Thankful and Looking Forward

Looking forward to some great retreats and events in 2009.

We will have at least two shamanic sound intensives, a new intuitive cooking and eating retreat (YUM!), soundpod is back (monthly free sound healing sessions), birding weekend (a cross between sound healing and nature awareness).

We will also be having gatherings to explore soul constellation work, two silent retreats…and of course, spring and fall renewal retreats. We will be pouring 4 of the 8 LightSong Community lodges here on the equinoxes and solstices.

For those who want to design their own personal retreat, we will be offering shamanic healing, sound healing, food therapy, soul constellation work, meditation coaching…and oh so much more.

Check us out at Hidden Lake Retreat. Give yourself a personal time out…www.hiddenlakeretreat.org

relax, reflect, rejuvenate.

What are our internal resources that we can draw on at this time?

We have been training ourselves to be grateful, to feel gratitude within our hearts. When we feel stress, are spinning out…this approach has been ratified by Oprah and E. Tolle of late (wahoo! for making this mainstream). Many of us taught by Jon Young know that being in a state of gratitude changes the brainwaves that we are broadcasting. This change in brainwaves actually is picked up by the birds and other animals in nature; observant people will notice a change in bird sounds and animal movement in response to these changes (this is the basis for my class “Bird Sounds, Healing Sounds” offered again in June 2009).

The spirits have been prompting us to go further than gratitude–to take stock, asking what internal, innate resources do I have that I call on? What gifts and skills do I have, that I can track through my life, that serve me in this life, no matter what. These are resources that transcend all external environmental conditions–and are especially important to be grounded in in these shifting times.

In asking this question, we go beyond being grateful for our lives, towards actually tracking some of the “mechanisms of well-being”, which have and will continue to support us in our walk. At these challenging times, when we are wondering about our prosperity, these resources will continue to be the foundation that we can stand on.

So if you are a journeyer, set a simple altar or lay before the one you have already set up. Call in your helping spirits. Ask for your spirit teacher or power animal to guide you on a “museum tour” of your gifts and skills and talents, which form the bedrock, the pool of innate resources that you can continue to call on. Ask them to show you new doorways into which this pool of resources flows for new opportunities for prosperity to grow.

If you are a meditator, you can cast this intention as you sit in meditation.

ask to be taken on a “museum tour” of your gifts and skills and talents, which form the bedrock, the pool of innate resources that you can continue to call on. Ask to be shown new doorways into which this pool of resources flows for new opportunities for prosperity to grow.

I would love it if you can report back anything that may unfold from this…

Walking and Dancing with the ego

Walking and Dancing with the ego

I had an interesting experience this summer that sent me on a new belief system trajectory about the ego. The final outcome of learning from the spirits is that the teachings I have received about working with the ego in healing have shifted. It’s a dance, not a war.

I was supporting a very big ceremony (Vision Quest) with my brother. We were supporters in camp. We are brother and sister in song, part of an extended traditional family. We sing sacred songs together. There is a rule pertinent to another ceremony that is gender-based. We did not know it was in play at this ceremony. My desire to sing and support was strong, but was in a way that I did not know violated this rule. Ego-based, as all desires are, I “broke the rule” anyway. Shortly after this “transgression”, the reprimand came from the family elders. It was a big, upsetting deal to all of us. Tears and apologies followed.

Later in the week when the questers came down from the hill and were in lodge; one of them spoke their story. Great help and healing had come through the singing we did (during our rule-breaking session). Much power was felt and experienced through this singing, and the medicine that went up to the hill was exactly what was needed by that person, who had been suffering. It all made sense to me as I listened to this dear one tell their story.

What the spirits showed/told me about this is that the ego is an important ingredient to life as humans on earth. It has kept us alive and in constant inquiry –that is where many life- or conscious-saving questions arise. Perhaps more importantly and newly illuminated was how the ego moves us around in time and space to make us available to help with healing. Our egoic structures reinforce motivations that make us move around in time and space socially, and put us in places where we can do work. Yes, we move to the beat of our heart, too. And, the ego is often involved in the assessment and choices we make.

