Spirituality
An excerpt from the Preface of Visionary Shamanism
An excerpt from the Preface of Visionary Shamanism
by Linda Star Wolf and Anne Dillon
Foreward by Barbara Hand Clow
“It is time not only to heal the past but also to learn from the future.”
Nut, the sky mother goddess of ancient Egypt, woke me up one morning before sunrise while Jupiter was still very bright in the dark night sky. I felt Nut’s shimmering presence downloading powerful information into my energy field. She arched her beautiful, indigo blue, star-filled body over me as I lay in my bed, caught in between the worlds, only half awake. Nut conveyed her message of sacred purpose to me through electromagnetic waves that filled my mind and heart with many strong images and emotions. Over the past year I’ve repeatedly heard the same inner message: “It is time not only to heal the past but also to learn from the future.”
Many people write, teach and talk about releasing past programming. But the time has indeed arrived for humanity to give equal attention to our future programming. This future programming is held within our archetypal DNA as well as our physical DNA and can be even more compelling than our past programming, once we surrender our ego’s agenda and open to our soul’s true purpose.
Make no mistake about it, the future self is very real, and many alternative realities are available for our imaginations to grab hold of. The imaginal selves, which together form the perfectly realized archetype of who we are really meant to be, exist in conjunction with the past selves but they do not always manifest in our current existence. When we begin to actively feel their pull within us, they are moving into our present life. In other words, our imaginal selves are eager and ready to be born into the world. They need our conscious cooperation to come into being, and as a result of their emergence, we will grow in self-awareness and wisdom.
Without the assistance of our imaginal selves, our development will consist of a long succession of woeful experiences. Suffering is very real on our planet. Genuine pain is all around us: in war-torn countries like Iraq and Afghanistan; in countries where environmental disasters have left millions of people without food or shelter; in situations where disasters resulting from human error have trashed the environment. The world around us is a reflection of our inner state of being.
As we collectively move into the new eon, we need to open to a much bigger vision for our future. This is an evolutionary shift that has been predicted by religious, spiritual, and shamanic traditions for thousands of years. The common prophecy has it that a time would come when we would need to wake up and see that we are all connected and a part of the world’s greatest challenges and opportunities for transformation. As we collectively shape-shift our consciousness away from addiction and into planetary service, we will begin to live and give from the fullness of our sacred purpose, simultaneously healing the world around us as we heal ourselves.
The earth and all its beings are calling out to the heart of humanity to heal its self and open to a larger reality. This is not a time for staying half asleep but for fully awakening and taking creative action in our lives. Staying stuck in the past is about addiction; opening to the future is about embodying the full measure of our energies of love and sacred purpose.
My personal spiritual commitment is to continue to rid myself of the immaturity and selfishness that blocks my soul’s true purpose. My hope, my prayer, and my faith is that we will all awaken from our deep slumber before it is too late. It is time not only to imagine a new Earth, but to create it. We must each find the love in our hearts that will inspire and motivate us to fulfill our unique role in helping to reshape reality. We begin by taking responsibility for changing ourselves and helping to open the portals in order to birth a higher love and wisdom, or, as the great master Jesus said, create Earth as it is in Heaven. It is time for humanity to shape-shift into its future self now!
Linda Star Wolf is the founder of Venus Rising Association for Transformation, Venus Rising University, the Shamanic Breathwork™ Process, the Shamanic Ministers’ Global Network and the author of several books on shamanism. Visionary Shamanism: Activating the Imaginal Cells of the Human Energy Field, published by Inner Traditions / Bear & Company, is now available in stores and on-line. Star Wolf will return to the Sanctuary at Sedona in December to teach Shamanic Egyptian Mystery School. To learn more please visit: www.shamanicbreathwork.org
Are You a Member of the Golden Motorcycle Gang?
Book by Jack Canfield
“Meet Up” with Jack Canfield in Hog Heaven
By Linda M. Potter
Picture Jack Canfield, the charismatic co-author of the Chicken Soup For the Soul book series and “America’s #1 Success Coach,” vroom-vrooming through the cosmos on a solid gold Harley… accompanied by a Gang of spiritual soul mates. Then… picture yourself joining the Gang. It’s hard not to smile, or at least raise an eyebrow.
But it’s more than just a whimsical image. It’s the inspiration for Canfield’s new book, a mostly factual, adventure-filled account of his personal spiritual journey and his subsequent awakening to his life’s purpose.
Partnering with fellow Gang members such as William Gladstone and Barbara Marx Hubbard, Canfield uses the book to set the stage for the ride of a lifetime — the one we’re all invited to participate in, the one that ushers in a new age of global consciousness and Universal Humanity.
Your new book, The Golden Motorcycle Gang, is set to release this month. What inspired you to write this book at this time?
When I was in graduate school at the University of Massachusetts, we had a guest lecturer who led us through a guided visualization to take us back to when we had chosen to become a teacher. Well, I went back to before I was born which kind of shocked me. And [in the visualization] there were a bunch of us, “souls” I guess, on summer vacation, floating through the universe and having a good time driving down the road on Harley Davidsons. (That’s where the book title comes from.) We looked down on earth and there was a war going on. It was 1944, which is the year I was born, and I just had this sense that I had to go down and help.
So I chose to be born and help out, and that’s been my life’s work.
Afterwards I thought, wow, I’m not just a school teacher; I’m a teacher at a higher level and I have a bigger destiny to fulfill. Then I kind of forgot about it until 10–15 years later when I started meeting people that I had this certain vibrational resonance with. I realized they were doing the same work I was doing; they were here with that same purpose. Maybe they’re part of that “Golden Motorcycle Gang” and we’re reconnecting, I thought.
I was having a beer one night with Bill Gladstone, a literary agent (and the co-author of the book) maybe 10 years ago, and I told that story to him. He said, “That should be a book.” And I said, “That’s ridiculous, no one wants to hear that,” but he kept hounding me. Finally I said, “Bill, I just don’t have time.” “What if I were to interview you two hours every day for a week or two,” he says, “and get all the stories. Then I’ll do the first draft and you can clean it up and make sure it’s accurate, fix the writing, or whatever.”
That’s how the book came into being.
