DatingGod

Dulled Razor's Edge

There comes a time when even the razor's edge becomes pointless. When you understand that the alertness and hyperconnectivity it requires means nothing. 

From one angle, it appears as if I am a middle-aged, overweight, middle class public servant. From another, it's a cow that finally stopped running alongside the herd in that small pack called shamanic and just said okay fine i'll go and let the winds and momentum take her over the cliff. From another it's madness. From another it's just a quiet life in a new home with a new garden with over half an acre for kitty hijinks.

It's so weird to stop creating stories. It's so weird to be in this space of whistling air. So weird to care so little, to have released hope so fully, that going with the flow of what "Life" wants becomes the default.

There's still some struggle. Not sure what to do with it except to let itself play out. It's still often scary to see things as they really are/aren't. Because there is nothing to be done. When the truth is seen, it's so complete, so 360, so 24/7, so 100, that it leaves you gobsmacked. Of course it does. It's why most people turn around and try and head back. 

The process isn't done over here. And so the only thing to do is release into further. 

No clues other than the fact that this body is still alive, the mind still clicks along, the sound of the human heart grows fainter and fainter. 

It's true: why folks who don't have to shouldn't. If you can avoid it, defintely go that way. But if the splinter in your mind is driving you crazy, come on out here. It's so wild, so vast, you can't even imagine. I'm here, and I still don't know what to do with what is seen.

Still glad it comes with kitties, though. Kitties are fun to travel through space with. 

News

are you watching the new hbo show The Newsroom? After every single episode, it has me thinking about what news is, how it affects us, what the point is, what it really is when newsmen/women get it right. til this show i abhorred the news. now i'm actively seeking out who is doing it right. i want to know what's really going on. and i know that there are people out there with the balls and heart to tell the truth. who do you listen to, read, watch that you absolutely know in your gut is telling the truth in news?

Clear Senses

So much of what I'm doing these days is a kind of un-doing. Like removing wrappers of insulation from what i perceive, how i perceive.

The day to day whole-song process of it isn't something I'm conscious of until somewhere well into whatever is being unwrapped. I only know the note to be played and work toward perfecting that note until it rings with Yes. Once a string of notes has been perfected, the song begins to make itself known, and I get a clearer sense of what the song is about.

Not knowing what the song is forces me to be fluid in the moment, to let go of results, because I have no end game in mind, only the current note. And with the only intention of singing the note to a place of Yes, the freedom to go where the notes lead is allowing the old, tired songs from my past to be removed from the replay lineup.

And again, a huge part of it is not writing or speaking about it because someone looking in from the outside is simply going to be shouting from their own old song, insisting that the notes they hear coming from me are this song or that song. The shouting muddies the tone. Slowly, the songs I'm learning are becoming a part of me, ringing so clear and strong that hearing words spoken against the song from outside of me are less and less important. Keeping right company has been invaluable with this. The ability to walk away from anyone at anytime if it feels true is one of the strongest tools available. The courage and trust it takes is a muscle, built up over time. It brings outrageous clarity around what we want from people, what they want from us, what we're willing to offer, what feels true to accept.

And so I can share a bit of the songs I've learned, even as I still don't know their endgame. They show up as mundane, but the effect in my living has been profound. Profound enough so that dedication to perfecting the current notes is the main focus, and this effort, rather than a discipline that I make myself do, is something that gets done because on the other side lies Yes, and more Yes is so very Yes . . .

One of the most fascinating occurrences to me has been the arc of spending so much time outside. It began with the burning of plants and not wanting the smoke inside the house. The urge to burn plants, to begin understanding what the plant world offers humans, what we have to offer them, kicked in about 9 months ago. For 9 months I've been going outside a dozen times a day, in the cold, in the rain, in the hot sun. I've talked to stars and trees, vines and ants, seen fawns and hawks and foxes and cardinals. I've interacted with deer, wasps, fog, high wind, cicadas, clouds, moss. So many songs still in process of being revealed. 

By going outside, a dozen times a day, for months, and then checking the weather app on my phone, I now know what temperature it is, simply by walking outside and feeling it. I can tell by the level of humidity I feel how it's going to impact my thought processes. I can feel rain coming or leaving. I can sense different types of emotional and mental energy that's going to be stimulated by the density of electromagnetic  currents in the air. By knowing the temperature coming during the night, I know how to adjust the windows and heat or ac to provide restful sleep. I never knew how deeply the weather effects mind, body, heart. Now I do. The song of weather . . . 

