Sacred Feminine and Masculine

On the becoming indigenous programme the subject of the sacred feminine and masculine showed up multiple times in one form or another. The masculine and feminine dynamic is a central theme of many peoples lives. In the modern world hierarchy and patriarchy are defining forces a fault line if you will that runs through many cultures. The inequality, division and misunderstanding that springs from these forces can be a powerful trigger. In the context of indigeneity comparisons of how more traditional peoples relate the masculine and feminine in their cultures has proved an interesting inquiry.

A caveat before I go further. It is too simplistic to equate the sacred masculine and feminine with physical gender. In my view conversations on this subject can too easily slip into this frame and in our group that also happened on occasion. Nevertheless, the marriage or balance between these two dominant archetypes is a significant defining motif of our times and worthy of much reflection and transformation. For me I try to remember that both archetypes live in me. To other is not helpful.

Bayo Akomalfe spoke about everything being entangled, nothing needs fixing. There is too much emphasis on othering. It is too simplistic to externalise the imbalance, wound or issue outside of oneself. Thus bringing the binary into focus, the separation between masculine and feminine qualities, characteristics or features then becomes ever more real. One being stronger, better, more powerful, effective and in control than the other. When the tensions, mystery, awkwardness are present - what do we do then? Bayo invites in this edge, let's the tensions dwell and move amongst us, he engages it and listens deeply. This does not imply fixing or solving. Instead it suggested seeing, revealing, recognising and acknowledging. It's in the paradox of simultaneously holding opposites, such as the sacred masculine and feminine, that something new can emerge. It need not be a battle or a contest. No winner is required.

Charles Eisenstein put forward the idea that to heal ourselves we also need to heal the other. What this represents is a new unifying story for health, for economics, for life itself. Charles brings in the paradigm of the gift. Can we drop the binary of masculine and feminine? This is very controversial because so much trauma lies underneath these archetypes. Mutuality needs to breathe. What is being grieved when the relationship between the masculine and feminine appears in the room? What can and needs to be praised also?

Loretta Afraid of Bear suggested the feminine needs new forms to witness and to speak into. Remember there is no other, there is no outside. There is no them and us. Notice all the compassion and beauty around. Notice your own patterns when triggered. What emotions show up? Can this emotional response be expanded into compassion? What is wanting to hide, to be unseen? With Loretta we are back to grief and praise.

Mac Macartney shared that the ancient stone circles that are dotted around the British Isles are a reminder of times gone by where peoples practice ceremonies to awaken the dragon. The circles representing the eye of the dragon opening and waking up again. The legend of George slaying the dragon some believe is a reference to the goddess being subdued and defeated. From that moment god cultures became dominant. And now we live through times when goddess energies need to be woken placed alongside god energies.

Balance as Martin Shaw might say, 'comes when the king and queen marry the  land'. What this implies is restoring balance so each of us can become a the river to our people and land becomes fertile and regenerative. When the sacred feminine and masculine are aligned and in deep relationship with one another no one dominants the other. They both shine in their own beauty.

I find it very difficult to do this subject any kind of true justice. It is stark and subtle all at the same time. This theme has streaked through history, culture and day-to-day life for thousands of years. The relationship between masculine and feminine is unlikely to shift over-night, or will it? Who knows? What is known is the subjugation of the goddess, the sacred feminine, has been happening for thousands of years and yet there is evidence that it was not always like this. The impact of this denial, power over of the feminine, has detrimental and harmful effects on everyone and everything. Maybe at the heart of the dis-ease many people, more than human beings and the planet experiences' lies this imbalance between these two primal qualities.

Sundance - Ceremony and Ritual

(Notes from a one week course taught at Schumacher College from 9 - 13 Nov 2015, teachers Loretta Afraid of Bear, Linda Delorimer and Tim 'Mac' Macartney.)

Ceremony and Ritual
We are always in ceremony. Life is a ceremony. The ancestors are around and they are listening. They want to help us, if only we would to ask. Nothing about ceremony is a contest. Be prepared each day of your life to get involved and to be challenged. As in life, ceremony has beautiful aspects and hard aspects. You don't have to make excuses for anything. You are part of the ceremony whether you go inside the inipi (Sweat Lodge) or not.

The first grandfather was rock. In the beginning there were four gods - Sun, Air, Earth, Rock - in the four directions. This is known as four to the fourth power. The rock grandfathers know everything. If you are in a place of huge challenge you can say to them, 'It is too hard for me, I am going to give this pain, question, issue back to you because I do not know what to do with it.' Our time on Earth is short. Make this time count. Feed the grandfathers in ceremony. Ask the grandfathers for help and healing. Take care of yourselves in this most critical and challenging of times, where many are governed by convenience and commerce and not those activities that are regenerate and life bringing. Be humble and respectful of the natural ways. YOU can make things happen. The holiest time is between 1.30 - 3.00am in the morning. It is the most holiest and magical time for an inipi.

In 1883 native peoples in North America were prevented by law to practise their ceremonies. This pushed these ways underground until the law was relaxed in 1978 and repealed in 1994. It has only been 21 years that Inipi and other ceremonies life the Sundance have been legally and openly practised again.

There are certain times in the year to observe sacred practises. These are similar if not the same for all indigenous traditional peoples. Such as, new moon and full moon, or the solstices' and equinoxes. The purpose of the Inipi at 1am is to activate our dreams. Woman on their moon do not enter the lodge because they are already in a powerful and activated state. We all gather the following morning and share our dreams.

Lakota/Oglala Creation Story
Indigenous peoples often practise an oral tradition in the telling of stories and history. Loretta Afraid of Bear comes from a long lineage of ancestors who do just the same when telling their creation story. So it was for us on the first evening, we sat and heard the story to begin all stories.

We call the Creator, movement. That movement brought about where we are today. We are all star people. Women bring everything. Women bring life. Women are the co-creators. It is important to be in sync with spirit. Put spirit first. Place life at the centre. Every action has consequences. There are no rules and yet we seek balance and to bring balance back.

Take care of family. Take care of the old people. Take care of the children.

There is a spiritual connection to bring us in sync. We don't have hierarchy. Women own everything. There's a balance that comes with that. Every race has original instruction. Native Americans have their instructions. Do the indigenous peoples of the British Isles have a memory of their instructions?

People are going to start waking up. Who is responsible for taking care of the Earth? The Lakota people say that in the mountains of Asia and Africa some of this knowledge is being kept.

White Buffalo Calf Woman brought Lakota the sacred pipe. She was black, red, yellow and then finally white. First came the black people in the west, then the red people in the north, followed by the yellow people in the east and finally the white people in the south. The common thread between them all is spirituality. What is it within our spirituality's that we can all link together?

There is a place where we all are the same colour, we are one race, the human race, and our palms remind us we are one, as all palms no matter what your heritage are the same colour. This is a powerful way to be reminded of our commonality. This also links us back to Pat McCabe and the five fingered ones, as the human race is known. By showing our palms we are all one.

Let's Dream
When in ceremony it is important to be attentive to everything going on around you. The next morning after the Inipi we sat in circle and shared our experiences of our night and day dreams. Two different themes arose from the group sharing. The first was 'Water', which appeared strongly in three people's dreams. It was suggested they walk to the river Dart near by and bring water back to our alter for us to be humble before. The second theme was the sacred feminine and masculine. Again this dynamic came up in many sharings that day.

We were reminded that transformation is hard. That we are going to feel things strongly and yet not to be sombre about it. Life, the work, ceremony is all about relationship. It's about building relationship. This is the cosmic flow and we don't want to interrupt the movement.

During ceremony, particularly Sundance, the highest offering we can make to Spirit is our flesh. Woman give from the top of their arms. Men from their chests. When you are making a decision your body knows the answer. The giving of blood and flesh is particular to Sundance. In the UK, Martin Shaw strongly recommends not to cut flesh or give blood as it communicates to the spirits in a way we may not wish to encounter. Menstrual blood giving is a different matter again. When in ceremony everything is in conversation. Be attentive. Listen. And most of all be kind.