The image of spiritual beings belonging to a motorcycle gang makes me grin a little, but also piques my curiosity. Guides, angels, ascended masters and others are more often portrayed as introspective beings wearing long white robes. Why do you think you’re getting visions of a “hog” Heaven?”
(laughing) I’ve never been drawn to a community where we all wear white and bow down to a certain guru. I’ve studied with many and I’ve sat at the feet of many, but there’s always been this sense of independence in me. When 15 guys on Harleys go by wearing their Hell’s Angels jackets, I admire that sense of “we are who we are and we don’t care what you think about it.” Not that these are guys I’d necessarily want to go have a beer with, because I don’t really know how safe I’d feel! But that’s the kind of feeling I had during that visualization. We were just a bunch of men and women flying through space on motorcycles. They’re golden because it’s spiritual.
In the book, you had more than one encounter with other people who had seen that same image of being in a gang of motorcyclists. Why do you think that same metaphor keeps showing up?
It’s hard to know what gets planted in consciousness. There’s a book by Dick Sutphen called, You Were Born Again to Be Together. In that book, he talks about groups of people who travel through time together like a family — it’s the idea that certain souls agree to go through eternity together and have different experiences. I think people in my “tribe” if you will, saw similar images. But I don’t know why.
It seems like there are many people who have had transformative spiritual experiences of one type or another, but are hesitant to talk about it. Have you noticed this?
I see it all the time. When I do my groups, we talk about these things and people come out of the woodwork. I see bank presidents, corporate leaders, military people and policemen who’ve had near death experiences, visitations from angels, intercessions from higher powers and awakenings. But they’re afraid to talk about it because they don’t want to be seen as “woo woo.”
But someone has to go first. A lot of people don’t know this side of me. I think I’m seen as kind of a famous person because of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books. Now they can see, here’s this normal guy who’s had these experiences. Maybe it will give them the courage to admit they have too.
You founded the Transformational Leadership Council; its members are listed in the book. What is the purpose of this group and how has it influenced change?
It was founded out of my need to have a support group of people doing similar work. There were different associations, but there was no group for people who own transformational training companies. So I threw a three-day event at my house and for three days we had a discussion about whether or not we wanted to create a support group with each other. Well, 32 people were invited; 30 came; 29 people said yes. Now we’re at about 125 members. It’s morphed into also including transformational coaching company owners, transformational authors that we all read, transformational media people, and so on. The purpose is simply to support each other in becoming more conscious and sharing our techniques with each other.
Did you feel like the 30 people in this original group were part of the Golden Motorcycle Gang?
I would say that 80 percent of them were. Yeah, I could feel that vibration.
How do we know if we belong to The Gang?
If you feel you have a calling, a destiny to contribute to the transformation of the world into a more cooperative, loving, positive, socially just, environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling world, you’re probably part of the Golden Motorcycle Gang. I might have been in one “local chapter,” but it’s clear to me that there’s more members than me and the little group I hang out with. I meet people who are locally well known but not on the national scene and I say, yeah, you’re part of the gang. I think it’s become a metaphor for anyone who wants to become a midwife to the evolution that wants to be occurring right now.
What does this evolution look like to you?
What I get is that there’s something bigger than us that’s evolving. We can tune into it through meditation, visualization, and so on. If you tune into it, you can cooperate with it and you do your part.
I think that so many people who are out there doing counseling, coaching, teaching meditation, doing yoga classes, NLP, EFT… are doing this work. Some people are very conscious about it because they’ve tapped into that calling, that awakening. Other people are more unconsciously doing it, but it’s a quickening I see all over the planet.
In the book, Barbara Marx Hubbard presents you with five questions we can all ask ourselves to determine whether or not we’re part of the Golden Motorcycle Gang. Can you share those with us?
Barbara had an experience [during a full-life regression] of going to the Elysian Fields where in Greek mythology the Gods and demigods hung out. There she found Aristotle and Plato and people like that (probably in white robes!) and was asked these five questions:
What do you know of the original plan?
Are you aware there’s some destiny unfolding that you’re a part of? A lot of people will tell you they are.
Do you have any memory of having volunteered to go to Earth at this particular time?
I volunteered to come down here. I think a lot of people did. I read Life Before Life by Jim B. Tucker where he did 2000 questionnaires and a bunch of interviews with people who had, under hypnosis, direct memory of choosing to be born, what gender to be, what race to be, what kind of parents they wanted to have — coming in with a purpose. They’d met with a board of advisors if you will — guides who helped them clarify that purpose so that when they came down, they could fulfill it.
The third question is, if so, do you remember your contract?
Do you remember what you agreed to do? For example, I agreed to help bring about a world that was more peaceful and harmonious and where people were living their highest vision rather than living their lowest vision out of fear.
What do you do best in the world that only you can do?
What we’re all being called to do right now is authentically be ourselves, not Tony Robbins because he made a lot of money the way he did it, or Barbara Marx Hubbard, or some guru. But to really ask, what is it that I do that’s unique to me?
My wife, for example, I call her a day maker — she makes people’s day. She leaves a message on your cell phone and it makes your day. She walks in to the salon to get her hair done and everybody walks out of there happier because she was there. That’s her purpose.
I have this belief that we’re all like cells in a body. Maybe you’re a brain cell and someone else is a pineal gland cell, and someone else is a liver cell, and someone else is a heart cell, and if we each fully be that, then all the body’s functions will work, and we’ll live. If you try to do something different, you end up being a cancer cell.
What are you supposed to do now, and what tools and resources do you need to do it?
We really have to tune in every day and say, what am I to do now? Today? This period of life? This month? This cycle? This season? And then go and find the tools, the resources and the people to be able to do that work. We should all be supporting each other in that.
Can you talk a little about the Birth 2012 event on Dec. 22 that you’re helping to organize: how you plan to participate, how the rest of us can also take part?
There are a lot of events being created and maybe I’ll be on a stage somewhere, but I will definitely be participating. Through the Transformational Leadership Council, we have a combined mailing list of over 12 million people and we’ll be promoting it, encouraging people to really participate in a day of celebration, a day of intention, a day of how do we want to create this next chapter of our life? That day will be an ongoing day of celebrations and concerts and TV shows and such. Conscious evolution means evolution by choice, not chance.