The body pain - digestive, back, knee, neck, jaw, shoulder - that's been a constant in my living the past six years nearly made me lose my marbles and go home in a huff. I had all sorts of pharmaceuticals I could turn to, which I did when the pain became unbearable. At the height of coping in this way, I was taking muscle relaxers a few times a month, and ibuprofen 1000mgs at a clip, three or four times a day. I was seeing the Korean acupuncturist regularly. Trying detox after detox. Yoga classes, three times a week for months helped in some ways, but made other things worse. The pain would release for a few hours, sometimes even for a day. But would always return.

And then a few months ago, something clicked. It was a process of un-doing, and with it came releasing from all of the things propping me up - painkillers, forced exercise, detoxes, sessions with the acupuncturist. Just let it all go and let the pain rise. 

I began to watch the pain, look at the pain, get very clear exactly what and where was hurting. I stopped pushing to make myself do "good" things, and stopped trying to force myself to quit "bad" things. Instead I followed the trail of what felt true in the moment whatever it was, and then watching the result on the other side. I learned that making decisions, coming up with solutions and plans to do good things and stop bad things came from the logical, male, left part of the brain, but that the impulses came from the asymmetrical, female, ever-flowing and changing right part of the brain. 

What I saw was this: the issue isn't about forcing good in or bad out, it's about raising energy, using the lever at the core. This lever at the core demands that we give up what we think we know, and instead follow its directives. This core knows exactly what will work, and it what order the steps need to come, the notes need to be played. Everything that we hunger for, crave, is simply a primal need for more energy, to be so alive, so vibrant, that our lives, every moment, is filled with Yes, singing in cells and neurons, down all of the pathways that make up a human and its connection to the web of Life.

And so I get stronger. The pain unwinds, the strength needed to live the new awarenesses I've discovered the past three months begins thrumming through my consciousness, and I wake up to the song of strength . . .

Or cutting off all of my hair. It felt so true to do it, to keep cutting closer and closer until arriving at the current buzzcut with the curly mass at the top. As I did it, played the notes that required more and more to be cut off, it was surrender to what can only be described as ugliness. It was a willingness to let go of showing up as beautiful, womanly. But when the moment came, as I applied the electric clippers to my head and shaved the hair down to the scalp, all I felt was: Yes. 

What blew me away was what happened as I left my home over the next week. People began seeing me again. The buzzcut? It changed everything. 

As a heavy-weighted, 46-year old female, I've gotten used to being ignored when out in public. After a couple of decades as an attractive young female, having people stare at me when I walked into rooms or down the street, it was shocking to simply not be seen at all, even when trying to get someone's attention to ask a question or share a conversation. And yet over the years I embraced the invisibility, began to truly enjoy the anonymity. There is great power in the stealth of invisibility :)

And so now, in many ways, it's like being in my twenties again. Except for now, it doesn't matter. There's no need for the energy that people send with their eyes. Only a lighthearted acknowledgment of whatever it is - fear, admiration, confusion, delight, lust - it's all fine. It's not mine. I'm just over here enjoying the song of the hot pink buzzcut whirlwind that lives atop my head . . . It feels so good to sing it . . . 

So many other songs in the process of being sung. Drumming and toning as prayer to the beings and teachers that are available to us just on the other side of this reality, those beings and teachers that don't care about our mind's desires, only what our hearts sing out at full shamanic volume . . . Taking all three of the feline weasels out into the yard every day, training them to the ways of cars and hawks and dogs and people, letting them slowly acclimate to the weather that exists outside of the house, being with them as their true nature in relationship with things winged, wiggly and crawly is explored. . . 

What song are you in process of singing? What song have you just discovered you're singing, after many months, years of playing the notes? What notes are you playing, over and over to perfect their tone of Yes? 

So many songs to sing . . . such a gift to be alive . . . every morning, the day before an open pathway to release the No with a shrug, to cock an ear to the sound of Yes in the nighttime sky . . .

The Anti-Guru

Half-way into the six-month Integral Shamanics Training Program I've come to realize deeply and fully why I waited so very long to launch it. I have an abhorrence of guruship, of being set up as cosmic teacher, of telling people what to do. It's a visceral reaction, an acknowledgement that the only teacher is an internal one, even as it uses outside sources as a mirror to reflect possibilities of growth, awareness, leaps in consciousness. 

