Drumming The Soul Awake

Originally published: 4/4/2017 on Weebly blog John Muir (my 19th century Scottish clansman and naturalist and founder of the Sierra Club) said: “When we try to pick out anything by itself we find that it is bound fast by a thousand invisible cords that cannot be broken, to everything in the universe." We are, slowly, slowly, opening (or re-opening the closed) understanding of the great mistake we made: thinking that anything is separate from any other thing – culminating in believing that we are separate from the Creator. This mistake underlies mainstream theology, economics and everything else in our culture, and wherever you look in our world and see human-enacted misery, you can see the underlying cause: believing that anything is separate from each other. This is the core difference between the indigenous world view, which sees the thousand invisible cords, and the western mind, which revels in the fantasy of individualism, culminating in many absurd notions and ways o...

Originally published: 4/16/2017 on Weebly blog Jesus, one time, many years ago, when I was in a terrible place, you came to me. You took my hand and led me down a well. Down, down, we went, into the dark earth. At the bottom of the well you dipped a ladle into a pool of water so blue that I wondered if it was water or light. You told me to sip and when I did my terror vanished, my regret vanished, my heart warmed as golden as the summer dawn. I knew that every creature that walked, crawled, writhed, swam or flew was my sister and brother. I knew that the stars have songs to teach us. I knew that the stones are my ancestors. I knew that our earth mother continues to love us even in our ignorant arrogance. I knew that true wealth begins by giving up grasping for wealth, and I knew that sin is all about raising myself above others, and that love is not that which makes me feel comfortable, but a fire that burns away the crust on me that is committed to blame. I learned that God is a...

Originally published: 4/21/2017 on Weebly blog Greetings, dear star-songs poured into a pulsing human heart which spends a lifetime remembering the words and melody, As I finish up another week of training with my teachers in New Mexico, I'm all a-whirl with amazement. The shamanic path is, in some ways, very simple in its goals and practices, and for us, at this time, there is core message that shamanism delivers to us: the world is far more alive than we've been taught, and far more interactive with us than we've been led to believe. We are far more able to create joy than we are told- largely because or entire culture - the economy, entertainment and mainstream religion - runs on the power of dismay. That word, Dismay, is applicable for us right now as we head toward the month of May, and toward one of the central holidays in the Celtic Shamanic tradition: Beltane, celebrated May 1. This is the beginning of summer, the direction on the medicine wheel of Joy, re...

Originally published: 3/7/2017 on Weebly blog I came across this quote from Thoreau and it set off a cascade of ideas that I hope will be useful for you: "The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it." I recommend reading that phrase several more times, slowly, out loud, before reading on. The Thoreau quote made me think of a tidbit from the Persian poet Rumi. This is what the person yearning for connection with Spirit says, and Spirit's response: I would love to kiss you. The price of kissing is your life. (Or less poetically stated: The price of kissing Spirit is letting go of your current identity.) And that Rumi tidbit made think of something one of my teachers is so fond of saying: "The price for spiritual power is discomfort." Like all decent wisdom tidbits, these phrases are loaded with power, mystery and the opportunity for misinterpretation. So it goes. Most the time we think that emotions sweep over us and overwhelm u...

Originally published: 3/20/2017 on Weebly blog The earth, like the soul, like the heart, like the universe, renews itself again and again. Like the moon, like the rivers, seas and creatures, new life is always on its way to emerging in its next shape. My teacher said, "What happens in nature happens in us." And so we, too, are on the way to being new, or are emerging into newness again and again. What has been frozen does release its grip. Why? Because the unstoppable song of newness sings the cold away and sings the ice off of us. The Celtic shamanic tradition tells us that right now the old woman of winter, who has a job to do, is getting sleepy after working hard all winter to clean the land of what needs to be taken to the other world. The exuberant maiden of spring, who has a job to do, is singing her song of newness, singing the flowers up out of the ground, singing with green breath the love of life into the land and creatures. So the old woman and the youn...