The Lakota have seven sacred ceremonies.

• Keeping the Soul
• Sweat Lodge - Inipi
• Vision Quest
• Sun Dance
• Making Relatives
• Puberty Ceremony
• Throwing of the Ball

We stand in sacred space all the time. The idea is when in sacred space we all hold one another and we move about with complete freedom. This is how it should be. The themes that arise within the group during ceremony alert us to where our fears are and what is open to transformation. It is the twin path. The intertwining of the practical, down to earth and grounded part of life with the loftier spiritual, imaginal and invisible part of life. Where the profane and the sacred meet. We are all walking the twin path, each of us finding our own balance and relationship between the two aspects of life. When in ceremony the spirits teach us songs and provide us with other messages to bring back to our communities, to our village. Remember ultimately there is nothing to fear in our world, not even death.

Inipi - The Sweat Lodge
I    - you
Ni - energy inside our bodies
Pi  - all of us together as one

Our bodies do not forget how to heal themselves. Inside the inipi what one person feels we all feel. Our ni recognises each others ni. When someone has stress or fear we can smell it. Don't feed the negative energy by saying bad things. When things are 'outwards', negative or out of balance it is not so much what happens as how we respond to what happens. We have to help one another. Healing, ceremonies and rituals are coming together. The Lakota do not have a word for compromise. To find balance does not mean giving up your values, your needs or your alignment. Duality and wholeness co-exist. That is the way. That is the twin path. And that is paradox. It all comes together by being in relationship. Participating in the whole. Bringing what you bring and contributing this to your community. It is about seeking to listen to the whole and by being good to one another.

Overwhelm, Discomfort and Pain
The ancestors are waiting for us to let them help us. They are always there, ready and willing. We are being asked to lean in to the void, to the abyss, to our fears, discomforts and pain. It can be overwhelming. It can be a barrage of feelings, memories, images, nightmares and all kind of difficulties and challenges. Remember it is ok. Our mind creates the abyss and our hearts cross it. The way through is to feel it all and be with it. Listen to the message trying to be heard. What is the truth wanting to be spoken. The river beneath the river.

Discomfort and pain is a hard place to inhabit. Native people have been through excruciating challenges from previous attempts at genocide and removal from their land, sacred sites and ceremonies. This is on-going. Native peoples understand the discomfort.

Indigenous peoples ask in such times: what is available? are all the elements of earth, air, water and fire in play? Go to safe and holy places. When you feel unseen go to places where you feel witnessed.  Ask, what are the protocols? what is allowable? What allows this sacred space? What do you want to bring into it? Ask your elders for permission to do this? Ask, what are you trying to get out of this? What is it you need to receive from the ceremony? Is it a guidebook, teachings or witnessing. And finally ask yourself, how will this be good for my people? If you can answer these questions you will have something tangible.

Elders are the wisdom keepers of tradition.
Children are the future.
Adults are the bridge.

On the twin path it is essential to attend to both strands - the practical/domestic and the holy/sacred. I commit to attending to craft and using my hands to make things in 2016. I commit to learning sacred song, playing my drum, journeying in pilgrimage the sacred sites of the British Isles and to being in circle.

Shadow Work I

Shadow work.

The storms have been rolling in.
Wind and rain flexing their muscles
Reminding me who's the boss.
Some call it destruction
Others say it's clearance,
Which ever way it's change.

When I spend too long in a place 

Where my shadow is not acknowledged or given space. 

My warrior will eventually show up. 

My warrior has arrived.

And she is guarding the door to my soul.

Protecting me.

I've been feeling provoked, prodded and goaded
Misjudged and out of sorts. 

That's my story.
What's yours?

I need to speak my truth.

That's hard to do when hurt, judged or overwhelmed.

That's hard to do when my shadow is not welcomed.

It's not safe.

Anger is activating.

Anger makes me aware of what's not ok.

Anger makes me attend to the shit going on.

Anger protects me and guards my boundaries.

Anger says STOP!

Anger says no.

Anger protects and empowers me to act.

Anger is my activism.

Anger needs to move, like the wind.

Anger needs a voice, it needs to go some place.

Anger needs to be heard.

Anger is not to be held onto or stored.

Anger needs to flow like tears.

My anger needs to get up, bellow and go.

So I can show,

My vulnerability.

When anger can pass through

I can let go and breathe again
Unfettered and
Free

Five Fingered Ones - Many Ways of Knowing

Five Fingered Ones
In North America the native peoples have a cosmology that includes their medicine wheel. Life is placed at the centre and all decisions are passed through the wheel. If an action or decision does not bring life it does not fit their cosmology.

Woman Stands Shining - Pat McCabe - our visiting teacher (Schumacher College, 26 October - 6 November 2015) was born into the Dine Nation and adopted by Lakota Nation. Pat said to us; 

You were born into beauty

As Beauty

For a joyful life

That is the truth

You have got to

Have the eyes to see it.

The five-fingered ones - human beings - are shifting the components of life in a way that we must heed what we are doing. We are wounding each other through our differences. Separation has to end. The Wiwa people's say these actions could never have happening in the world if they did not first start in our hearts. Some say the masculine energy within us is attempting to over power the feminine energy. The masculine spirit and feminine soul need to come back into balance. The womb of the woman is for some related to the womb of the cosmos. Nothing new is going to happen, no new creation will be birthed until the polarities of masculine and feminine are aligned, healed and reconciled. We have to make a radical new choice collectively as a global human community and run like hell for leather with this new third way.

We need to become indigenous to Mother Earth. This is what it means to place life at the centre. That is a challenge for everybody in the hoop of life. The hoop of life is comprised of every single member of the living community. The integrity of the hoop is being tested. We need to start tending and mending the hoop of life.

We are at a crossroads

Ask yourself - do you want your life?

Reclaim your life.

Proclaim to all, shout it like you mean it;

I WANT MY LIFE

Ask yourself, what amazing thing is going to happen today?

Ask yourself, what sacred practice did your peoples use to connect themselves to life?

No one is a mistake

No one is without purpose

Spirit will tell you where and who you are

Paradoxically our intellects will not

It is like expecting one key to open every door

The five fingered ones have fallen asleep

We need to remember

We need to awaken

The plan is Life

Place life at the centre

It's real simple

Life makes life

There are many ways to the bottom of the valley

There is more than one trail

Know the trail where you live

You've got to want your life

I can't tell you what's up in your land

Most people die at 25 and get buried at 75

Not me and not you!

Indigenous practice removes the vail

They lift the enchantment

It is said, Coyote threw the gossamer vail

Over the heads of men to bring despair

Coyote expected us to brush off the vail

But we didn't

Now Coyote is working out how to remove the vail.

Many Ways of Knowing
As the five-fingered ones we have more than one way to meet the world we live in. This broad spectrum of ways of knowing is a the hallmark of indigeny. Indigenous people have learnt and know how to live in a balanced and harmonious way in one place. They have done so for thousands of years in some places. To create a relationship with a place you have got to have a means of communicating two ways. Firstly each person has to proclaim themselves. You have to want your life and say so with vitality and meaning. We each have a name by which the spirits know us. The spirits can't do jack until you ask. Give it a go. Interactive with life. But remember do not quest for a vision unless you mean it.

Indigenous ways require a commitment and a discipline to place yourself before the truth frequently. This can be done using many different methods.
Meditation being one
Create an alter or sacred space inside and outside
Rest your body
Rest your mind
Be conscious of what you feed yourself with stories, books, videos, media, movies
Spend time in nature
Be in circle
Have buddies, a tribe, a clan that is interdependent to one another
Pay attention and observe what's happening around you
Intentionally step away from human systems (cities, technology, machines, ideas)
Slowdown
Find ritual and ceremonies for this moments in life
That you want to acknowledge and observe
Grieve and Praise

For example, when you arrive somewhere new, call out and tell the place of your arrival, lay down offerings, such as tobacco, fruit, nuts. Mother Earths trying to call her children home. Arrival rituals pay respect to this calling.

