Lisa Z. Lindahl’s new book, Beauty as Action: The Way Of True Beauty & How Its Practice Can Change Our World, is a treasure for both the insights and practices it offers to help us let True Beauty inform our everyday actions and enrich our experiences. Lisa’s writing style is witty and engaging. It possesses a lyrical quality that is enlivening to the reader. She asks questions that make you giggle and wonder—even as they reveal profound and illuminating truths.
“Lisa Z. Lindahl is a revolutionary entrepreneur, thought leader, artist, author, and advocate”
. . . and Lisa is also a diviner in the Strega Tree Collective. We thought we’d ask her a few questions about each and both.
Strega Tree: What is the main reason you would recommend your book to someone?
LL: Virtually everyone has experienced beauty. Employing that experience at will lifts us up, and “Beauty As Action” shows how True Beauty is available to all, all the time. It will speak to those who may be experiencing some sense of helplessness in the face of our current cultural degradation and are seeking an accessible and sustainable way to be a positive agent for change — for both themselves and for the good of others.
I recommend it also for those who may have already achieved a great deal, but are still feeling a bit empty inside, as if something is still missing, undone. The practices and stories in “Beauty” are able to point each individual towards their own fulfillment.
What Really Matters? Surprisingly, it is beauty—True Beauty.
We have all experienced moments of True Beauty—whether seeing a field of flowers, hearing a child laugh, or feeling in harmony with everything around us. Practicing True Beauty—not to be mistaken for glamour—puts us in synchronicity with the healing of our planet as well as on the path of spiritual evolution. Most importantly, by learning to engage with beauty more often, we can heal our cultural dysfunctions and transform our world and our role within it to be more positive and generative. ~Back Cover Text
Strega Tree: How does your philosophy and practice of true beauty interface with your spirit work?
LL: Beauty, authentic beauty, is my “true north.” It helps me put all my work, profane or sacred, into the larger context as I gnow that the cosmos is always striving to create that true beauty.
Strega Tree: Can you tell us more about your drum work and visionary cosmology work?
LL: The drum healings I do are derived from the practice of the Tuvan drum healers (shamans of southern Siberia) and handed down to me through the Foundation for Shamanic Studies. Remember: resonance, vibration is in the core of all. In a drum healing the client and I will stand with each other. Really, I am only a vessel for spirit to work through, as, directed by helping spirit, the drum will begin to “explore” the client’s body and energy field, moving me all around our client, who stands still and at ease. The drum-cum-spirit susses out those areas that can be helped by the drum/spirit’s vibrational energy directed toward the area; sometimes a small thrum, sometimes a loud booming. A session can take a few minutes or an hour. Often more than one session is most beneficial. And here is the funny thing that I love about this: when I am working, the drum is the healer and I am the instrument! A wonderful switcher-roo! It is very powerful and I love doing this service. It is so simple and direct.
What I term “visionary cosmology” I have heard others refer to as “claircognizance,” a sudden, clear understanding of something that I had no prior knowledge or information about. What makes what I do a bit different, though, when in dialogue with someone around a problem or challenge they are confronting, I listen and then see possibilities for solutions or outcomes. I will “get” a whole outcome or solution – a way the situation and its dynamics may come together in the future organization – hence my term of visionary cosmology. What is odd is that I do not necessarily have to understand the industry or people involved.
Strega Tree: So are you saying that as you listen to someone, you receive a vision of how their future may look or what they may attempt to move toward?
LL: Yes, plus perhaps ways around perceived obstacles that they may not have considered. Also, they receive/feel optimism, encouraged. I GO someplace else during these conversations, the “me” leaves and enters some sort of giant overviewing place.
Strega Tree: How interesting. That sounds like a form of divination but within the context of a heightened and active dialogue. Would you agree?
Absolutely. And it was working with the Strega Tree community that led me to the understanding that this process was, in fact, a form of divination, of a way in which spirit works through me. That is when I began referring to it as “Visionary Cosmology.” And it is why I do not consider this process strictly in the “coaching” category; to call it such would feel misleading.
Strega Tree: What would you identify as a special attribute you bring to divination, something unique to you?
LL: My sense of humor, sensitivity to beauty, and my sheer longevity with the other realms. I have been communicating with Spirit all my life. I just didn’t know that’s what I was doing for a long time!
Strega Tree: How would you define divination in your own terms?
LL: Listening and sharing what I hear or come to gnow with those that want to hear.
Strega Tree: Why would someone benefit by receiving a divination with you?
LL: I can’t answer that. Only the person receiving the div could. And really, someone receiving a divination from any reputable diviner will benefit. I think it is rather like friendship: we find those that we resonate with and play/work with them.
Strega Tree: Can you tell us about the beauty in a divination?
LL: What a fascinating question!
In order to answer it, first let me reiterate that True Beauty is about the creation and maintenance of balance and harmony in our cosmos.
With that in mind, for us humans one aspect of True Beauty is endeavoring to keep growing and evolving, to avoid getting stuck. To strike balance and find harmony as we grow and change. Divination is an elegant way, a sophisticated tool to hone our authenticity and keep as “beautiful” as possible.
Divination itself is a truly beautiful practice and point in the process – the human experience realm and the spirit world. This connection is a part of the natural world and order of things that humanity has lost touch with and a part of the reason the broader global culture has spiraled to such a degree into degradation & depravity. We have forgotten our own divinity! And divinations are a powerful tool to help us remember and sometimes, to reconnect with our spiritual family.
Strega Tree: If you were to offer someone one quick way to practice the way of True Beauty, what would that be?
LL: Ha! Read the book!
Or more immediately: go outside and take a walk without a single electronic device on your person. Look! And see. SMELL the asphalt. See all the different greens out there. Listen to the birds and the cars and the voices and the wind and and and. …
Experience nature. She’s a great teacher.
To learn more about Lisa, visit her here. To purchase the book, click here. To learn more about her divination work go here.
© Strega Tree Collective 2018