to work together. Loved the teamwork.

PREFACE

Writing this book is a re-weaving of life experience with me, my family and the human experience for everyone. I will draw from my beginnings as a daughter, Aunt Elsie and Aunt Ruth’s niece, and an absent father, from whom I inherited my Cherokee heritage. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t feel my Wyoming heritage in my bones and my soul. Most priceless and pleasing of all on my journey is being a mom to two sons and an Ama (grandma) for Emilia.

My work over the last twenty eight years includes fifteen years as a college instructor, with an emphasis in Transpersonal and Jungian Psychology. I am a licensed marriage and family therapist, hypnotherapist, astrologer and facilitator of women’s spirit groups. I explored color and personality in a book in 1989 and wrote astrological articles for Welcome to Planet Earth through the 1990’s. These experiences keep me Tending the Fire of the human journey.

Our beautiful planet Earth began from Fire in the big explosion billions of year ago. From Toltec wisdom of Don Miguel Ruiz, the following story illuminates our beginnings: The shaman came out of his cave on the night of the new moon. The sky was clear and he could see millions of stars. As he looked at his hands and felt in awe he realized that ‘I am made of light; I am made of stars.’ He knew that everything that exists is one living being, and that light is alive and contains all information. Then he realized that although he was made of stars, he was not those stars. ‘I am in-between the stars’, he thought. He discovered more … Everything is god. Human perception merely perceives light. He also saw that matter is a mirror - everything is a mirror that reflects light and creates images of the light. And the world of illusion, the dream, is just smoke which doesn’t allow us to see what we really are. The real us is pure love, pure light.

Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements

OUR JOURNEY ON EARTH

In the river of content for the book and the journey, we will turn over many stones along the way. We will explore where we begin, where we can flow, where we get stuck, where something dissolves and ends, where joy shines through us, and where we come to life again and again.

The knowledge of the physical and the metaphysical guide us on our journey:

We are spiritual beings moving through human experience. We are eternal beings - no birth - no death. We live in this moment and then the next. We can wake up anytime to give our gifts, talents and unconditional love.

DAILY PRACTICES FOR TENDING THE FIRE

Creating, Meditating, Celebrating in the Circle of Life

Creating – A man who is not on fire is nothing; he is ridiculous, he is two-dimensional. He must be on fire even if he does make a fool of himself. A flame must burn somewhere, otherwise no light shines, there is no warmth, there is nothing. Carl Jung

Meditating –