The land in the UK is very lively. The ancestors speak of a history between Mother Earth and the five fingered ones. Mother earth remembers this lineage. The Uk is like an enormous Oak tree that grew over time to be so big full of ceremonies. There came a moment when the Oak tree was cut and hidden. Now what remains are the roots from this old Oak tree and the roots are still there waiting for us to connect back to them again.

We need remember that we each have a divine connection within us that cannot be effected by anything or anyone, including ourselves. When we get off track and out of alignment we are brought back to the hogan, to the womb and the songs are sung to us again so that original beauty can return. Balance and harmony are reconstituted.

Remember it is all choice and free will. No one or no-thing can make you do anything you do not willing want to do. As we move into a deeper into the surrender our frequency changes. Interactions with the natural world recognise our depth of practice. Why surrender? Our minds make a problem out of everything and seek to come up with solutions. We get enraptured by stories of fame and riches. The thriving life way does not focus on what's in it for me mentality, the take approach to life because in the thriving life way the intention is We. This is referred to as the move from ego to eco.

Becoming Indigenous
There are some who will scoff at the idea of 'becoming indigenous' and others will deride the idea of creating a learning programme with this title. You will find some arguing for non-indigenous to be in one place and to leave the indigenous peoples alone. For white folks 'becoming indigenous' is radical and as a programme title it is controversial. As Colin Campbell would say it has heat from the conflict, but heat need not be a bad thing. Pat McCabe reminded us that it is everyones birth right to have a relationship with Mother Earth. No one has the right to get in-between you and that. Loretta Afraid of Bear looked into the eyes of each one of us and said, 'You are Indigenous'. Irrespective of the division there are Indigenous Medicine peoples willing to enter a conversation on 'Becoming Indigenous' and defend every persons right to seek this relatedness to land and ancestors.

Cultural appropriation, toxic mimics and  inauthenticity are a whole other conversation. One that is necessary and valid but not to be conflated with someone's ability, willingness or birth right to rebuild and connect to their land and peoples.

When we don't put life at the centre and when we cannot sit in the mystery we resort to something else. That something else is conformity so as to avoid the discomfort. The challenge is not to be drawn into the binary. Hold the paradox. wait to see what can then emerge within the paradoxical space.

In the divergence and controversy around 'Becoming Indigenous' hold both the favourable and supportive views alongside those less supportive and encouraging.Acknowledge the extremes and polarities present. The paradox is to honour the diversity without deferring and allowing separation to occur. Stay connected, stay in the circle, keep the hoop strong. No one life form is more special or more important than another. All life is needed to ensure the hoop is intact, in health and in strength.

Navigating the territory

Getting lost is admirable. Feeling lost is uncomfortable. Banging into and up against unknown forces can be painful. I pick myself up shaken and bruised and retreat to care for myself and my words. 'What happened there?', I ask myself. 'Who knows and yet stay true and follow your own star home, not someone else's.'

Navigating the tracks requires diligence, discipline and dedication.

The cycle between violence and beauty, happiness and suffering, between grief and praise is going strong. The call for another story is ringing loud in my ears. Tears, many tears are being shed. Blood is flowing. Explosions, bombs, violence continues to rain. Unintended consequences are being felt and reverberating through the ether. Is this the way it will be ... Que Sera Sera? When misplaced nationalism soars will our stadiums, schools and churches resound to the words of William Blake, 'I will not cease from mental fight, nor shall my sword sleep'.

I feel fog descending around me
Clouding the scene
I'm lost
No longer knowing anything
Am I alone?
Is anyone out there?

A good friend tells me this is a neptune moment.
Enter the transcendent 'bird' third.

I feel the potential of a fresh breeze sweep through me offering a break in the fog and an opening to follow. I stand at the meeting point. The place where paradox dwells. The tension of holding opposites can be unbearable and yet if I hold the polarities long enough can there be a breakthrough? The bird third that transcends us from the tension towards something new.

The planet neptune was discovered in 1846. Let's be clear here, Neptune has always been there. The difference to those shaped by modernity is that something does not appear and exist until it is seen and named. So it was for Neptune in 1846. And now our astrologers incorporating this planet into our consciousness say Neptune, my gift du jour, represents 'dreams, illusion, abstract thought and the mysterious. Spirituality is important to this planet, and how we harness that energy for our personal betterment. Neptune invites us to let its energy wash over us and to use a meditative state to gain insights and heightened awareness. Poetry, music and dance are among the trance-like activities which this planet favours.'

As I am bounced and battered by events and forces Neptune visits me inn the guise of a William Stafford poem and the healing balm of a peace Mantra - Sarvesham Svastir Bhavatu.

I am grateful to Robert Bly for bringing the words of William Stafford to my door. I feel the energy and presence of raven; the darkness around us is deep my friend.

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider--
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

 William Staffords poem it titled 'A Ritual To Read To Each Other'. It could be these words are intended to be read between two or more people. Or it could mean to be read to the different parts of oneself, or even between you and a more than human being. It's in the in between places that differences can be most felt and the thread that connects all things can be seen. This connection is spoken about by many of the mystical poets. It's the invisible relational line that flows between everything ultimately rendering us inseparable, lest we forget, it's important that awake people be awake.

Bringing Health Down to Earth

(Notes from a short course at Schumacher College 19 - 23 October 2015 with Bayo Akomalafe and EJ Clement-Akomalafe)

Many of us have lost touch with our bodies. Our physical bodies have become distant to us. There was a time when I was like this, when I was a head disconnected from the intelligence of my body. My mind can lie to me, my body never lies. If only I can listen.

What happens when we choose to open ourselves up again to all that our bodies offer and say to us? What happens when we choose to open ourselves up to the aliveness of the universe?

These questions invite us to rethink our relationship to sickness and health. We have always had access to the indigenous knowledge our physical bodies and our relationship to the bigger body (life) has to offer, but for too long we have been ignoring it. Now we have to find our way back. Counter intuitively in this moment the more we get lost the more we find our way.

Eco-metaphysically we need to re-energise what health means to us.

Unlike how socially we are cultured to behave, grief and suffering are not a private matter. They are a public event. Grief is not the enemy to be repressed. Pain is not to be stamped out or medicated away as is the mode of much of allopathic medicine. Wherever you are is the most sacred place you can be.

There is no outside.
There is no sacred mountain you have to climb.
How can we reimagine and come back into relationship with the multiple?
Life is an entire ecosystem of which we are a part.
It is all intra-active.
By slowing down, deeply listening and observing we can reconfigure our gaze.
It is not about solutions.
There is only an openness and awareness.
In the noticing we are losing our 'I' ness.
The universe is much more playful that we believe.
In a world that is entangled there is no outside.
Everything is connected to everything else.
Everything is dancing with everything else.
Let's throw a better party.
Let's reveal our own innate wisdom.
And come up with our own meanings of health.
Thus we lose the story that we are singular.
A full picture is not possible.
We lose ourselves into groundlessness.
There is beauty in incompleteness.
Where we reach a point of unsayability we reach the point of vulnerability.
We meet our bodies at the inaudible gasp.
Move away from predetermined grace.
AWKWARD IS BEAUTIFUL
At our height of confusion is when we have it all together.

Quilting is the shared collective of everyones listening.

Quilting Prompt 1: What is the living story of your body?

The unsayable wants to be known, it was to be seen and heard.
Our lives are becoming entangled with one another.
We are being provoked to make space for something else.
What wants to happen cannot be represented in words in the first instance.
Our bodies are speaking for us at this moment.