Do you want to learn more about the Golden Motorcycle Gang or Birth 2012? Check out www.GoldenMotorcycleGang.com and www.Birth2012.com.
Linda M. Potter is a popular speaker, a freelance writer and the author of If Only God Would Give Me a Sign! www.lindampotter.com or at lindampotter@comcast.net.
Portrait of Soul- Transformational Poetry
Book Excerpt
by Byron Lindley
What Can I Give?
Weaving words together
like an artist blends color
on canvas with paint
I wish that I
could create
something so beautiful
as a monsoon sky
is to the mind
stay awake for a moment
listen inside
pretend for an instant
that all faculties of sense
are aligned with the heart’s
magical capacity
for intimate devotion
devoted completely
to something so sublime
as indescribable
indecipherable
as infinite divine
I lay down my life
in words on these pages
you see
this blessed medium
of art from my heart
is all I can find
all I have to give
because I have received
something so glorious
magnificent as
a captivating sunrise
inside
that blows the limits of mind
past the furthest reaches
of a poverty intellect
destined to transcend
release the boundaries
my colors spill over
melt all together
blend into one
You are my love
and I’ll give it all away
to become
let myself unravel
long for my rope
to come undone
absorb my spark
assimilate
into the splendor
limitless infinity
burning brilliance
of poetic reality
in Your ineffable sun.
About the author:
Byron Lindley is a writer and poet. A spiritual awakening in 2003 brought about an intense opening and purification of the soul. Since that time, a continuous flow of sacred energy has manifested primarily as sublimely inspired poetry. He lives in Los Angeles, California.
Available at: www.byronlindley.com
Wisdom of the Plant Devas by Thea Summer Deer
Wisdom of the Plant Devas
by Thea Summer Deer
Book Excerpt
Self-Heal
Prunella vulgaris
Unconditional Self-Love
The Story
While the name Prunella may elicit the image of a prissy princess or call to mind an Italian folk tale, Prunella vulgaris is a common perennial wildflower. The genus includes seven species that are all known by the common name self-heal. Self-heal has been used medicinally for centuries on practically every continent to treat just about every ailment. Perhaps it is Prunella’s little purple flowers that cause its association with little plums and prunes. The flowers bloom constantly from May to September.
Self-heal is a medicinal plant, or weed as some consider it, which is incredibly abundant, available, and found practically all over the world. It has a long history of folk use, especially in the treatment of wounds. Prior to World War II it was used to staunch bleeding and treat heart disease. Considered one of the fairy herbs in rural Ireland, perhaps because of its wand of delicate purple flowers and ability to heal, it inspired the young English artist Cicely Mary Barker. Cicely Mary Barker’s art elicited a sense of freedom of spirit that charmed a war-weary world in the early twentieth century with a vision of innocence and hope.
The herbal actions of self-heal are so many that it is usually considered to be an herbal panacea. Self-heal is used as an antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant. In addition, self-heal also exhibits the following herbal actions: alterative, antimutagenic, antispasmodic, astringent, carminative, diuretic, febrifuge, hypotensive, immunostimulant, stomachic, styptic, vermifuge, vulnerary, and tonic. It is used to gradually restore health, promote wound healing, stop internal hemorrhaging by contracting blood vessels, reduce fever, cause tissue to contract, relieve symptoms of indigestion such as hyperacidity and gas, strengthen and tone the stomach, treat edema, induce urination, lower blood pressure, and even expel intestinal worms.
Fresh-picked self-heal is used as a fresh herb poultice applied directly to a wound. Although the most common use is topically to treat sores, burns, and bruises, it is also used internally to relieve hemorrhaging, fevers, diarrhea, and swollen glands. In Chinese medicine self-heal is classified as cooling to the liver and used to treat liver and gallbladder inflammation and stagnation. There is also evidence to support the traditional use of self-heal in the treatment of some forms of cancer as well as type 2 diabetes. Its antiviral actions seem to slow cell division, making it a potential aid in the treatment of HIV and herpes simplex virus.
The Divination
Self-heal wants us to heal and has brought herself into close proximity, and relationship, with humans for this reason. She cools our livers, heals our anger, and teaches us how to heal and love ourselves unconditionally. Love is the greatest healer, and this plant loves us so much that she just keeps showing up—practically everywhere! Sometimes, when a person has been badly damaged or wounded through neglect or violence, we have to love them until they are able to love themselves. This is what the devas of the medicine plants are doing—loving us until we learn how to love ourselves. Take a moment to look around. Where is this plant growing near you? How will you honor her medicines? There is no imbalance that she cannot restore. You have only to open your heart and receive.
“Love thy neighbor as thyself,” implies that one must start by learning to love one’s self. If we look around at our neighbors in the world today we can see that we have not done so well with this lesson. Why is it so difficult to truly love our Self? Perhaps it is because of what we were taught about being born. Were we born in blessing, or born in sin? How were we raised? Were we loved and supported and encouraged to carry our gifts or told that we were bad and punished?
When we love ourselves enough to do the inner work of bringing back the lost soul pieces that keep us from being fully present, and we integrate those pieces into our third dimensional physical form, then we free ourselves, and others, to experience new levels of consciousness. We become present in love.
The Deva Speaks
What is this that you call love and to which you aspire with no conditions? The human has only ever known the emotion of love upon which there has always been conditions. Your condition for love is based on the elements for survival. The elements have always been here to serve your evolution, and it is their love alone that is unconditional on this plane.
It is a law in your dimension that there will always be this struggle toward the light of love: a struggle that will continue for as long as you take form in a dimension of duality and separation. For your notion of an unconditional love is actually a field of love emanating from a central sun that you have already begun to perceive. When the need to survive is no longer upon you then you will enter this vibrational field of love. No conditions as you presently know them exist in this field, for love is what is. It is in this field that I have grown my medicines for you, and through this field that we will walk together as I show you the way home.
Becoming the Visionary Shaman By Linda Star Wolf and Anne Dillon
Book Excerpt
Chapter 2
Becoming the Visionary Shaman
I believe that we are all born with a powerful shamanic spirit. Like the rest of the natural world that we are so deeply related to, we are given many wonderful shamanic gifts from our Divine Source. One of the most powerful gifts given to us from the Creator is the inner knowing and wisdom that informs us when it is time to let go and to die and be reborn into a whole new level of consciousness.
