Spring Equinox - New Moon love

Happy Spring equinox!

The sun and the moon are shining equaling and balancing their illuminant energy onto the earth. 

The season is officially changed and everyone has just started getting the gardening itch.   

I LOVE this time of year, the anticipation for all the snow to melt and the start of  diggin’ season all over again! 

But for now, I am going to focus on this month, or even this week.   With the equinox here and a new moon, it has me looking back into my everyday life and examining what needs more balance; work and play, masculine and feminine, giving and receiving, reading and movies, the yin and the yang.   With this question in mind I grabbed my good ole Kyanite.

Blue and green kyanite from Brazil.

The beautiful, blue kyanite is great for balancing chakras, directing energy and removing the vibrations that no longer serve you.  Take a few breaths, set your intention to help you with whatever part of your life needs some harmony and allow it to clear and balance everything out.  I visualize the kyanite energy flowing from the crown of my head, down my spine, to my feet.  Clearing the way and making sure each side is nice and even and in harmony as I set my intention for a balanced mind and body. 

A Little Scary thing about Compassion and how a stone can help - Kunzite

Compassion is defined in Websters dictionary as, "literally, suffering with another; a sensation of sorrow excited by the distress or misfortunes of another; pity; commiseration."

Compassion, this attitude of thought, comes with a lot of different meanings, lessons and emotions to everyone.  Personally, I try to work on my compassion skills daily. It is so hard! I believe I am a nice person, polite, and I try really hard not to judge, but sometimes finding that compassion for the people, things and organizations you just don't like is a challenge.  What IS helping me, little by little,  is finding the reasons  why it is a challenge to me.  One reason  is because I am scared.  Finding compassion in someone suffering is scary.  It makes you think of how you would feel if you were in that situation... and that is scary.  Who really wants to go through any suffering?   

"Compassion, the sympathy of another's suffering," it is a challenge to have this sympathy on something that has hurt you in the past, but the true lesson in the act of compassion is rising above it all.  Get over the scary part.  Depersonalize it and take you You out of it.  You cannot stop the future from happening, but you can open up your heart to be more emotionally ready.

There is one stone that helps me find compassion when I am in a challenging situation looking for help and that is Kunzite, also known as spodumene. Kunzite is the pink variety of spodumene and it is so beautiful and serene . Kunzite is a lithium aluminum silicate mineral, giving it a glow that pulses with calm, loving heart opening energy.  I have always imagined kunzite to have a moon like glow and mother attitude that puts you under a spell of the super loving, fairy like mineral.  The mineral has a way to open up your heart and take away all that is scary and resisting you to truly love and be loved.

Connecting to the Autumn Spirit with Petrified Wood

The seasons are changing.  Autumn is here and slowly there is less daylight, more darkness, colder temperatures and the tress and animals are all making their way to slumber.  Autumn is the time to slow down.

Lao Tzu has said, " Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished." 

As humans, I believe we sometimes forget to slow down and acknowledge our natural connection to the earth and elements.  It is time to SLOW DOWN.  It is okay to allow yourself to slowdown, stay inside for a day, create or recreate your space or den, take a nap, calm down the constant mind chatter and allow yourself the gift of being in the moment instead of speeding up and worrying about the future, the holiday season, work, school and job.  Just giving yourself a few moments, perhaps a yoga class, a meditation or even a moment in your car to slow things down.

Minerals and crystals can assist you in that feeling of joy and peace you get from gifting yourself a moment of stillness, a moment to acknowledge your connection to nature. Petrified wood is one of the many stones that can help in this connection. Petrified wood is heavy and organic.  With the past life of a beautiful, enormous tree millions of years ago, Petrified wood can fill you with the ancient wisdom of stillness and growth. Petrified wood helps ground you and take you back to your roots, the original roots of life and creation as it teaches you the lesson of observing and growing.  Most petrified wood are from trees that are at least 200 million years old and 100-200 feet tall.  They became petrified as a result of volcanoes eruptions and the minerals in the ash that replaced the wood with silica ( quartz ) and other minerals. Over time and environmental conditions, the wood slowly became petrified, fossilized and sometimes opalized.  Petrified woos is one of my personal favorite stones, always giving me a sense of ancestral strength and calmness. 

Shiva Lingam

The Denver Gem and Mineral Show was not too long ago and my fiance and I had a chance to go play a little. Going to a gem & mineral show is much like a kid in a candy store for us, so much to look at! All senses are highly stimulated, my intuition is on fire when it comes to the yes or no regarding questions for humans or rocks! This year we got some amazing specimens, a lot of dreams came true in regards to building our personal mineral collection and specimens to share with the mineral loving community.

