Hopi Elder Wisdom

IT IS TIME TO SPEAK YOUR TRUTH:

Create your Community.
Be good to each other,
and do not look outside yourself for the leader.
This could be a good time!
There is a river flowing now very fast.
It is so great and swift that there are those who will
be afraid.
They will try to hold on to the shore.
They will feel they are being torn apart and will
suffer greatly.
Know the river has its destination.
The Elders say we must let go of the shore, push off
into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open,
and our heads above the water, and I say, see who
is there with you and celebrate.
At this time in our history, we are to take nothing
personally.
Least of all ourselves.
For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth
and journey comes to a halt.
The time of the Lone Wolf is over.
Gather yourselves!
Banish the word struggle from your attitude and
your vocabulary.
All that we do now must be done in a sacred
manner and in celebration.
"We are the ones we have been waiting for"

From A Hopi Elder
Oraibi, Arizona

H.(o.m).E C.A.L.L.: Integrating and Healing our Shadow

" Light is found by passing within and below, light born out of darkness rather than light 'opposed to' darkness. As long as we think in terms of opposites and conflicting dualites we will feed aggression, wanton destruction, isolation."

-R.J. Stewart-

In order to become more deliciously ourselves, to express our divine and unique authenticity without F.E.A.R, ( * False Evidence Appearing Real) and to embody our own distinct truth in action, thought and speech we need to consciously integrate both the Light and Dark aspects of our Be-ing. However, accessing the damaged and restricted, no-trespassing zone withIn can be a rather frightening process when the disowned and denied aspects of Self exist outside of Hearts love and acceptance. There can be dangerous land mines of stored memory which manifest as chronic pain, muscle tension and other physical symptoms, or there may be thought bombs blowing up inside our head with their disturbing ideas, with recollections of uncomfortable past-happenings or with run-on sentences that rant their punctuated complaints in tirelessly bold italics. Yes, anytime we have fought against what we REALLY feel, what we REALLY think and what we REALLY want, there is most certainly a war going on inside of Self. And we wonder why we’re wearing so much“fatigue” all the time????

The parts of us we cast out or reject when we divide ourselves into “good me” and “bad me” polarities are forming armies of bad-ass revolutionaries who are armed with the charge of negative terms like:

UGLY AGGRESSIVE SELFISH BAD IMMATURE UNRULY REBELLIOUS ILL-MANNERED OPINIONATED DISILLUSIONED ANGRY EVIL DEFENSIVE SELF-INDULGENT EGOIC UNCIVILIZED RUDE ARROGANT OFFENSIVE…etc.

This cast of primary players are cunningly staging the grand shadow-play of our subconscious, subterranean realms of Being. In the darkened dressing rooms of our buried and repressed psyches, these alienated characters are conspiring to storm our inner stages with elaborate and haunting guerilla productions of their own. These inter“plays” may take to the centre-stage of our conscious realities in the form of challenging people, exhausting relationships, difficult jobs and erratic acts of personal disruption. And they are costumed with all our most fragile, vulnerable and traumatized triggers and sore spots. They have names we don’t really want to remember and they have painted faces which may terrorize our prim and proper notions of who we think we are.

We must C A L L them back home to ourselves if we truly wish to heal our past, free our present and live our lives authentically, with honest purpose.

When we are in the midst of an elaborate enactment of our shadow-personas, it is a fairly unrealistic expectation (and one many modern spiritual schools of thought promote) to think we can just snap our fingers and blissfully L-O-V-E our denied, wounded, and bitter selves. I personally believe there is a profound process/ journey we need first experience before we can infuse the more frightening aspects of ourselves with unconditional love.

I have defined it the HOME CALL.

H onesty
O penness
M ovement
E xpression

C ompassion
A sking
L earning
L ove

In my experience, the H.O.M.E. C.A.L.L. (the conscious process of integrating and healing shadow elements) has all of the above ingredients, often in a similar progression as well.