The Bones of Ritual

(Notes from a short course taught by Colin Campbell and Lucy Hinton at Schumacher College from 28 September - 2 October 2015)

Kabir said at the core of every human is a yearning to return to divine grace within ourselves. This homecoming it at the heart of ritual, ceremonial practices and cosmologies. There are techniques that are designed to open up a portal for us to make this journey to to return to our hearts. A vigil - going into the wilderness in a vulnerable way is one such practice. Strength is found in vulnerability.

Martin Shaw refers to the ecstatic moment when the wild begins to infuse us as wild land dreaming. When we enter the woods we enter the dream tangle. Stay there long enough, some say at least 3 days is needed without food and shelter,and we can drop the conditions of modern life and allow ourselves to be reordered internally. We may at this point get dreamt by the land. Elders remind us how important it is to commune with the wild. If we try to avoid, deny or overcoming nature we are in big trouble.

A vigil is an opportunity to call back and remember the exiled parts of ourselves. From the moment of severance when we are smudged out each of us steps into a threshold moment. Intent is essential as it sets us up for a conscious act with symbolism behind it. Ritual is a conscious act which contains the intention to form a bridge between the visible and invisible. In so doing we are enacting an ancient and sacred reciprocity.

Indigenous people place life at the centre. They say all life has it's own special consciousness. In this way the divine, the universe, knows itself through each form of consciousness coming into being. In Southern Africa during traditional times if you wanted to understand the psyche of a human you had to wander out into the wilderness. Everything contained in the wild is incorporated in the cosmology. Human behaviour is a mimic of the wild.   

On vigil we offer our lives to be eaten. To be eaten by the cold, the dark, the midges, our fears and our discomforts. The reward is the belonging. The commitment of offering ourselves up to everything brings it's own reward. A vigil is not a place to prove anything to anyone including ourselves. On vigil we place ourselves in a state of deep prayer or communion. There is no need to go far. No one is being asked to go beyond the bounds of their own capacities. Each person goes out in a state of giving. Give up all your comforts and distractions. The key to vigil is our stance. 

• Take a clear intention - deep presence and authenticity - state your intent or question.
• Find a threshold - to cross into sacred space place two sticks, stones or make a circle. Be smudged as a cleansing and as a blessing - and then step out.
• Observe the three taboos - no food, no shelter and no company.
• Experiment with suspending disbelief. Remarkable things can happen, follow what needs to be followed, listen to your intuition.
• Return back across the threshold.
• Tell your story and have it mirrored back to you.

Final Bones Reading by Colin Campbell (3 October 2015)

     

1. Chaos - wait - things are brewing. 

Dynamic waiting

Like Vigil

Be present

We feel all over the place

Discombobulated

Things are happenings

Wait

Watch

Seeds are being planted

How long?

Be n a stance f receptive presence

We don't know how long

We have activated a lot

Let it be

Let it settle

For at least the next week avoid making any major decisions

Nurture yourself

Take time out if you can

Focus on being rather than doing

What is really important?

Don't put an action plan together.

Ask - I Where is meaning?

How can orientate myself to that?

How can I orientate myself to who I am?

      2. Blue Crane - crane with 2 tics

Warning - be careful of careless action

Inaction is better than action

Waiting and stillness is better than moving

Stance of stillness and presence

REST

You have already found what you seek

TRUST

Between times

Liminal and chaotic

It doesn't seem to have form and yet the imaginal cells exist

2 = conflict

3 = resolution

Transcendent moment

A third element is needed for the trinity

Sometimes

*Artwork: Stephanie Law

Sometimes a Wild God by Tom Hirons

Sometimes a wild god comes to the table.
He is awkward and does not know the ways
Of porcelain, of fork and mustard and silver.
His voice makes vinegar from wine.
When the wild god arrives at the door,
You will probably fear him.
He reminds you of something dark
That you might have dreamt,
Or the secret you do not wish to be shared.

He will not ring the doorbell;
Instead he scrapes with his fingers
Leaving blood on the paintwork,
Though primroses grow
In circles round his feet.

You do not want to let him in.
You are very busy.
It is late, or early, and besides…
You cannot look at him straight
Because he makes you want to cry.

The dog barks.
The wild god smiles,
Holds out his hand.
The dog licks his wounds
And leads him inside.

The wild god stands in your kitchen.
Ivy is taking over your sideboard;
Mistletoe has moved into the lampshades
And wrens have begun to sing
An old song in the mouth of your kettle.

‘I haven’t much,’ you say
And give him the worst of your food.
He sits at the table, bleeding.
He coughs up foxes.
There are otters in his eyes.

When your wife calls down,
You close the door and
Tell her it’s fine.
You will not let her see
The strange guest at your table.

The wild god asks for whiskey
And you pour a glass for him,
Then a glass for yourself.
Three snakes are beginning to nest
In your voicebox. You cough.

Oh, limitless space.
Oh, eternal mystery.
Oh, endless cycles of death and birth.
Oh, miracle of life.
Oh, the wondrous dance of it all.

You cough again,
Expectorate the snakes and
Water down the whiskey,
Wondering how you got so old
And where your passion went.

The wild god reaches into a bag
Made of moles and nightingale-skin.
He pulls out a two-reeded pipe,
Raises an eyebrow
And all the birds begin to sing.

The fox leaps into your eyes.
Otters rush from the darkness.
The snakes pour through your body.
Your dog howls and upstairs
Your wife both exhalts and weeps at once.

The wild god dances with your dog.
You dance with the sparrows.
A white stag pulls up a stool
And bellows hymns to enchantments.
A pelican leaps from chair to chair.

In the distance, warriors pour from their tombs.
Ancient gold grows like grass in the fields.
Everyone dreams the words to long-forgotten songs.
The hills echo and the grey stones ring
With laughter and madness and pain.

In the middle of the dance,
The house takes off from the ground.
Clouds climb through the windows;
Lightning pounds its fists on the table.
The moon leans in through the window.

The wild god points to your side.
You are bleeding heavily.
You have been bleeding for a long time,
Possibly since you were born.
There is a bear in the wound.

‘Why did you leave me to die?’
Asks the wild god and you say:
‘I was busy surviving.
The shops were all closed;
I didn’t know how. I’m sorry.’

Listen to them:

The fox in your neck and
The snakes in your arms and
The wren and the sparrow and the deer…
The great un-nameable beasts
In your liver and your kidneys and your heart…

There is a symphony of howling.
A cacophony of dissent.
The wild god nods his head and
You wake on the floor holding a knife,
A bottle and a handful of black fur.

Your dog is asleep on the table.
Your wife is stirring, far above.
Your cheeks are wet with tears;
Your mouth aches from laughter or shouting.
A black bear is sitting by the fire.

Sometimes a wild god comes to the table.
He is awkward and does not know the ways
Of porcelain, of fork and mustard and silver.
His voice makes vinegar from wine
And brings the dead to life.

Tom Hirons' book of poetry' is a work of art I can totally recommend. 
You can purchase a hardcopy here: http://shop.hedgespoken.org/products/sometimes-a-wild-god

Coming Home to Community, Coming Home to Self

To quote Sobonfu Some, 'there is something important about community and that is why we keep coming back to it.'

My week has been underpinned by a conversation, or lack of conversation about community. I work in an organisation that offers learning experiences within a community. The beauty of community is it can not be forced. It is organic. It is invitational. And everyone moves through and accepts that invitation in their own way, in relation to their own needs. Community is not synonymous with conformity. This week I have seen how community untangles itself when people are invited into experiences that do not serve them or do not meet their needs. The result is disentanglement and a community fraying at the edges and fragmenting. Again I repeat, fraying and fragments is not synonymous with failing, rather it simply highlights or indicates places in which attention is needed to be focused. Tending and mending not fighting or flighting. It's all about perspective here and what story you see to be told.

