What follows are insights from one of the participants who helped build the 9 Fires of Truth Peace Wheel in Portland, Maine. We greatly appreciate her, the support she offered to the project, and her sharing of this experience. I found myself crying as I read these words. I trust they will bless you with their beauty.

"When we went on our individual journeys with a quality, it felt like Moose and Trust chose me. I felt into being that large animal, male with spreading connective antlers, in the water environment.

"Trust is needed to follow Spirit's guidance in what to do with all the gifts I've been given."

Trust was an on-going lesson: Trusting my guidance, trusting the process, trusting Raven as leader and trusting the group.

When we went outside I was concerned that there was "too little time left" to complete the construction. I let go. "I am not responsible. It is not my job. Raven has done this before."

Then the center felt to me like it should be about 2-3 feet away from the center that Raven had dowsed, a specific spot where the ground looked "dented" and "magnetizing". But then I saw that the whole wheel would have gone up the hill more if it were centered in "my" spot. But I also remembered on Henry's land where I had gone to help him dowse and align a labyrinth earlier this summer that there actually were two related centers. So maybe both are "right". I let it go. Same refrain: "Raven has done this before."

The stones went into place so easily after Raven used his cloth as template to mark the 8 fires on the perimeter and the 18 foot diameter was paced out. People moved and shifted what others had done, but always with a sense of "carrying on" not "correcting". The center stone was orginally put on its side "pointing to vision", someone said. I felt it should be upright. Others did too, because, without my saying or doing it, the stone was place pointing upward. The smooth tumbled stones from the beach that John and Jacob had brought were interspersed with field stones - most about the size of two fists. There were the right number of larger stones to mark the 9 fires. Someone had brought purple sand from a different beach and this was sprinkled on all the stones.

Far from being pressed for time to complete the wheel, we even had time to build a key shaped entry path from the direction of the parking lot to the Peace Wheel.

Next Raven had us go to the fire we felt drawn to. I went to Trust. Two others were there.

Each stone on the perimeter had two to four people by it, but no one had gone into the Unity stone in the center. "Reverend Judy", several people said, and she accepted the invitation and stood facing the Unity stone and beyond it the Wisdom stone. Raven gave each of the nine groups the crystal for that Fire. We were invited to say words of commitment, prayer, dedication, and then place the crystal on the standing stone and bless it.

Before we started, a path opened at my feet leading me into the middle to face Judy across the Unity stone: beyond Judy was the Vision stone. I nearly felt like, or judged that, I "shouldn't" go into Judy's "ordained place", blah blah blah in my head, but the path was clear and I followed it. As I walked I realized that Trust is very much based on awareness of the reality of Unity, even when there appear to be divisions, separations, enmities.

Judy was very grateful that I'd come in. She was feeling lonely, that it's hard to be Unity by yourself. Other people piped in "It's easier - it's harder to be unity with two". Both have their challenges, I'd say, intra-psychically and inter-psychically. Judy and I agreed to say opposites, like yin/yang, male/female. Judy said she'd like to say a Unity Prayer first.

Groups spoke around the circle starting with Wisdom and moving to Courage and on. Unity was last. Judy and I held both hands. She spoke the prayer and then one of a polarity; I answered with the other. We placed our Unity amethyst on top of the purple sand on top of the stone and laid our hands upon the stone. "Oh," I realized and said half aloud, "the different places are one too!"

That is the different possible centers, the fires, where Judy and I were standing all are one. I only then realized that I was standing pretty much in the place that I had identified as "center" earlier on.

I also realized that we had created a Vesica Pisces. Judy and I were standing at the centers of the circles and the Unity Stone was at the center of the Vesica. It had all come about so effortlessly by trusting and following the "guidance" that showed my feet the path. (I have had a history of connection with the sacred geometry of the Vesica.)

Raven then took a key crystal to ignite the fires in turn. He had said that this was the point at which some people saw flames or columns of light or balls of light. What I saw was fire within the stones of each spoke in turn as Raven ignited that Fire, and then within the Wheel as a whole. Raven's intention, commitment, and power felt clean, clear and impeccable. After he'd squatted by each Fire with the crystal to the stone infusing and igniting it, he stood up and made a sound- strong, somewhat between a ZZZ and a FFF- that also communicated fire. The vertical direction was emphasized, toward the Peace Matrix. For me the direction through the spokes to the center felt as important. Nine fires going up and nine fires unifed as one. There was a great deal of heat.

Afterward we sat around the wheel taking in what had been created. We also did a meditation connecting the four fires in a lemniscate from CA, to BC to Fl and Portland faster and faster. We also shifted, temporarily, the intention of the column to release stuck souls. Heather sang a perfect song for dancing around the wheel (one she had learned, not one she had composed).

Then we blessed an earth ball as a Thank You for Raven Naming qualities that we saw in him and honored in him and also those we wanted to gift him with. When it came to him he said, "It is a good thing I have learned to receive." Indeed. And for us all because we had received a great deal.

That is the story. Trust has continued to be a theme, and sometimes a struggle, as I continue to learn how to trust, what to trust, when to trust. There has been greater Peace too, despite dismaying political events and sadness at the suffering that is on-going."

Love,
Carol

Many blessings to Carol for sharing this story.

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