Natural rhythms

Breathe in, connect to, coherence
The one breath, one wind, of life
 
In stillness, it emerges
And by the heart it directs
 
To swim in with the tide
Why struggle and resist?
 
It is futile
Just feel it now
 
The energies of your life
Revealing the paths ahead

 

Fire ceremony of the full red moon

We celebrated the recent 'blood' moon
And total lunar eclipse with a
Shamanic fire ceremony
My first ceremony since Peru in 2007
And wow, it was special.

It calls in the energy and support of archetypes.
I find it fascinating that the archetypes
Are common to shamanic ceremonies
In most parts of the world.

It doesn't matter what you call them
For they rest with the four directions.
Far predating Christianity,
The four directions and the symbol of the cross
Surround the epicentre - of the seer.

The energy of the archetypes can be called upon
To act as 'allies' - that energetically support
Our intentions and prayers, by ceremony and ritual
And with the wood fire burning
Under the full moonlit night we begin:

South

To the winds of the South

Great Serpent

Wrap your coils of light around us

Teach us to shed the past the way you shed your skin

To walk softly on the Earth

Teach us the Beauty Way

 

West

To the winds of the West

Mother Jaguar

Protect our medicine space

Teach us the way of peace, to live impeccably

Show us the way beyond death

 

North

To the winds of the North

Hummingbird, Grandmothers and Grandfathers

Ancient Ones

Come and warm your hands by our fires

Whisper to us in the wind

We honor you who have come before us

And you who will come after us, our children’s children

 

East

To the winds of the East

Great eagle, condor

Come to us from the place of the rising Sun

Keep us under your wing

Show us the mountains we only dare to dream of

Teach us to fly wing to wing with the Great Spirit

 

Mother Earth

We’ve gathered for the healing of all of your children

The Stone People, the Plant People

The four-legged, the two-legged, the creepy crawlers

The finned, the furred, and the winged ones

All our relations

 

Father Sun

Father Sun, Grandmother Moon, to the Star Nations

Great Spirit, you who are known by a thousand names

And you who are the unnamable One

Thank you for bringing us together

And allowing us to sing the Song of Life

 

Close

The four directions, Mother Earth and Father Sky

Thank you archetypes for being with us

Serpent, jaguar, hummingbird, and eagle

We release your energies to return

To the four corners of the Earth                                                                         

 

Ceremony courtesy of Opening Sacred Space © 2011 The Four Winds Society.

 
  

Centre (a meditation)

Become the centre
feel the heart of God within you
all around you, right now
Not located somewhere 'out there'
It is here, right now
As you breathe, peace comes to you
and as you breathe out, love settles
Like a gentle summer breeze

Right now
you have the choice
to source peace within
to quiten the agitated mind
to be at the cause
rather than the effect

Feel your heart
naturally expand
to meet this new space
of peace around you
send out a simple blessing
to someone who you saw today
share this peace from your awareness

With your breath
dance with the rhythm
of life's intelligence
Animated by your focus,
brought alive by your seeing
for you create all the time
without knowing it

Meditation

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. Carl Jung

As I breathe in white light, I allow it to surround me, settle on me and in me
Gentle, like warm sea water, gradually submerging my body and my being
As the white light reaches my heart, it refracts like a crystal, beaming out around me
Bathing my immediate surroundings.

I allow love to settle, in my heart, in my skin, in my bones, in my brain and all organs
From my head to my feet, slowly moving down I radiate love as white light
On the inhale I move down from the head to toes
On the exhale I move up from toes to head, beaming loving energy

I give thanks for the blessings in my life
As I breathe in, I centre gratitude in my heart and the base of my spine
A wave of energy spinning around my torso
As I breathe out, the spinning energy is blown outwards,
Slowly resting on all around me like sunlit dust or snowflakes

In this state I am one with life itself, the Mystery that pervades everything
I cease to understand and open up to be, here, now with this open heart and feeling of love
Though beautiful things exist, I cease searching outwards
I feel the wholeness, completion and perfection of my own energy

I acknowledge it, like I would acknowledge the beautiful energy of a stranger
I allow the energy to settle, purified by the white light
I whisper thanks to it, that it has graced my life since birth
Illuminating my awareness since a baby.

As I bring this meditation/prayer to a close, I embrace the lifeforce within me
Pure, boundless, potent
I send out this energy to the people who I plan to come in contact with today
Sending it, gently bathing them. I see them touched by this energy, uplifted.
I give thank to life itself, and all the support I have, that makes this possible.