I pause a moment to notice what I am experiencing and go back to the words of Sobonfu Some, who says, 'In my tradition community is the guiding light behind any being, any person, that helps that person or being achieve their life purpose. Without a community an individual is lost without a place to contribute, without a place where a light can be shone upon them.'

This week my community has carried on in it's practices, ways, structures whilst we notice anomalies, disturbances and interruptions. It's all feedback into the system to use a language of science. People are voting with their feet, electing to be somewhere else, anywhere else but in the place they have been invited. In a community that practices open space this is how it should be. From that perspective all is well. And yet it isn't. The disturbance could potentially put at risk a new venture, a new attempt to create community and a place of learning. It is also causing hurt to some individuals as well as confusion to others. How to be and how to respond in these circumstances is challenging. The invitation from our teachers is to track what is happening and to surrender to what is happening. Letting go into this confusion feels very counter intuitive to me. When all around feels unfocused, ungrounded, without meaning or purpose or a centre the desire to step in and reconfigure some semblance of order is strong. And yet I am learning that force and imposition is not the way either.

What is the gesture, the way to be in these times of confusion and uncertainty, of grief and hurt?
What can I offer?
A loving heart .
A willingness to participate .
A commitment to continue listening and track what is unfolding.
Is this enough I ask?
In my discomfort I recognise I do not have any answers except to know I cannot do this alone.
I need a community to be in community.
I am filled with hireath, saudade, longing and yearning for a HEALTHY community to see me, to see one another so that everyone has a place to contribute and shine.

I pause a moment and return to the words of Sobonfu Some, 'Community basically goes into the real nitty gritty of our human need. It is at the core of our human existence. Upon community becomes relationships. We all know healthy relationships are at the heart of every human life. Without a healthy relationship we will continue to do therapy until we comeback and die again and nothing is going to change. What we are yearning for is basically a place that will give us that home. Not just a physical home. A lot of us have homes and we even have alarms in them. Sometimes we go home and the alarm is still going off and we are looking in the closet in case someone got in there. The home we are really longing for is not something that is outside somewhere. The homes that we are looking for is actually in the heart, in the soul of other people out there. This notion that you cannot go back home is true and it is true the notion that you can go home. ' [PARADOX]

When faced with this paradox, all is well, all is not well, what to do then? How do go home when your community is dysfunctional to some degree (frayed and fragmenting) or not there even? Or maybe I am being too harsh and focusing on the fraying and judging it. Maybe what I need to do is practice gratitude and to bring appreciation of the beauty and joy that is present alongside the grief and chaos.

Sobonfu Some says, 'You can go home to the heart of a people who hold you in, or who have always held a space for you. As long as someone has a space in their heart for you you will always go home. This is why in the Dagara tradition they will say, either we are all going to go home or no one goes home. And that is why people who are homeless help us look at our own homelessness. It's not because we live in a home that we don't feel homeless. We still feel that longing for someone to recognise who we are. This is beyond the need for other people to make us be what they want us to be to make them feel comfortable. It's people who really know there is a spirit in this person. That there is a spirit that has come with a purpose whose gift needs to be seen so they can be freed. IF WE'RE NOT HERE WITH GIFT THEN WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE? The power of a community is to find that gift within the community were we belong. The gift that our community must receive. That is why we are continuously creating clubs. That is why we are continuously looking for one more degree. Hoping that it is now going to give us permission to go out and live our purpose instead of making a living. In a context [a community] where your gifts are valued what you bring is exactly what the community needs. You don't need to make a living. All you need to do is be yourself, live your purpose. That is part of the reason why the government doesn't like artists very much, because we don't conform. Artists will continue to do what they need to do - thank god. If artists don't create art we will all go crazy. Art is what keeps us sane. How do we then create this [community] space? 

Sobonfu Some leaves me there, hanging upside down, with the words 'We'll find out'. At this I smile because she seems to have the humility to recognise that this is where we all find ourselves in our collective earth community today. In a place, stepping into the uncertainty, unknown space of finding out. And for me she points to ways of being ... creative, artistic, non-conformist ways of being to keep myself and my community sane.

I am left at the end of this week with a few words as guides in a dark place.

Trust
Simplicity
Surrender
Tracking

Cosmology of Connection

Notes from a short course taught by Drew Dellinger at Schumacher College from 21 - 25 September 2015.

We are considering the Universe Story as proposed by the theologian Father Thomas Berry. He suggests humanity, particularly in the Western world, needs to upgrade its cosmology to regain our sense of connectedness to all things. As E.O.Wilson says, 'To know where you are is to know who you are.' We are standing on a planet shooting through space and it's time we started acting like it. Joseph Campbell said the next myth will need to embrace the whole planet. The Universe Story is an attempt to do just that.

The modern world sits in-between stories. We haven't had a cosmology since the 13th century, unless you count the rise of scientism,

Where do we find the threads of a new story? Through deep listening, reconnection, grief work, creativity ... and the list could go on. Even in our genius we can barely imagine what is to come. It's our imaginal cells that hold the vision.

I am a Russian tailor
I was born from the south of a whale travelling the Chinese seas
A star once followed me for a whole year
Not once did it leave my side
In the mornings I eat 10 juicy Spanish oranges that I grew
Myself on the Steppes of Georgia

I am a Russian tailer
By night I make jackets only for American mice
By day I am a jukebox maker, some call them MP3's
The name keeps changing
I don't much care for names and labels

I am a Russian tailor
With no other name than the sound of wind
One day I will fulfil my dreams
When I build the most magnificent boat
That flies away to magical unseen places

Strangers ask me, 'why?'
And I answer, 'how?'
I smile a rainbow of love and butterflies until
We embrace and become friends
Some say I move too fast
But that's because I am Russian!
Seriously people what did you expect.

Haiku

one day
we will talk
as herons flap their wings

leaves like palms
strike upwards to blue skies
tides follow the moon

please flow
into the
unknown unseen places

patience is the
gift of the black panther
do not look away

Mythology, Cosmology and Story (Martin Shaw)
Mythologists are interested in cosmology, about stories where the earth is speaking through us - the dream tangle. Health is to be founding paradoxes, in the wild land dreaming. A story is more than a map. It does not give us the abc. Story is alive. It is a living wild beast.It is time to move from a shameful darkness to a fruitful darkness. We need to annihilate all our defences against receiving beauty. To restructure and reorientate ourselves in this way requires a lot of whittling away, being opened up even until death comes knocking on our door. A grace from beyond can only enter when everything else has gone.

Who is going to show up for the 'becoming indigenous' tribe?

Stories are psycho-active. They are like stepping into a waking dream. Secret information is waiting to be revealed if the conditions are just right.

WHAT DID YOU DO WHEN YOU KNEW?
Connection and relationship is about trust
You are therefore I am
Martin Buber 'I Thou'
Everything is thou
Everything is living
Life is sacred

Division is transformed into diversity
Divison equals power over and conquering the other
Diversity is about participation and celebration

We connect through love, compassion, service
Friendship, generosity, nurturing and care
Spirituality is all about relationship
It is not about belief

Matter is inside life and consciousness
How do we respond to paradox?
What happens in conflict?
When online sacrifices to another

The mysterious collaboration of life feeding life
Mutuality and reciprocity
Difference is complementary
Polarity is complimentary

It is natural to feel sorrow, sadness at difficult times
And yet we cannot control nature
Can we transform human consciousness?
Live with less attachment
Reward is in the action
Let go of aspiration
Enjoy the way
Know you are special
Everything is special
Stop judging
Be Natural
Be yourself
And don't compare

Kaliedescope

In the myriad kaleidoscope of all the seen and unseen
Can we ever know what truly brings us all into oneness
A brightly coloured toucan soars above
Earthworms keep munching in their darkened moist lair
A peacock struts its stuff feathers proudly on display
Camels kneel front legs then back as humans disembark
The mid-day sun scorches parched ground
As water fall and tumbles below into the lagoon
Monk-jack deer nestle in a glade to sleep
Microbes gather, divide and regenerate
Algae spawn and spread
Oceans swell as the moon circles our blue planet
Hydrogen collides with oxygen
Granite slowly dissolves, erodes and moves cross the surface of rock
Seasons change
Comets blaze and burn their way through the universe
Black holes spiral drawing everything near
Acorns sprout shoots and grow towards the light
The sound of children playing carries down the valley
Rivers flow to the source
Are these connections seen or unseen
Know or unknowable
A beautiful mystery to behold

To thine own self be true, then you can't be false to any men.
With your will activated and fear released our love blossomed and was ready to go into the world.
We are taking the threads and weaving it into expression that can be seen, felt, inspire and impact others. We are born into the gift of life, a body as manifestation and expression of the cosmos. We can't repay that gift in a transactional way. There is no way we can repay the sun for its generosity. And yet there is a way. The way to repay the gift is to be fruitful.