I accepted many years ago that I am on earth in part to assist and guide others in connecting to their shaman within, particularly now as we are moving into the Aquarian Age and everyone can open to their inner shaman. We can open to our inner shaman by utilizing tools like Shamanic Breathwork, which helps us to learn how to develop the nonlocal mind in order to avail ourselves of ancient wisdom as well as to receive the fertile downloads coming in from the future realms of consciousness.
To access the nonlocal mind means being able to access different periods of time and different places with our thoughts instead of merely being able to focus on the here and now. The nonlocal mind is not restricted to past, present, or future events but can travel between all three realms. It is the field that prayer, miracles, visions, and revelations draw from, including the sense of déjà vu. The laws of synchronicity are active in this kind of shape-shifting reality, and cause and effect are not what they seem to be in linear time.
According to many of the great spiritual traditions–Hindu, Buddhist, esoteric Christianity, and some indigenous teachings–everything already exists and, in a manner of speaking, has already happened on some imaginal plane of existence; everything already is. I refer to this as Isis = is is. Events are not going to happen, nor will they happen some day. However, because of our innate need to focus on times and events sequentially in order to have a “human experience,” we are created and designed to see the past, present, and future in a linear space-time continuum. They are self-styled reference points that we have collectively created so that we can exist in a spatial reality where our life lessons are learned, and synchronistic occurrences congregate to give us clues about the truth of our powerful shamanic natures.
Some of us know how to gaze into the future to read the Akashic Records, which are variously described as a cosmic library or a kind of supercomputer whose esoteric data includes everything that has ever happened in the cosmos and everything that ever will. Psychotherapist and author Michael Newton has written extensively about his experiences with clients who, in a state of deep hypnosis, have been able to access these records in order to make decisions about their own life’s path.
Visionaries like Buckminster Fuller and others such as Henry Ford and Albert Einstein could easily draw upon this energy. Barbara Marx Hubbard, a well-known spiritual evolutionist, refers to this energy as the imaginal cells. The imaginal cells are the very valuable part of us that already have an existence in another realm. They are the seeds of the future that are constantly downloading into our human energy fields and into our human levels of consciousness.
You might say that the imaginal cells represent our human potential, but it’s actually more substantive than that because our imaginal cells already exist within the matrix. If we can tune in to them we can open ourselves more easily and allow them to come in and create who we are meant to be more quickly. They will do this over time anyway–with or without our consent. However, when we consciously invoke them and actively surrender to the process of change, we accelerate the process so that we can bring in our newest incarnations in a much more rapid fashion and thereby speed up our evolutionary process as it pertains to consciousness and making the quantum leap.
Walking in shamanic awareness in the Aquarian Age is not necessarily about knowing the “correct” order for calling in the four directions or the “exact” number of stones to be placed in the medicine wheel, or the “right” way to behave in a particular ritual or ceremony. Awakening the shaman within is much more about learning how to heal oneself by knowing oneself–the light, the dark, no difference–and through this awareness awakening the inner wisdom keeper and shaman.
The inner shaman is not only interested in further evolving powerful spiritual traditions by respectfully honoring what has been but also being able to stand on those teachings as foundations while continuing to dream the dream forward in an upward spiral of spiritual wisdom. It is time to ask ourselves what the twenty-first-century shaman looks like and take a long hard look in the mirror while we are listening for the answer to our question.
When we learn to accept our multidimensionality we become responsible for our creations in the world of time and space. In so doing, we actually become co-creators with God, living out our destiny as universal humans and actively co-creating the future with the Great Mystery. At this point, no matter where we find ourselves in this vast universe, at last we will know that we are and always have been home.
What is Ascension? By Dyan Garris
What is Ascension?
By Dyan Garris
Ascension is a much misunderstood concept. When we think of the meaning of ascension, we may tend to think in terms of the Mayan prophecies regarding 2012. But whatever conclusions we have drawn from those is not necessarily what ascension means.
Let’s talk about the term “ascension” first. Ascension is really about transforming the lower into the higher. That is it. It is nothing to be feared. Everything in the universe changes and shifts. Nothing stays the same. Ascension is a normal, natural process that we’ve been engaging in for all of eternity, perhaps without knowing it. It has nothing to do with our conception of “death,” but has everything to do with life.
Very simply put, if we can take the energy present in the lower chakras and transform that energy into energy that can be integrated and used in concord with the upper chakras, there you have energy for transformation, and thus, ascension.
Ascension is a full integrating of mind, body, emotions, and spirit. It’s a way of living as a whole person instead of just as a physical entity. Often, people forget that they are not separate from their spirit and focus instead on the physical. But the ascension process we are now engaged in requires that we live differently. It requires us to live as “one” within and without. It requires us to re-learn to co-create. It requires that we call all of our scattered energy back to us. It requires that we live as empowered beings who remember our divine right to create and remember our connection to each other, to ourselves, and to Source.
Part of the reason people become so frightened by the ascension concept is that we have come to equate “transformation” with some sort of “death.” And we are biologically designed to avoid death. So, it is natural that we would have some resistance to the concept of ascension on a very base and primal level. But in order to function and survive as a species, ascend we must. Just as an infant grows into childhood and eventually adulthood, so it is with ascension. It is that natural of a process.
If you understand the paradox of the illusion in which we live here on the Earth plane, you can perhaps appreciate the paradox of ascension as well. Things are not always what they seem and there are many illusions present in the physical realms. In fact, no matter how real living here may seem, it is all an illusion. Our basic task in the achievement of ascension is to see through all illusions, return to understanding, and return to being able to live and function in the real reality.
So many people are facing difficult challenges at this time in all areas of the physical realms. This is not to punish us, but to assist us in the ascension process. We cannot stay stuck. The old must be released as we learn to fully embrace who we are. Know that these are simply steps on the ascension staircase. Everything you think you know must now transform.
There is another paradox there, if you choose to see it, because the process of thinking takes place in an upper chakra and thinking should therefore be a “high” process coming from a high place. But certain kinds of thinking can definitely keep us stuck in the lower, more physical realms. It’s akin to someone “out-thinking” themselves. Our thoughts can keep us stuck, particularly if they are all about root chakra issues.
