Summer Solstice 2014 Teaching:
Medicine Wheels, Altars, Vision Boards

Summer Solstice, the first day of summer and the longest day of the year, began at 6:50 a.m. edt this morning. The next few days are great times to check in with what you would like to experience during the 2014-15 cyclical year. The Summer Solstice energies lend themselves to you putting actualization of these experiences in motion.

Why Talk about Medicine Wheels, Altars, and Vision Boards?

Dr. John Waddell, SARK’s fiance, during one of their coaching calls mentioned the term, cognitive focusing tool, when speaking of vision boards and law of attraction. Simply stated, a cognitive focusing tool helps your brain focus, learn, and assimilate information more easily. Just like an educational computer game, your brain learns from building medicine wheels, altars, and vision boards.

What Do Cognitive Focusing Tools Teach?

From the very beginning of my spiritual journey, I intuitively understood that anything I created – medicine wheels, altars, vision boards, art, crafts – were an externalization of my current understanding of who I am and my relationship to the whole of creation. So, the easiest and most pleasurable way to find out what currently is going on inside me is to plug into my creativity and see how it expresses itself. Then, I can step back and look at my creation and ask myself the question, “What does this tell me about myself?”

My intuition certainly has been reinforced over years of building medicine wheels, altars, and vision boards. Every time I’ve made an evolutionary leap – whether I’ve cleared more on some level or received a new understanding –  I usually get inspired to reset my altars or contemplate my vision boards. These are times when I give honor and gratitude for what I’ve learned, smudge or using burning pots to open up more space, add or subtract sacred objects, change color schemes, remove photos, add photos. When the transformation is complete, my cognitive focusing tool reveals more of my authenticity.

As Within, So Without

Cognitive focusing tools are mappings. They teach you more about you. When you know what’s going on inside you, then you can understand how you have created certain experiences. Understanding usually quietens your mind so that you can allow more flow. Allowing more flow changes your inner and, therefore, your outer experience.

But, What If I Want to Speed Change Up?

Many think that change is tough. You have to read books, apply what you’ve learned, have cathartic experiences. Certainly, all of these tools will support change. But, what if it was easy? What if getting your body used to change was all you had to do? So, if you habitually tie your right shoe before your left shoe, what if you just reversed the pattern every once in awhile and mixed things up?

The truth of the matter is that facilitating change isn’t always a matter of heavy duty internal processing. Since what you experience within and without you match, changing either environment will shift your experience. So, what about creating a new vision board or changing the one you are using, so it feels more “you?” Or, how would decorating your altar with summer flowers make you feel? If you took out your colored chalks and created art, wouldn’t that be a joyful experience?

More Creativity Equals More Joyful Flow

So, in the new cyclical year 2014-15, why not devote time to your own brand of creativity? What if you found new ways to revive an old love of arts and crafts? What if you took 15 minutes every day and tried that recipe you’ve always wanted to experiment with? The possibilities to create joyful experiences abound, and if medicine wheels, altars, and vision boards aren’t the right cognitive focusing tools for you, find one that does work. When you begin to condition your body to accept and allow that creating from joy and an abundance of choices is natural for you, then you will see your experiences start flowing from joy and abundance.

Life is not a thinking man’s or woman’s game. It’s all about how you feel about you and your relationship to what you experience. In 2014-15 why not join me and give creating from joy a try?