Happy New Year, Readers. I love you.
A brief review of 2023 and a poem for you. Here's to a beautiful year of alchemical art and fierce world creation from wisdom!
Dear Friends,
Tonight, on this first evening of the new year, I want to express my gratitude for your attention and support. What I do has meaning because you are here. I never take that for granted. I am always humbled and happy when I feel your engagement or receive word from you.
This year I did something I promised myself I’d do before I turned 50: I wrote and finished my first book, Tenacious Magic. Got it in just under the wire—publishing the last chapter here on Substack a week before my birthday in August…phew. I’m now in the process of editing the manuscript (looking for an editor and a publisher if you have any leads) and also working on a screenplay. I was able to do that because of you—because I felt your presence, because some of you became paid subscribers, and because many of you engaged with me through the process; making it all feel less lonely. Thank you for showing up when I needed you.
In 2023, I held my first in-person retreat since 2018. In October here in the Hudson valley, 11 women gathered to share an experience of the Sacred Heart. Together, we felt a post-patriarchal reality that is exceedingly rare in this world. We felt the alchemy in the union of the divine masculine and feminine. We felt sisterhood grounded in unconditional love; without judgment or jealousy. We stepped into our unique gifts. We opened up to a new world altogether—the world that is awaiting us: the New Earth. We got a taste. I want more women to experience this magic. I plan to offer three more in-person events for women in 2024: spring, summer and fall.
I’d also like to highlight the evolution that has re-shaped my Coming Home meditations into something truly special. By letting go of the reigns (control, ego); including more prayer and invocation of divine guidance; sourcing the material for our meditative journey from the field/participants; and offering the merits of the practice to the world…I feel like a new tantric practice has been birthed.
I have a small group of regulars (you know who you are) and we have grown to love and trust each other dearly. In 2024, I hope more of you will consider joining. I think you’ll find a very welcoming and warm community. Skill levels vary and it doesn’t matter—everyone who comes gets what they need. My intention when I lead these journeys is to take everyone into their own soul’s work—to let our higher selves and our guides work on us. I make myself a channel for this and we create the conditions for healing and awakening by coming into coherence and holding a meditative state together.
Looking back through my files, I found the original email I sent out on March 23, 2020 as the pandemic lock-down was just starting and this practice I call Coming Home was birthed. These are the themes I listed then as inspirations. I do believe the practice is now hitting it’s stride and it delivers beyond my expectations on the original call:
The rise and healing of The Feminine and the corresponding detox/withdrawal from the patriarchal systems we were born into.
The fundamental interdependence that underlies our existence and the need to advance a practice of relationality -- among humans, but extended to every living being...tuning into Gaia's collective field and recognizing our place in it. As my friend, Quanita, puts it: "Who are we when we truly understand we belong to each other?"
The importance of each Individual's experience and the need to relate to ourselves and each other with precision so we can--all of us--become a full expression of our unique essence. It's time to truly see each other and allow ourselves to be seen. Each of us has a role to play in this universal experience. Let's find it.
The need to ground more deeply into the earth field, our home, for stability, support and emotional regulation. This is about surrender and trust. The situation demands it. For many, our comfort lies in control because that's what our culture has fetishized for so long, but it's time to grow out of that limiting illusion into something more complex and true to natural law.
I would just add my new focus on prayer and the active calling in of divine guidance.
Coming Home is hard to explain in words and must be experienced to be understood. I never know where we’re going to go—none of us does. And it’s always a fascinating and deeply nourishing combination of the sacred, the mundane, and everything in between. It’s by us, for us, and it takes care of us. Come!
Finally, as usual in 2023 I wrote poems and made mandalas (poems of the earth). It took a lot for me to believe people would want to read them, but in reality I get the most feedback and engagement with my poems—more than anything else I do. So, I have a poem for you tonight. I hope you enjoy it wherever you are. And I hope you feel inspired to express yourself in your own unique way in 2024. I hope we can support each other to make the alchemical art the world needs desperately now.
With love from my heart to yours,
Schuyler
Poems of Earth
By Schuyler Brown
Words like pine needles
lie scattered on the forest floor.
I pick them up
and arrange them into sentences.
They look so beautiful there
like a poem of earth.
What is written
is drawn from what is found.
The right leaf for the center
of the feeling.
Beauty is the ecstatic guide
into a reverential descent.
When will we come home?
Not to a specific place...
but, into this body, onto this earth?
Arranging the parts
into a whole...
Our own story of wholeness.
As I walk, I collect my ancestors
in the moss and stones.
I follow the desire that flows through me
and listen to the silent voices
of the plants and seeds,
"Pick me! Take me! I exist!
I give myself without reservation..."
This is sacred work;
a commitment to life
in spite of it all.
What is lost
is not forgotten.
What is strange
becomes familiar again.
From season to season
the years pass and I remember
which trees bear fruit
and which leaves fall first
and where the yellow lives
and where I can find red
even in the depths of winter.
As I walk--
wet with rain
stung by cold
fondling thoughts
like soft stones in my pocket,
crunching worries
like autumn leaves underfoot,
I begin to see
with my hands and in my mind.
What is sought
is what is found.
Always surprising
Answering questions as yet unasked
Completing thoughts
Subtle, like whispers in the wind.
Each touch another step
into the secret center
of the mandala.
Thus emergence:
out of “nothing”
comes the very miracle
I've prayed for;
the medicine I need;
the memories long forgotten;
ideas ready for expression.
Forged by my fingers,
on the delicate rock--
a painting of leaves
a poem of earth,
and words like pine needles
form complete sentences now.
This is my ritual remembering
of myself to the earth.
~*~
Your words always inspire thought in the subtle resonances which challenge my own expression in word. Thank you for your courageous sharing. Also, I am currently managing a project with a friend to publish a poetry project and found a publisher called Inner Traditions | Bear & Company as a potential partner. There have many titles that I have read and have great appreciation for and their library is extensive with a very intentional vision. Anyway, I thought of you and your project potentially being a fit. Feel free to reach out to me via digital mail if you have any questions - mercurious@centaurdreams.com - I know this is random but I operate from a space with an open source philosophy and freely offer my wisdom through a life as a creative professional.
Beautiful!!! Happy New Year!!! Celebrating the gifts that you BE, that emerge through you, into the world...