Hi Friend,
Here we are at the end of something. A cycle. A revolution. A series of trials and choices and questions and answers and hopes and dreams and actions all summed in one word a ‘year.’ Another year has come and gone and what do we have to show for it?
How did it make us? Or break us?
How did it shape us? Or bend us?
How did it grow us? Or slow us?
Time moves along and, whether we like it or not, we move along with it. My old Kundalini teacher used to say something like, “Either the energy of life can ride you or you learn to ride it” and I feel the same way about time.
It’s ours to define and create or bide.
All time is happening RIGHT NOW and we get to decide how we spend it and what we spend it on. What I’m saying is that we have agency.
Cycles like years and seasons are wonderful metronomes to touch in to the question, ‘Am I spending my time how I want and need to?’ and as I age and time seems to speed up, I’m grateful for the intervals and octaves of reflection like ‘a new year’ or a new season or the next moon circle to pause and ask myself am I riding time or is it riding me?
Riding time like a stallion. Brewing it in a cauldron over fire. Stretching it like salt water taffy. Consolidating it into a sparkling diamond and beaming prismatic rainbows in all directions. Sharing it. Stealing it. Borrowing it. Wasting it?
Are you riding time or is time riding you?
The Information Age, with it’s thick and fast current of noise and programming, can sweep us into false timelines and perspectives where school years, political cycles, market opening and closings, celebrity scandals and elections define where time is, how fast it’s moving, and in what direction it’s moving. This vast confusing sea seems to want elders to look like maidens. It wants us to age in reverse or not at all. Like a rip tide, we’ve gotten drawn out into a sea of confusion and many of us have lost our relationship to (and command of) time all together.
What does it mean to ‘command’ time?
Reclaiming our relationship to our perception of time - remembering that there is plenty of it do whatever needs doing - is one way back into sovereignty and agency as person. But wait, that might not be totally true. You might also need to recalibrate your perception of what’s important and what matters most to really reclaim your purpose and power.
This NOW moment lasts a really really really long time and when you fully inhabit it, inside of right now, there is infinite time and everything becomes possible.
Here’s an invitation to apply what I’m saying…
Today when duty calls and there is work to do rise into that task with dignity and promptness and preparedness. Prepare for the time when action is required. Step into the action eagerly and with your full attention and allow yourself to be present with the experience. The boredom, the tediousness, the discomfort, the inefficiency…whatever it is that you meet there just meet it in its eyes. Make contact. Don’t rush or cut corners. Just Be Here Now, do what needs doing, pour your life force into that doing and watch what happens. Watch your mind and heart expand. Watch time slow down. Feel the life force energy rush in, the mind quiet, and the inspiration flow.
When we inhabit the moment we are in fully (even when we’re working for The Man or doing something we think is beneath us) we reclaim our essence and inside that essence is a vastness and spaciousness that can both stretch and slow time so there’s more of it to create with. I call it ‘deep time’ and practicing presence in this way is what has allowed me to build a world full of temples, a practice full of purpose, a community full of beauty and connection, and a life full of magic and meaning in, what seems to many to be ‘the blink of an eye.’
Try it.
With Winter Solstice only days away and a fresh slate called 2025 just beyond, this is a prime time to drop into some contemplation about what you’re spending your time on, how you’re practicing presence, and if and how you are sharing your genius. If not having enough time has been a story you’ve lived inside of for a while, let’s relieve you of that false narrative and plant a timeless and expansive seed in its place.
A Blessing for Presence by John O’Donohue
May you awaken to the mystery of being here
And enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.
May you have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.
May you receive great encouragement when new frontiers beckon.
May you respond to the call of your gift
And find the courage to follow its path.
May the flame of anger free you from falsity.
May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame and anxiety never linger about you.
May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of soul.
May you take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention.
May you be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.
May you experience each day as a sacred gift, Woven around the heart of wonder.
As we shift into the deepest part of the year and welcome the light returning, now feels like as good a time as any to reclaim how we spend our time. How we inhabit our moments. Where we gift our precious attention so we can experience each day as a sacred gift and not a pitstop on our way to somewhere else.
There are quite a few invitations available at Rootstock this month to help you practice presence and to inhabit time as though it’s your birthright. Here’s a few:
Two spaces for Private Medicine Retreats opened, one at the end of January and another in February, and both are available to book. If you have access to the Booking Portal already, feel free to log in and register. If you don’t know how to access the Booking Portal, join my Discovery Zoom to learn more about medicine work and I’ll give you the details. More dates for medicine work in April, May & June will become available to book on January 25th.
I just launched a very Aquarian ‘school’ to teach you about the work of Guideship, sacred space holding, and the Fundamentals of Psychedelic Healing from my personal and lived perspective. The Root: Open Source Mystery School and Psychedelic Salon is designed to give existing guides or therapists, aspiring ones, coaches, sitters, researches, legislators, and really *anybody* interested in the promise of psychedelic healing grounded, honest, and lived perspective on how The Work works from the perspective of a working guide.
