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Working with the internal combustion of the present

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Originally published: 6/23/2020 on Weebly blog I hope this three-minute prayer song will help bring you some peace in the heart and mind. In this time it is important to seek out the elements of water and earth as medicine. This song-prayer form is one of the great gifts I’ve received from my Peruvian teachers and from the plants in the jungle that I’ve built relationship with through ceremony. The songs are improvisational, not scripted, and I didn’t realize until I played it back that the sun (element fire) is the in middle verse - held and contained by the verses to the water and the earth. That’s when it can deliver its proper dose of fire-wisdom and radiant love of life. Some thoughts and suggestions on all of that follow the video below. Please feel free to learn and sing this song, adapt it, make it your own. I hope it helps. Here is what the water taught me this morning: Our modern world has been built on the power of internal combustion. Western culture is primarily gro...
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God as Lover and the Joyless Society

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Originally published: 6/23/2020 on Weebly blog As we pass over the peak of the summer solstice, we are fully embraced by the direction South on the great wheel of the year. In the Celtic tradition, the south carries many powers - joy, love, fullness, sensuality, feasting, music and all that goes with the fullness of life. I've noticed over the years, as I've taught classes on the medicine wheel, that most people have great trouble fully embracing the powers of the South. We love asking the west for healing of our old wounds, and we love asking the east to bring us the new shape of things, and we even love asking the north to help us have patience and discipline. But we find it difficult to fully ask the south to fill us with joy. There is always some credible inner voice that says it is inappropriate at this time to be joyful. That voice never goes away, because human life is always a disaster in one way or another, so we decide we'd better live without joy, and con...
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Asking the Spirits to hold the container

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Originally published: 5/6/2020 on Weebly blog One issue for many of us, in this initiatory period we are in, is that our culture can't hold the ceremonial container for us. Our uninitiated elders can't hold the container because they don't know how. So, one solution is to return to the original elders - the Spirits of Nature - to ask them to hold the container for us. This 8 minute prayer-healing-song tries to provide a little of that for you. I hope you'll take the time to settle in and let it do its work on you.
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Belonging to the power of uncertainty

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Originally published: 4/2/2020 on Weebly blog I may think what I'm wrestling with is a scary virus. I may think I'm wrestling with the sudden obliteration of my income, or the interruption of my ordinary life or career goals. I may say I'm feeling trapped, or abandoned, or that I'm wrestling with fear, or death. None of this is untrue. But all of these are on the surface of life. I may think I am longing for success, or love. I may believe I am longing for acceptance, expansion or fulfillment. None of these longings are useless, vain or false. But these, too, are on the surface of life. Below the surface lies a primal power that I fear terribly, and yet is the very core of my belonging to life: the power of uncertainty. The Irish philosopher poet John O'Donohue says, "Real power has nothing to do with force, control, status or money. Real power is the consistent courage to be at ease with the unsolved and the unfinished." (Eternal Echoes, 195)....
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Prayer for help

Originally published: 4/13/2020 on Weebly blog (Video unavailable)
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Prayer Song to the Waters for Help in These Times

Originally published: 4/21/2020 on Weebly blog I hope this six-minute prayer song to the waters helps lift some anxiety from you. Take time to open yourself and allow it to do its work on you.
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A Conscious Initiation

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Originally published: 4/28/2020 on Weebly blog The shamans see what we are going through as an initiation. Initiations serve a purpose: to move us into the next more mature spiritual state of being. Unconscious initiations take the form of disasters, chaos and terror, and this is what we are largely seeing now. Maybe you are filled with dread and anger, confusion and weariness, and maybe your dreams are off the charts in weird and disturbing. This is part of an unconscious initiation. It's up to each of us to decide what we do with this time. Much of your fear, confusion and frustration at the assholes all around you comes from trying to grasp what is happening through the lens of the rational mind. But my suggestion for you is different. The rational mind simply does not have the bandwidth to carry you through a spiritual initiation. This is why I highly recommend working with the spirits of nature, your helping spirits, and your higher self. So much of this Covid time per...
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