A Shaman's Death

This year, I have the pleasure of "dying" twice: once last weekend as an ending to a shamanic intensive I've been involved with for most of 2011, and the other in December with a year-long circle I've been holding since January - my AWAKEN Circle. 

I had no agenda for last weekend's death, other than to be shown whatever was for me to see. The experience was quite surreal on several fronts. What I will share is that for the first time in my "dying" experiences, I was actually buried in the damp soil of the Earth - head to toe, all but my shrouded face covered over with dirt. It was a strangely wonderful experience. 

I loved digging my own grave; it was a tremendously sacred act. And I loved having someone so special to me cover me over with dirt; it was also a sacred act. The feeling of it cannot be put to words. I wished I would have the same pleasure upon my actual death...

I was buried between two huge old oak trees for some period of time. I could hear the wind blowing through the leaves above me as I laid in the dirt, dead. I could also hear flies checking me out, and the whisper of birds flying past and chirping their songs around me, creating moments of total peace and serenity. In contrast, every so often a battery of intense gunfire rang out nearby...as if taunting me with the reality of my death.

The soil was moist and rich and dark in color. I imagined while digging my grave that I would get damp and cold in there. But what happened was that I felt cozy and warm instead, completely held by the love of the Earth. Twice while buried, a wave of a damp coldness passed through me to the bone, but they were only waves, lasting only for what felt like moments...and then the warmth returned. 

At some point my awareness shifted into what I can only describe as a pureness of being. My senses heightened - specifically vibratory sensations. Everything became as a vibration - a wave of energy moving through my body as I laid in the dirt. There was no thought; only presence and vibration. My body opened until I felt fully expanded into all things... as one vibration of being...a vibration of Love in its purest form.

This was a different experience from my past deaths in which I felt an acute letting go of the physical - a sort of separation of my energy body from my physical one and from all things physical. Not so this time. This time, I felt a merging with - an expansion into - all things physical or vibratory. I had an acute sense of connectedness with rather than separation from the physical, even in death. It was beautiful. 

I do not hold anything around the meaning of this experience; I only cherish how it felt. At some point, I arose from the dirt as if on cue from some higher source of wisdom - fully alive, fully awake, fully vibratory, having dropped into an even deeper connection with something beyond the physical. Life and death, death and life: two sides of the same face. I am both of them; both of them are me. 

And so this journey continues: Adventures in Love - my personal exploration into the power of the vibration of Love.

Navigating Changing Times

I hear so many people say - and I've said it myself - how quickly time moves today. We can hardly grasp that the end of 2011 is just around the corner, or that night has shifted back into light, marking another day's passing. It's not death we fear, if we fear anything at all. It's the feeling of free-falling into the dawning of a new age of Humanity - one of true peace, consciousness and Oneness - that feels unsettling at times.

It seems these days that all around me, people I know and love are experiencing big changes in their lives...including me. We are people who have spent years - if not decades - creating sacred ways to be of service to the Highest Source within ourselves and others. We are warriors of the Divine, of Spirit, of Love and Peace, of the Human heart. We imagine and believe in the creative beauty these things hold and so we set our intent on finding ways to support their expression in our world.

These days,  I actively and consciously work at the spiritual principle of non-attachment. I believe that it is our attachment to things - to outcomes, ideas, identities, stories, being right, etc. - that causes our suffering. Why? Because things are constantly changing; that is their nature. Change is all of our nature because the whole of the Universe is made of energy, and energy is not static; it is dynamic by nature.

What this means is that when we attach to something - when we want or expect it to stay the same or to be a certain way - we set ourselves up for disappointment and perhaps suffering because it will ultimately change. Change is constant, whether we choose to see it as such or not. We change with each breath, and on a cellular level, we change in each moment. Change might take a millisecond or a century, but everything always changes.

How do we navigate these changing times? How do we keep up with what's happening in our lives and in our world, especially when they seem to be happening faster? The answer as I see it is really very simple, requiring only a shift in perception and awareness:

Recognize that there is no separation: this is what we know. It has taken some brilliant quantum physicists to prove this today, yet they are proving it. We are all energy, and ultimately, energy has no separation, no definition, no borders or boundaries. It is one entity, one Being, one movement to a sacred rhythm, one expression of the creative force of "life" within the endless space of existence.

When we look into the eyes of another, we see ourselves. When we gaze upon the vastness of the ocean, we gaze upon the vastness within ourselves. When we rest into the soils of the Earth, we rest into the soils of our own Being. When we raise our heads to peer into the brilliance of the Sun, Moon, Stars and sky, we peer into the brilliance of ourselves. When we scale the heights of the grandest mountains and delve into the darkness of the deepest caverns, we scale and delve into the heights and depths within ourselves. When we stand in awe of the powers of nature, we stand in awe of the powers within our own Being. When we search the whole of the Universe, we search the whole of ourselves.

As you move through your life, interacting with all that it holds, know that the whole of what you encounter is you. When you recognize yourself as the whole of the Universe and the whole of the Universe as yourself, then choosing how to navigate these rapidly changing times becomes easy: Do it with Non-Attachment, Compassion, Equanimity, Joy and Love because that's what life commands - yours, mine and everything elses.