Sign up for the whole year (Root Class of 2025!!) and steer the format and curriculum for the year or simply come to the singular zooms that appeal to you. It’s priced to be accessible to everybody and it is here to help us all serve Creation and humanity better.
I’m already brewing up a slew of additional Zooms that the ‘lifers’ who commit to the year will get at no additional charge and a Guideship Practicum Retreat is also in the hopper for 2026 where my ‘students’ can come and practice what they’ve learned. It’s a whole thing and it will flow organically and depend a lot on who shows up and how. I hope you help me re-create education in this space and make this a movement.
Our winter microdosing immersion filled full but we just opened up the waitlist for the Spring session. Five out of five immersions have filled in the last 15 months and 200+ folks have moved through this curriculum and protocol for one reason: it works!
Combine a season like Spring, a path like a 3 part microdosing protocol, a community of 14 other curious seekers, some mushroom medicine, two seasoned guides, and an alchemical process takes hold that turns the whole thing into pure, delicious goodness.
Don’t get me wrong….this is a psychedelic journey and it’s fraught with all the doubt and challenge and struggle of a macrojourney but it’s also full of a slow drip of revelation, acceptance, wholeness and presence. For real, if you are struggling to feel ‘ok’ with your life or this moment, this is a worthwhile thing to try. Folks that hop on the waitlist will get priority registration in Feb when it’s time to dive in. Also, so you know, *everything* you need for the full 3 month microdosing practice is included in the price of tuition. Everything.
Community Bathhouse Days are one of the best companions to winter and, as expected, spots are filling up fast. Our next open bathhouse is February 9th and, although that feels far away, I recommend that you plan ahead and get something on your calendar if you want to come enjoy this sweetness this winter! Grab some friends and a picnic and come have a soak!
Our beloved Moon Circle remains one of the most effective containers for reclaiming presence and redirecting life force that we have here at Rootstock and I am soooooo grateful to look forward to another year of women gathering! This circle has become an institution and an important ritual for conscious living and we have a lot to look forward to in the year ahead:
Dates for 2025 are bookable on the calendar but PLEASE don’t hedge…don’t book bunch and then cancel last minute. We have a waitlist of 5-20 women every month and you should only register if you are committed to coming. Last minute cancellations are hard for me to manage and, as I personally manage all that stuff for Rootstock, it feels ok to ask.
There’s now a Friday night co-ed experience available the night before Moon Circle. In January, we’ll try out Cannabis Craft: Vision Boards and make a playful space to collage, commune with cannabis and each other, and vision. For February’s circle, Melinda Kinzie will be bringing her Sacred Sound Sanctuary offering here (Jan 31, actually. Save the date!). Stay tuned here or to the calendar to see what’s coming and, if you have an experience or gathering you’re excited to offer, let me know the details and we can see if it’s a good fit.
Co-Creation Crew is looking for folks that are interested to support the Winter season of Moon Circle. Want a guaranteed spot and bunk in the next four circles AND want to bring your style of love and care to the container? Learn more and let me know if you’re available to commit.
The Sun Circle sprouted wings and is alive and well and fully in the hands of the men now. You won’t see it on the Rootstock calendar anymore but, you better believe, the men are gathering monthly! If you’d like to get on the list to receive details on when & where the men are meeting, contact Cody McDonald at icmacd@gmail.com
The Sunday following Moon Circle is and has been a steady and sweet community day where essential work for Rootstock always happens and, as we slide into the new year, I have a vision brewing of a Family Circle. Imagine a 3 hour window (12-2pmish) where we open the circle and then 3 ‘stations’ will a) make snacks, b) tend fire, and c) work on a project together before we then close the circle. The kids will be able to move through the stations and all the doing will be tailored to involving them and teaching them. 6 committed adults would be necessary to pull it off well and, I wonder, are there men and women that want to help co-create a conscious community around our Littles? If this resonates and you would like to commit to try at least 2 Sundays, reply to this email and let me know. When enough folks say yes I’ll get some dates on the calendar and we’ll try it! Rootstock is a very good campus to experiment with and I’m hopeful there’s life-force and desire here. (look! I even have a logo ready to go)
Funny, but here we are out of time.
There’s definitely more that I am feeling and seeing and wanting to share but I can only ask so much of you.
Perhaps some of what I shared in here is useful for you? Maybe it’s igniting something? Or fanning a fire that was already lit? Wouldn’t it be amazing if this silly little email changed the trajectory of your life? And with it all life on planet Earth? That’s a big dream but, hey, you never know. Maybe you forgot that you are the ocean and the wind and the sails and the rudder and the stars and you just needed reminding?
Anyway, I’m grateful for the opportunity to share what’s in my heart and to turn with you all into this new season.
Blessings on your Holy Daze.
Blessings on your calendar.
Blessings on clocks and sundials and watches and push notifications.
Blessings on your movements.
Blessings on your life.
May you claim it fully and with vigor and sweetness and presence and love.
With gratitude and snowflakes,
Beana
Thank you Beana❤️🙏🏼