DatingGod

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 . . .

 

John Cleese: A Lecture on Creativity

Well worth the time to watch :)

Zoom and Stillness

It's been a roller coaster couple of weeks inside this brain, body, heart. Nothing going, of course, according to plan.

The plan was to do a deep cleanse for the nine days after leaving the fellowship. Water fast, yoga, walking, lots of sleep. Instead I sort of crash landed into a pile of No, and spent the time mostly resisting the urge to pack up the kitties and flee to some cabin in the middle of nowhere. 

Partial cleanses occurred. Lots of sleep occurred. Days free of burning and fermented and caffeinated plants occurred. Carby snacks found their way into my belly, via a tunnel in my mind. Kitties snuggled the heck out of me, then avoided me when the No got too noisy. Joyful interactions, and less joyful interactions. Stepping up and backing away.

I got a lot of work done. Okay, maybe not a lot, but enough. Over the next couple of months, This is happening, and there's lots to do to build it in a way that's strong, stable.

Part of the last couple of weeks has been questioning whether or not I can pull it off. I've been doing this work for almost three decades. Teaching others how to do it for the past fifteen years. Planning it for over a year. But putting it all together, in three local and global online locations? This is new.

The tagline for the training is: Mastery, Transparency, Tribe. It's technique based - shamanic skills, psychic skills, personal development - a very practical way of learning how to access, translate and utilize the data stream that runs behind, underneath this world. Gold standard methods used worldwide, across all times. Clear, straightforward, easily learnable, like playing the piano, or learning to read.

But a vital aspect of using these skills isn't so head-on and has to do with transparency. It's around how to do healing work without pretending to be sunshine and light, without wearing a mask of "perfect". Because trying to show up in a certain way blocks the flow, actually decreases access, and limits the ability to translate.

And yet sunshine and light is generally what's expected of healers. Being respectful, being kind, is simply about being decent. Whether the healer is a physician or a massage therapist or an energyworker, decency goes a long way in helping clients, patients, relax enough, feel safe enough, to enter into their own space of healing. But the dynamic of healer as perfect, and client as broken, needs to change.

We're all - every single one of us - in various places of aliveness and decay. It's the way of this place, this world. Enlightened people get the flu, die of cancer, go bankrupt. People with abusive tendencies and lots of cash have access to medical treatments that 99% of the world barely knows exists. There is no "fairness", only flow, movement, change.

We take the actions that Life is urging us to take. Or we fight the urge, based on some sort of "should" lodged inside the body-heart-mind of how we believe we're supposed to show up in the world. We find a hole in the wall of resistance, and take action to release the should. Or we sit at the base of the wall, and eat cupcakes and watch tv to pass the time, trying to ignore the drumbeat inside that says: Further.

Facing who we are, and who we're not, takes courage, fortitude, and usually comes packaged with suffering. Grief and mourning are part of it. Anger and depression, too. So is pointless joy, random moments of synchronicitous hilarity and revelations of perfection. And on the other side? Immense gratitude. 

The past couple of weeks have been about asking myself: how dare you step up to take on a tribe of folks, to teach them, be with them as they navigate their own storms? It all just seems too big, so impossible, so foolish to take on. I feel inadequate to the task, afraid that my own patterns and struggles will keep me from being there for folks in the ways that they need, from engaging with them in a way that facilitates Yes for both of us.

But where I keep coming back to is this: it's still about individuals, helping them see the map, teaching them how to read a word, a sentence, a paragraph at a time, showing them how to access their own individual way of translating this for themselves, the people they serve in their living. It's about doing session with them, entering into the landscape inside of them, helping them unweave the No a strand at a time, see the story they surround themselves in. It's about feeling such profound joy whenever Life gives me the opportunity to do this with someone. It's about showing up, over and over, even when fear is present. It's about being still and knowing All Is Well. 

And of course, as usual, Life has shot me through a tube, dumping me out with a thud in a land where only one path is available. I suppose I could listen to the fear that says I'm an idiot for not being in a job with health insurance and 48K a year. But that path disappeared a few months back. I hunted around for it for a while, and still am open to a trail if it happens, if I find it. But for now, there is only this one path, called Tribe of Yes, and the landscape is mostly unknown, and the flow of dark moon and bright sunlight cycle quickly, and the razor's edge between delusion and vision is hard on the feet.