Let your own heart be your guide - not out of fear, guilt, shame or obligation, but from your deepest knowing of the Oneness of all things. One powerful spiritual teacher taught it most clearly when he said "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." That's a mighty powerful guiding principle to live your life by...

A Pain-Filled Lesson

It's been an interesting couple of days following an injury on Saturday. I'm deepening into the spiritual teachings I've been practicing for a few years now around opening to pain, particularly those of Stephen Levine: "...resistance turns pain into suffering; soften and explore the constant state of change within the sensations; watch the unfolding of sensation as a process; when we begin to respond to discomfort instead of reacting to it, an enormous change occurs. We begin to experience it not as just 'our' pain but as 'the' pain. And it becomes accessible to a level of compassion perhaps previously unknown; (and we begin to experience) the personal in its universal aspect."

The practice I'm focused on now through the Awaken series on conscious living is to reprogram the body's response to pain, including and especially the reaction of the mind to pain. Most of us grow up learning to avoid pain. It starts very young when we hurt ourselves. If you watch small children fall on a playground, they generally show a short-lived reaction to pain until or unless the adults around them react. Then it becomes a big drama! But if they are not critically hurt and the adults either don't notice or respond calmly, kids express their pain with some startled sounds and then get up within seconds and keep playing.

Usually what happens in our growing up years is we get message after message from adults to avoid pain, that pain means something is wrong, and that pain is something to be scared about. These adults are well-intended; it's their job to care for and protect us. They are responsible for our welfare and survival. Yet what we carry into adulthood from these experiences is a belief that pain is bad.

Believing that pain is bad as adults, we avoid and resist pain, which means we close our energy body around it. But what if we could stay open through pain? What if we could simply experience it as fully as we allow ourselves to experience other sensations in life? What if pain was not something bad to be avoided, but just an intense sensation instead? How might that change our experiences of it?

That is my practice. It's a practice in moving beyond the mind to open the energy body no matter what the sensations. In the realm of dying and death (as we are exploring in the Awaken series), it is a way to reprogram the body and mind to respond openly to pain rather than closing around it, so that as we die we can experience peace no matter what. When we master this,  a level of separation develops between us and 'the pain' that offers spaciousness to find joy and peace despite the sensations that may be running through the body. Since none of us know what our dying or death experiences will be, this is a great practice to master! Ultimately, it allows us to create and hold a container of bliss through the transitions of the body.

I got to practice this yesterday. I can describe how much pain I was in by saying it was tremendous! I (carefully) taught two yoga classes and interacted with people all day who had little idea what my body was experiencing (though the shiner around my left eye gave them an indication that something was different). My goal was to open my energy body so large that the pain would simply be a tiny part of my day's experiences, and to create enough space around the pain that I could bring in and hold joy.

I succeeded, mostly. I was aware of my pain yet not ruled by it; I acknowledged it instead of resisting or ignoring it; and I consciously opened beyond it to bring in joy. The pain was there and so was everything else; it didn't dominate my experiences. I shed some tears last night over the pain that felt linked to old body memory and energy that was ready to be released; it felt good to release it. In the end, I experienced a day filled with healing, joy and love instead of just pain.

Today I remember what it feels like to be in chronic pain. I remember experiencing chronic pain for two years following a serious car wreck in my thirties. Back then, I fell into a deep depression. Pain was the focus of my life as I took steps to find healing for my body. Although not the most pleasant part of my history, the experience led to a dramatic life change that I consider an awakening for me. 

Today, my body aches from my neck down to my hips and I still have a pretty nice shiner beneath my left eye. I know what to do for my body when it's healing, so I'm doing those things. And yet I notice myself leaning into the comfort of knowing that this pain is temporary. I wonder: "How might this experience be different for me if this were not a temporary condition?" I cannot answer that question, yet I do contemplate it.

Sometimes accepting what is gives us the opportunity to experience it without any temporal boundaries, since we can't know when or how what is in the present moment will change. But things in the present moment are always changing; that's the nature of energy and everything here is rooted in energy. I find comfort in that. When I attune myself to the subtleties of the pain in my body today, I notice the shifting sensations. The pain is not a static experience; it is a dynamic one in my body. As I deepen into that awareness, my body relaxes and opens, my breath softens and slows, and I find spaciousness within my being to expand around the pain and beyond it.

I could choose to view this experience as nothing more than a painful, unfortunate accident. My choice instead is to view it as a brilliant opportunity to reprogram my body and mind's experience of and response to pain. It is an opportunity to move toward mastery of opening big enough that I can find the spaciousness within my being to experience inner peace and joy no matter what... even tremendous pain and (ultimately) in the face of whatever my own dying and death may bring. Tonight I teach two classes, and I will teach them filled with joy, love and pain.

Every experience we have in life is an opportunity to grow and open. Today I am reminded of what a gift that is and my heart is full and happy despite the pain. I think that is pretty amazing...

Imagine...

https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#inbox/12e1aba720d8708a

 IMAGINE...

That's all we have to do: IMAGINE.

A  knowing of divine truth.

A heart of One.

A life of presence.

A world of peace. 

A Being of love.