Secret to Life

During luminous awareness time this morning, I received the message "The secret to life is in the closet."  My first thoughts were: "What is that object? Which object is it? Where did I store it? What can it be?"  A little later, I interpreted that to mean that I keep my most sentimental memories, emotions, and love in a safe place and only take them out for viewing on occasion when I am alone or when I share them with select few in confidence.  I take them out of the dark storage and into the light for others to experience also.

That is not living because I hold too much for too long in safe caverns instead of sharing more often.  I have found that it is not criticism of what I share that prevents me from sharing more, but the fact that what I share overpowers others because it is too much for them to understand my perception in a single experience.   While they try to digest what I've shared, they tend to distance themselves for a while. Communication is a difficult thing.

This morning my calendar message stated that even the densest materials on Earth are miraculously filled with light. Closets are dark and they hold many wonderful treasures. Uhmmm...

Based on the the ripple effect, I need to be always consiously aware that each small interaction that I have with anything and everything in the universe will affect everything else. It need not be a big splash.  I forget this, often thinking that I need to do some big thing to have made a wonderful contribution to mankind and that my life has been worthy of humanity.

So, I need not store the secret to life in the closet and rarely take it out for showing.  I simply need to always let it shine and glimmer in small amounts and KNOW it will go a long, long way. It may even hit me like a boom-a-rang.

Knowing when and how to use Power is an art. We all contribute to the power of the little ripple.

Live consciously aware, and remember the smallest joins other smallest and becomes massive.

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Questions We All Ponder: Who am I? Why am I here?

In a workshop facilitated by José Luis Herrera, the answer to the questions "Who am I?" and "Why am I here?" was completely resolved for me.  They have been getting answered and resolved little by little all my life, but events of the past two years, and how something he described fit in with my perceptions and feelings of those events, really sealed the answer for me.

In the last 5 years, many of my most beloved and closest family members have moved into the spirit world and onto their next lives, including my precious and much loved daughter.  I never really enjoyed living because of all the constraints placed upon my creativity and spontaneity.  After their moving on and leaving me here without them, I really didn't care if I was here or there. I only stayed because of my beloved family members that are still with me and so want me here with them.

I have spent much time in meditation and have experienced the spirit world of light, comfort, well-being, and love.  This is the place I have always wanted to go back to, the wonderful place of the beginning and home, where all of our spirits are.

I have also spent much time in the cemetaries.  It is very difficult to know that the cemetary is always a have-to-visit place on any holiday and is very difficult to only be able to physically give flowers to my daughter for her birthdays and holidays. 

A few days before Halloween and All Saints' Day, I was visiting her grave and a van came.  A woman with at least 8 children of various ages and gender got out.  I watched them from a distance.  While she placed flowers on an infant's grave, the children ran about in the infant gravesite area.  It was very surreal and spiritual.  I could also see the buried infants dancing as their feet ran with the live children's feet above them.  They were all so happy to be sharing spirit with each other! 

I thought, "The woman and I should have not allowed them to run on top of the little ones' graves." But I don't think either of us were allowed to interfer because the little buried ones so badly wanted to experience running and screaming and playing, and the little live ones knew it and gave it gladly.

José Luis Herrera talked about the Peruvian culture's ritual on All Saint's Day and how they regularly visit the cemetaries and bring the favorite foods and drink and flowers to their loved ones.  They have a picnic at the gravesites so that their loved ones can experience the tastes, the smells, the sights, and the sounds of the Earthly things they loved and can no longer experience.  For those few hours, they can enjoy those again because we love, honor, and cherish them enough to never forget them and share with them.

Yes, the spirit world is a world of love, comfort, and peace. The earthly world is one experienced by the five senses and many things happen in it.  I will experience the sights, sounds, textures, smells, and tastes of the many things that earth offers for as long as I have the energy to do so.  When I am weary, I will return to the spirit world for a rest until the next life.  I know I am home on earth and home in the spirit world.

With all my love and happiness,
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Soul Retrieval - Survival and Healing

 
I just returned from a Soul Retrieval course in Sante Fe taught by José Luis Herrera, a wonderful Andean shamanic teacher. What follows are some of his teachings, my understandings of them, and my experiences.

Our life journeys are similar to waterfalls that start small and pure at the source, separate and split apart when obstacles appear in order to follow the path of least resistance, meet and join again after by passing the obstacle, and end as a source of accumulated wealth or poverty depending on how fast and how well it recovers its parts.

