Article Highlights:

  • My book is done!! Check it out here.
  • Happy B-Day to me
  • The Chalice and the Grail

My book is done! And it’s for sale on Amazon in many countries including the US, England, Canada and Australia. I feel good about the book and so very glad to be done, as you might imagine. As you’ll see in the chapter below, it’s a book of stories interspersed with the type of musings I often share here.

A funny thing happened regarding when it actually became available. I tried to have it ready sooner; many things unavoidably interfered. Thus, I didn’t really choose the date for this announcement, it choose me. So here we are going into my birthday week, making the book a bit like a very happy birthday present to me! That wasn’t intended, but it makes me smile, you too I imagine. Since I celebrate the whole month of September, I’ve decided to include a short excerpt from my book each week this month.

My author name is Mayet Leilani. The book is called We Are Light! Experiencing the Truth of Who You Are. It’s a small book – my guidance was to create one that can be slipped into a purse or bag and easily carried around – and to make a book that can be revisited for a deep feeling of peace, to restore balance and a feeling of well-being, of being comforted. And to create a book that can guide in a moment of difficulty but also offer a special sense of joy and a profound experience of Self-Realization. That seemed a tall order – I hope I’ve accomplished it.

Here’s the first Chapter, to give you a sense of it. And it stands alone, for those of you who won’t be interested in purchasing but want to get a feel for it. Enjoy reading it as a little celebration of me and my birthday!

CHAPTER ONE
The Chalice and the Grail

After sitting in silence for some hours surveying the length of the small protected valley before me, I rise to go. Turning to leave this beautiful overlook, I surprise a large bull elk rounding a knoll of the path. Its immense rack of antlers, backed by the early sun, glow as though with a light of their own that seems to send rays of warmth directly to my heart, and peace to my mind.

For long moments we stand, our eyes locked on one another, breathless, hushed, just 5 feet apart. Its panting breath blows through flared nostrils nearly within my reach. Its sides heave from the exertion of the climb to this high knoll. At such close range I feel small near its massive bulk.

Muscles ripple and I feel the Elk tense as my proximity begins to penetrate our shared entrancement, yet I feel no fear. Perhaps we each recognize something in the eyes that communicates through heart not mind, throwing aside the usual instincts of protection, piercing layers of security-born separation.

Then, as suddenly as it began, the long moment shifts and the beautiful antlered creature spins as gracefully and quickly as a ballerina and springs away. Time and breath take up their more usual rhythms, the sound of birds comes back to my ears and reality approaches with its grief and pain. But I am not the same as before. In that poignant exchange, something was mysteriously shared, something undefinable ended, something else began.

~ * ~

What changed, ended, began? Why? How? What was shared that day between the Elk and me? What did I recognize in its eyes? These answers would find me in the weeks ahead.

I had come to this remote unpopulated valley full of grief and loss, my will to continue almost too low to meet each new day. The Elk encounter was how my healing began. In that moment, I recognized myself in a new and mysterious way, one I did not understand fully until later.

The borders of the small valley defined an old homestead once owned by an elderly couple now deceased. Before and since then, the property had been uninhabited by humans. The decaying two story farmhouse had never known electricity or other modern conveniences. Water was provided by a spring bubbling from the hillside and winding in a small stream through the valley.

Newly purchased by a friend who recognized the value of its lack of habitation and modernization, the vast acreage had a unique terrain. The valley portion was primarily flat with low ridges triangulating on three sides. The sun rose from behind one of the ridges each morning before traveling its length to set behind the hills at the back of the farmhouse each evening.

Chalice Ranch

My friend, knowing I needed quiet and privacy for a personal retreat, allowed me to stay at his newly acquired Idaho mountain property. Driving through the gate for the first time I passed under an old hand-carved plank that bore the words, Chalice Ranch. My skin tingled slightly seeing the name, a promise perhaps of recovered hope and health.

For three weeks, home was a little shepherd’s hutch nestled in the crook of the small gurgling stream. I’d brought supplies to live simply, using the shade under the wagon and a cold box in the stream to store my food.

Having arrived at summer’s end on an exceptionally hot fall day, the shepherd’s hutch was stuffy and sweltering. I threw open the door and small back window to air it out, fluffed my sleeping bag and pillow across the mattress on the sleeping platform and put my bag underneath. I lifted a tiny, hinged table into place and on it positioned cloth, pen and tablet, lidded candle, a smooth black rock from the stream and two small talismans from home. I set my metal cup, plate, bowl and camp utensils on the window ledge.

The shepherd’s wagon was spare but cozy, perfect in its simplicity. Made to haul behind vehicles to mountain hunting or stock grazing camps, it was small in size but charming with curved roof and Western trim. It reminded me of the gypsy caravans it was patterned after.

Finished unpacking, I carefully descended the three steep steps from the hutch back to the ground. Just a few short strides away I lowered myself onto a flat rock to sit with bare feet in the stream, taking several shaky breaths. I’d made it here. Barely, it seemed to me. Tears of relief filled my eyes.

I’d brought very little with me and there were neither phone nor neighbors, but I knew all I needed was here. Silence, nature, questions, answers, dreams, visions, spirit – I hoped they would all rise to greet me, as they do whenever I finally stop and allow.

I was here to find respite from the turbulence of my thoughts, the difficulties of my day-to-day life, the uproar of my emotions. I managed a few more ragged breaths and made my first attempt to surrender these. I didn’t succeed, but the process had begun.

Early each morning thereafter a shaft of sunlight split through a cleft in the ridge, shooting directly into the door’s tiny east-facing window to open my eyes. Each night I fell asleep to the rippled song of water over stone. I bathed my face in first light and the cold mountain water, my breath visible in the chilly fall mountain air, and walked the property, day brightening as the sun rose.

It was on my third morning at Chalice Ranch that I encountered the Elk. Returning afterward to the stream and shepherd’s hutch, I stirred up a small fire and heated water. I sat on a rock, my mug of lavender and herb tea warming my hands. As the valley shook itself awake around me, I let the stream lull me away from my painful loops of mind.

I mused on the morning’s encounter – what had happened? What had I seen in the Elk’s eyes that affected me so strongly, I wondered? What was it I felt so fully? What had I glimpsed? A reply came, quick and unexpected, “What you recognized, beloved one, is the eternal Light that illuminates all life, it is the Light within the sacred crucible.”

I pondered this broadly and often at my little campfire, reflecting that throughout the history of humanity there has long been the search for the priceless Chalice, the desire to find the Holy Grail. What is the meaning of this great mythical search? Wisdom spoke again: “It is simple. You are the Chalice, and the Holy Grail is the Light-filled Presence within you.”

~ * ~

The premise of the book is that Peace and Enlightenment are not only possible, they are your birthright and they exist within you, to claim right now.

Uncovering new ways to think about this, discovering how easy this is meant to be and what the process is like in an ordinary person’s life brings a simple clarity that I hope gives a feeling of relief and excitement, joy and hope about your own journey.

Through storytelling and distillations of insightful and practical wisdom I’ve tried to create an opportunity for the reader to experience the incredible beauty and certainty of their own progression of Light. I hope it can be a book that takes you right into direct experience of who you really are.

To the Presence you are,
Mayet Leilani
We Are Light! by Mayet Leilani is for sale on Amazon in many countries including the US, England, Canada and Australia and others.

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