I am going to begin with the largest new member of our family, a new specimen for our personal collection, the Shiva Lingam.  He is roughly 19 inches long, 15 pounds, egg shaped, brown toned mineral consisting of silica, iron and magnesium and some other elements.  There is a long story written about the history of this stone.  Found in the scared river in India, Naramada, the Shiva Lingam is considered a symbol of the Hindu God, Lord Shiva.  The story goes that the specimens were created when a meteorite hit the river, thus forming their unique egg shape.  Full of creative male energy along with the characteristics feminine markings or spots, the lingam is a balance of masculine and feminine energies.  This guy is pretty heavy, sturdy and special. He is like an egg shaped zone of energy pulsing the balancing energies of male and female. It is a fantastic addition to our collection, people who walk in and pick him up giggle like a child again and our animals seem to enjoy the company too.

Amazonite - Thank you

I don't know about you, but there is a lot going on out there energetically lately.  Crazy full moons, Mercury Retrograde, the time for the all those energy" shifts" there is just a lot going on.  At our home we have no television, so we became aware of the  London riots a little on the late side, but it was such a reminder that there is a great big world out there beyond my little homestead.  Frustration, anxiety, feelings of unjust and disrespect  are just some of the few emotions that I believe were felt is all this commotion and that I was feeling with situations closer to home.  Now, not really knowing what is going
 on in world news, all that I really know is there are are many different ways to deal and handle with  emotions; fight back, say and do nothing, act out against your loved ones, become violet, become depressed -there are many ways good and bad to react.  Reacting is sometimes not the best outcome,  emotions are usually at the highest and sometimes can be out of control or spastic - but I have found the joys of Amazonite.

When I feel like I am about to negativity react to my environment, I grab a piece of Amazonite, take a deep breath and just allow myself to relax and remember what the feeling of love feels like.

Amazonite is like the love and bubbley-ness of moonstone and the structured- stallion- prince charming  love of emerald. Like a knight on a horse, Amazonite proudly walks through with love, making it okay to feel those emotions, but also there to be strong and  their for you as you can  release them with compassion and grace. 

It's Been Far too Long

It is already August! The summer has flown by, but the road to mine just opened!  

Over the winter season, with out the joy of going out and digging in the earth, a lot of other amazing things have happened! But Yoga, - the connection between mind, body and spirit is something that is really changing and reshaping my life. This winter/spring I went through the certification to become a yoga teacher, and really it is the first time in my life that I have been really able to use my bachelor's degree, love for 

minerals and healing all together. Yoga is the place where all of my favorite things connect. It blew my mind!   You feel the grounded-ness from hematite as you do in devotional pose, your heart shines bright with moonstone as it does with back bends. It is such an amazing feeling - and being able to share this passion, this joy has become a goal of mine. Not to mention the benefits of yoga to help a sore body after being hunched up in a hole digging all day and there are only a few things better then a peaceful practice surrounded by mountains and crystals!

To the right is a picture from a recent outing to the Red Sage Mine.  After sitting in the whole, truly connecting my pelvic floor to the earth and feeling completely grounded - I saw a tiny point emerging from the roof of the pocket!  

From there, being careful not to break any crystals, I dug around the piece; brushing away mud, dirt and clay to find the whole size of the specimen and wiggle it loose.  In this pocket we found this palm sized -quartz cluster! The specimen has dark smokey tops but it has a nice coating of copper that will take some elbow grease to clean off to really get a nice look

Cleaning and Discovering

Crystals and stones everywhere,      

 just all of them covered in dirt!

With the new moon approaching, I get ready to set my goals for the month.  Whether it is goals of domestic duties, spiritual growth or career based, I just know it is time to assess and make those goals.  

But this TIME… with the weather incredible warm and sunny in Fort Collins for a few days, I just think how much closer it is getting to spring time! When the snow starts melting at the top of the hills, it is about time to start spending the weekends back at Red Sage Mine.

                                                                     In the meantime, the spring season- like weather also makes it a pretty pleasant time exploring and cleaning all our crystals from last season.  Specimens spend time out doors to get cleaned and ready.  With just some rain and snow showers, so many new crystals are popping out of layers of iron enriched soil and debris.  We leave those guys outside to capture the whole cleaning with the aid of the outdoor season change above ground.  

Indoors we have buckets of stones collected from the Summer 2010.  Specimens of all sorts of different sizes, color, terminations, history and mineral content show up in buckets that have spent weeks soaking.  Each handful offers another warm “welcome” to the stones as they appear out from the earth.  Most of them you remember when they were discovered and the sudden re- acquaintance leaves such a delightful feeling as if you just of ran into a long lost best friend, or cousin.  I am so grateful for our “in door” mining and can’t wait to see what we uncover.