Going back to the circle or wheel of the four directions the cosmology of air, fire, water and earth - things move from the least manifest to the most manifest then disintegrate and start all over again. A endless cycle of death, birth, life, death, birth, life and on and on.

We can find new human meaning by connecting ourselves to this cosmological order. Traditional music is often polyrhythmic and in participating it creates interdependence between the players. there is a subjective beat, a hidden rhythm if you will, a groove, a participatory consciousness. That is what we are now seeking to hear and to be a part of. The universal groove.

In the universal groove everyone plays a part and everyone is welcome. To do that we all need to follow our own unique path, our own bliss within the collective groove. In order to make this change we need to own up to denial and do our grief work. Within the linear, take culture that dominates in the west sits a deep well of sadness and many of us find ourselves at the bottom of this well combing the hair of the dragons asleep on our knees. It is time for the dragons to go.

It doesn't matter if others do not have the same awareness. Devote yourself to a cause that is meaningful too you. There are many to chose from. Shake of the disfunctionality. Awaken your will. Activate the pendulum swinging between being and doing. This is called creativity. Take your creativity seriously. Your life is a poem.

NOW IS THE TIME ... to step up.
I am sitting here and I get a huge blank.
My time now is preoccupied with 'other'.
My generative adult is seeking the wise sage and the wild one
To be with what's needed now and what's coming soon - our son.
Now is the time to turn to home, to our son and welcome him into his manifestation.
Now is the time to prepare ourselves, to be mindful of his coming.
Now is the time to be present to the becoming indigenous programme,
The group, the teachers, the college and my place with in all of that.
Now is the time to BALANCE participation and stillness
So I can feel the creativity of birth, death and transition.
Now is the time for TRANSFORMATION.
It's liminal. It's deeply mysterious and I don't know.
Now is the time to learn to be and to do in liminal transformational energy.
Now is the time to invoke and activate my imagination.
To LET GO of fears no longer serving me or others.
If not now WHEN?
Now is the time to step up onto the field of PLAY.

Four Nations of Ancestors

Notes from a short course taught by Colin Campbell at Schumacher College form 14-18 September 2015.

In indigenous cultures you will often find a major symbol known as the medicine wheel or the four directions. It approximates to the compass of north, south, east and west. From these four points it is possible to create some of the oldest symbols we know, such as the circle and the cross.

The circle reminds us of the reciprocity and connectedness of all things. It is the representation of creation. The cross has been appropriated in more recent history by Christianity.

The motif of four is also a strong motif in many cosmologies. There are 4 seasons, 4 elements (air, fire, water and earth), 4 directions and Jung introduced the 4 archetypes (warrior, magician, sovereign and lover). Why 4 occurs this was is a mystery.

The map of the four directions can be used to create a framework of ancestors, through which we can find ourselves. This is not of the past or history. It is about being in dynamic relationship here and now.

We begin in the West - This is our lineage ancestors, our genetic or blood line. Who is our lineage? How do our lineage relationships work? Modern science has confirmed what traditional cultures have always known, which is genetics plays some part in forming who we are. Our existence is contained within a paradox. Something science does not like, or want to accept, although quantum science is pointing towards an expanding creation story that includes the mythic, the hold of two polarities. It is not an 'either or' duality. Rather an 'and both' understanding of life and the mystery. In this way we are not seeking certainty or coherence. The One can only know itself by making a reflection of itself.

Tides go in and tides go out. The moon waxes and wanes becoming full and becoming new. Now you see it and now you don't. The pendulum swings one way until it reaches it's maximum point before swinging back the other. At the maximum you get the poles. But what connects them? CJ Jung introduce the idea of the transcendent third. Life is a spectrum of polarities. They related to one another through their otherness. The meeting of opposites results in friction, which creates heat, as heat rises it coalesces and this brings the opportunity for unity. In other words, as consciousness emerges through conflict it unifies though the transcendent third. This is also known as the alchemical principle. In this way the quality of the conflict relates to the quality of the reunification.

The above diagram relates the four directions to this unifying effect. If we take the male elements of Air and Fire, they represent progress, spirit, growth and an upward motion or rising of temperatures resulting in Heat. Eventually they meet the feminine elements of Water and Earth which begins a downward motion thus falling temperatures and the soul descends flowing the cycle round again.

[WEST]  Lineage of Ancestors - Air - are those that went before, our parents and grandparents. In the matrix of our blood family an awful lot of who we are can be understood. Family constellations created by Bert Hellinger follows this lineage by offering an alternative therapeutic method drawing on elements of family systems therapy, existential phenomenology and Zulu attitudes to family. The idea is trauma, anxieties, complexes, memories and experiences can be passed down the family line in ways that effect us today, but we may not know from where the traumas come.

Rituals that deal with psychologies and complexes are therefore dealing with the ancestors of air. Breath is given to us by our ancestors, they breath through us. We are the physical form our ancestors carrying on characteristics of blood relatives. Much of this lineage descending down the line can be worked through by the living.

Rituals are tools or practices to engage with the world we live in. We learn most by creating a dynamic interactive space, also known as Play. The Tarot begins with the number 0 and the character of the Fool. As babies we naturally interact dynamically. Through provocation and response relationships emerge and in that way we learn. There is great beauty in possessing a playful nature. It's poetic and poets hold the paradox with no need or desire for resolution. Wilderness is in constant dynamic interaction - a form of play - serious play maybe, and yet Play nevertheless. Play has the quality of allurement. This is the invitation to interact and relationships form and develop. If you look you will notice that allurement is everywhere.

Be playful.

Open windows  and doors in a room and hope the breeze will come in. Chant, sing, make music, drum, dance and hopefully we will meet the divine and we will begin a relationship.

In animus cultures everything has life. Thereof everything can be allured and aroused to be present and to be in relationship. The spirit relates to another and joy is born invoking our souls. Our spirits want transcendence. This is from where our hype-maculine culture comes wanting more, bigger, out and above. Our souls want belonging, presence and immersion. The creative principles inherent where conflict exists.

Our present day rituals, our modern indigent has to be dynamic and contain movement. In this way we don't have to re-create rituals exactly as they were practiced in the past. They can be adapted to our modern contexts.

Where there is trauma or a blockage energy can no longer flow and cycle round as nature and the divine intended. When in ritual we make offerings. be mindful of your context. What is a meaningful offering? it could be gold, chocolate, wine, beer, water. Next when you make an invocation you are bringing animation, dynamism, activating a meridian thus accessing and freeing up the flow of energy again. By freeing up energy we can heal our bodies.

Rituals are repeated practices unlike ceremonies which are a one off remarking a transition or event. The more ritual is repeated the stronger it becomes. Sacred ritual carries an intent to connect with the non-visible. When participating in a lineage ritual call in your blood ancestors staring with your mothers family and then your fathers family. Calling them in to be present is the invocation. Then make your offering and make your request or offer your gratitude for some event in your like. Tears are the best offering when making a request. Tell your ancestors your troubles and ask them for help and guidance in resolving these issues. Dawn is the most powerful time to practice such rituals. If the issue is huge then do your ritual before dawn. If you wish to make a ritual of gratitude then offer this at dusk.

