So what might be a Spirit take on global warming? The Earth is a living
spirit who takes care of us because we are part of her. And she seems to
have decided, for now, to get warmer and greener. We don't know the
reason why, because she is a vast consciousness and we are a tiny
consciousness. It is presumptuous of us to think we know the reason.
We
do know that we are not treating her well, and that we are taking more
than we are giving back, and we have forgotten to feel gratitude to her.
And that we need to change the way we live in fundamental ways. But the
earth herself is not a scientific object to be mastered and known.
Thursday, 28 February 2019
Sunday, 24 February 2019
Rupert Sheldrake
I saw Rupert Sheldrake speak the other night. He was addressing the
theme of what you might call peak experiences and their attribute of
bringing us into the present. So this is the purpose of meditation, for
example: staying with the mind, in the present, and there is a blissful
quality to that. But then we have extreme sports and their current
popularity - in an era of concerns with health and safety! He also
suggested that this is one reason we have pets: because animals live
in the present and bring us into the present.
For me, with my shamanic leanings, sweatlodges and trance dance have this function: the physical experience is so compelling that I am taken out of my distracted mind and into the present. And the experience of the present is outside this construction we call time and it is profound.
Sheldrake is also known for having his TED talk dropped from its list
of talks because of his questioning of science, and his theory of morphic
resonance, that proposes a collective memory in nature. An example of
the way his mind works, which I loved, was his questioning of physical
constants like the speed of light, and even the constancy of the laws of
physics. He did some research on the speed of light, and found that it
has indeed changed over the decades! So here is his infamous TED talk, in which he highlights, and questions, the 10 basic assumptions
about the world that science leads us to hold.
For me, with my shamanic leanings, sweatlodges and trance dance have this function: the physical experience is so compelling that I am taken out of my distracted mind and into the present. And the experience of the present is outside this construction we call time and it is profound.
Monday, 4 February 2019
SHAMANISM AS INNER PATH
This Shamanic path is for me primarily an inward one. If I take care of
the inward part, then everything else flows as it should. But I
frequently feel I 'should' be doing more than I am, and when I act on
that, it doesn't work and I end up feeling confused, and it can take a
day or two to get back to the centre of myself and feel at peace again.
This has been going on for as long as I can remember, and I'm slowly getting better at it, slowly coming from a place deeper within myself. And it's something I find myself saying to others quite a lot - it is very common in our extraverted culture to feel that we need to keep busy, that that is what justifies our existence. There is an enormous collective mindset around this, an energy field if you like, that we need to dance our way out of.
One of my best ways out of it is
to talk to someone at length about the nitty-gritties of my life, and
those pushes and pulls within me, and eventually it feels like coming
back to sanity.
Possibly the primary focus of my life for 27 years now has been paying attention to the wounded bits within me. Just being with them. They seem to me like they are very big, but maybe that is the same for many of us? And I am fortunate that there is something within me that has so far stopped me doing much in the way of teaching this path, even though in many ways I'd be good at it. Because if I did, my crazy stuff would want to get involved too. And I see some teachers living out their crazy stuff, it usually involves some kind of inflation that compromises the good stuff that they do. And as they get older they may get more rigid with their craziness.
So something in me has stopped me going very far down this teaching route. And on the one hand I am grateful for that, but on the other hand it makes me feel inadequate that I do not 'do' more. And that then brings me back to the question well what is of real value? And the answer for me is living close to the Spirit within me, and that is what a lot of the time I do in fact do.
I am being pushed not to just be in constant relationship with the wounded bits - and there is so much richness in that, it is not a narrowing - but also to be independent and complete and balanced. As I put in a previous post, I was told in a dream recently that I would not be in a relationship until I was happy not being in one. And actually, I find I am happy that way, though it is not yet stable.
And this is also a journey for me of becoming conscious about relationships. I used to just drift in, and fit around what seemed to work. And that is no good any more, it really isn't, even though it is in many ways 'normal'. When we are young, Nature seems to drive us in an overwhelming way to be with somebody else in this projective, half-person kind of way. And we can easily spend the rest of our lives like that. Sometimes, I am sure, it grows into something else. More often, probably, it requires a separation.
Either way, I think that to be the best kind of teacher or healer we need to find the balance and wholeness within ourselves that we often look for in another person. And stay with those painful bits, which can feel very deep, for the light shines out of that abyss.
This has been going on for as long as I can remember, and I'm slowly getting better at it, slowly coming from a place deeper within myself. And it's something I find myself saying to others quite a lot - it is very common in our extraverted culture to feel that we need to keep busy, that that is what justifies our existence. There is an enormous collective mindset around this, an energy field if you like, that we need to dance our way out of.
 |
| Dante's Divine Comedy |
Possibly the primary focus of my life for 27 years now has been paying attention to the wounded bits within me. Just being with them. They seem to me like they are very big, but maybe that is the same for many of us? And I am fortunate that there is something within me that has so far stopped me doing much in the way of teaching this path, even though in many ways I'd be good at it. Because if I did, my crazy stuff would want to get involved too. And I see some teachers living out their crazy stuff, it usually involves some kind of inflation that compromises the good stuff that they do. And as they get older they may get more rigid with their craziness.
So something in me has stopped me going very far down this teaching route. And on the one hand I am grateful for that, but on the other hand it makes me feel inadequate that I do not 'do' more. And that then brings me back to the question well what is of real value? And the answer for me is living close to the Spirit within me, and that is what a lot of the time I do in fact do.
I am being pushed not to just be in constant relationship with the wounded bits - and there is so much richness in that, it is not a narrowing - but also to be independent and complete and balanced. As I put in a previous post, I was told in a dream recently that I would not be in a relationship until I was happy not being in one. And actually, I find I am happy that way, though it is not yet stable.
And this is also a journey for me of becoming conscious about relationships. I used to just drift in, and fit around what seemed to work. And that is no good any more, it really isn't, even though it is in many ways 'normal'. When we are young, Nature seems to drive us in an overwhelming way to be with somebody else in this projective, half-person kind of way. And we can easily spend the rest of our lives like that. Sometimes, I am sure, it grows into something else. More often, probably, it requires a separation.
Either way, I think that to be the best kind of teacher or healer we need to find the balance and wholeness within ourselves that we often look for in another person. And stay with those painful bits, which can feel very deep, for the light shines out of that abyss.
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