Soul Weather August 2026 | The Tortoise in the Ocean

Welcome to Soul Weather. I know I am channeling the Tortoise again, and I have been told it is pronounced tortoise in English, though I am not sure I am going to remember that consistently. The Tortoise is coming in and presenting a whole different aspect of herself, or really a deeper aspect of herself. She is still working in tandem with the Phoenix, so I would not be surprised if the Phoenix joins us as well.

The Tortoise begins by saying that what she is presenting herself as, and the depth at which she is supporting us, is increasing. Even though she is the guardian of water, and we are in the fire season, we are being guided even more profoundly at a primordial level with this guardian of water. She is saying that the reason it is going even deeper is because the Phoenix is going deeper with its heart healing and its deep cleansing of our heart space, and of the dusty attic corners of our hearts. The depth of the two matches. If you remember when the whale was with us, who was also guiding us through the water, we had the surface whale in the white water, echoing the rhythm of our daily lives. And then she kept saying, you are going to deep dive with me, and you are going to touch something like a tranquility and an inner peace. The Tortoise is following that same rhythm now. Up until this point we have met her on land, just like we first met the whale at the surface. She was meeting us in our day to day, coaching us to be methodical and strategic. Now she is presenting in the ocean. We are meeting her in the water element, in the ocean, and in the depths of the ocean, and like the whale, she has the rhythm of coming back up to the surface to breathe, and then going deeper down.

When I tune into her energy in the water, she says something specific. Here is where you do not only meet a guide who supports you at the very compassionate level of meeting you in your life as a human. Here she is meeting you in your life as a spirit. She is meeting you not just as the specific person that you are, but really as what it is like to be human, human in this realm, human in the earth as we know her, in the reality as we know reality, in the ride that we are in. That distinction matters, and I do not want to smooth it over. She is part of the creation team. That is my translation, and I am clairvoyant rather than clairaudient, so I am choosing my words carefully. She is connected to the creation of this reality.

Remember last time she was speaking about a running mill. She was saying if you keep going at the speed of the machine, you will just flip over on your back. With me, she said, you can slow down the machine. You slow down away from your nervous system, and you come in with a level of sovereignty, a level of intention, a level of method and strategy to keep slowing down. Here she is going further. She is saying, I invented time itself. I am the linear time and space guardian. When you think about water in so many traditions, including traditional Chinese medicine, water is the birthing place. She is saying it is the birthing place of this universe, and she facilitates that birthing, not only of the universe, but of you as humans.

Then she brings the specific correction that came in very strong this morning. She says, the whole time you are treating time like it is your enemy. Like there is never enough time. You are running after time. It is not only the time of day, but half the month has gone by, and then half the year has gone by. We have a thing about time where we feel it is working against us. She is inviting me to imagine what it would be like to try to be in this world without linear time and space, and to report back on that. Because linear time and space is what allows you in this human incarnation to orient as a spirit. It gives you a template that actually supports you and organizes the universe for you in a sequence rather than everything at once. The image I am getting is that her big shell is like the clock of linear time and space. And she is saying people curse me all day long. I am not getting a lot of gratitude on the time front, or for the work I am doing to maintain this rhythm.

The whole business of night and day, of months and years, is to help you orient yourself within this very complex experience. It does not limit you. It allows you to drop in, in a sequencing that actually helps you achieve clarity. Linear time and space is one of our greatest allies, not our enemy. That is the correction. And with that, of course, we get into the whole thing that once we are in linear time and space, we end up in the illusion of impermanence, the illusion of birth, middle life, and death, and apparently that is a whole big tragedy. But she is saying, this is where it gets trippy, I help you bridge the overlap of linear time and space and eternal space. Your body and your experience in a body as a human is happening in linear time and space. But as a spirit, you are still operating in the same time zone as this Tortoise who knows that linear time and space is just a matrix that we drop into, but it does not define the entire experience. It defines an aspect of the experience.