The Mayan Prophecies
Let’s simplify these. This ancient civilization kept a calendar based partly on astrology and partly on astronomy and partly on their ancient wisdom. In their writings, for whatever reason, this calendar came to an end in December, 2012. Many people take this to mean the end of the world will occur at that time, or that we will have an apocalypse, or that this refers to the end times referred to in the Bible. This is speculation.
However, in December, 2012 our sun will move into the very center of our galaxy with the planets around it forming a sort of “new ray.” This does not necessarily mean that our world will end at that time. One thing it does mean is that things that have previously been hidden will come to “light.”
So what we’re working on now is simply shifting our energy fields to be able to accommodate the new energy that will literally be “beaming” to the planet at that time. Will it kill us if we don’t shift? No. However, if we refuse to shift, the discomfort we feel presently as we engage in the process that we are currently in, would be greatly magnified and perhaps unbearable in an energy field kind of way. Think of it this way: Would you be uncomfortable if your mind developed to maturity and adulthood, but you still found yourself physically present in the body of a child?
Transforming Energy
Remember, it’s all about being able to transform the lower into the higher. What does that mean exactly? If you understand which energy resides in which chakras this will all make more sense.
For example, the energy of money resides in the first or root chakra. If you can begin to understand that money is energy instead of real power, you can begin to use that knowledge to transform your entire existence.
The real power of transforming the energy of your thoughts, goals, dreams, and desires, for example, is in the ability to understand energy and then how to make it work for you as a “flow.” As long as you hold on to the belief system (root chakra) that money is power, you keep yourself completely stuck and unable to transform. When you let go of that illusion that was taught to you, you can begin to clear a pathway for the energy of money to flow to you. When you do that, you’ve effectively taken the lower (money and your concept of money) and transformed it into the higher (pure energy).
And if you take any other energy, you can do exactly the same thing. If you know, for example which chakra the power of creation resides in and how to operate it, you can transform your life. And the same holds true for all other energy contained in all of the other chakras.
These are not difficult concepts or tasks. What is lacking is basic knowledge of how energy works and how energy works in terms of ascension. Once we understand this and remove our distortions, ascension becomes very natural. And life – no matter where you are – becomes very easy.
Dyan Garris is visionary mystic, voice recognition psychic, and trance channel medium who reads directly from the Akashic Records. Her specialties are manifestation and chakra balance and teaching people what is missing from the way manifesting was taught. She has created a Spiritual Toolbox™ of products that work together for integrative living. This includes a multiple award nominated CD series with several #1 charting songs. She is also the author and artist of Voice of the Angels – A Healing Journey Spiritual Cards and several other books, including the award winning finalist and bestselling book “Money and Manifesting.” Garris is the owner of The Sedona Psychic Fair and The Phoenix Psychic Fair. Website: www.voiceoftheangels.com
Awakening to Your Life Purpose with Dr. Jean Houston
Awakening to Your Life Purpose with Dr. Jean Houston
by Corinne L. Casazza
I’ve been a fan of Jean Houston since I read her book, The Mythic Life. Our shared Sicilian heritage led me to truly resonate with the tales she told of her Italian family. Jean’s writing is lyrical, rich and evocative; she’s a great storyteller and a tremendous humanitarian. Having written so much of heroes, she is certainly one of mine. Dr. Houston has inspired me not only to be a better writer, but to live up to my full potential.
A dynamic force in the human potential movement, Dr. Jean Houston has worked with people from around the globe, and at every level of corporate culture and government. In a lifetime of work, she has come to discover that despite our multitude of differences, we all struggle with the same issues, especially those of finding and living our life purpose.
According to Houston, our collective story is constantly changing and we need new skills to thrive. “Part of it is we’re at the end of one era and the beginning of the next one. We’re the people of the parentheses. I think our parents and grandparents had expectations which were fulfilled. This isn’t true anymore. This is a whole system transition in which everything is changing. Most people are not prepared for this. Why does the Y generation love Lady Gaga? It’s because she changes every minute. Change is the nature of reality these days.”
Dr. Houston prepares people for the present and future by “having them access many, many capacities and potentials that we all have and rarely use, and by giving them ways of shifting their belief structures into ones that are coherent, genuine and realistic, ones that inspire and motivate. They are simply cooking on more burners with this expansion of body, mind, spirit and being.”
Houston teaches people the skills to engage a larger story and a larger reality allowing them to meet their challenges on a more equal basis instead of being run over by them. “I find all over the world a rise in spiritual need and yearning. I show people how to find the spiritual practices that will awaken in them the spiritual unfolding in their lives.”
In her new seven week virtual course, Awakening to Your Life Purpose, Houston delivers some intensive training. She looks at reality in various ways, one of which is sensory and physical. “I teach people how to activate physical and sensory capacities to a level of acuity they haven’t previously had. They are able to take any intention and run it through these inner potentials so they touch it, feel it, dream it, dance it, paint it, chant it, hear it; they are it. This creates a passion for the possible as well as a set of skills that allows them to manifest things. They are able to learn things quickly. I give them access to the many, many personalities that reside within us.”
This author of 26 books is no stranger to applying these techniques in her own life. She has great resistance to writing. “I really don’t like to write. I think writing is one of the most difficult tasks of all. You’re facing the blank computer, you’re facing the blank page…and you’re hoping prose will emerge and it’s a sense that you have to pull up from yourself all manner of qualities, all manner of selves, really, so it makes sense that the local self is in resistance because it really doesn’t want you to turn the page on your own history. You are off on a desert island of yourself.”
She overcomes her resistance by calling in the archetype of the cook. “I can (write) because I jump ship on local Jean and become the cook where I have no resistance at all. Instead of being phobic, I become a cook. I have no blocks at all. I stir in a mélange of ideas and add the buttery sauce of new associations, and the spice of new ideas; I literally think as a cook.”
Houston feels and her work has borne out, that if we look through the great numbers of persona, or archetypes, we all have within us, we’d develop this other persona in such a way that we could bring the skills and the mood to bear on anything that’s challenging for us.
When we “get beneath the surface of consciousness, we are a teeming source of storying. At the same time, our story is changing. I show people how to engage in the larger story, how to live in it archetypally.”