H-Honesty. This is the main ingredient needed to “own” our shadow experience in any given situation. Using internal “I” statements, without shutting down any particular feeling, thought or sensation of Body, validate Self for yourSelf and no-one else, first and fore-most. It can begin with “I am”…. or “I feel”…. or “I think”… or “I want”….etc. Name and identify who you are in this shadow-moment without any masking or embellishing, and please, no botox. Just be with what is, truly and honestly. No-one has to know you have just crashed landed into the Hotel Hades of your Head.

O-Openness. Stay present with the shadow moment and all it evokes and stirs in you, without the need to escape, define, interpret, justify or excuse. Breathe into the All of the Moment with receptivity and trust. Allow the wisdom of the experience, however painful or difficult, to move through your whole being like you are a vast open window of perception and allow the winds of truth to simply flow through you.

M- Movement. After the honesty and the openness you have so allowed in the intensity of your shadow-moment, there may be a strong physical/ emotional response to the triggering, to the discomfort of it all. Move it!!! This is when arms may need to flail wildly, your head may need to move around, tears may need to spill like Niagara, and the belly-voice may need to be activated. Allow for this. Make space for this. This is very important (children do this immediately after something intense happenings to them….they move it through right away) as it will help ensure the negative imprint doesn’t embed itself into your pre-existing scar tissue and subsequently get stuck there to fossilize.

E-Expression. You’ve dug deep in your own dirt and you have a self-awareness and insight which is now grounded, making it easier to articulate from a place of calm-after -the-storm. This may be when it is important to speak to another about your experience. You may need to clarify something specific, or you may need to take your space to give a direct and honest reflection back to someone. It may also be a good time to journal, or to create some form of personal art which reflects the integrity of your shadow-experience for yourself and another.

C-Compassion. You have completed the “home” run of shadow-self and it has been a challenging, uncomfortable and difficult process. Yet somehow there is a fresh and lucid clarity crystallizing within you now. Because of the steps H.O.M.E. you have taken, there is a vital integration settling in you and this brings a new gravity and grace to your every step. There is now room for a radicalized understanding of Self. Infuse yourSelf with a deep compassion- it will come more naturally now that you’ve walked at least a mile in your shadow’s shoes and have a better understanding as to why they were so darn muddy for so darn long and why they tracked so much crrrrrap inside. True understanding is the foundation of all compassion.

A-Asking. Your newly integrated shadow-self may have specific requests of you at this point. To help yourSelf settle down into your bones, into this new H.O.M.E., you may hear an asking for very specific things. Like-please play that Hendrix song one more time, even louder. Or, please give me a bag of those triple chocolate fudge caramel cookies you never want me to eat-I really like them! Or can we call mum now, please? Can we wear those crazy funky boots with the 9 inch heel out soon? ASK yourSelf what you need at this point. Ask others for what you need too. Ask. Ask. Ask. Ask for professional help, if need be. Denied parts of the self often have numerous requests to make once they have returned home because their essential needs have been suppressed and ignored for so long. Often these shadow aspects were shut down in early childhood by primary parents who did not have the emotional resources to give you what you really needed, so these repressed needs hid out in the raunchy ghettos of you and got nasty and rebellious instead. If the inner requests being asked of you are outrageous or too obscure, privately indulge them in safety or renegotiate a compromised vanilla-version. Trust yourself in this. You’re the Parent now. And no one needs to know………

Remember: as long as it harms none, so mote it be.

L-Learning. You have been H.O.M.E. schooled and have now graduated with self-honours. Keep the lines of communication open. Actively dialogue with Self. Listen to your underworld’s tetonic plates shift and learn how to stabilize potential disasters one-handed like a super hero. Keep a detailed log of shadow-happenings and track their patterns, trace their roots. Learn an entirely new language of your shadow-lands and become your own best interpretation, your own best shrink and write yourself placebo prescriptions for radical bliss and outrageous self-care. Write the subtitles of the shadow plays you’ve attended in your mind recently. Gather the quotes from the inner dark that make you wince and make invisible bumper stickers out of them that you secretly stick on yourself when you are being an ass. Decode your shadow-antics and become the director of your next life play-the one where you keep all the stage lights on and upstage yourself frequently. Study who you really are in all situations, responses and relationships. You’ll learn plenty.