Originally published: 2/1/2017 on Weebly blog This Saturday marks the celestial midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. We celebrate it on Thursday as Groundhog Day - the day when the sleeping fertile earth begins to awaken. That's a version of the Celtic tradition of watching for serpents (the life force) to emerge from hibernation under the wintered earth, and it's a version of the Old Hag of Winter - the Old Bone Mother - gathering her last bit of firewood. It's a charged time on the Celtic medicine wheel because it marks the opening of the door to the direction East - the door of new life and springtime. It's the time we "plant the seed of hope." Here is a simple prayer or ceremony you can do: What is your hope? Plant it with prayer- ask for it to be brought into being. This is a great time to ask for and welcome a new pattern, a new way of living, a great time to ask for old patterns to finally be erased. In Celtic shamanic tr...

Originally published: 12/24/2016 on Weebly blog When I step away from the two main flaws of the Christian tradition I love it. The flaws: 1) that god only incarnated once, in one body, a long time ago, and 2) that this story of how God relates to the world is the only true one. The truth: God incarnates all the time. Each time someone decides to turn from hate toward love, each time wonder pushes cynicism aside, every time someone lets go of resentment, whenever someone's arrogance is softened by humility, allowing compassion to blossom, God incarnates at that moment, in that body. The truth: the Holy dresses in a thousand thousand different costumes. It comes to the least imaginative dressed how they expect because they are so easily frightened. But to others, ones with sturdy legs and strong eyes, the Holy may come as as a storm, or a great antlered animal, or crows cavorting in the dawn mist, or an old woman cackling a song that sounds like fire. On and on the Holy del...

Originally published: 10/20/2016 on Weebly blog Sheesh, there's so much instant vitriol right now-- people can't say the simplest thing without others climbing down their throat. Why is this? I have a shamanic answer that I hope helps make sense of things. Deepak Chopra recently penned a great article about Donald Trump and the power of "the shadow" - the parts of our own psyche that we want to keep hidden away out of fear, embarrassment or shame. We cringe at the venality of the reality TV characters because they embody our worst fears about ourselves - they make our shadow visible. Trump is a reality TV star, and, at first, his campaign was strangely entertaining. But as the stakes became higher - when it stopped being a show and it became clear that it was possible he could win - the fun turned to horror for many people. Trump's campaign has been a descent into the shadow, and his power has been to pull everyone down to speak and act out of our own p...

Originally published: 9/5/2016 on Weebly blog There's far too much ridiculous bullshit in our daily life. We're constantly lied to and manipulated. Branding is more important than actual authenticity. Money is the reference point for everything. This stream of bullshit acts as a corrosive on our most important spiritual energy: trust. We cannot take any step forward in anything meaningful without first summoning trust, and our trust is under constant assault. So it's good that we are now in the direction West on the Medicine Wheel, because the West is a powerful ally in a world of corrosive bullshit. If there is a single word that defines the Celtic direction West, it is: Great Mystery. Mystery cleans the bullshit. The world is bursting with forces wanting to shrink our natural immensity - forces that try to convince us we are defined by our fears, lusts, and insults. When we stay small like that, our energy leaks out, and then we are more easily controlled. The m...

Originally published: 8/8/2016 on Weebly blog Donald Trump is a masterful purveyor of negative energy, someone who freely and indiscriminately dispenses hoocha, maladai, and the evil eye, among many other names for cursing energy. While it's true that he is the Frankenstein rising up from Karl Rove's 30 year-old laboratory of Republican race-baiting, and it's tempting to snicker as the monster bites its creator, it's good to remember that Trump is an expression of the worst energies latent in each one of us. Trump is the living embodiment of the shadow side of American culture - that low consciousness that we push out of sight and pretend is "not us" but which is imprinted in all of us since birth: hyper masculinity disconnected from nature, the Feminine and compassion; the fantasy of individual achievement; money as the soother of a spiritual and moral void, violence as a gleeful solution to irritation, lashing out against the smallest of insults; imp...

Originally published: 8/27/2016 on Weebly blog We carry inside us many names given to us by life. Names are embedded into us - sometimes perpetrated upon us - by our parents, by friends, by culture, by religion. Names are given to us by our money and clothing, by our body, by our job. We carry names given to us by our sins and mistakes, by our enemies, by our regrets and secrets. These names swirl in our thoughts when we try to make decisions about who we are - and who we are trying to become. The names often calcify in our energy body, where they direct so many of our thoughts and actions from the shadows.  Names are meant to shape us, or control us, to contain us, to define our role in the tribe, to make us acceptable, or to keep us safe. But we have many other names too: names given to us by the stars and the trees, and by the glittering afternoon water. Names given by the ancestors who are cheering us toward the strength that they didn't have in life. The moon has a nam...