Now is the time for us to discover our life purpose. “I grew up knowing this was the most important time in history. I grew up knowing we couldn’t continue to live as half light versions of ourselves. It’s because I’ve seen so many people and interacted with so many cultures that I’ve seen the glory and the beauty that everyone contains. What we do profoundly makes a difference in whether we grow or die.”
Dr. Houston is offering a free audio seminar on Three Keys to Discovery and Living Your True Purpose Participants of this 75 minute presentation will learn to:
· Activate their unique gifts to live life at a higher plane of effectiveness, compassion, and joy
· Find meaningful work, have deeper relationships and live with PURPOSE
· Garner the courage to step outside of the daily grind and thrive
· Infuse each “ordinary” moment with purpose and potential
· Create life motivated by gratitude and an abiding zest for life
Participants may also register for Awakening to Your Life Purpose – Houston’s new seven week virtual course where she delves even deeper into the tools for permanent and sustainable life transformation.
Jean Houston’s work has helped countless people transcend ordinary lives and enter mythic ones. For my part, she has inspired me to write new myths, legends and tales that awaken people’s consciousness to grow, learn and heal.
To register for the FREE audio seminar Three Keys to Discovery and Living Your True Purpose or for more information about Dr. Houston’s groundbreaking virtual courses please visit: http://www.DestinyandYou.com
Yuletide and Sisterhood
Yuletide and Sisterhood
by Corinne L. Casazza
A circle of women sits silently in the dark. The center of the circle boasts a Yule log of birch. Three candles – black, white and red adorn it, yet to be lit. Boughs of holly, evergreen and even some mistletoe are festooned around the Yule log. The spicy aroma of the greenery reaches the women’s noses as they sit in anticipation. The Priestess seated in the east, the direction of beginnings, starts to speak – calling in the Goddess.
I attended my first pagan circle in New Hampshire where I’d heard my dear friend Patti Murphy talk about “doing circle at Gail’s.” I knew the circle was closed and I needed permission to attend. Patti told me she went to circle and dreamt of a fiery red-headed woman who gave her the phrase, “Novelty Teachings.” She told Gail her dream the next day and got the reply, “My God, that was Brigid!” Brigid is the Celtic Goddess of fire, the hearth, poetry, childbirth and unity. She is the Goddess celebrated at Imbolc; the very one Gail had been calling in that night. “Novelty Teachings” became the title of Patti’s first book.
After hearing this story, I asked if I could attend and the circle was opened to me. I loved the pageantry, spectacle and ritual of circle. Calling in the Goddess, praising her, and setting intentions. But the best things of all were the women. This was Sisterhood. Something I’d never known before.
In my corporate life all I’d experienced was the back-stabbing cattiness of women. Here was a group of women working together, helping each other, telling each other they looked beautiful and truly basking in each other’s accomplishments. It was amazing; so much so that I dedicated my first novel to this group of women. When I left the east coast, they were the most difficult thing to leave behind.
Yule or Solstice is December 21st. It is a new beginning; the birth of the sun. A time when light returns to the earth and the days become longer. The Pagans used evergreen and holly in their celebrations to represent the promise of life going on; nothing dies completely. The candles on the altar represent the triple Goddess: white being the maiden, red the mother and black for the crone. The Yule log was burned in the fire as an offering to the Goddess and the ashes were given out for protection. Families would place them in their own hearths.
Gail Nickerson was our High Priestess presiding over all our rituals. “Yule is a new beginning,” she explains. “The promise of a new season and life ever-lasting. It’s also a time to set intentions for the coming year, to decide what you want to bring into your life.”
There’s no set ritual; it’s up to the celebrant to choose. In Gail’s circle each woman lit an individual candle from the Yule log and stated aloud her wishes for the coming year. We raised the energy around these intentions and sent them out on Goddess’s ear to the Universe.
Other rituals could include making small gifts for each other from materials found in nature like jellies, incense or ornaments. Bayberry is typically burned as this herb is associated with bringing riches and prosperity into one’s home. “Mistletoe was considered a fertility herb. If someone wanted to conceive, you’d give them a gift of mistletoe. Placing mistletoe under a kissing ball is a fertility rite,” says Nickerson.
Raised protestant, Nickerson started questioning her faith in her late twenties. “I was so intrigued by readings – cards and leaves. Then I read Out on a Limb which introduced reincarnation. The more I learned about it, the more it resonated.”
Nickerson learned meditation and it was life-changing for her. “I did more research and brought people that I cared about together to do ritual. I had a lot of fear to overcome, but it was worth it.” There were originally five women in her circle. “The more we worked together, the more powerful the work became until none of us wanted to do without it.”
They practiced the eight Sabbaths for the turning of the wheel (the change of seasons). “I invited people and the circle grew. It changed my world. Eventually, people broke off and started their own circles and it was really exciting to see it grow and spread,” says Nickerson.
The circle is also used for specific reasons: for healing, for abundance, to celebrate the lives of the women. There are circles for pregnancy, birth, naming circles, and marriage and divorce circles as well. These personalized rituals are Gail’s favorites.
One particularly moving circle was held for a woman prior to brain surgery. “At the end of that circle, I just knew that something had shifted and everything was going to be all right. And it was,” says Nickerson.
Indeed, I, the author, was here in Sedona when our sister went into surgery, and I was shocked to receive an e-mail from her only days afterwards. I assumed someone had sent it for her, but she was up and around and e-mailing!
Gail feels her finest hour was when she “taught a class for women on how to create their own circle. It was very moving to see the understanding on the faces of other women. To know they have an inkling of who they are and what they are capable of. I loved sharing my gift with them.”
There’s also the passing of the torch to the next generation. Nickerson shares circle with her daughter, Morgan, who’s ten. “My daughter loves circle. She comes every time I have one and never wants to miss it. I wish I’d had it when I was her age. There is nothing like being in the midst of a group of powerful women.”
Nickerson advises other woman to create their own circle if it resonates with them. “Don’t be afraid you’ll do it wrong,” she says. “There’s a pattern you can follow. It’s simply setting an intention, celebrating or healing. It’s very powerful to steer the presence of the Goddess among you. I can’t imagine not having that in my life.”
According to Nickerson, circle is “just connecting with the Divine through symbol and ritual to have a conversation with the Universe. Cast your fears aside and give it a try!”
