GLOBAL WARMING: A SPIRIT TAKE

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.

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.

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. 

Dante's Divine Comedy

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.

SHAMANIC COUNSELLING: AN INVITATION

What I like to do most is to talk things over with people. Insights happen, issues move on. I've been doing this using astrology for 17 years. I love all the usual shamanic stuff - the journeying, the healing work, the sweat lodges, the pipe ceremonies, the trance dance, the medicine wheel and so on. And somehow I feel I should end up running groups, and I know I'd like to do that and that I'd be good at it. But somehow I end up chewing stuff over with people, usually online. 

And I guess you could call it Shamanic Counselling. That phrase tends to get used to mean guiding people to find their spirit helpers in journey work. But it's not what I mean, though it may involve that. What I mean is that there is a spirit within each of us that is trying to unfold, and in that process we get to places that are difficult and hard to get our heads around. And this is precisely because there is something new trying to happen, so how could we possibly understand it? And sometimes there has to be a demolition job first, and Spirit is very good at that, but by the same token it can be hard to see it creatively, as an opportunity, to tune in to what is trying to be born - maybe ever so slowly and painfully! And of course we get our own promptings from Spirit as to the meaning and the way forward.

So if any of you folks out there would like an online session with me, email me at bwgoddard1@aol.co.uk. I'm quite informal. It may run to a number of sessions of indeterminate length, and you'd probably get to know me to some extent also. I don't do the one-way relationships that therapists believe in. And we'd probably talk about all sorts of stuff, and I'll probably cheat by using a bit of astrology. And I'll accept money, whatever is comfortable, there is no lower limit, just so much that you don't end up feeling obligated

THE SHADOW

You can learn about your shadow by reading history. You can read about Auschwitz, you can read about the concentration camps in Russia, and you can imagine yourself as a guard instead of as a heroic rescuer of unfortunate victims, which would be very, very unlikely. And once you can imagine yourself as a guard, which is a terrifying thing to do, then you understand something about yourself. 

You cannot have proper respect for yourself until you know that you are a monster, because you won't act carefully enough. If you think well I'm a nice person, I'd never do anyone any harm... You're no saint, you can be sure of that, and the harm that you do people can come in many many ways. (Jordan Peterson)

CACTI

Went to this cactus shop near Winkleigh in Devon today. I used to keep cacti as a kid, and then I began again about 10 years ago when a friend gave me a bunch of seedlings. On my way out, I asked the owner - who has been dealing in cacti since he was 10 years old - if he had any Peyote. I expected him to say no, but got an enthusiastic yes. He keeps them hidden above a stand, and has sold about 150 this winter. So I bought a couple at £3.50 each. (You need about 4 for a 'trip' - not his word - he told me). 

Peyote

He does most of his trade online now, he posts cacti to people, but paypal threatened to drop him if he continued to sell Peyote online. Then it turned out that one of the cacti I had bought was a San Pedro, another teacher plant. He only thought to mention it because of my interest in Peyote So I bought another one. You need to ingest about 4 inches of the stem in this case. 

The owner, Ralph, is getting on now, but he is good to chat to. He's managed not to do much, if any, in the way of teacher plants himself, but he wants to, and he suggested we could meet in the pub sometime to talk about it. His friends keep inviting him to Peru for that purpose. I'm not that drawn to doing much of it myself - having done a load of it when I was 20 and been changed by it - but I like being around the plants themselves. Maybe it is their spirit

UNLEASHING THE LEOPARD

A few nights ago I dreamed I was walking along Exeter High St (my local city in the UK) with a leopard on a leash. The leopard tried to bound off after some prey, but I restrained her. I was then told that I would not be in another relationship until I was happy being on my own.

I once asked my Chippewa Cree friend Ron what the purpose of his people's way was, and he said it was about becoming a balanced human being. And this is what the dream is asking of me: to become balanced, so that I am complete and happy in myself.

And part of being balanced is being wild and natural - and sometimes fierce and dangerous! - as the leopard is. In the past, I have always felt on a leash when in relationships, that part of me had been surrendered, and was being lived through the other person. And there was always therefore a sense of relief and reclaiming when the relationship came to an end. 

This being a half-person is for many of us normal and natural, in the sense of one's 'other half'. But from mid-life, there is often a push from within the psyche to find that other half within. This is classic Jungian psychology. And it is also reflected in the Native American idea that one is not much use to others in a deeper sense until one has become balanced - which is why elders are valued. This balance is seen symbolically in the Pipe Ceremony in the joining of bowl and stem, female and male, a universal principle.

I was pushed out of my last relationship not by my personality, which would probably have carried on for a long time in a slightly miserable way, but by something deeper that I did not understand and therefore doubted for some years, until it became irresistible. It was my psyche wanting to individuate, to become balanced in this deeper sense. I see quite a lot of people of my sort of age who are single, and they sometimes doubt their capacity for relationship as a result, but I think it is often this new balance that they are moving towards.

As an astrologer, I'm often approached by people at times of transition. So I've got to see this quite a lot. And the stereotypes are often true, which is why they are stereotypes! Men start to feel more deeply (Venus) and women start to stand up more for what they personally want and not be so beholden to others (Mars). And on a deeper level it is the soul calling us for its own mysterious purposes, it is much more than just a psychological integration.

The dream told me I need to feel happy on my own. So I decided to, and it happened, just like that! Though that was just the first stage, I'm sure. We need books about this mid-life process: finding the other half within, and the value that solitude can have for this, and what it means to be with someone else when 2 people are able to live alongside, rather than through, the other. I suspect there remains a need to feel inspired by and intrigued by the other person, a sense that we will never fully understand them.