She really is like a yogi. And from there she reminds me about the four corners. We have visited these four corners of our human body. The two sitting bones and the two shoulders. If you think of the shape of her little paws coming out of the shell, and the four corners, and the four directions in the tarot, four is the number of the greatest stability. The pairs are a very powerful anchor. So she is saying that right now, when you are going into meditation, or just going into full presence and full connection with your body, and you can use the breath to do that, keep going back to your four corners. Land on both sitting bones evenly and allow your shoulders to stack on your sitting bones and stay with these four corners. Right now that is a very, very powerful window into the healing space she is holding for us.

She is saying, yes, I hold time. It is a whole big job. And it is not your job. That is my job. But I also hold you. I hold humanity in this experience. I support you. This is the whole business of the shell and the idea of having this refuge. We have a refuge within ourselves that we can always access, and particularly now, accessing that refuge is through this awareness of the four corners, bringing our hips into a state of evenness as much as we can, and our shoulders into a state of relaxation so that there is a sense of stacking the shoulders on top of the sitting bones. She is saying this gives you access to the understanding that if I am there, not only holding linear space and time, but holding you, then why is everybody running around in fear, and why is everybody running around with a sense of not enough time. I am there. You can trust me. And with that, you can trust the organizing principles of this existence. It is not there to mess you up. It is all there to support you.

So in a way, you can be in the shell, but you can also land on her shell, sit on her shell, lie down on her shell. That shell receives your experience, your anxiety, your turmoil. What she is saying here is, I am so here. I am here past the noise of your psyche, past the noise of your trauma, past the noise of your fear, and I am here past the noise of urbanity and modernity. That noise does not cut you off from me. That is an illusion. I am here. So right now, she is saying, you can be with me in my rhythm the way I have been talking to you about for the last few months, and you can also be with me on my shell, and that space creates your anchor. In the same way that the four corners anchor you as a human, you are then anchored via the Tortoise. And the idea of anchor is not one that holds you back or thwarts your momentum. It is actually going to support you, because then you will see and hear past fear, see and hear past trauma, and see and hear past modernity.

This is going to be really helpful in supporting the Phoenix with its feather, who is going after every dust bunny available right now. It is not going to shake you up where you are not ready to be touched. But any little dust bunny hanging around, any little thing that is loose, the Phoenix is going to do that work. So the more you feel the support of the Tortoise, and the support of this experience of life and how life is organized, the more you understand that this is all shaped as an ally, the more you will be released from whatever noise, dissonance, and suffering is lurking around that is available for healing right now.

And the Tortoise says, not only that, but if we can get past the whole trauma business, and past the element of fear and terror and insecurity and a sense of danger, if we can get past that, the Phoenix is going to help us at the point of view of unconscious biases. The stories we have not only of ourselves right now, but of reality itself. What I am hearing is that we are going past the architects of survival phase. For months now we have been clearing out architects of survival so that we are not limited by those perceptions. But right now we are being told we are also limited in our perception of reality itself, and these unconscious biases are getting in the way of our flow.

And while that could be trippy, think of the Tortoise. If we are going to do that, I am kind of happy we are not doing it with a whale, saying whoa, okay. Everything slows down with her. So you have time, literally, to figure things out, to let things untangle themselves, and to let preconceptions and opinions and ideas dismantle slowly. There is no hurry here, and that is the whole point. It is quite beautiful, because the Phoenix is on a mission right now with this fire energy. And this is not only symbolic. The forest fires are literal. There is a lot of intense fire out there. To stay with the water animal, and to stay guided when you think fires are put out by water, is really quite literal in terms of what we are seeing in the world right now, whether in Europe, in Washington state, in Ontario, or wherever the fires are hitting. It is a massive issue right now.