Originally published: 7/5/2016 on Weebly blog Today’s lesson in bad shamanism involved a sliced up finger. Many years ago a teacher told me to say this command to my knife before using it: “You are my dog. I am the master. Don’t bite me.” After saying that, I was supposed to bite the knife. Then I could go to work. That’s one of those strangely charming things your shamanic teacher says. But there are deep lessons about power weaving through that phrase. Lesson one: All things carry power. The knife carries power- the power to slice and sever. My teacher called it the power of “biting” because one of the powers of shamanism is poetry, image, and allegory, so “cutting” becomes “biting” which sounds more alive, and points to the idea that the knife has its own life. Shamans recognize that everything carries and expresses power. My Celtic tradition says that the Great Song that is the universe is made up of uncountable “little songs of the heart” which pour from each creature....

Originally published: 3/11/2016 on Weebly blog Art: Wojciech Siudmak There’s this yearning in us: music of the far-off, barely audible most of the time, tugging at us, and in those fleeting times when we hear it clearly, our heart beats with Knowing: I came here from somewhere else. We incarnate in this body, in this family, in this time and culture - for three reasons: 1) to unlearn patterns from past lives, 2) to learn something from the patterns of this existence. It took me 30 years of wrestling before I could accept those two ideas. I owe that confidence to a great Lady I met, who showed me that the universe is a river of jewels. But there is a third reason we “dress up as being human for a while.” We come here in order to deliver a blessing to this world. Focusing on past lives and on karma I am creating for my next life assumes that I came here for myself. But something shifts in me when I shift the question away from “what am I supposed to get from this life” - wh...

Originally published: 2/3/2016 on Weebly blog Groundhog Day marks the midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. We are, slowly and delicately, emerging from the belly of winter. The groundhog is symbolic of the very first life energies beginning to manifest and emerge from the womb of creation which we celebrated at the winter solstice. The new earth is now slowly emerging. In that emerging, the weather shifts wildly, as we are seeing with today's huge snow in Minneapolis. The old lady winter and the maiden of spring struggle against one another for dominion of the landscape. This "new emerging earth" is external, and also internal. There is, indeed, a new earth emerging in you, and from you, dear drummer on the taught skin of life. How to manage this, how to work with it? The Celtic goddess of healing, inspiration and birth, Brigid, comes into our work at this time of year, if we ask. She is associated with many powers, but here is what she...

Originally published: 2/9/2016 on Weebly blog Dear Drummers, This Saturday’s drum circle and healing ceremony with the Celtic goddess Brigit is going to be one of the most unusual, beautiful, and, I hope, effective experiences you’ll ever have. With a great deal of fun, you will be able to cast off and dispel negative energies in a safe and protected environment. First: We shake off the spiritual barnacles clinging to our hull, and prepare our energetic body to be blessed: 83 minutes of drumming and ferociously rapturous free-dancing to help remind us that “...life is a prodigious miracle created for your amusement and illumination and the universe conspires to bless you. Your allies from the other side of the veil are swarming in, inspiring you to become smarter and wilder and kinder. Primal benefactors are plotting to emancipate us. The winds and tides are on our side, forever and ever amen. The fire and rain are scheming to steal our pain. The sun and moon know our real na...

Originally published: 1/20/2016 on Weebly blog Wonder is an antidote to anxiety, a healer of depression and the fertile earth of creativity. Following your yearnings is like gathering seeds to toss into your soil of wonder. Soon, you are a resident of a new earth. Your yearning speaks to you as impulses from the heart, images from the mind, and magnetic attractions from the belly. Listen. Wonder does not exist outside of you, but rather arises from inside you. Wonder is a well at the center of your being, ready for you to bring your ladle and drink. Sometimes the Great Goddess helps you bring the ladle to your lips. Sometimes Jesus does. Sometimes the great, blue-lit Grandparents from the stars pour the water into the top of your head while chortling with ancient delight, "Does this answer your question?" (Jesus says, "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring for...

