Jai, groundlessness!

Coming out of a funk of groundlessness yesterday, I was struck by the way in which this state of "I have no sense of ground beneath my feet" can contribute to the awakening of my deeper Self. The sages tell us that sitting in the discomfort of groundlessness and simply acknowledging it works wonders, but I've not had much opportunity lately. Things have generally been going so well that it was difficult to summon up a real sensation of discomfort - much less groundlessness. 

To be clear - what I'm talking about it that very real awareness of the impermanence of everything - including yourself. It often comes up during periods of major transition - like death. It reminds us of something our egos usually manage to ignore, with varying degrees of bliss: Namely that we are not the constant and unchanging "thing" that we might like to believe that we are. That everything we see and smell and touch and love will pass away, as will we. 

You can tell when the groundlessness has hit, because of the welling sense of existential nausea that begins to flow from your center, adding a jaundiced tint to everything you encounter. Now remember: This is what you've been hoping for! Keep that in mind. Now go and sit in this discomfort. Watch it. Observe how your ego writhes in agony. See the monkey mind bounce off the walls and scream. All is well.

Once you reach that place of the calm inner smile, begin to feed the discomfort like a fire. Let it burn all the parts of your perceived self away. This makes room for your true Self to emerge. 

Resting in the inner smile, your true Self takes on the cloak of permanence and plays the game of forgetting and becomes the little self. 

No beginning. No end. All is One.

namaste

LumensGate coming of age

Over eighteen years ago, Keter and I - along with Elise, Sam, Tara and a few other folks - founded Lumensgate. The idea was to have a venue for effective transformative ritual. We started at Brushwood Folklore Center near Sherman, NY. Primitive camping, co-ed showers and rained out rituals were the norm - along with the occasional seasonal camper showing up during our ritual cycle and freaking out our participants. We were too small - less than 100 people - to reserve the whole space for our private use and so after six (?) years we moved to Four Quarters Nature Sanctuary, near Artimas, PN. The primitive camping, outdoor showers and rained out rituals continued. But we now had shelters to eat under and Holly began creating the beginnings of a meal plan. 

And it was all worth it. Each year we created a ritual cycle on a theme that we received from the LG gestalt. We re-united the Virgin and the Whore; the God and the Goddess; the magickal and the mundane. We opened our hearts to Community; connected with the Divine; and, retraced our ancestor's steps through the Dreamtime. As a gestalt, LumensGate has grown and matured over the years, taking many of its participants with it. 

The heart of the event was - and is - the heartfire that is lit at the opening ritual and extinguished at the closing. This fire is where the three worlds come together and the One Center opens to allow us to do the work we come there to do. 

Three years ago, with many of our staff and participants no longer so willing and/or able to handle sleeping on the ground and getting rained on for several days at a time, we made our second move from Four Quarters to Hope Springs Institute - near Peebles, OH. This move brought with it many changes. Our costs skyrocketed. (Moving from primitive camping to a retreat center will do that.) Our attendance, already small, dropped off. Many of the folks who had thought of LumensGate as a magickal or neo-pagan gathering, didn't like the shift to a more expensive venue. That first year at Hope Springs, we were not sure if we would be going forward - but by the end of that event it was quite clear that we were. 

Hope Springs has been great. It feels like this is the first location for LumensGate that is a real "fit" for the work we are doing. Their sense of maintaining sacred space and stewarding the land reflects our own perspectives. In many ways, it's like finally coming home. And this partnership has helped to support my own sense of LumensGate's continued growth and momentum. We've even discussed the possibility of adding additional "editions" of LumensGate in different parts of the country, using the spiritual tech we develop for the one at Hope Springs. Very exciting! But the best thing that has come out of the past several years is the maturation and integration of our planning staff. Keter and I are the only ones from the original crew, but Donna has been with us for 16 years and Patricia has been on staff for 9 years. Over the past few years we've joked that between the four of us we have a single brain. This has been a powerful experience for me - never having been much of a team player. I have had the pleasure, honour and challenge of serving with a group of unique and amazing peers. 

Last week, Donna - our Registration Goddess for the past 16 years or so - invited Patricia and I for lunch. It was a great lunch in her lovely house, with her dog Gandolf keeping us company. There she informed us that she is leaving in September for Montana and would no longer be able to serve on the staff for LumensGate. This was hard to accept, but it was clear in her voice that this was coming from the root of her being. All we could do was honour her choice and be prepared to grieve when she leaves. 

Just yesterday we had our first planning staff meeting for LG '09. At the top of the agenda was "staff transitions." I was thinking that this would be a discussion of who we would be asking to join staff and how they would be brought onboard. Instead, we found out that Keter too will be leaving LG. We knew that she was planning to move to San Francisco, but there had been talk about her flying back for staff meetings. Now it is clear that this won't happen either. It was an emotional and difficult meeting for all of us. 

