This Spring Equinox, I met with my Drumming Circle group to do shamanic journey work to the sound of the drum. It is always a powerful experience when we join together to seek wisdom from the Unseen World. Today, it rocked me back.

I journeyed on the question, “What can I do in response to current world events?”

Answer:  Extend you practice of Ho’oponopono, (of seeking forgiveness, taking full responsibility for your projections and illusions, and giving forgiveness) to the People of Japan and to the experience of the dropping of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The current world situation offers the opportunity to bring this dreadful wounding of the psyche of my country and of the Being of Humanity into the light and grace. It opens the way to healing the divisions we see among us, so we can return to the truth that all Humanity is one life.

I took a shamanic journey the other day, seeking guidance on how to move forward in my soul’s work. I have been sharing visions and wisdom, images and messages from my shamanic journeys and dreams for several years. Now, I long to weave my experiences of the Unseen World into group discussions and classes, collected stories and books.
Before the journey, I asked for a guide to show me how to bring mystery and mysticism into substance and form. As the drumming began, I stepped through into a meadow lined with trees, which is one of my favorite places for lessons from nature beings. There I found Grandmother Spider waiting for me. 

Weaving a web is not a matter of taking threads that already exist and interlacing them. The intricate patterns that you love, emerge only after you have done the initial work of making the anchor strands that form the basis for the rest.

When you begin to create a web, you must form an original silk thread allowing its substance to emerge from your deepest being. You are creating with the strength of your heart and soul, and entrusting your life to this one filament . It holds you suspended as you continue to add to its length. There is no option to start a different strand, you are committed to this emerging.

You may spin a great deal of silk before anything happens. It is just you and the spinning process. Then, without warning, a breeze or the breath of Spirit comes along and carries you to an anchor point. When it connects, you release what you have created and return to a higher position again to start forming the next silken thread.

As you dangle mid-air from this new strand, you have no idea whether it will attach somewhere near the first or in a different direction. Enjoy the sensation of freedom as you swing in the breeze. You have no control of time or space. Eventually, you will touch the ground, a plant will offer an attachment spot or you will decide to go back up and begin again from another starting point.

From time to time, an animal or strong wind with come through and take apart all that you have created. Let it go, there is no hurry. Use patience and determination, resilience and calm as your guides.

Remember that you are not alone. All of the elements of nature surround you. Enjoy the sunshine and shadow. Release all fear and float in the breeze. This makes the work easier and more fun. The time will come when you will have enough anchor silks developed that you can begin weaving the more intricate portions of the web. But for now, creativity and grace are your tethers. Enjoy

Grandmother Spider

I was smiling as I reentered the ordinary world, coming back to my home and my chair. I am grateful that wise teachers appear when I hold a question. I like the surprise of seeing what form each will take, and how they will lead me from what I think I know to an insight that reveals the next step along my path. 

This process is open to all of us. I use a recording of shamanic drumming to help me make the transition. You may find that forming your question, and then quieting your mind opens the doorway to the Unseen through your imagination. The key is to open to the wisdom beyond the conditioned mind and separate sense of ego. Experiment with asking for loving guides and teachers to show you what you are seeking. Let me know what you find.

Peace and Joy,
Nancy

Approaching 2022, the word that ripples through me is “imperative.” It has an energy that propels me forward, insisting that I not hide behind excuses or wait to find the perfect form for my work before I share it.

The time has come in this evolutionary cycle of our species to share my highest and best offerings for the healing and transformation of humankind. I cannot wait for things to quiet down or the whole picture to come into focus. I must take my place in the Beacon/Beckoning Circle and allow whatever wants to be expressed through me to take tangible form.

The Beacon/Beckoning Circle is an image from a shamanic journey on Winter Solstice, Dec. 21, 2021.  I had receive it a few weeks before, but within the drumming circle ceremony, it took on a more vivid form.

My notes after the journey:

We are standing in a circle facing outward. All of our drums and rattles, bells and flutes, voices and instruments are helping to tune the Being of Humanity; to raise the vibration of all. This is part of the evolutionary unfolding of humankind in harmony with Gaia.
My guide tells me,
You are standing shoulder to shoulder, each a bearer of what your degrees of arch from this circle are pouring through from the Cosmic Soul. All are vibrant and all are equal. The streams of light from you overlap, echo those around you, amplify each others gifts, and add the unique quality of sacred energy flowing through your individual expression of life.

As you continue this harmony, this way of uniting your energies and openness to sacred flow, each of your brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters will find their place among you. All will come to stand shoulder to shoulder, your light shining outward through all the Web of Life.

I have not been writing this past few months because I have been learning from a wide range of paths and practices about how to connect with the Unseen World. I had been hoping that some synthesis would emerge, but now I see that each is a portal or window into deeper reality and wisdom. I have been learning the value of each, not so I can somehow weave them together in my life practice, but so I can see that there are pathways of access to the Unseen Mystery, the True Reality for everyone.