They (the spirits) also showed me in a more clear way than what I had previously conceptualized, is that the desire to “do away with ego” or quell the ego is almost akin to saying that we do not wish to fulfill the contract we made to be spirits in human form. Being human means having an ego that helps us navigate through the physical and social world. Saying we deny this ingredient to our humanity is like saying we might as well be pure spirit, which is not what we agreed to when we incarnated.

Healing and bringing pure information and divine power into ordinary reality DOES require that the ego not be projecting itself into this stream of light when we are being conduits of this light. This takes years of training and initiations in a process I call “personality purification”, so there are few intrusions of personal stuff in the hollow bone as power moves through us. It is a beautiful dance, of honoring all of who we are, and asking that the ego steps to the side in the process of bringing forth that divinity. To deny any of our humanity can cause soul loss, incrementally…another topic for later.

As time progresses, the ego in its original form has become somewhat imbalanced in its control over our lives, emotions. So we invite it to be just one of many elements in our walk. Bow and ask our heart to lead the best it can, while honoring all parts of the dance.

hollow bone

Somehow Spirit picked me to be a singer of ceremonial songs. This is an interesting walk.

 

Watching the ebb and flow of the ego, the witness, as we catch songs, like the ropes from the sky gods, to bring healing and power into sacred ceremonial space. The songs they are spirits themselves, given to the people under different circumstances. Many centuries old, these songs have spirits and thoughtforms and expectations associated with them.

 

Not my native tongue, these songs have taught me a prayer language. The energy signature of these songs is potent.

 

And some elders say, “don’t sing this song or that song unless…” while another will say, “when a song shows up, honor it by singing it.” I like him. good old Rod…the more the filtering process is to be engaged, the less the purity and truth expressed in each song can be set free, in the holding or the evaluation.

 

I sing with others in ceremony, and I look around and notice that all of the good singers have strong egos. me too. I asked Spirit about this once. they said that the ego strength is like the tempering of the hollow bone. When spirit comes through with the divine force of these songs, the hollow bone needs to be strong or it will shatter!

 

And so it is the walk, of noticing, witnessing, then stepping aside…most with a splash of coyote too cuz its a process of putting yourself out the into the stormy flow of song-power and spirit, with people, and ceremony, and structure and making mistakes in public…worth a good laugh afterwards, hopefully, after the occasional public spanking (seen or unseen, externally or internally imposed–ask Ken and I).

 

These songs they are spirits, yes, and they have also become like friends, or like children. to be taken care of, fed, nurtured, carried with reverence.

i have noticed that i see a lot of who i am as the one who sings in community. who am i if i am not singing…maybe a good time to be quiet then, becuz the whole point is to surrender the ego…

always an interesting walk to ask to be the hollow bone

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You are invited to share sacred sound and song at the Shamanic Sound Intensive I will be facilitating at the end of May (24th-26th). See the calendar page at www.hiddenlakereteat.org for more information.

 

The passing of our animal teachers from this good earth

Our animal friends are intertwined in our lives at so many levels, seen and unseen. They are our teachers, and we honor them reverently.

My friend Colleen had to put her horses down last month. She and they had been together for decades. I had had a dream about Dakota, her dearest horse. We were stepping over him as he lay on the earth. I did not understand the dream at the time I dreamed it.

Colleen told me how she had been outside after the horses passed, praying and connecting to Spirit, wrapped in her mummy bag under her tree, as she does faithfully in her practice. All at once, she was dumped out of her chair, and crashed to earth. This crash to earth set into motion a long period of pain and recovery.

Touching the wild, inviting it in

I have noticed that I can begin to “shake things up” in my life–to reconfigure my energy system and invite more vibrancy in my everyday being-ness– by touching the wild. While I am not in Africa anymore (where the above kill shot was taken), and probably neither are you, we have wildness around us everywhere, no matter how disconnected from nature one might feel or believe that we are.