I feel that both Keter and Donna are doing what they need to do to be true to their inner voices. I respect that - even as I grieve their loss. We will not be able to replace either of them, and there will two big holes in the inner landscape of LG for a long time to come. 

Now the question is: Where do we go from here? It would almost be easier to let go of LumenGate - to allow it to dissolve. But that would not be true to MY inner voice. So I find myself in a difficult place. I feel the need, not only to continue, but to grow LumensGate - to establish additional events that use the rituals and exercises we create for the main one. But in order to do that, we need funds - resources to invest in promoting LumensGate to a much broader marketplace. LumensGate is the premier ritual event in North America, and there are many people who are hungry for what we have to offer, but hardly anyone knows about it. 

I realize that we cannot make this happen with the resources we currently have. We need people who understand promotional work and who can help take us to this next level. So I am putting this dream out to Spirit. And humbly asking for help.

namaste

$pirituality - the conflict between money and awakening

There is a long-standing conflict in the minds of many - if not most - modern people between spirituality and money. As a working shaman and a Sheya mentor and initiator, this is an issue I have had to work with for over twenty years now - and I'm still trying to get to the bottom of it. 

There are several pieces to this puzzle. One is the way that money has come to symbolize all things material, when spirituality is so often seen as the antithesis of materialism. Another is the idea that spiritual instruction should be freely given and available to all, regardless of the sacrifices of those who offer it. 

I have come to a place in my own journey where I find these two suggestions absurd. Well grounded spirituality is about integrating the whole. As long as we keep any part of the whole outside of us and paint it with the brush of shadow, we cannot be truly liberated. It is only when we realize that WE are the ones who give money - and anything else - its perceived value, that we are set free of that projection, to use use money as a simple means of storing and directing energy. As for the belief that spiritual instruct

ion should be freely given and available to all, how are we to offer instruction is we don't set good examples. Would you take diet advice from an obese nutritionist? Marital advice from a counselor who have been divorced several times? Why would you take advice on how to live a full and happy life from someone who is neither? 

This is not to say that money is any indicator of health, happiness or fulfillment. In many cases, it has no bearing at all. However, being free of the stigmatized shadows we project onto money IS a good indicator of these things. As is the ability to meet ones responsibilities in an effective manner. 

It is my considered opinion - at least at the moment - that any system of spiritual growth that does not maintain a healthy balance of giving and receiving, is not offering its membership a viable role-model. I realize that I am a dyed in the wool non-dualist and this may have some bearing on what I consider to be effective and healthy spirituality - but there you have it.

namaste

awakening the teacher

For many years I have been rolling around the idea of "teacher" in my head - trying to figure out just what we mean by this word. 

As language is painted onto the essential concepts that we try to communicate, a veil is placed between the person who expresses the concept and the one who receives that expression. And yet, without that veil, would we even be able to communicate as well as we can? 

This particular concept has been calling my attention more lately as I've been designing a training program for Sheya mentors. Even there - in the choice of the word "mentor" instead of "teacher" - is a further attempt to communicate some essential variation on the concept, which is probably lost in the process. For me - though I still haven't quite gotten "teacher" firmly delineated - "mentor" is one who supports and assists the student through a process which they have voluntarily taken on. It is less concerned with passing on specific information than it is with helping the student through the various pitfalls and avalanches of the chosen path. 

This realization about "mentor" reminds me of the confusion arising from "teacher". There are teachers who stand at the head of a class and shove information into children's heads. There are teachers who sit in caves and spout nonsense to awaken their occasional visitors. There are teachers who have no contact at all with their students, but create patterns of words and images that continue to instruct others for generations after their own death. 

With this wide spectrum of usage, we really need to be clear what we mean when we say, "this is my teacher." It could mean anything from "I take a French class from this person" to "This person has awoken my soul." 

This leads to the question of what is my role when I accept someone as my student. If I believe that I'm being asked to help them awaken their soul and they think I'm just going to spoon-feed them some intellectual "mysteries" that will allow them to live a more interesting life - we have a problem. It is my responsibility to communicate the essential nature of the service I intend to provide to any potential student - along with any boundaries, expectations and goals pertaining to the relationship. 