I don’t know what I will share with you or in what order. I do commit myself to sharing whatever wants to be expressed on a regular basis. I will shine my own arch of light outward and hope that it will resonate with something within you to strengthen and encourage the way you share your light.

I love the thought of all of us standing shoulder to shoulder as we each find our way to respond to the imperative to nourish wholeness, unity and harmony throughout all of the life of Earth.

Peace and Joy for the coming year,

Nancy

I had a dream that seemed to last all night. I was in a classroom and there was something being taught that was both unfamiliar and intriguing. I felt the intensity of my attention and the resonance within me that this was both important and true. Yet, when I moved from sleep to waking, the only thing I could remember was a comment made in the hallway outside the classroom, “This is how we touch form within formlessness.”

Who wouldn’t want to go back and find out more.

I had the chance in a shamanic drumming circle where there was someone else playing the drum beat for me. It allowed me to sink fully back into the unseen world where I asked if there was a way to return to the classroom of my dream. I was immediately taken to a huge hall of marble, with alcoves lining either side. It reminded me of the Hall of Kings from Tolkien or a grand cathedral from medieval times. I walked past scientific labs and rooms filled with telescopes; places where languages of many varieties were flowing over one another; and past botanical gardens.

In a short time, we arrived at a closed door which opened before us and I saw the long table, surrounded by eager learners that had featured in my dream. The teacher beckoned me in and I took up a position across from him. “You want to remember the class from your dream,” he said, looking into my eyes. “That is easy, we were finger painting in the air with vibration, to get a feel for the flow of Life.”

At that moment, a swirl of rich green color moved into the space between us, and one after another of the people around me began to reach their fingertips toward it. There was no sense that they were trying to make the color shift in hue or to move it in space. Instead, each one caressed it like you would a satin ribbon, letting it move and shift between their fingertips. Sometimes there were many hands touching it, and at other times all would draw back and allow one individual to reach out with an open hand to let their fingertips rest on its surface. In those moments, their hand moved as through they were conducting a silent symphony.

As I watched, several other color swirls also entered the space and were interlaced with the first. A vivid royal blue and a deep rich maroon joined the play. As sensing fingers encountered them they would remain for a moment unmoved and unchanged, continuing on their way as though nothing was happening. Then, a shift would occur and their color and shape would shift. This was often the signal for that person to remove their hands from the area.

The teacher reminded me that in the night I had heard a train whistle and saw a blue velvet light flowing around the hillsides and sweeping around my bedroom. It had been a beautiful experience of seeing the sound and knowing that this vibration was carried in midnight blue.

The colors you see here are not sound waves, but the currents in the flow of Life. What we are trying to learn is how to feel this flow and move with it. We are not creating this flow and it is not coming through us. Its source is The Source and we are reaching out with our core being, our soul, to experience its resonance within us. We use our fingertips to focus our attention. We learn this way because we can pick up both the physical sensation of Life’s flow and see when we are seeking to change it.

He then invited me to extend my hand and touch one of the swirling forms of color. My finger moved through neutral air until they connected with the original green swirl. It was warm and thick, and there was an almost rubbery resistance to the pressure of my finger. Then suddenly it swerved away from my hand.

You are touching it with your physical body and your sense of touch. These place a buffer of space between you and the flow. Your mind comes between you and it, and creates a sense of separation or a desire to control. Prepare yourself through song and see what your experience becomes when it is your own being of light that is reaching out.

I stepped back from the table, and turned my back to the others. I sang one of the songs I use to prepare for shamanic journey and moved into the awareness of the light of my inner being. I sensed my whole body filled and nourished by the Source of all Light. This always helps me remember all of who I am; that at my core I am light and spirit.

Feeling more like a star than a human being, I turned back toward the table and extending my hand into the space of dancing color. The color patches did not change their form or direction as my fingers encountered them. Instead, I felt my hand invited to float on the current of the flow of vibration. It made almost hula-like wave movements, lifted and carried by the thick finger paint-like current of life. I was not seeking to influence it, but was allowing it to carry my hand wherever it might go. One color would lift and then withdraw, only to have another move in from some other direction to carry my hand through this dance.

The teacher spoke gently, so as not to break my focus.

This is how we learn to sense the flow of Life. You will sense it on many levels and through many senses. It is color and music, rhythm and cadence, sunlight and shadow, sandpaper and silk, scent of flowers and taste of salt. Finger painting with it allows you to be playful and to notice when you are letting it move you and when you are trying to move it.

The return beat of the drum told me it was time to return to the tangible world. I thanked the teacher and all the others involved in this classroom. As I was stepping out the door, the teacher called after me, “You are not very strong with your sense of smell, but you might want to listen to what flavors you long for. It is just another way of experimenting.” I smiled and turned to walk back through this magnificent hall and back into the room in my home where I was journeying from.

