Hello Beautiful Souls!  Our guest speaker Medicine Woman/Shaman Shannon Davis continued our discussion on grace. She led with a definition of the word grace as it refers to being in God's favor, also the help or strength or power that is given to someone. In a biblical sense, the word included the enabling power and spiritual healing through the love and mercy of Christ. She also spoke about our modern usage of the word grace, citing the examples 'falling from grace' and she is full of grace' denoting not having favor or having favor.  

As humans we communicate primarily with words, the words we speak can have certain connotations. They also have the power to convey concepts and they may generate certain emotions when we speak or hear them. The word grace, due to its usage in Christianity can carry a lot of weight.

What can we do if words leave a funny taste in our mouths and spirits? One of the shamanic tools Shannon shared with us today was word deconstruction. It involves saying the same word over and over again until it loses its meaning. We then begin to feel the energy of the word, not the man-made assignation of meaning, but the essence contained within the word. I highly encourage you to try that with some of the words that you use, tapping into the feeling of the word. 

Why?? Words are a powerful thing! She brought up an interesting point concerning the law of attraction. We can meditate 10 minutes in the morning, giving ourselves that great cosmic pep talk, but we may not be as mindful of the words we speak for the other hours of the day. We might engage in fear-based speech, judgement-based speech, caring-too--much-about-the-opinions-of-others-based speech. God/Spirit/Universe's grace is unconditional as is love, we are the ones who move ourselves in and out of grace by choosing to source from word banks that are not based in love, possibly bringing us that negative experience that we really don't want.

What would our lives look like if we were mindful of the words we use? What if we practiced deconstructing of those weighty words? What if we looked at ourselves as God/Spirit/Universe does, vessels of love and unmerited favor? That is a lot to think about. I invite us all to take a little time to be circumspect with the words we use and extend grace towards ourselves and one another.

Thank you Shannon for teaching us word deconstruction, and that we have the power to attract to ourselves both negative or positive experiences based upon the words we use.

In gratitude,

Shamamma Bean