Unconscious Knowing Becomes Conscious
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To encounter the sacred is to be alive at the deepest center of human existence.
Sacred places are the truest definitions of the earth….If you would know the earth
for what it really is, learn it through its sacred places.  ~ N. Scott Momaday

Upon seeing the matching photo of the temple in Japan, I went to the basement where we kept our old National Geographic magazines. I found a world map which I took upstairs and laid it out on the dining room table. I gathered all 44 StoneCircles and laid them around the map. I asked each of them, “Where is your sacred home?”

In an instant I realized something I hadn’t noticed before: I knew the sacred home of about half of the pieces already. How was that possible? As I wondered and reflected, I gained an awareness that I had known where they belonged even as I was designing and stringing them months ago. It’s just that I didn’t have a context, a ‘place,’ to put that information so I didn’t notice it at a conscious level. Until now.

I had even known where my original necklace belongs when I was designing it! I remember thinking about Avebury Stone Circle and my visits there when I was stringing that first necklace, Healingently. Though I don’t often think about or give much credence to past lives, I remembered having a thought that perhaps I’d been there millennia earlier. I imagined thousands of women at a gathering where there much dancing and singing in celebration. Something I love about that place as it is today is that the original stone circle actually surrounds the small town of Avebury. In fact, the town is built from some of the circle’s stones. There is a crossroads that runs through the center of the circle and sheep roam freely throughout. It’s an ancient sacred place that accommodates the world of today.

I also knew that, for example, the sacred home of Butterfly Wings was in Palenqué, Mexico and Walk in Beauty was in Monument Valley. And so on. As I positioned the pieces on the map, I recognized that my next task would be to explore the question of why that particular place for each piece. I was very curious to see whether there might be any discernible relationship between the designs created months earlier and the places where they were landing.

Photos by Barbara
Top: Healingently – Avebury, England
Bottom left: Butterfly Wings – Palenqué, Mexico
Bottom right: Walk in Beauty – Monument Valley, USA