When we are faced with traumatic events or unsafe situations, we may lose part of our soul. The soul part that leaves us goes to a safe haven until we can cope again.  It is a part of our soul that is essential to our well-being. When we are strong and safe again, we can call that soul part back to us and it can be reintegrated. The sooner we recover and recall that soul part back, the easier it is to reintegrate it back with the whole and the faster we feel well again. The longer one waits to recall it, the more time has changed you and the soul part has to get to know you again. It may not stay and it may not elect to come back at all.
What you are afraid of is also what you can use to help heal yourself.  You may have to go into your own battlegrounds, find what is feeding off of your resources, and mend it with light and love. You learn from your fears and dislikes, and you can use them as fuel to propel you to fulfillment.

In my soul retrievals for the past year, the underlying theme was a fear of conversing with people and a dislike of conflicts that take a large amount of energy and time to resolve.  For years, my response to new people has been avoidance.  In the soul retrieval sessions, it became evident that this resulted from my moving from a protected neighbor and school to an isolated highway home and a rather hostile school environment.  I simply thought that I had managed that as best as I could, but it has been managing me since I was 7!

I went from a neighborhood where my family, my grandmother, several aunts and uncles and their children, and many close family friends lived along 3 streets.  I rode my bicycle to the church that my father built and most of my relatives and friends attended.  I don't recall having disagreements greater than what we wanted to do that day and who we wanted to be with that particular day.  I have known these people since I was born and making friends with them was easy. It was free-flowing for the most part and all helped each other.

When I moved, I had to meet new people and make new friends.  Many of the children that I met at the new schools were very hostile and verbally mean until you got to know them well.  There was very little opportunity for a new person to help any of the people I met because they were very closed and distrusted very much.  After trying and getting very bad reactions, I finally gave up and had only a few close friends throughout the following school years.

This pattern has continued until now.  But now that I have identified it, I am changing my perspective and trying to associate with others once again.  I am trying to not take anything personally and to judge as little as possible.  I am trying to just "go with the flow like zydeco" and  if relations change for the better, they change for the better.  So far, they have been changing for the better and I am much happier.

Perceptions & Judgments: Our Personal 2D Glasses

In The Four Insights written by Alberto Villoldo, he states that our judgments are assumptions that are based on what we've learned and been told. These become the filters we view the world through. We make sense of our world by judging situations as right or wrong, good or bad according to rules defined by our culture.  An Earthkeeper believes that it's important to let go of these sorts of judgments and maintain their ability to discern. Practicing nonjudgment is the practice of transcending our limited beliefs. Earthkeepers learn to experience events in such a way that they no longer take life personally.  Here, things no longer happen to you, they simply happen.

When you change your perception of the events you experience, you also alter the way these situations live within you.  You are no longer the cause or the effect of anything, and you sense a tremendous relief because the world is exactly as it should be -- and it doesn't need you to fix it.

According to Alberto, there are four levels of perception that correspond to the four domains of manifestation of vibration and light: the physical world (our body), the realm of thoughts and ideas (mind), the realm of myth (soul), and the world of spirit (energy). These perceptual levels are associated with the four energetic bodies that make up the human energy field.  They are stacked inside each other with the physical body innermost, the mental body enveloping and informing the physical shell, the soul enveloping the mental and physical, and the spiritual body outermost, informing and organizing them all like a blueprint.

When we shift from one level of perception up to the next, we retain our ability to function at the lower realm, but we have a much wider view of what we're experiencing. Being able to shift to a higher realm of perception can help us find solutions to our problems, resolve conflicts, heal disease, and experience oneness with all of creation, whereas before we were only experiencing distress and separation. When you shift your level of perception, you can transform the myriad challenges you're facing in your emotional and physical worlds.  You can understand that what you perceive as a problem in one sphere is actually an opportunity at the level above it.

When we practice nonjudgment, we reject automatic beliefs and discern better. We deal with the problem at hand, not just from the literal level of our body, but from the highest level of perception we can.  We allow ourselves to embrace the unknown, along with its unlimited possibilities.

Live fearlessly and in ayni with others.

Living Energy Between the Worlds

Jaguar recently showed me in a dream that I was not truly living within both worlds of the physical and spiritual energies.

While my daughter was living in the physical world, she and I had connections through the seques, or ley lines.  We knew when each of us was thinking about the other and many times what we were thinking. We would each pick up the phone and dial. Without a phone ring, we were connected and could hear each other. And we still have a similar connection even after her passing into the spiritual world.  We resonate a knowing kind of communication. So, I know we do not die.  Only our physical body dies. Our spirits go on to their next endeavors.