In that sense she is showing me to be grateful for water. To be grateful for having this particular guardian animal and water spirit being. She knows she is needed. Because this fire is very potent, very yang energy. And what I am getting from her is that in a way she is the queen of the yin. She is the yin. So what more do we need than a slow moving, self assured guardian animal, who has created the universe itself, to say, fire, we are going to calm down, we are going to slow down, we are going to channel and orient ourselves to water at this time. In a sense, what we are witnessing is the battle of the yin and the yang, at its most fundamental axis, the water and fire axis in so many elemental and animist traditions. That is the axis.

Taming the fire is not something new. I am reminded of channeling on a 14,000 year old pyramid in Indonesia in Java, at Gunung Padang. When I was talking to a priest, he was the one managing fire. Because Gunung Padang on the east side of Java is closest to one of the largest, most dynamic, vibrant, and threatening volcanoes in the world. That priest, his entire mission was to constantly be in that relationship so that fire did not erupt. She is saying this particular dynamic is part of this reality. This dance, and sometimes this very dynamic dance, between the two. At the soul level, or in the spiritual heart space, this is where we are taming the fires that are within humanity, the ones that create war, that create oppression and suppression, and ultimately war and death. Looking at humanity, the excess fire is the one that is the most dramatically damaging at the broadest scale of all the elements. But that is built into the system, and she is right there holding that intensity, holding us in that duality and that experience, however it manifests in our lives. Physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and not only personally, but in our communities, in our nations, on our continents, and in the world.

The Phoenix right now is revealing. If it is going after all the dust bunnies, you can imagine it is going after the dust bunnies of nations. The corporations, the larger organisms that influence our world are going through the same thing. These are living entities we have created within this matrix of linear time and space. So it is happening at the personal level, in our relationships, and at the systemic level. When you feel swept away by the wind and the smoke and the fire and the drama, in whatever form that is presenting for you on any given day, keep going back to your four corners. Keep going back to that core stability, and know that the system, the experience itself, actually does make sense. Even if in that moment you are thinking it does not. There is an underlying logic. And that is where we are back to dropping past modernity. Past the noise of academia. Past the noise of politics. Past the noise of all of that.

She says, within yourself, you have that channel to touch me, to be with me, to be on my shell. And if you need to, you can come and hang out inside as well. I am going to hold you. I welcome you. It is absolutely unconditional. This is where we touch that feeling, within this experience we are in and through her energy, of ultimately touching compassion. The compassion is there. And if you can feel the compassion of time itself, and the compassion of what I will call the universe itself, if you can start tapping into the fact that that is the orchestrating energy behind it all, then the sovereignty and the personal power we have to put out whatever fires we need to put out will be there. She is the fireman hose, essentially. She has the hose. She has enough water pressure to deal with it all.

She is also showing me that for any of you who are really concerned about the planet earth right now, and are trying to take care of the planet, she says let the planet also take care of you. Remember how much the earth gives you. Remember how much linear time and space offers you. Remember that abundance. What is coming in is that by August 21st, we are going to be shifting to the earth element. So I think this is what she is predicting here. Just know we are moving toward that earth element. We are moving into the time when the gardens are yielding so much of their harvest already, and we are moving into the element that governs healing.

So we are in the countdown with the fire element in the northern hemisphere. And now that I am seeing her in this light, when you think of her shell, in a way that shell is the earth. It is our planet. It is this particular experience, and how nature is organized, the logic of nature, and the logic of this whole environment, which includes our psyches, our spirits, and our bodies. The feeling she is giving me is to remember that sometimes our bodies do get sick. Sometimes we are injured. And the idea is to not get so frustrated that everything is breaking down, but rather to show up with love. At the same time, with a kind of gratitude, to never lose sight of that gratitude one has for this organism you get to live in. The same thing when the planet is shaking up, when there are earthquakes and fires and intensity at that level. To still have gratitude. The earth is not the enemy. It is not the threat. To keep remembering that abundance, and how ultimately, while you are still alive, the earth is always supporting you. Every meal.