I touch the wild by simply opening the window and listening to the birds singing…or my car window for bird-song drive-bys! Watching the buds on our house plants break out into leaf- and flower-dom. Better yet, the emerging crocus and daffodil outside… Taking a walk, with an invitation in the heart, that something wild (of nature) will inform the walk in some way.

Shamanic living for me is attuning to the rhythms of nature, and treating other organisms as if they were sages.

Shaking things up with an ancient medicine

I have always seemed to carry Coyote energies. In love with, and at the same time afraid of, being the “bad girl”. When Bradford Keeney came and shared with the Portland shamanic community “shaking medicine”, a sense of permission, remembering, and a breaking out of the confines of my own rules burst forth in my life. It was not just the 60,000 yr old wisdom and power that comes from the Bushman of the Kalihari that has shaken my world (and many of my mates), but the wildness of the teacher, Brad, and the remembering of our own wildness within.

The rawness of the wild that we have forgotten in our modern world calls to us, to be breathed in once again. The ancient and steady power of the earth and star nation (sky god) calls to us again, to be invited into our hearts and bellies for healing ourselves and our communities.

As Brad was speaking, the altar that i pour my sweat lodge under turned on its ear, and a dawning of a new age of being with spirit was born. to be continued…

Shamanic Sound Healing: Message from an Emerging Healer

I have been doing some Spirit writing from some of the journeys in and out of class (Healing Through Sacred Sound and Song, A LightSong Course Taught by Dr. Lauri Shainsky), as they relate to what I am moving through personally. I guess this class is opening the door to my own personal healing and that will hopefully open doors to healing within my ancestral lines, especially with my daughter. I know this is also the door for bigger work down the road.

The Song–To the Depths of Emptiness

I was taken to a cave, to the void where there was nothing but darkness. I am a visual journeyer so this was frustrating as I kept wanting to be shown something. I felt like I was just led to nowhere. I couldn’t even tell if I was still on the journey. So I just lied there, and asked: So now what? Is this it? They said yes. They said stop looking and listen. I did and heard nothing. I was actually pissed off. I asked again, is this it? They said yes. Then, after awhile they said “This is the place sound is born”. Then we were called back. It felt so frustrating. It wasn’t the same place of quietness and solitude that I have been where you feel expansive and blissful. This place was empty to its core! It had no feeling, no sound, no light, no sense, no space. I am still sitting with it. It was actually a little scary to think about. Like I never acknowledged that there could be such a place. It reminds me of an agnostic death, where when you die, that’s it.

Singing the soul forward

My benevolent helpers have shown me this beautiful process which they help me perform at the end the soul retrieval ceremonies they perform through me. They call it “singing the soul forward”.

They have instructed me that an effective way to integrate the recently-retrieved soul parts into the wholeness of the soul. It involves helping each retrieved part re-experience all of the events that the rest of the soul has experienced since that part was lost from the whole. The benevolent ones give me a unique song for each person, which is sung while the events are vibrationally infused during the integration and sealing process. This part of the ceremony “catches the soul part up” so to speak on what the rest of the soul has experienced, so it, too, gets to experience the history of, and become integrated into, the wholeness of the soul.

Thoughts? Experiences? you can also email me at lauri@hiddenlakeretreat.org

Invitation to shamanic healers and clients to share experiences

I am inviting you to write about your experiences that you would like to share with others, your questions and wonderings, about the shamanic healing that you do with the spirits, or that you have received from the spirits through shamanic healers.

Please Use initials or made-up names so that people’s privacy can be maintained.

My wondering for the day:

My spirits performed a soul retrieval on a client “NC” the other day. They retrieved an important part that had been taken by a parent as they passed on. We traveled to the edge of the light, my spirits went in and retrieved the soul part, then returned.

When we returned and began discussing things, NC noted that the evening of her parent’s passing, she experienced a profound state of peace and light.

My question or wondering or learning was this:

we have often thought that the soul part is caught in another space-time, and that the host soul is having experiences in in this part’s absence. apparently, it seems, the soul part is having its own experience, too. NC felt as if she was having an experience of the light, as her soul part had been transported there.

Thoughts?