Early in the morning before my dog was to go to the vet for surgery, I was apparently apprehensive about how he would fare during the surgery later that day.  I dreamed that I was walking in a wilderness of sorts.  A kitten showed up and both of my dogs rushed to friendly sniff, meet and play with the kitten like they do with the cats at their kennel. I was concerned about the kitten's welfare. Jaguar showed up, picked up the kitten by the neck and placed it behind her.  Jaguar then swiftly gashed my dog on the side of the stomach and somehow injured his leg. He was whimpering and  limping about.  My other dog was behind some things, laid out sleeping like she always does after playing. She didn't have a scratch or a care in the world. Then Jaguar looked at me and resonated the communication that I still feared losing the ones that I loved even though I know perfectly well that they will always be connected with me.

The lesson I understood was to live fully without worry, without fear of losing, and without fear of abandonment. Truly live connected to the living energy by knowing it and acknowledging that knowing.

Mesa Building Training Session 1

Rememberance, Guidance and Enlightment

In my first training session of building my mesa bundle, my first task was to collect objects from nature, build a circular sand painting with them, and place my three personal mesa stones in it. The sand painting was to sit and cook over the weekend.

The second task was to pick three stones from the sand painting and blow three issues that I wanted to get rid of into three different stones. The first issue was my fear of being social and being in the midst of many persons' energy fields.  The second issue was my boredom with living and finding life just not worth the trouble of living.  The third issue was my despair and willingness to easily and quickly give up on things when life got tough. Along with the blowing of the issues into the stones came an individual healing and activation of each stone as a power stone, or khuya.

When I first started this process, the first stone's shape that I blew fear of people into reminded me of a barge in the bayou.  This stone is actually from a Glacier National Park creek.  After the weekend training, this stone now reminds me of a very large white-water raft that can safely hold many people in the wild, cold, exhilarating, rushing rivers. I now see how fun being with people can be and the fear is just of the unknown path ahead that we travel together. It is not bad or good.  It just is and it's more fun traveling together.

The second dark stone represented a dark, stagnant, lifeless lake when the session started.  Now it reminds me of a sailboat that can go any where at any time.  It can float above the mundane.

The third stone is from the Natchez Trace and represented the red, muddy, slow, and heavy Mississippi River with all its despair and blues of the past.  That little stone took in all my grief and despair as hucha which is heavy, dense, incompatiable energies.  Over the weekend, it cooked and processed all that hucha and made fertilizer--very rich fertilizer that is the fuel that my body has used to shoot me right up into the high energies of happy.  I have for the most part stayed in comfortable balance since.

This sand painting process was an amazing process that revealed many things to me.  When I started building the circle, I noticed an ant pile outside of the circle and a bumblebee settled on the grass on the other side of circle, also outside of it.  I then thought of my circle as my universe with other living universes outside of it.  So, my circular border is thin because I wanted fluidity and flexibility of movement between the universes.

There is a heart shape stone in the center of the circle that has a big smiley face on it with many wounds underneath it.  The underneath part of this stone is shaped like a cone and ends in a point like a piece of cut gemstone.  It has real depth and penetrates into the earth with its root.  It is the core and is my heart that holds all with love and compassion.  I surrounded that stone with three living plant parts, one purple flower like my mother used to grow and two brilliantly colored red and yellow leaves.  These represented my mother, my father, and my wonderful daughter who have all passed before me.  I thought that the living plant parts would have wilted and completely dried up by the end of the weekend, but at the end of the weekend, my vision of this told me that they are still supporting me, will always be strongly connected to me and will always guide me in our endeavors.

Near my Natchez south stone, I placed a long thick piece of tree bark that reminded me of the Acadians and their struggle in this swampland. I called this piece Acadian Driftwood.  After three days, this piece reminded me of how they have never given up.  They just keep fertilizing and re-growing without thinking too long about the tough times.  Danse every day!!

I placed a large, heavy red rock from my courtyard in the west side because it lookedstrong enough to protect my medicine wheel and sacred space.  I guess it has jaguar energy in it. There are a few more Glacier stones around the NW side.  They provide healing and comfort like a hot stone massage.

My circle is a wheel within a wheel within a wheel. In the middle wheel is a living green weed vine that connects the southern Acadian Driftwood, the western protective rock, and northern comfort stones.  These are connected to the inner circle which on the east side has a forked branch.  This forked branch brings energies from the outer universes into and down to the center of my universe of Mother Earth, Pachamama, like an interstate highway.  We are all connected. We are all one tribe.