Living On The Edge: The Deep Truth of Our Destiny and Our Fate – By Gregg Braden – Author of Deep Truth
Living On The Edge: The Deep Truth of Our Destiny and Our Fate
By Gregg Braden
Author of Deep Truth
Introduction
During the last years of the Cold War, I had a front row seat as a senior systems designer in the defense industry to one of the most frightening times in the history of the world, and the thinking that led to it. During the 44 years of the most potentially lethal, yet undeclared, war in human history, the super powers of the United States and the former Soviet Union did something that seems unthinkable to any rationally minded person today. They spent the time, energy, and human resources to develop and stockpile somewhere in the neighborhood of 65,000 nuclear weapons—a combined arsenal with the power to microwave the Earth, and everything on it, many times over.
There is a common thread that links the rationale that led to the cold war and many of the crises that face us today. They all stem from a way of thinking that has dominated much of the modern world since the beginning of the scientific era about 300 years ago. They’re based in the false scientific assumptions that suggest we’re somehow separate from the Earth, separate from one another, and that the nature that gives us life is based upon violent competition and survival of the strongest.
Fortunately, new discoveries have revealed that each of these assumptions is absolutely false.
Unfortunately, however, there is a reluctance to reflect such new discoveries in mainstream science, mainstream media, traditional classrooms and conventional textbooks. In other words, we’re still teaching our young people the false assumptions of an obsolete way of thinking based in struggle, competition, and war.
So while we no longer face the nuclear threat that we did in the 1980s, the thinking that made the wars and suffering of the 20th Century and the crises of the 21st Century possible is still in place. This fact is vital to us all right now for one simple reason: The best minds of today tell us clearly that we’re facing the greatest number and magnitude of crises in recorded history, and that if left unresolved, each crisis threatens our very existence!
Our Clear and Present Danger
The journal Scientific American released a special edition (vol. 293, no. 3, September 2005) to inform the world of the critical situation we find ourselves in today. The title, Crossroads for Planet Earth, says it all. The way we solve the simultaneous crises that include:
- our response to climate change
- the unsustainable and growing levels of extreme poverty
- the emergence of new diseases
- the growing shortages of food and fresh drinking water
- the growing chasm between extreme wealth and extreme poverty
- the unsustainable demand for energy
will chart the greatest destiny, or seal the darkest fate, of our global family that is estimated to reach a staggering 8 billion people by 2025.
For the first time in human history the future of our entire species rests upon the choices of a single generation—us—and the choices are being made within a small window of time—now.
The key is that the way we address the crises of our time is based in the way we think of ourselves and the world. Maybe it’s no coincidence that today, after three centuries of using the scientific method to answer the most basic questions about ourselves, the world has found itself facing the greatest crises of war, suffering, and disease in recorded history! Our old ways of thinking—which include believing in the need for competition, our separation from nature, and the Darwinian tenet “let the strongest live and the weakest die” have brought us to the brink of disaster. Clearly, the thinking that led to the war and suffering of the 20th century, including the Cold War, is not the thinking that we want the delicate choices of our survival based upon!
The Question…
How can we possibly know what to choose—what policies to create, what laws to pass, or how to build sustainable economies and bridge the issues that are tearing at the fabric of our relationships and society—until we’ve answered the single question that lies at the very core of our existence. The question is simply this:
Who are we?
As individuals, as families, as nations, and as a combined human civilization, our answer to this deceptively simple question creates the lens through which we see ourselves, our world, and make the choices of our lives, our future, and our survival. When we embrace the discoveries of modern science—the truths of our past on Earth, our planet’s cycles of change, and the role these play in our lives—then we’ll understand what we’re really up against, what our options are, and what choices are available.
The Hope
In recent years, an explosion of new discoveries throughout the sciences has left little doubt that many long-standing views about life, our world, and our bodies have to change. The reason is simple: The ideas are wrong. In light of the new evidence regarding near–ice age civilizations, the false assumptions of human evolution, the origin and role of war in our past, and the undue emphasis on competition in our lives today, we must rethink the most basic scientific beliefs that lie at the core of the decisions we make and the way we live. This is where the new deep truths of science come in.
Deep Truths
During a conversation with Albert Einstein, Nobel Prize–winning physicist Niels Bohr once shared his insight into our deep and mysterious relationship regarding what we think of as “truth.” In clear and eloquent terms he stated “It is the hallmark of any deep truth that its negation is also a deep truth.”18 In other words it’s what Bohr called the “negation” of old scientific assumptions (meaning discoveries that it no longer make sense in the presence of new evidence) that makes the opposite of those assumptions a deep truth. And this is where the news of recent scientific discoveries becomes a proverbial double-edged sword.
The good news is that the new information gives us an updated and presumably more correct way of thinking about things. The downside is that entire paradigms have already been built upon the false assumptions. Everything from the curricula approved by school boards and taught in our classrooms; to the careers of teachers, authors, and academics whose lives have been devoted to teaching the paradigm—along with the political decisions and policies that have been made into law in the highest courts of the land—is based upon what is accepted as “true” in our culture. We may well discover that our beliefs about global warming, the role of competition in global economies, when we choose to save a life, when we choose to take a life and the reasons for war, for example, fall precisely into this category of deep truth.
As we face the greatest number and magnitude of crises in recorded history, the facts revealed by six areas of discovery radically change the way we’ve been led to think about our world and ourselves in the past. They include:
— Deep Truth 1: Our ability to defuse the crises threatening our lives and our world hinges upon our willingness to accept what science is revealing about our origins and history.
— Deep Truth 2: The reluctance of mainstream educational systems to reflect new discoveries, and explore new theories, keeps us stuck in obsolete beliefs that fail to address the greatest crises of human history.
— Deep Truth 3: New discoveries of advanced civilizations dating to near the end of the last ice age provide insights into solving the crises in our time, that our ancestors also faced in theirs.
— Deep Truth 4: A growing body of scientific data from multiple disciplines, gathered using new technology, provides evidence beyond any reasonable doubt that humankind reflects a design put into place at once, rather than a life-form emerging randomly through an evolutionary process over a long period of time.