Early in 2011, I became obsessed with the program's vision. I could see its simplicity, its practical application. It was a stripped down, clarified version of the tools I use to do shamanic and psychic sessions for people, tools I'd honed from some 30 years of study and practice with shamans, energyworkers, psychics, yogic masters. The program structure was taken directly from the architecture of my Master's degree in Public Health with its concentration in Social Behavior and Community Health. The philosophic underpinnings were what I'd come to see as human culture circa the new millennium, what the false belief systems were, how entrenched they were in the human mind, body, heart, spirit, and how painful and arduous the process was likely to be as a person set about freeing themselves from them. And how simple, though not easy, the process to freedom was.

I knew the program wasn't about enlightenment, couldn't be about Waking Up. And not only because I myself wasn't enlightened (whatever the frak that is) but also because I understood so very clearly that enlightenment can't be pursued, much less taught. What the program would be was an introduction to a small but comprehensive set of tools, tools for accessing the energetic data stream that runs underneath, behind this thing we call "world".

The tools would be straightforward - shamanic, psychic, energywork. Participants would learn how to shamanic journey, build a medicine bag, connect with guides and power beings. They'd access the psychic flow of data using the psychic channels present inside of themselves. They'd clear and balance the energybody using sound, movement and repatterning techniques, tune chakras. They'd bring all of these skills into practical applications in their everyday living.

A personal development component was also added to help people navigate the ass-kickings the body-mind-heart-spirit go through as they attempt to peel away the beliefs they hold at a deep level. These false beliefs say that the keys to their freedom lie in another's hands, that anything not observed with the five senses is imagination or mental illness, that the only reality is the one that media, friends, technology, family, government, health practitioners and mainstream educators say is real. And they aren't real, only a mass consensus, layered over and over, a hundred thousand layers deep, until the layers appear as a solid ground. But they're not. Yet the trick is to unpeel the layers, allow them to fall away, even while navigating the fear that arises as what was once believed to be a solid floor to stand on is in fact merely wisps of thought, feeling, projection.

The vision of the program hinged on levels of awareness: Access the data stream while lying down with eyes closed to enter shamanic reality (journeying), then access the stream sitting up with eyes open (psychic reading), then bring it all together while standing and moving the body (energywork). The three levels of access each hold a key to the free and easy access that is inherent in the stream.

Shamanic journeying requires surrender and acceptance of the flow of data - a kind of passive release into the universal energyfield, to interact with the healers and guides and beings that can be met with there. This softens the hold the mind has on controlling and shaping what is allowed into consciousness enough so that the prison walls that are our current culture's human mindstate can be dissolved enough to be seen through. 

Psychic reading is acceptance of the fact that we have the ability to know what's going on, and that accessing this knowledge is as easy as pulling a book off the shelf or net, and then reading it. This breaks through the belief that psychic info can only be accessed by people who have "the gift", or that it's something that is mystical or spiritual. It shows that it's simply another way to read, to gather information, like surfing a universal google portal.

Energywork is acknowledgement of the energyfield that flows through body heart and mind, that moves through environments, all of it setting the stage for how human consciousness is experienced. If there is dis-ease in the body, mind or heart, there is also imbalance in the energyfield, and by working with this powerful underpinning of the material world, the body, mind and heart can be healed.

And so it goes.

It's now three months into the inaugural six-month program, and folks are beginning to find their sea legs in the shifting currents of their expanding awareness. There's less fear and more excitement in the exploration. And most of them finally get that I'm not a guru, just a fellow explorer who is passing on identification of the tools, sharing some ways to use them, encouraging them to find their own way, their own method of incorporating them into their own storyline.

Because I'm not a guru. And the past three months have held some very intense moments where some of these nine folks got upset or angry when they came to me for The Recipe To Fix The Unhappy, and I gently or not so gently, handed it back to them. One person quit the program, then a few days later, rejoined, in many ways still wanting to quit, but willing to keep showing up, because the expansions being experienced ultimately surpassed the fear arising. Three people almost quit - I watched them descend into something awful inside of themselves, where they saw that all they wanted was the happy and the joyful and the funk arising was certainly not that. And then each one of them got it: the awful, the funk, was only the barrier, the block, the one they'd been banging their heads against for years. And each one of them faced it straight on, and passed through the wall as if it weren't there, like the collection of layers, of false beliefs that it was.

For over a decade, I set myself up as a spiritual teacher, with the goal to project an image of perfection, of radiant light and sweetness, of Having Arrived At Healed. But I've learned that one of the most valuable things I can show to others is that this swirl of living can be faced and swum in without drowning, no matter how dark or light the waters appear. Transparency is more valuable than the projection of another layer, no matter how shimmery that layer appears. And that until I get my own sea legs with this new way of showing up, I'll be facing my own walls until they dissolve into mist.