L-Love. Now you’re REALLY ready for it. You’re not just trying to force yourself to feel an impossible unconditional love in the midst of all the fermented poop that was previously flying around inside you. Instead, you are welcoming a love that organically emerges out of a very real, very candid, very brave and courageous process, the shadow HOME CALL. Welcome a self-love that is a sustaining and life-giving presence, not merely a zippy new-age condiment to hide what was previously so yucky in you. You are even brighter now that you have integrated a real shadow to contrast your light with!!!

Bravo!

Encore!

Bravo!

*Mary Burmeister’s acronym for fear

This post was republished in 2008 (with permission) by Stephanie Gagos in her self-published newsletter. Her web-site is: www.myvoiceoftruth.com

tRiCkStEr mEdiCinE

Kokopelli Exa Loki Iktomi H e y o k a Coyote RAVEN sAci Kitsune Puca

Trickster Medicine is a delightful and creative expression of intelligent foolery, sacred reversal and meaningful humour intended to counter-balance the restrictive and somber monotony of our personal/ collective definitions and rhythms. A means of providing insightful "comic relief" for communities congested by social conformity and constrained by the sobriety of day to day living, the Trickster or Clown is a powerful archetypal force amongst us. Known by many names and weaver of many a zany myth-tale throughout the world, Trickster’s message has remained unscathed: Our well-being lies in our very ability to openly laugh at ourselves!

We have shaped many modern spiritual/ religious beliefs within a consensus frame-work which promotes a kind of clenched and freshly ironed look to our relationship with Source. With stern piety and poker-faced reverence, we feel we must somehow tip-toe around (near-invisible) in hushed voices, "tucking in our messy edges", behaving "appropriately", and controlling any and all deviant thoughts which might distract us from the seriousness of our religion, our politics, our social lives, and our spirituality.

Many major religions and modern spiritual paths which emphasize a fear of retribution are firmly rooted in an inflexible homogeny of thought and action, leaving little room for the spontaneity and gaiety of the Trickster. We tend to place our embarrassing foibles, mistakes, our wonky perceptions, wily and irreverent questions into a kind of metaphorical purgatory in our own heads, judging these as "unevolved" expressions of Ego, or misbehaviours of a regressed part of the Self.

All of this only serves to cast Trickster out, to repress a very potent energy that exists in our psyches for a reason. For TrIcKsTeR seeks to liberate, challenge and mock, to tease and to test the true resolve of our very convictions and personal dogmas, using jokes, absurdity and laughter as a means to access our unbounded creative potential.

The themes Trickster brings are always reflections of one’s own life. You’ll know you’ve been “fooled” by the Trickster when presented with an honest opportunity to laugh, with humility, at yourself and your imperfectly perfect reflection of perfect imperfection. Joyful play, innocent irreverence and sheer bafflement over the jumbled folly of life are necessary contrasts which provide a much needed counter-balance point for us. And there are a myriad of ways to respectfully express Trickster. By openly expressing Trickster and sharing its medicine in a safe, creative, and authentic way, many innovative possibilities for private and public solutions may indeed emerge to show us an entirely new way.

Reverse Panhandling:Rob Brezsny
http://www.freewillastrology.com/

A Poem: Petals Unfolding

Petals Unfolding

My senses unravel in the presence of you

like the deserts ignite their horizons with vastness and colour

and, in hot threads cast by timeless looms,

I am weaving webs all over and through you,

even in the shadows.