— Deep Truth 5: More than 400 peer-reviewed studies have concluded that violent competition and war directly contradict our deepest instincts of cooperation and nurturing. In other words, at the core of our truest nature we simply are not “wired” for war!
— Deep Truth 6: The key to addressing the crises threatening our survival lies in building partnerships based upon mutual aid and cooperation to adapt to the changes, rather than in pointing fingers and assigning blame, which makes such vital alliances difficult.
The best science of our time, when it is married to the wisdom of our past, confirms that we still have the ways and means to shift our time of crises into a time of emergence. We can create a new world based upon actionable and sustainable principles based in the core understanding of our deepest truths. The key is simply this: the better we know ourselves, the clearer the choices in our lives become.
No one knows for certain what the future holds. But no matter which challenges await us or which choices we’ll be faced with, one thing is absolutely certain: Knowing who we are and understanding our relationship to one another, as well as to the world beyond, gives us the evolutionary edge to tip the scales of life and balance in our favor. And it all begins with our awareness of the deepest truths of our existence, and how we rely on those truths each day for every choice in our lives.
*** ***
Bio
Gregg Braden is a New York Times best-selling author, a former Senior Computer Systems Designer for Martin Marietta Aerospace, former Computer Geologist for Phillips Petroleum, and the first Technical Operations Manager for Cisco Systems. His book, Deep Truth, releases October 2011.
For over 25 years he has searched high mountain villages, remote monasteries, and forgotten texts to bridge their life-giving secrets with the best science of today. His work has led to the cutting edge books such as The Divine Matrix, The Spontaneous Healing of Belief, Fractal Time, and Deep Truth. Gregg’s work is now published in 17 languages and 33 countries and shows beyond any reasonable doubt that the key to our future lies in the wisdom of our past.
Website: www.greggbraden.com
Breathe America ~ Breathe Sedona
Breathe America ~ Breathe Sedona is a FREE day of Visionary Shamanism and Shamanic Breathwork™ journeying on September 16, at the Sedona Creative Life Center, led by the founder of Shamanic Breathwork™, Linda Star Wolf, and sponsored by Venus Rising Association for Transformation and several Shamanic Breathwork™ practitioners who recently graduated from Venus Rising’s Accelerated Training program at the Sanctuary at Sedona. To register or get more info for this free event, email breathesedona@gmail.com or call 602-605-0082.
What Is Visionary Shamanism? by Linda Star Wolf
Visionary Shamanism and Shamanic Breathwork™ are powerful tools for activating the Imaginal Cells in the human energy field in order to expand our consciousness, become more aware of our inherent power, and take responsibility to do the inner work required if we want to use our power in a good way to create real and lasting change in the world. When there is an activation of consciousness, our evolution is actually accelerated and a quantum leap can be made. We really can’t afford to evolve slowly right now. There are far too few resources for the many people living on the planet. It’s going to take a quantum leap to give birth to a new wave of consciousness and a new paradigm that is ready and primed to enter into our human forms during these highly transformational times.
Visionary Shamanism and Shamanic Breathwork™ activate and integrate ancient shamanic wisdom with the new paradigm downloads that are coming into individuals around the world today. As human beings living in the modern world, we still have much to learn from indigenous teachings in terms of understanding the cycles of nature, living in sacred reciprocity and developing a deep connection with pachamama. The wisdom of the trees, also known as the Standing Ones, the mineral kingdom, the plants, the animals and all our ancestors live within us, in our bones and skin, in-forming us. At this point in our spiritual evolution, we are discovering that we can get our own messages from deep within our DNA, without necessarily having to go to a shaman in remote places of the world. We are awakening our capacity to walk between the worlds and access information from many dimensions. In order to make the evolutionary leap that is required of us at this time we must commit to learning how to open up to our Shaman Within, activate the imaginal cells of the future and then embody our future selves in the present. One of the greatest lessons we are here to learn at this time is that we are the ones we have been waiting for. We are all just beginning to wake up and realize that no one else is going to heal us or heal our planet. This is our sacred work and the sacred activism of this new era.
Visionary Shamanism is not just about going into an altered state and getting a vision. Sometimes when people are drawn to expanded consciousness, whether it is breathwork, plant medicine, or some other form of altered states work, they are looking for visions of light because they are disenchanted and overwhelmed by the intense energies we are all experiencing on Earth during these shamanic times. But getting a higher vision for our planet is just the beginning. While it is incredibly important to think outside of the box and open to our future selves, it is equally important to heal the past so that we can embody these visions. Carl Jung said, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light but by making the darkness conscious.” True spiritual maturity involves not only having a vision, but then also knowing how to bring that light into the darkness and into form. We do that by clearing out the obstacles in our psyches that have kept us small, stuck, disempowered and disconnected from our own bodies, minds and spirits.
If we plant a seed in place where there is not enough sun, water, or good soil, it will not flourish. Due to the level of unconsciousness still very present on Earth at this time, most of us are like seedlings that were planted in the shade, in depleted soil and were not watered enough. Most of us were not given the support found in nature’s ingredients to help us flower. The good news is that when we face the psychological dilemmas of our past, even past lives, and nurture the younger parts of our selves that may have felt threatened, rejected or unloved, we naturally begin to flower. When we do the inner work to remove the blocks to our wholeness, a natural downloading of information happens that allows us to be the change we want to see in the world.
New cutting-edge processes like Visionary Shamanism and Shamanic Breathwork™ help us to embody our visions and to become the flower of life. All we really need is the sacred space and healing power of the breath to access these natural altered states, expand our consciousness and discover that the answers we are desperately seeking already live in our own hearts and psyches. It’s all within us and will unfold naturally if we are willing to take the time to do what is most important at this time: remove the blocks to remembering who we really are! We are the ones we have been waiting for and this is our time. Stop what you’re doing and Breathe, America!
Linda Star Wolf is the founder of Venus Rising Association for Transformation, Venus Rising University, the Shamanic Breathwork Process, the Shamanic Ministers’ Global Network and the author of several books on shamanism. Her next book, Visionary Shamanism: Activating the Imaginal Cells of the Human Energy Field, will be released in December 2011 by Inner Traditions / Bear & Company. Star Wolf will return to the Sanctuary at Sedona in December to teach Shamanic Egyptian Mystery School. To learn more please visit: www.shamanicbreathwork.org
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