If Reiki is your practice, this transmission gives it clear placement, but Reiki is not the teaching here. Reiki can help you sit into your four corners. It can help you slow down enough to be with her rhythm and her shell. It can help you meet the Phoenix’s feather work as it goes for the dust bunnies of your heart. But the teaching is the Tortoise, guardian of water and inventor of linear time and space, correcting our relationship with time and with the earth, and the Phoenix taking its heart healing and cleansing beyond the architects of survival phase into the unconscious biases we hold about reality itself. See if you can tap into this beautiful tortoise, to tap into the feeling that her back is like the cosmos and all the galaxies put together, including this planet. See if you can connect to the magnitude of that orchestra of life. Then come back to your four corners, and orient yourself, via your four corners, within that massive orchestra of life. Be with the magic of that. The way I am experiencing it right now, it is like the miracle of that. Slow, methodical, strategic, thoughtful, and moving toward the earth element, moving toward that profound sense of trust in existence itself, and how you fit into this web of life.

Namaste. Om shanty. Shanty. Shanty.

Your 7-Day Tortoise Practice

This week is about learning to stop treating time as your enemy. The Tortoise is the guardian of linear time and space, and she is showing you that time is not against you. It is the matrix that lets you orient as a spirit in a human life. There is no hurry here. That is the whole point.

Day 1: Stop fighting time

☐ Sit for 10 minutes with Reiki, hands on heart and belly.
☐ Notice every time today you think or say there is not enough time.
☐ Write down how many times it happens.
☐ Finish this sentence: “The way I treat time is…”

Check-in:
Did you treat time as an enemy, a resource, or something else?

Day 2: Land on your four corners

☐ Sit upright for 10 minutes.
☐ Bring your attention to your two sitting bones and your two shoulders.
☐ Let your shoulders stack on your sitting bones.
☐ Stay with those four corners whenever your mind drifts.
☐ Write: “When I land on my four corners, I notice…”

Check-in:
Did your body feel more even, more anchored, or did it resist?

Day 3: Practice the Tortoise rhythm

☐ Choose one task today and do it slowly, methodically, and strategically.
☐ No multitasking. One thing.
☐ When you feel the urge to rush, say quietly: “There is no hurry here.”
☐ Write: “Slowing down today showed me…”

Check-in:
Did slowness feel like a refuge or like a threat?

Day 4: Rest on the shell

☐ Do 15 minutes of Reiki, lying down or seated.
☐ Imagine the Tortoise’s shell beneath you, receiving your anxiety, turmoil, and mental noise.
☐ Let her hold what you have been carrying.
☐ Finish this sentence: “What I let the shell receive today was…”

Check-in:
What felt lighter after you stopped holding it yourself?

Day 5: Meet a dust bunny

☐ Do 10 minutes of Reiki with hands on the front and back of your heart.
☐ Ask gently: “What dusty corner of my heart is ready to be touched?”
☐ Let the Phoenix do its work. Do not chase or analyze what arises.
☐ Write one line about what moved, softened, or surfaced.

Check-in:
Did you allow the heart work, or did you try to manage it?

Day 6: Notice an unconscious bias

☐ Sit for 10 minutes and ask: “Where is my perception of reality itself limited?”
☐ Write down one belief about how life works that you have never questioned.
☐ Ask: “Is this true, or is this an unconscious bias?”
☐ Stay curious. Do not force an answer.

Check-in:
Were you willing to question a belief, or did it feel dangerous to question it?

Day 7: Give thanks to the earth and time

☐ Do a full Reiki self-treatment, or at least 15 minutes on your four corners.
☐ Reflect on this: the earth is not the enemy. Time is not the enemy. Both are holding you.
☐ Write down 3 ways the earth has supported you this week.
☐ Write down 1 way time has supported you, not limited you.
☐ Finish this sentence: “Moving toward the earth element, I want to trust…”

Check-in:
Where did gratitude replace frustration this week?