My heart murmurs a thousand fragrant mantras

to bloom the names I know you as:

you, scripted in wisps of cloud,

you rippling geometries in water,

you in iridescent shades and abounding textures,

all of this

a rapture which awakens me,

lucid.

I am petals unfolding

in silken devotion to your lingering kiss at my lips

a moment which glistens the winged poems at the calyx

and pollinates the winds I call to you now.

I am petals unfolding in a garden of essence

harvesting no-time,

tilling ancient memory,

growing feasts of plenty,

between the here and there.

These petals unfolding

are falling weightless, without gravity

and spill out toward the within.

They bear the weight and ground of my step

as I continue to walk

beyond you.

Amaya Dana O'Duir

True Time

In the fast pace of our modern western world we tend to walk a tenuous tightrope of forward-thinking linearity, drawing a straight, narrow line from a perceived beginning to a tangible end, from the conception of an idea to it’s immediate finished product and potential profit gained. We tend toward being “product oriented", often neglecting to give true value to the integral process inherent within the very journey itself. We often mistrust those unprecedented non-linear steps we may suddenly take when we discover a wider dimensionality to our myriad questions, personal explorations, and varied experiences. As the expectant clock ticks, the hourly punctuality of our many responsibilities can make it difficult for us to engage in time as a radial presence, as a synchronistic and organic flow of energy. Yet within cosmic time’s intrinsic design (the ebb and flow, wax and wane, retrograde and direct motions, germinations and terminations) we C-A-N balance our “doing” with our “being” in a divine union, making us more available to the Numinous, the Divine, for the Sacred infusion of Spirit Flow.

We are a culture over-masculinized with the “yang” energy of perpetual “doing”, of task out-of-control, resulting in an imbalanced materialism. However, within the true essence of cosmic time, a timing frequency the Ancient Maya clearly understood, we are offered an alternative to the mechanized time we are currently run by. In this, we can seek to restore the magic of synchronicity and fluid inter-connection. By observing our solar and lunar cycles, our galactic planetary cycles, (by way of classical or traditional forms of astrology and astronomy) seasonal geographical rhythms, personal power cycles, (adolescence, parenthood, pregnancy, cronehood…etc) and fertility cycles, we can begin to reattune our bio-bodies, minds and hearts to a greater whole. We can hold space with a vaster potential beyond the limitations of our cluttered, multi-tasking 9-5 heads.

Time is a frequency, and if it were geometric (which it very well may be), there may be specific points connecting to the hidden geometries of our own lives. Radial lines of connection extending in multiple directions…….

The profound thought you had when you were 12 may be a specific point connecting to a radial line in your current life-flow, guiding you, way-showing, creating the personal geometries in the unique design of your current life. In this light, the past is now, which is the future, simultaneously. Staying present with our breath, grounding ourselves in healthy daily rhythms, and listening deeply to our personal environments can help us access an expanded understanding of our personal-collective purpose and higher evolution.

Though we may easily assume that the happenings in our lives are merely random, it may just be we have yet to perceive or comprehend the dynamics of their complex geometry accurately enough to see how the multiple streams of lines connect. Everything happens for a reason! Maybe life is one big connect-the-dots picture of grand geometric splendour! Life becomes astoundingly synchronistic when we open to receive time’s true frequency. Suddenly many interesting and highly obscure things happen in odd succession, and it seems there is an invisible guiding principle affecting the serendipitous outcome of things. This is being “in Time” with “the Rhythm” of life.

Deja-vu, synchronicity, co-incidence and serendipity are all “landmarks” on our life maps. By turning up the volume a little louder on the receiver, we are clearly reminded that we are in “time” with our true rhythm. Listen to these happenings closely, they are highlighting an essential truth for us to resonate with and to direct our current choices by.

What is ‘shaping’ or 'birthing' itself from these synchronistic experiences?

Where are you being guided to go next?

To (and from) whom, what and where are the points in your geometry connecting you?

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