(Part of this did come within the time of the shamanic journey with my drumming circle in February. The rest has been a gift from my helping spirits and guides from the unseen world as I typed this morning. I sense that there is more about the play of finger painting with vibration, in which our own energy/vibration dances with that of all creation. I will let you know how that unfolds.)

In a dream the other night, I was sitting working a complicated jigsaw puzzle. My brow was furrowed in concentration and my belly was tight with frustration. I kept picking up the same three pieces, trying them and finding that they did not fit. I was beginning to think about getting the scissors and just making them fit when I heard very clearly, “Let go and open up.”

The words seemed to send a wave of relaxation throughout my mind and body. A huge spiral column of vivid green light began to rotate slowly through the whole room. Its movement was not effected by my presence or by any of the tangible items in the room. It did not change color, intensity or form, simply flowing through us as if we had no solid form. I was fascinated.

When it reached the level of the floor, it revealed a woven carpet made of energy thread. At each crossing of thread, color and light glistened revealing images and patterns beyond imagining. I recognized it as an expression of the Web of Life. The spiral of green light seemed to help draw my focus to first one point and then another in a playful dance.

“There are not three options, but millions,” I was told. “Your mind is very tight and your fear closes down your vision. You no longer need to live in that frustrating way. Open to the giving and receiving throughout the whole Web of Life. Sacred reciprocity guides the flow of limitless love, light and creativity as it moves from one form to another in an effortless progression. Learn to open to this flow.”

How much energy have I wasted in my life trying to get pieces to fit in the way that I think they should? Guided by my conditioned assumptions and projections, I go to the three or four most familiar options and get frustrated and angry when they will not provide what I want or need. My dream made me feel like a little girl, hands on hips, scowling at the unfair ways of the world, while standing knee-deep in a field of wildflowers.

I think the dream had its roots in reading about and practicing The Five Seed Syllables of Tibetan Sound Healing as it is taught by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, a master in the Bön Buddhist tradition. For the past week I have been focusing on the first tone, “A” (which sounds like “Ahhh”). With this tone I focus on an area in my head which is directly down from the crown and inward from the middle of my forehead, a little above eye level. As this vibration fills me on each exhalation, I bring to mind “opening” and envision a broad clear sky.

When the five to ten minutes of toning is over, I feel entirely different from when I began. Where there had been a feeling of grasping tension, there is now a relaxed openness. I can feel the muscles of my chest and belly relax and the wrinkles in my forehead smooth. My inner vision is now ready to see the million possibilities that surround me when I allow my mind to open to like a bright blue sky.

Peace along your path,

Nancy

(You can find a nice introduction to Five Syllables of Tibetan Sound Healing and Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche in his presentation on “Tapping into the Source of Creativity” on YouTube : https://youtu.be/PXlFM8Aw8dU).

My recent inner work has focused on burning away the most basic assumptions, projections and illusions in my life, those things which block the flow of creativity, love and joy. I have been using Qi Gong practices that strengthen the inner fire of life energy in my belly to help provide me with strength, clarity and a deep sense of who I am beyond my mental frameworks and behavior habits. As my inner physical energy builds and moves throughout my body, I experience a growing confidence. I feel a stable core within myself that offers both flexibility and resilience.

I often do shamanic journey to the Unseen World to enter a great bonfire, and invite it to burn away all of my personality, ego, and separation. As I moved into it during a recent journey, the process did not end in the usual way. I dropped even the image of myself as a being of light and I found myself tracing the history of the elements of which my body is made. The molecules and atoms that have stored my personal memories, also remember their existence within drops of rainwater and moving through the bodies of other creatures. They remember being stone and stardust, oxygen and iron, tree fiber and wing feather, photons and magnetic waves.

I do not have to slowly untangle the fire of my being from the limited experiences of this lifetime stored in tissue and cell. I can focus instead on the memory of being part of all that has been from the beginning of beginningless time. This broader, unified reality also exists within my physical form.

In my journey, I was invited to reverse the process so that I was again aware of my core being of light and the fire of my life energy. I was told to look here for the truth of who I am in the world at this time, and to find direction for my focus, thoughts, words and actions. I alone am responsible for this vital life force within me and can choose how I stoke this fire and direct its creative force.

I suddenly become aware of the entire Web of Life — all expressions of life in this cosmos. Each was shining with its own inner light and life force. Connecting all of this is the light and energy of the Sacred One that surrounds and fills us all. Aware of the light shimmering and twinkling throughout this web, I felt the light of my own being enlivened with both joy and purpose. Each of us is called to live our life’s fire and energy to the fullest expression of who we are. Each is unique, precious and vital to the whole.

As I came out of the journey, and back into the tangible world, I felt calm and fluid. All living beings are gifts to spark my memory and connection with my inner being of light. They remind me who I have always been. My heart opens with the desire to live in such a way that my inner fire fuels the most rich and complete expression of my being. In this way, I recognize and honor the broader harmonious reality. The light of my core sparkles throughout the Web of Life and my inner fire adds to the clarity and power of the whole creation.

Peace along your path,
Nancy