This ritual is also called a Patla. Place a cloth over your shoulders, knell down with your head over your knees and between your invocation calling in your ancestors clap your hands twice at the end make your offering and then sing. If the issue is connected with the home an family then patla to your mother's lineage inside the house. If your issue is connected to work, money, reputation then pal to your father's lineage and do so in the garden.

Do not invoke a relative until 2 years after their passing. If you want to get grand you can add in a feast element to the ritual. Always set two extra places at the table for your grandmother and grandfather. Always be open with those you invite to the feast that they are attending a ritual. It
is not a party.

[NORTH] Ancestral Lineage of Those Who Lived on the Land Where You Live - Fire

Some say it takes 10 years to completely belong to a place. By then the ancestors of that land come through you in the food you have been eating grown on that land. In the modern world we now regularly eat food grown or produced in many different lands. What effect this has is unknown. It is not necessarily bad. We are living in a time of breakdown, breakthrough and emergence. Take the metaphor of the caterpillar becoming a butterfly. It is the imaginal cells that contain the vision of the butterfly. What are the imaginal cells of our time? Our indigenous past is cut off from many of us. the books are behind locked doors. Our young civilisations does not have much in terms of maps. Our futures will be dreamt by the present and the past.

Now we have to track our future indigeny with intent. What is it we are looking for? All of nature contains medicine. Animals, plants, rivers, sacred places bring potency, power, medicine that is restorative to humans seeking healing and balance. When traditional cultures would hunt they would first invoke the spirit of the animal they were seeking, using the practice of trance dancing the spirit of the animal is allured to the hunters.

Be Daring

If we allow our indigenous self to become a vessel for spirit to manifest and speak through us then the imaginal cells could become embodied, magical and overtly present to our communities.  Invoking the dream tangle. However, for most of us we push our imaginal cells to one side n the interests of normality, conformity an acceptance in the modern world. And yet there is method in our madness. How can we let our creativity come through and be a vessel for our imaginal cells? How do we bring the mythos present again? When we are a culture and people driven by our intellect and reason this can be difficult. There is nothing inherently wrong with our left-brain reasoning as long as we maintain a connection with our periphery. There are riches at the edges. At the transitions points between land and water, air and fire we can find abundance, diversity and new life.

The periphery is also known as the shadow. If we don't recognise and acknowledge the shadow it will appear in unexpected ways. Shadow spirits want to be part of conscious expression. they will grab our attention. Therefore do not separate the dark. How do we bring the shadow into expression? Here ritual is about bringing what is beyond taboo into view. Jung wrote about modern arrogance denying possession states and reclassifying them as complexes. Possession by spirits still exists.

The types of ritual that relate to ancestors of the soil or fire include pilgrimage. Contemporaries it for yourself to make it relevant for the times in which you live. Travel to lands that your ancestors lived and bring back soil and/or other offerings to the land you now live in. In essence we need to re-dream our relationship to land and the places we live to connect ourselves to those that lived there before us.

[EAST] Ancestral Lineage of Far Off Places - Water

When we drink water we pick up the spirits and energy of those who it has passed through before us. Water and the hydrological cycle connect lands, people, everything. This is similar to the morphic resonance theory developed by Rupert Sheldrake. Water spirits travel fast and can emerge in many places simultaneously. This is where the saying 'don't tell a secret by a river' comes from, for it will travel and be heard by many.

Water moves things around. Commitment is one of the qualities of water because it is uncompromisingly connected to the force of gravity. The ultimate destination of water is the ocean. The ocean represents baseline consciousness, the enlightened self and unified consciousness. It is where we came forenamed where we will return to. Water will get to where it needs to go, as will all beings.

Water purifies by helping us let go and get back to our fundamental nature. Water also has to do with the coherence of community. The circle represents community, water and the human psyche or soul. Solute sin water and it lives in our blood. The elements of Air and Water are polarities on the horizontal axis. Water is connection, it plugs us into things and it heats into air which is vision and understanding, which then cells back into water and round we go.

Water tells us where we are and where everything is at. The knowledge of who and where we are resides in our blood. Nothing in an animate world happens by accident. Everything has intent. Whatever polarity or direction you are in the opposite is also present.

[SOUTH] Ancestral Lineage of Animate Nature or Land - Earth

This is about all the animating forces of the natural world which we principally interact with through sacred sites.

This can be done by pilgrimage or vigil.

Many of us are not consciously aware of the separation and disconnection within and without resulting from the industrial world view. Many of us no longer acknowledge or respect sacred sites.

What do I remember out of the dark?

When we vigil we render ourselves vulnerable to the place. In so doing the place seeps into us. We get dreamt by the land. We lay ourselves down. Preparation is key. To communicate with the divine, with the invisible we have to create a natural resonance to be seen. The spirits of nature function at a lower temperature that the seen world. Somehow we need to lower our temperature too. This is why many sacred sites feel cool. Think of Notre Dame. Coolness is experienced internally. When we vigil we need to cool ourselves. This means avoiding behaviours that raise our temperature, such as, sex, menstruation, conflicts and particular foods.

If we go back 13.8 billion years to the point of singularity we would find the temperatures were cool. Then there was a sudden temperature inversion resulting in an explosion of light. Infinite heat is infinite creativity and infinite cold is infinite potential.

A ritual recipe for lineage to earth and sacred sites:

Select a sacred site that you resonate with.
Through visioning and dreaming ask the site how to prepare and what it wants from you.
Pilgrimage to this site on foot as best you can.
Ask your question, present your issue at the site.
Listen
Present your gratitude and make offerings of thanks and appreciation.

Conclusion

If we are going to track our modern indigeny we need to consider 5 things on our journey.

1. We have to know our story, our cosmology.
2. We need to dance to embody the states and expressions that need to move through us.
3. We need to practice sacred rituals to connect us to the unseen and bigger body.
4. We need to resonate and proclaim ourselves through music and song.
5. We need to converse with the divine, the sacred through our own form of prayer.

As the modern world moves into a state of anarchic disintegration, meltdown and breakdown prove all that is new and emergent through experience. The new cosmology, the new story, new rituals, new indigent and traditions is a relational process of emergence and unfolding.

Find ways to express and hold the paradoxes around you in a meaningful way. Experiment, be playful, be dynamic, be daring, pilgrimage, create and practice ritual, listen and track everything that has power and resonance. Do not push too quickly for meaning or understanding. Stay in the overwhelm. Sit in the discomfort. Stay present. Everything changes. All passes through eventually.

Tracking means paying attention. Track your passions. Track what you love.

Becoming Indigenous - Tracking the story

Notes from a course taught by Colin Campbell (14-18 September 2015) at Schumacher College

There is part of us that is young and part of us that is old. The young part of us is post-industrial. The old part is primal. The young has created the LAW. The political and legal structures that now govern us. It defines how we now function and live. Law is based on property ownership. The industrial story says we humans use the natural world as a resource. Our Law apportions up the these resources between us. The old relates to the natural world as a shared existence. This is the LORE. The old part of us knows how to listen and be in relationship with the LORE where everything is connected to everything else.

Part of our natural emergence is to explore SEPARATION. We sit with deep conundrums. The Old Ways cannot be because so much has changed. Going back is not an option. When we use the term indigenous what are we saying? Is it a reference to looking back? Remembering how it was is about taking stock. And yet who we were is no how we are going to be. What indigenous means is a dynamic opportunity. It is an unknown. Is it even appropriate to invoke what was our indigenous nature?

When we speak to those living more traditional or indigenous ways they say, 'When you look at yourself the question is;

How do you  live best?
What does it look like?
Who do you go to when problems don't seem to be solvable?'