Originally published: 11/27/2015 on Weebly blog Dear Warm Beating Hearts of Mystery Inside Sensitive Human Skin Filled With Ancient Seawater, Two weeks ago I was in the Amazon jungle, a 90 minute, sputtering boat ride up a winding, muddy river from a frantic Peruvian town to a remote village of the Shipibo people. Two weeks ago I was lying in a hammock inside the cone-shaped ceremonial Maloka, sweating and dazed from the unrelenting heat, but more so from many days of mostly fasting from food and water, and from drinking unbelievably bitter and potent tobacco juice and from the daily smoking of many huge "mapachos" - thick cigarettes made of jungle tobacco, at least seventeen times for more potent than Marlboros, but with none of the 599 added toxic chemicals. I was half-listening to the unending cacophony of life-song that is the jungle - warbles, coos, caws, chirps, sighs, trills, tweets and sudden frantic flutters - but mostly I was dazed and dreamy, as I was being...

Originally published: 9/23/2015 on Weebly blog Now we exhale. Each year is one breath, with the solstices the absolute empty (winter) and absolute full (summer). At each equinox (spring and fall) the breath is an equal mix of in and out, of summer and winter. We are now in the year’s exhale. Take a moment to feel your exhale. This is the “releasing” half of every breathing meditation. We are in the time of releasing. We live in a culture that does not train us in releasing, that fears releasing in every way. All intimacy is about releasing our hold. All spiritual practice is about trust, which is a release. I’ve found in my healing work, that every healing ceremony begins with a release. (Like this one.) The Spanish poet Antonio Machado (circa 1900) penned a mysterious little poem: Between living and dreaming There is a third thing. Guess it. Certainly there are 1,000 answers to that little riddle, and they are all correct. Spend some time today answering the riddle for yo...

Originally published: 8/18/2015 Arthur Douet Dear lovers of the holy earth, and seekers of the song of blessing, I am just returning from the Santa Fe area, after communing with amazing shamanic colleagues and teachers for a few days. I am reminded of what has been taught to me again and again: Our goal in life is to become a walking blessing. It's such a simple phrase! But like all of the other simple spiritual phrases we hear, there is nuanced work involved. Knowing (or spouting) a simple phrase is not enough. What is the nuanced work involved to become a walking blessing? The first task is about letting go, or "releasing stored energetic patterns." Letting go sounds easy, and of course it's not. But our journey to wholeness, to healing, and to wisdom, begins there. One of my favorite lines from the poet Rilke: I want to unfold. I don't want to stay folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am a lie. The first step in the shamanic p...

Originally published: 8/28/2015 on Weebly blog The summer is coming to an end. We don't want to let go of it. But we must. We are in the exhale of the year's breath.  In the Celtic shamanic tradition we are moving out of the dancing mythic South and into the West - the direction of dusk, autumn, inner knowing, welcoming of Mystery, letting go, and vision-setting. I remind you that if you have European ancestry, that phrase, "Celtic shamanic tradition" is part of your indigenous soul that is calling to you right now. That vague melancholy you feel may be your indigenous soul calling out to be remembered.  More... The Earth Mother sacrifices herself at Harvest so that we may live. She says, "Take, eat; this is my body." How do we respond to her sacrifice? In the machine-based industrial world, we have responded by demanding she produce even more for us, and by forcing her with fertilizer - earth steroids - to produce more. This seemed to work fo...

Originally published: 7/24/2015 on Weebly blog The shamanic path comes down to one word: beauty. As both a personal spiritual path and as a healing modality, shamanism is about resuscitating beauty in you.  Beauty is not something you can believe in (or be shamed or compelled to believe in). Beauty is only something you can experience. This is the basic difference between the shamanic path and the way western religion is taught – one is based on believing, one is based on experiencing. We live in a culture that doesn’t understand beauty, and indeed is afraid of beauty. We confuse money with beauty, which has caused immense damage to the western soul, and when the soul is damaged, we cause damage to our lives and to the world. Institutional religion often pushes beauty aside to replace it with obedience. We feel how this poisons us, but often cannot articulate it for years, decades. Beauty, by its nature, refuses to be tamed by humans. Beauty comes not to obey our small ways...