Maybe I'm throwing a party and no one will come. Maybe this is just another emptying out. Or maybe this is when it all comes together - the shamanic, the psychic, the science, the muscles gained from years of mountain climbing - to create something that assists this huge shift in consciousness we're all deep inside.

I want to teach as many folks as possible about the data stream. How it's there for all of us, like an infinite library that contains all times, backwards and forwards, all dimensions. How the library card is our birthright, along with opposable thumbs and highly functioning frontal lobes. How to use that data stream to help connect the global biosphere in a way that sings Yes, that births a global organism that joins in the conscious, universal dance with truth, eyes wide open.

And as it all unfolds, I'll write more about the process. Transparency was taught to me here, in this digital stream that connects humans across vast distances of time and space. And so the word, the vibration, that I'm aligning to match is: courage.

Courage in the face of the No.

Courage in the midst of storms.

Courage in the quiet, the stillness, the Nothing.

Courage.

Shamanic Yes, Always Available, Let Go, Dive In

When the request is heartfelt, and true, Life always says Yes. 

In one moment Friday night, a moment that came out of seeming nowhere, after a cascade of moments that showed me where the hole was inside of me, I realized that it had been years since a musician created songs that I felt myself deeply inside of.

And the realization came as I listened to Florence and the amazing tribe she leads. Greenery and grainery singing down my neural pathways. Out in the midst of wind and dark night sky, dancing for stars and the small, brilliantly white slice of moon, I found myself inside a groove that showed me my place in the web that is this world and the worlds underneath and behind and above it.

Shamanic soul retrieval. Florence and her fantastic Machine drilling down deep through layers of No. Calling me to dance the surface of skin and the musculature underneath and the current of prana as it unleashed the Yes inside.

 

Florence And The Machine - Breaking Down - Ceremonials Vidéo MrMusic sélectionnée dans Musique

Florence and the Machine "DOG DAYS ARE OVER" Music Video from LEGS MEDIA on Vimeo.

On Walkabout Down The Rabbithole

The past week has been incredibly intense, and in the most gentle yet hardcore, full yet emptying, expansive yet grounded way imaginable. I don't know how to write about it. Or talk about it. Not yet. But I will.

I won't need to have to come out the other side in order to begin writing about it, but some sort of shift needs to happen. It's too delicate right now.

And beyond everything else, what is number one, above and beyond wants or desires or feelings or thoughts or the internets or posting is this: the truth resonates, vibrates inside of me, and I give my energy to it, and do what it shows me is the right way.

It does in you, too.

And so I leave you with another link, another pulsation of Yes via the net. This one is going to probably be a bit hard to stick with. She has a flat affect, much like elder Native Americans do, and in our dramatic western culture, it reads oddly in the beginning. But she's the real deal. Look at her eyes. Watch her eyes. And listen for the truth. Better yet, listen to the vibration inside of you. Not the judging mind, not the inner weasel that cringes. Listen from the truth inside of you.

 

בציריך - עם כתוביות בעברית Kiesha from Derech-Lev on Vimeo.

I Lit A Match, Another Monster Turns To Ash

Jack Lalanne Drops His Wonderful Body

Good lord, what a hottie, and how incredibly ahead of his time:

 

For more video clips like these head over to Traceless Warrior.

Less Noise = Less No

I've been feeling it build for a really long time now. Years, in fact. Building and building until I want to scream. Then I do. And with a mighty shove I take an action. But it never really changes. Just builds again, and builds and builds. now I have a better idea why.

As of a few months ago, I've been slowly winding down with the blog posts. Not because I don't have things to write. Not because I haven't been writing. I just haven't been posting.

Why? Because posting on the blog stopped being fun, uplifting, or safe.

DatingGod turns 8 years old in April, and it's due for a change. My digital self is due for a change. There are a lot of you lovely folks out there I adore, who've been coming here for years. This change will be for you, too. So we can share more Yes together. Create more Yes together. So I can find a way to feel you, experience you, connect with you again.

I'll give more details soon . . . for now, this says it, for all of us:

Mindfulness Training For Your Digital Self

(Thanks to the lovely Kasia Quinn  for the introduction to the cyborg world of EvBogue. . .)

Waking Up

Avett Brothers, Head Full of Doubt