My only tattoo

And the four incarnations

First, thank you to the many of you who wrote me and commented on my last post, I’m saying goodbye now. We had a beautiful memorial service online for the recent losses of our community: Billielee, Julia and Kevin Flores, and Francis Rico. Here is the altar I created for them…

This week’s writing is one I started a while ago, and had fun finishing this morning. Hope you enjoy it. Blessings!

---

The design of my one and only tattoo came to me through the messenger of coffee.

At that time, in the early 1990s, there was no such thing as seasonal pumpkin lattes or salty caramel chocolate frappes. Nope, this was a simple cup of coffee in a heavy, white ceramic mug.

In those days I rarely drank coffee (I was already naturally like a hummingbird revved on sugar), which means I must have been finishing a report for college or writing an article for the newspaper I worked at as a journalist.

The year or so before my coffee spoke to me I had discovered earth-based spirituality. My best friend Autumn and I had spent the summer with two huge piles of books with names like The Spiral Dance, The Cosmic Mother, Drawing Down the Moon, and When God Was a Woman. It was a holy home-coming, a remembering of my bones that I belonged to the earth and that my ancestors knew how to listen in ways I had forgotten.

Two foundations lessons I soaked in during this time, that continue to guide my life and teachings, were about circular living and working with the four elements: air, fire, water, and earth.

In modern, patriarchal times we have often been raised to think of the earth as an ever-renewing expansive Home-Depot-Whole-Foods-Market-Mall-for-the-Humans where we can take whatever we want, whenever we want to. At our worst we feel entitled to plunder the earth without consequences; at our best we recycle, don’t use plastic, and buy organic to “save the earth” but are still fundamentally out of relationship with the cycles and rhythms and language of the planet we call home.

Honoring the shifting of the seasons is one way to reconnect with the earth.

Note: not everyplace on the planet has four seasons; In Southeast Asia I grew up with two seasons: the monsoon season and the dry season. This wisdom I’m sharing is sourced from Celtic and early European earth-based traditions of my ancestors. I’ve shared a list of resources below.

Returning to the cycles gets us out of linear thinking:

If I just do this perfectly, or follow the right steps, I’ll get to my goal / be happy / be loved.

Everyone should do it this way

There is one right path from beginning to end

Linear thinking is helpful in computer programming and spreadsheets, but not so helpful when applied to relationships, or life. Because people are messy. Life is not as easy to navigate as a simple line. Beginnings and endings are part of a constant inter-woven cycle, rather than a clean-cut, unconnected creation.

Cyclical thinking helps us to stand in the center of the circle of life and marvel at the multitude of manifestations. We expand to embrace the complexities of being alive on this spherical, wild, diverse planet. When we connect to the circle we honor beginnings and endings, birth and death, day and night as equal. We stop trying to be someone or something else. We delight in creative expression.

Feel the difference in your body between trying to live life as a fixed line vs a circle of change. What do you notice? How does linear living limit your perception, and how does circular living create more peace and presence?

My second revelation as a young woman was connecting with the four elements — air, fire, water, and earth — as allies and guides. Instead of relating to these four elements as commodities or things to take for granted, they became dear friends and teachers in my life. The wind taught me how to speak my truth and stand strong in storms. The fire taught me how to raise my energy to meet challenges. Water taught me how to let go of the past and release attachment to the future. Earth taught me how to show up fully in celebration of everything.

Imagine the elements are alive and wanting to relate. Acknowledge and say hello to the wind tousling your hair. Invite in the friendship of the sun. Allow water to teach you to surrender and play. Listen to the silent wisdom of trees and rocks and animals. How does this feel different than centering yourself as more important/separate than the elements?

We are not separate from the cycles, from the flow of time, from the shock of sudden loss or the miraculous blessing of an unexpected gift birthing into form. We are not separate from the elements that sustain us: the air we breathe, the fire of our metabolism, the waters of our blood and lymph, the earth of our bones and muscles.

Sometimes we get called to be messengers for the cycles and elements in unexpected ways.

Like through a cup of black coffee and a dash of cream.

Imagine with me: I put the mug of coffee on the counter, and pick up the little pitcher of cream. As I pour the cream into the dark coffee the white liquid spirals out from the center into four wavy lines. All sound around me stops and the coffeeshop dissolves as I see this perfect symbol of the spiral of change and the four elements, the universe winking at me through coffee and cream.

I get the image tattooed on my belly the following week. It is my commitment to remember, honor, and share the cycles of change and the elements of air, fire, water, and earth.

---

Many moons later, in 2003, I self-publish my first book, The Four Elements of Change: Tools for Living a Centered Life, which was inspired by a message I received from the elements. This first book has now had four incarnations! It is a book about how to be in relationship with both wanted and unwanted change, using the elements as guides. I love that it not only talks about and gives tools for change, it also embodies change over time through its four updates. Here they are!

Version #1

Version #2

The next year a publisher agrees to re-publish the book and help with distribution; we update the cover and I add in an endorsement from my mentor, don Miguel Ruiz, and a forward from one of my first teachers, Vicki Noble.

Version #3

10 years later, I get a surprise phone call that changes my life. It is from a book publisher who asks me: Would you be interested in republishing your book The Four Elements of Change? And thus begins a long partnership with Randy Davila of Hierophant Publishing. We edit and repackage the Four Elements into The Toltec Path of Transformation.

The next year Randy and I publish Warrior Goddess Training, which jumps to #1 in two categories on amazon.com and stays there for four years. To date the Warrior Goddess series has sold over 400,000 copies : )

Version #4

Ten years later we re-edit, simplify and hone, and republish Toltec Path as A Little Book on Big Freedom.

https://hierophantpublishing.com/books/a-little-book-on-big-freedom/

Here is the blurb on the back of the book:

Air. Fire. Water. Earth.

The four primordial elements not only inform our physical lives, they are potent symbols for aspects of our inner selves. When we learn to harness their power correctly, they can lead us toward radical personal transformation, or what best-selling author HeatherAsh Amara refers to as Big Freedom.

Drawing on her extensive background in European and Toltec shamanism, Amara deftly explores each of the four elements and explains how they relate to your inner world:

• Air: The art of seeing yourself and the world with clarity

• Fire: The art of cleansing what no longer serves you

• Water: The art of being open and creating space for change

• Earth: The art of nourishment and self-care

Packed with exercises and meditations at the end of each chapter, this book offers a clear path to finding your own Big Freedom, one that involves tearing down any inner walls made of fear, judgment, or regret, and building a profound friendship with your truest self.

---

So, dear ones… may we all keep embracing change, honor the cycles, and ask for help from the elements that make up all of life.

Let me know; which element do you feel most called to, and why? Which element feels challenging, and why?

Current situation; I’m writing this post from the Urubamba, Peru where we have a group of 65 travelers deepening into the elements and wisdom of Incan wisdom. This is a land and people that is so intimate with nature and cycles. I’m sharing photos daily on the IG and FB stories if you want to follow along…