In Southern African tribes the first port of call is the maternal Uncle, the paternal Uncle, then grandparents and then the ancestors.

Where do we go when we sit with the problems we face now?

The Young part of us in Western cultures goes to our logical selves, the practical ways.

The Old part of us of us goes to a collective notion of culture, the ancestors, those possibly not on the physical plane any longer. This is very difficult for the Western mind to fathom or relate to. The Western mind tend stop apply its individualistic view. We lose much from the original traditional ways. A lot of what we are seeing is not what it was!

The conditions and contexts we now face are totally new.
We are all in the dark. The old traditional ones and the young industrial ones.

Darkness is providing the conditions for transformation.

We finds ourselves responding to feelings.
We are following a calling.
We are seeing the tensions.
We are open to exploration.

Conflict is dynamic.
It's an alchemical process.
Remember Heat TRANSFORMS.

The essence of the new exists. To get to it we have to remove that which hides it. Thereby revealing the flame. It's no surprise we find ourselves living through experiences and times filled with conflict, we see attraction and feel this as heat. All of which presents the conditions for transformation and change.

Conflict is not therefore in and of itself negative. Conflict is a part of the creative principle.

What do we do now?

WE TRACK THE NEW INTO BEING

Traditional 'old' people say the basis of tracking is to follow the story. We have to track the emergent story. It's a multidimensional process involving our spiritual selves, intuitive selves and our sense.

The Sand people would say, first invoke the spirit of the animal within yourself. [TLOU]

What does it mean to invoke the spirit of my indigenousness?
Invocation has practices.
The spirit will tell you what to do.
What do you do when tracks disappear?
You change channels.
Move from spirit, to intuition, to your senses.
Keep moving until you can pick up the track again and continue to follow the story.

Tracks will come and go.

When in the mystery we don't always know rationally what is happening and yet we will know when we know in all our other ways of being, doing and knowing.

For Colin Campbell his wild indigenousness relates to wild unmanaged lands. I am on the tracks of my own wild lands.

Excentuate, regenerate and relate to the wilds within and the wilds without.

To begin the tracking we invite everyones voices to be heard. A spiralling inwards for our group. Time for the practice of Council.

Coming Home to An Animate World

The Listener
Heron appears and I am drawn in, captivated
Heron invites stillness by the flowing river
Heron brings me joy

Track and observe the patterns
You don't have to know the meaning
The answer is never the answer
What's really interesting is the Mystery

Coming home is coming alive
Resistance and judgement show up
The conditioning to be right
Leads to the suffocation of judgement
Like chains tying my hands together
Constricting my ability to touch the world

Being lost is an achievement
Where any direction leads to surprise
Disorientation shifts my perceptions
Leading to the possibility of the liminal,
the imaginal, inviting in dream states

The Westernised mind emphasise thinking and sensing
Feeling and imagination are dangerous
to the establishment, they don't like it!

If we fall in love with the earth community
We can discover our souls, our unique and precious gifts.
Our greatest strength is our greatest weakness
we are the only life form we know
who is not capable of naturally occupying
it's own niche in the world.

Through our souls we connect with the rest of life
Through our souls we become relational and dynamic beings
Our bodies are always in conversation whether
We are conscious or not
Everyones place in the world matters
I matter
You matter
We all matter
Mary says, 'Let the soft animal of our bodies
love what it loves'

Let your body feel before you mind thinks
Feel yourself touched as well as touching
Seen as well as seeing
Heard as well as hearing
Let your animal self out to play, to be, to relate
Be a visionary artisan of cultural change
Antonio says, 'What have you done to the garden entrusted to you?'

When big emotions get stirred up
Are they ours?
Are they our ancestors?
Are they transpersonal?
Are we tapping into a bigger well of grief?
Grief resonates from our longing to participate
When we honour the dead we enliven the world

Ceremony allows us to participate in the world
As if it mattered

What do the bones say?

We gathered as a near complete group on the Sunday evening to arrive together and meet one another in circle and then around fire. Colin described Becoming Indigenous as a 'connection and remembering of the wild'. This brought me some peace and an alignment with my earlier feelings about the programme. The following morning we walked up to the Elmhirst Centre via the 2000 year old Yew tree to honour and acknowledge this ancient ancestor among us, to mark our presence and the beginnings of our journey together. Colin Campbell held a reading of the Bones. This ritual, a first for me, is from the African continent. Colin has memorised over 600 or more poems out of a pantheon of 6000+. These poems are visionary and metaphoric insights into the communications from the patterns the bones have made in their fallen state.

In Colin's tradition diviners hear the lore. The lore seldom gives easy answers. It will be cryptic, metaphoric and paradoxical. In the opposing forces between the modern and traditional ways a heat is created. The key is holding this heat between the ambiguity and antagonistic forces. Undertaking a reading of the bones invokes the ancestors, human and more than human. We thus click into the greater nature of things. The divining comes from a collective culture. An individual universe culture like we find in the West is ontologically different to a collective universe or culture.  Collective culture or consciousness is mythic, whereas an individual consciousness is cognitive. The latter contains the ego. The modern disease of self consciousness inhibits our capacity and freedom of expression. The ego believes the self is vulnerable. Alternatively in a healthy collective culture the notion of separation does not exist. Therefore the need for personal protection does not exist, it makes no sense. Differentiation is a modern phenomenon.

Much of the modern disease comes from the awareness of attrition, heat and tension arising within us  from the old ancient ways and the new individual ways coming up against one another. If we understand that randomness does not exist, that we don't live in a hapless universe born from a chance event. Rather everything has a place and everything is related to everything else, then multiplicity exists. It doesn't matter what we look at, be it leaves blowing on the forest floor, the entrails of an animal we come across or tea leaves in the bottom of a cup - whatever it is - the universes is constantly communicating and conversing. It's up to us to discern what is meaningful at anytime. It's up to us to tune in and listen. And it is up to us to decide how and in what way to respond.

We are pick up information all the time in many ways and we are constantly giving out signals. This creates a relational process. Humans are sense-making animals. It is our way to interpret sense and meaning from the information, conversations and communications we encounter.

Divination is the art of applying meaning in what we encounter - in what we see.

From the Bones that morning Colin shared with us two poems.

1. Tearing Apart - 'The Time Between'

The separation of one from another creates space for something else to move in. This is about fundamental change.

Q: How much of what you cherish of whey are can you pull apart anklet go, leave and move on?

This is the opposite of accumulation. This is about emptying out. The fear of loss this invokes is deep. Change for many of us is associated with loss.

Invitation: To trust no matter how much the disillusionment that what is needed will remain and sustain.

2. Cutting - 'Severe and Separate'

Invitation: leave behind what is cut.

This is a transition phase. A period of letting go. Like the child being separated forth mother. It may appear brutal and yet it is vitally necessary to survival. This is the paradox experienced during this time. Now we have to find another way. Evolutionarily we are programmed to find another way. Like the caterpillar turning into the butterfly. That which was known is cut off and taken away.

Q: How do we find meaning, find a navigational tool in this process?

Like the baby leaving the mother who looses the umbilical cord. The 'How' is in recognising the process of change and being with the happening in itself. Remembering that which sustains us will find another way. That which does not sustain us no longer serves and has to go. This is terrifying. The fundamental change happening has little interest in the terror. We have to hold the crisis of loss alongside the process of change.

The degree to which we allow the dissolution to occur is what will serve is now. Try to reduce and or remove resistance. And remember we are not in control of the cutting. The cutting happening is done to us. It's how we respond and react whilst the cutting is happening that counts. Ironically, paradoxically everything we have accumulated up to this pointing our lives does not serves us now.

The two poems of Tearing Apart and Cutting relate to Death.

Sit and be with these poems.

Let them begin the dismemberment and dissolution process and allow the fall as if I am the fool setting out of my journey.