- Brendan Tapley

Responsibility

"By oneself the evil is done and it is oneself who suffers
By oneself the evil is not done and by one's self one becomes Pure.
The pure and and the impure come from one self: no man can purify another."
- the Buddha, from his work 'The Dhammapada'

I got to this point when reading The Dhammapada, and ended up reading the paragraph over again a number of times. It struck me as a clear teaching on Responsibility.

Responsibility is a KEY distinction to having clean energy, effectiveness and integrity in our lives. Lack of responsibility is a common cause of suffering. Taking responsibility can however be hard when our ego has vested interests to keep the lack of responsibility in place - almost always in the form of beliefs that reinforce the irresponsibility (and suffering).

Here are some simple questions that can help to act as a responsibility-check:

• Do you have a victim mentality in life and where does it surface? Clues include energised reactions such as blame, anger, frustration, disempowerment, etc.
• Do you have a clear vision of what you want? If not, why not?
• Do you complain to yourself or others about why you are not achieving more in your life?

So, back to the Buddha's quote above, here are some lessons I got from it:

• Firstly, "oneself" can be interpreted to be the oneness at the source of all things. Whether you experience suffering, evil, or purity, it is all experienced by only oneself. That this is 'done' by one person to another is an illusion, since both come from the one self of God. 
• "By oneself the evil is done and it is oneself who suffers". Each of us are ultimately responsible for any suffering that we may experience. It is I that experiences suffering, or not. It is I that becomes pure, free of suffering, or not. It is my choice, and my responsibility for the consequences of whether my energy (thoughts and feelings) are pure, or dwell on suffering. 
• "By oneself the evil is not done and by one's self one becomes Pure." The same as above, but reversed into the positive. The Buddha is providing an access here to escape suffering by highlighting that we also have a choice to live a pure life, with pure energy.
• "The pure and and the impure come from one self: no man can purify another." My (and your) self is of the one self and therefore whole, complete and perfect. Because we are already whole, it is not for someone else to make us feel whole. It is for each of us to love ourselves (Love, another key word) until we sense and come to know the innate wholeness within us. 

In this modern day in age, there are a load of experts, gurus etc. who could provide helpful pointers. However, the answer is within us, not outside of us.

So it is a good practice to balance at least as much time for yourself (in silence, meditation, yoga, whatever works for you) as the time that you spend seeking answers from other people. 

Time for ourselves also allows to get into our energetic heart-space, and out of the head. Learning to be aware of your heart/energy space is important to making heart led choices.

Beware of spending a lot of time seeking solutions or gratification from other people. This might be a sign that you are in your head, While mental stimulation has its place, seeking it all of the time might be a sign that you are stuck 'in your head' trying to solve a problem (with all its complexities) at the cost of missing the energetic signals and solutions that already exist within you.

Inertia

"Suffering is the great awakener"

When we choose to remain stagnant, pain will be our companion - not to inflict hurt, but to transmit a message that we are living in too small an inner world. We haven't yet recognised that pain's message is that we are ready to take the next step in our evolution.

- Michael Bernard Beckwith

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs & High Sensitivity

"A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. He must be true to his own nature. This need we may call self-actualization". - Maslow, 1954

I was recently re-exploring Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which I can definitely relate to. A poignant observations for me is that if our basic survival needs represented by the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy are not met, then our limbic and reptilian brains override our neocortex in order to promote organismic survival. Therefore, it is VERY important to structure our lives in ways that nurture our needs. On the flipside, it can be common for a lack of needs being met to trigger flight or flight reactions which can send people on merry go round of familiar reactions to familiar issues.

It may require courage to change things in our life, so as to better align to our needs being met. Yet I believe that people often underestimate how important this 'change' element is. Often it can seem easier and safer to just stay where we are. Yet if needs continue to stay unmet, then that little complaining voice in the head is not likely to go away. To the contrary, it may just become more and more vocal.

I was surprised to stumble across the articulate and rewarding article by Ane Axford, which does several things that I regard to be grounbreaking. She describes the attributes of a Highly Sensitive Person, including the genetic links to this condition, the subconscious beliefs that go with it, and how she has learned to manage being a HSP by grounding physiological/emotive reactions into her body.

This reminds me of yogic and zen practices of being present to the body, and 'being with' feelings in order to process them and release them, rather than resisting them. For anyone who is sensitive, then you may well find some relief in reading more about HSPs and that there are ways to integrate the unhelpful symptoms (there can also be helpful/productive symptoms by the way) in a way that enables them to be processed and released.