Over the past 20 years or so that I have served as a teacher (with varying degrees of competence and incompetence) I have come to the conclusion that there is nothing that prepares you for the task other than actually doing it. If a person is open to learning from their students, they gradually improve their teaching. This has been my experience and it continues to awaken my capacity to teach at deeper levels. I would say that I have learned considerably more since becoming a teacher than I knew when I started. And the process continues!

namaste

random thoughts for today

It occurs to me that many of the apparently discrete things that I'm interested in all overlap in some way. Essentially, Chinese medicine/QiGong bils down to the same map as shamanism. Tone and vibration play a part in each. The whole of Sheya is rising from the same structure - integrating tools and techniques from all of them. It's all the same thing expressed in different ways. At a superficial level, it's an obvious and simplistic statement, however, at a deeper level it is also a reflection of the nature of all those pieces.

Not all teachers are appropriate for every student. I can tell if a teacher has something of value for me to learn by observing who he is and how he lives his life. If he is the sort of person that I would like to be, then I might be able to learn something from him. The person I am now - and the person I want to become - are different from who I was and wanted to be when I was twenty. Therefore, the teachers I look to now would have been invisible to me then. 

Context is everything - a warm coat is bliss to someone in a snowstorm, but on a sunny beach it is repulsive. The same can be said for much else in our world of samsara. Even though we may "realize" that it is all illusion - that there is no difference - the experience of matter and energy as "real" is remarkably persistent. Is this really just a matter of perception? Or is the very nature of our context such that, in order for us to experience, we take on this dual existence? 

Terma - there are hidden teachings everywhere. Not only in the rocks and caves of the Himalayas, but in the everyday experience of each and every human being. However, one of the keys to accessing these "hidden" teachings seems to be a process of opening doorways in certain objects - like special rocks - and exploring what we find there, with the intention of discovering such teachings. What can the nature of this key tell us about the fundamental nature of our relationship with the world around us? Is this the meta-teaching behind the terma?

seed stone sits in the palm of my hand

opening doors beyond mind

I close my eyes and contemplate

endless sky

LumensGate '08

Friday night I spent all night - and I do mean ALLLL night - around the heartfire, dancing, drumming and trancing out with the rest of the wonderful folks at LumensGate. I am still amazed, after 18 years, at how well it all comes together. The flow of the rituals, the openness of the participants, the presence of spirit (and spirits) all working together to make the transformations happen. 

I'm still too toasty (and glowing) to make as much sense as it deserves, but I definitely found new doors to walk through. They were not comfortable, and I'm still dealing with the feelings of vulnerability and loss that arose once I had made it to dawn, but I have a feeling that this was the most powerful one yet. It will be "interesting" to watch the results of the ritual cycle take shape over the next year - both in myself and in the other "gators". 

Jai Hanuman!

The Miraculous Quality of the Mundane

One of my earliest memories - I think I was seven - is of riding in a truck cab with my father, listening to the radio. Quite suddenly I was struck and overwhelmed by the vast, complex and intricate network of people, skills, interaction, cooperation and efforts that made radio possible. It wasn't just that someone had invented the radio itself but that there were people who paid for advertising products, which generated income which allow allowed other people to make music and play it over the radio so that others would listen to their music, and the advertising, and perhaps even purchase the products advertised, thus completing the cycle. I don't know how long it lasted, but I was pretty stunned by the complexity of it all. 

Quite a few years ago, when I was twenty something and was meditating for hours a day, I once went for a walk and realized I could feel the sidewalk humming. I saw that even the sidewalk, made of crushed sand and grit, was still alive - that everything was filled with Chi. This realization left me quite blissed out for hours afterwards. Since then I have always tried to keep in mind that the whole of the world is alive and conscious at some level. Not just the trees and animals but the stones and even the dixie cups. 

Yesterday, in the shower, I found myself looking at my twin bladed razor and thinking "this too is alive." It was tempting to laugh it off - seeing myself as ridiculous. But it's true - and miraculous. Consider the miracle of the razor: Not only is it an item that could not be produced by our bare hands. Not even a skilled blacksmith with a complete set of modern tools could craft this simple product. It takes the completely (apparently) unconscious and unskilled attentions of a robot factory fed on the remains of long dead monsters that once roamed the earth, to slap together a construction of plastic and steel that would not even exist if not for the current trends in human society to 1) be clean shaven, 2) compete with each other for resources, 3) constantly strive to find and meet previously unrealized needs in order to more effectively compete with other monkeys for

  increasingly scarce resources....and it occurs to me that sometimes miracles are not things emerging from puffs of green smoke but instead arising from the fog of the everyday trance - that even awakening from that trance, even for a moment. That is a miracle. We humans - building trash heaps of wasted resources on which we sacrifice the future of our unborn generations in the vague hope of another moment of unknowing - and suddenly acting out of compassion we transform everything - with a single smile we change the world. It is worthwhile - valuable - beautiful. . . and never to be encompassed by mere words. This magical, ecstatic Mystery that we are. What grand visions we mistake for mundane refuse. 

namaste