Acts of Power: Daily Teachings for Inspired Living (book excerpt) | Lynn V. Andrews

Lynn Andrews’s new book Acts of Power is an intensely personal document that has assumed a special individual significance for contemporary readers, providing them with 365 daily inspirations that offer pivotal insights for living a joyful life.

Andrews has distilled twenty-one books into this daily companion edition to support and inspire you in a small, easy-to-follow, yet very important and powerful tool for living well. Transcending the borders of age and background, Acts of Power’s spectrum of experience, thought, and wisdom invites direct identification and a sense of recognition, a sharing of concerns and solutions.

Excerpts from “Acts of Power: Daily Teachings for Inspired Living”

January 27

CIRCUMSTANCE

I felt the west wind pushing against my back as though it were supporting my efforts and had come to encourage me. I contemplated the magnificence of this life. I saw more clearly than I ever had that we are all exactly in the position in life that we choose to be in, no more or less. We are not victims of circumstance. We have formed our own circumstance for many complex reasons, which often remain unnamed out of our own ignorance or our inability to learn and face the truth.—Lynn Andrews, Star Woman

January 28

HONOR THE DARK SIDE

 When women understand their Ultima Madre, or final mother, they can build altars and fetishes of these powers. When they feel the influence of Crazy Woman or the Death Mother, in the form of depression or gloom, they can light candles and burn copal and honor her great power, the dark side. You see, her intent only defines your goodness and beauty. By honoring the dark side, you destroy her power over you. Then she can’t take you.—Zoila, Jaguar Woman

January 29

FIND YOUR CIRCLE OF LIFE

“I see a dream for your people, black wolf,” she said, her eyes glittering, not unlike the timber wolves that I have seen. “The dream that I see for your people is to find a circle of life that honors your elders, something that your people have forgotten. I know that you spend a great deal of time in life trying to encourage the growth of this concept with our sister, Face in the Water. I’m going to place this dream in the center of this circle, and we will make it so. I make this bid for power.”—Twin Dreamers and Lynn Andrews, Tree of Dreams

January 30

WHO ARE YOU?

My teacher Agnes Whistling Elk once asked me, “And what have you learned, my daughter, from all the work that we have done together?”

I was very excited and said, “Well, I have learned to be a healer. I have learned to do acts of power in the world, and I am an author.”

“No, my daughter,” she admonished, “you are a woman living her truth who happens to write, who happens to heal and work with people.”—Agnes Whistling Elk and Lynn Andrews, Love and Power

January 31

JACKRABBITS

“Your moods make rabbits today,” Agnes, who sat next to me, whispered in my ear.

“What do you mean?” She had startled me.

“You think little thoughts and they multiply like jackrabbits.”— Agnes Whistling Elk and Lynn Andrews, Crystal Woman

Lynn Andrews is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of the Medicine Woman series, which chronicles her three decades of study and work with shaman healers on four continents. Her study of the way of the sacred feminine began with Agnes Whistling Elk and Ruby Plenty Chiefs, Native American healers in northern Canada. Her quest for spiritual discovery continued with a Shaman Curendera of the Mayan Yucatan, an Aboriginal woman of high degree in the Australian Outback, and a Nepalese healer in the foothills of the Himalayas. Today, she is recognized worldwide as a leader in the fields of spiritual healing and personal empowerment. A shaman healer and mystic, Andrews is widely acknowledged as a major link between the ancient world of shamanism and modern society’s thirst for profound personal healing and a deeper understanding of the pathway to enlightenment. For more about Lynn and her work, visit: lynnandrews.com.