To polarize or not to polarize, that is the question.
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An invitation to identify with the ground of our being.
INVITATION
Take a comfortable, upright posture.
Become aware of your body.
Become aware that you are supported by Mother Earth.
Become aware of your breath moving through your body.
Become aware that you are breathing with Mother Earth.
Remaining aware of your breath moving through your body,
Repeat to yourself inwardly:
My body is part of me. I am not my body.
My thoughts are moving energy in the field of my awareness. I am not my thoughts.
My emotions are waves in the sea of my awareness. I am not my emotions.
I am not my family, my ancestry, my religion, or my nationality.
I release all of these identifications. I offer them to Mother Earth.
As I continue mindfully breathing, I settle into the ground of my being.
I remain There.
What we all have in common.
No matter what our religion is (or isn’t), no matter what our occupation is, no matter how virtuous or sinful we are, we are all inhabitants of Mother Earth. We have this in common. This unites us, despite our differences. Each one is beautiful even with his or her imperfections. Each of us is a unique being, within the reality of our unity as occupants of this sweet planet we call home. Becoming aware of the unity of ourselves with our Mother Earth and each other is a task of great importance.
Shamanic healing.
Shamanic healing is not about fixing what has gone wrong.
It’s about growing a new body that heals, ages, and dies consciously.
— Alberto Villoldo
Definition of “tenalach” (Irish).
Tenalach (Irish)– used to describe a relationship one has with the land, air, and water, a deep connection that allows one to literally hear the Earth sing.
Black Elk says it.
“The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that its center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.”
― Black Elk
New discoveries about the healing power of nature.
Redwood National Forest, CA (10.29.13)
I have had a lower back problem for a while, and it has gotten worse in the last ten days.
For the last two mornings I was inspired to get out of bed and stand on the bedroom floor– meditating in the standing position– before doing anything else. My back is the most painful at this time.
I breathed through my feet and connected with Mother Earth, drawing her energy up my body while breathing consciously. Through a detailed, inwardly guided process, I felt my light body merging with the spirit of the forest and I experienced that the forest spirit healed areas in my light body. I spent 40 minutes on this yesterday and maybe 20 minutes today. I was guided to move in certain dance-like ways and also to make certain sounds. It reminded me of dances and chants of indigenous cultures, but I was not imitating them. Today I was approached by two beings that are in my drawing series called “Entering the Void with the Eyes Open”– Bear, and also a forest woman being that I don’t have a name for. At the end, of these meditations, my pain was significantly diminished, and I could move and walk without pain.
This morning, at the end of the meditation, I did the Inka Medicine Wheel breathing exercises that bring the heavens and Mother Earth together within me. It was perfect and beautiful.
I see that my “sacred ritual artwork” is feeding my coming into “ayni,” or right relationship with nature. My current drawing series involves connecting with the forest spirit and the series before that contains beings that are now coming to me.
I am ever so grateful for these experiences.
If we surrendered to earth’s intelligence we could rise up rooted like trees.
— Rainer Maria Rilke
Our speech and the land.
As technological civilization diminishes the biotic diversity of the earth, language itself is diminished. As there are fewer and fewer songbirds in the air, due to the destruction of their forests and wetlands, human speech loses more and more of its evocative power. For when we no longer hear the voices of warbler and wren, our own speaking can no longer be nourished by their cadences. As the splashing speech of the rivers is silenced by more and more dams, as we drive more and more of the land’s wild voices into the oblivion of extinction, our own languages become increasingly impoverished and weightless, progressively emptied of their earthly resonance.
-David Abram
Trees exist in community.
http://cryptik.squarespace.com/home/the-consciousness-of-trees.html
Now I know why I have been grieving so much for the tree close to our house that has been cut down. What I have sensed as the Forest Spirit is “explained” by this scientist.
“Walk around like a leaf…”
Walk around like a leaf, know you could tumble any second, then decide what to do with your time.
–Naomi Shihab Nye, The Art of Disappearing.
(Thanks to Angela Loyd for the quote.)