We all have walls to walk through. I plan to keep orchestrating this training program reflecting that. Showing my process. Letting them see what goes on behind the curtain, even when someone has mastered all the tools they're just learning to use.

And so I'm not a guru, or even a teacher. Just a guide, a shamanic cartographer. A flicker of their false belief system made manifest, so that they can see through, and then let me go when their hearts, minds, bodies, spirits are clear enough, strong enough to let go of the image projected out of this being called Katherine. 

Why? Why Not?

The dirt nap is coming for us all . . . a conscious dance of shiva is a good way to go . . .

Ze Twofer

Dance Exorcist: Shamanics In Motion

Releasing Into the Interior

The posts here get further and further apart. There are lots of stories occurring over here, but the directive around them is clear: not for the blog.

Some get told to clients, as a way to help them see a bigger picture or to show a concept being explained in motion. Others get shared with loved ones, for whatever reason that arises in the moment. Most don't get expressed into the world, at least not to other people. They stay contained inside this body-mind-heart where they appear to be distilling down into something closer to the truth, which is an impossible statement, but again, as close to the truth as can expressed at this time, in this space, for this reason.

I don't experience the telling of a story as a bad thing, that there's anything inherently wrong with the human desire to tell stories from the unfolding of a life. It's just that it's so clear for me at this time: it's about holding the stories, watching the desire to story tell as a way to somehow capture what's flowing, pin it down, make it stay. Which is impossible. And by its very act kills the germinating seed of Yes.

There's a way to tell stories so they become empowering, for both the speaker and the listener, a way to tell a story that includes the listener in such a deep way that the story being told is actually their own story. This blog used to be that, and maybe still is if someone stumbles here and goes back through the nine years of archives. And maybe it'll be that again, maybe the stories occurring over here will request they be posted, let loose on the internet in this form.

But for now, the writing is pouring into two places: the extensive handouts created for the Integral Shamanics Training Program and a private doc and notebook where the words and concepts and stories don't have to be shaped - just flow out fingers and heart and mind and simply exist without further input, from anyone, anyone, no judgment or editing or backlash. Just flow. 

Because the current underlying awareness is around something I've known about for decades, called different names by different teachers I studied and apprenticed with. Grandfather Albert, a Mi'kmaq shaman, who led a four-day total fast in the forest - not even water - because he said at the end of the fourth day, the bad spirits would see you as dead and release you. Fiona, who showed how to disappear from the entities' sensors by repatterning emotional and mental frequencies. Laura and her many tomes about the aliens. And then the gift from The Vine a month ago, where she showed me for five hours, relentlessly, mercilessly, who we are, why we were built, who built us, why, what it all means, what we have to do to be free. Now Paul writes about it in such a straightforward way, calling it wetiko. And David Carse and Jed, who keep saying: further. 

A few months down the line, I'm going to offer up all of the Integral Shamanics training program handouts for you - some sort of free ebook I want to set loose in the world. For today, here's an exerpt from the handout for the first class in the training program:

Participant introductions: telling our Stories of Yes

Transparency is one of the core principles of Integral Shamanics, along with mastery and tribe.  We live in a culture that celebrates two extremes around this flow of energy: perfecting an opaque image and TMI (too much information). Perfecting an image is about creating a physical, emotional and mental mask that fits with cultural norms and usually allows its wearer access to more resources (money, other people’s time & energy, etc.). TMI is an energetic response some people have to the cultural norm of projecting a perfect image, and is also an attempt to clear the mind-body-heart of the tension that results from the tremendous energy it takes to project and maintain an image. Rigidity and withholding is another attempt to deal with the buildup of tension, as a way to tightly control and hide what lies underneath the mask.

Antidote. One antidote to the extremes of image, withholding and TMI is to simply hold the energy, to not release into talking or showing how either happy (positive charge) or sad (negative charge) you are. To hold energy, simply remain silent, breathe, watch the thoughts but don’t express them, let the world swirl around you, only take action you need to take, either for practicality’s sake or because you feel to move/speak. This is different from  withholding in that it’s conscious holding, so that the barrier of control can be felt, the boundary seen and moved when it feels safe and advantageous on a level behind/beyond world and it’s desire to amass resources.

Holding. In this moment, what energy  (emotional feelings, intense thoughts, physical sensation/pain) can you feel pushing at you, either from outside, or inside? Hold it – whatever it is – without trying to change it – to make it better or less or gone. Be with it. Breathe.  Say Yes and Thank you. Allow the vibration of these words, the feelings and sensations that come with them for you to move through you.

Stories of Yes are also powerful antidotes to the energy drain of keeping an image alive that is not Who You Are. They can be joyful or sad,  from this moment, from your recent or distant past, or echoing to you from the future. They can be spoken, sang, danced, drummed, presented as artwork or crafted object to pass around, as silence, or whatever else you feel tells your story.

Who You Are. Whatever story you feel to tell in the first class, let it be something true, something in its revealing that will illuminate Who You Are, how you got here, what place on the map of Aliveness you can feel yourself being drawn toward. Know that the story you share will shift the vibration of all of the folks who’ll be gathered during the first class. Let the story you tell be from your heart, mind, spirit, the organs and vibration, muscles and light, fluid and charge that is you in that moment. If you’re not sure what you want to say, sit with it between now and the first class. Right now, in this moment, be quiet and ask yourself: Who Am I? How did I get here? And when it’s your time to tell your story in the first class, ask yourself again . . .

 

Energy For Energy

So much happening. So much shift and change. It's the Yes. And it's unleashing itself inside of me.

Just to manage the influx of energy flow, I have to get out and walk, and run, and walk, and run, and do pushups. I have to play my new drum, to channel some of that intense humming going on inside of me out into the world. I have to eat protein and greens, take my multi-vite, drink lots of water. I have to say Yes to things that are scary but are the clearest next step when a next step is clearly indicated.

The energy continually looks for release. When I feel the energy damming up inside of me, the pressure that can turn into anxiety or depression or delusion, I find a way to release the energy out into the world beyond exercising and eating well: make or take a phone call or email with someone who needs help, take an action around an issue I handled poorly, to mend it or fix it or make sure it doesn't happen again when faced once more with the situation. And write, do sessions, teach classes, build a Tribe of Yes on facebook where folks can come and tell their stories of Yes.

This all keeps the cycle of energy going, energy in, energy out. And it builds. Doing this builds energy. 

It's about cutting off all of my hair, even though I intellectually know I look prettier with long hair. But I do it anyway because I can feel that my hair needs to be short right now. And it also needs to be purple and pink. And in a whirlwind on top of my head, all day, every day, which means that when I get up in the morning, I submerse my head in a flow of icy water, then shake it like a dog, like a mad grass-roller, and let the spikey ends find their own expression of direction. It doesn't matter what others think about my new headgear. When I look in the mirror, what I see is: Yes. 

It means refining the art of "energy for energy" with the flow of human connection in my world. For too long I gave myself away, for free, to anyone who would take me, until I was drained and in a miserable heap, full of blame and loathing, for self and others. I believed it was my only worth: what I could do for and give people. So I attracted lots of people who liked to take energy and not give anything back.

But then I woke up from that false belief. And in the flow of the bounce back, I stopped giving anything to anyone unless I absolutely had to for survival. Until I saw the false belief of that too. Until I saw that we all depend on each other for survival, that we may enter and leave this life alone, but that while alive, we are truly connected, and that we can choose the web of people that occupy the spaces in the weave closest to us.

In this living of mine, it's now energy for energy. Sometimes it's money, othertimes it's because Grace says to do it. Sometimes it's because they are a loved one and the Yes says: do this now, and then later when it says don't do this now, I listen to that too, with no guilt. When someone gives me something, I find something to give them back, or pass it along to someone who needs it. Keeping the flow going.

I'm learning to get out of the way of the takers, the folks who have refined the survival technique of getting other people to give them things, and not giving anything in return, and not copping to it, and so the cycle goes on and on, as long as they are engaged with. I'm learning the difference between being of service, and of servitude.

It's a hard lesson, and sometimes I feel like a jerk, because the ideal for someone doing the sort of work I do is selfless service. I do as much selfless service as I can, because when I serve, we both benefit.

But when I allow someone to set me up as their spiritual vending machine, we both lose. Using another person as an energy source stunts growth, and servitude isn't any fun at all. A system of taking and no giving will ultimately cave in on itself. And so now I opt out. They often get peeved, I sometimes get squirmy. But within days, hours, minutes, balance makes itself known as they either come back and offer energy, or freed from the negative energy loop, they wander off into the world to find another possible spiritual vending machine to work their pattern with. And again, we both benefit.

Energy for energy. Win plus win. Do what feels true. Watch the results. Identify the energy pattern in motion. Adjust the output and input accordingly. Energy for energy.

Build energy. Plug the holes. Build energy. Find a place, person, situation to flow it into.

This is the flow. This is dancing with the Yes.

John Cleese: A Lecture on Creativity

Well worth the time to watch :)