TaKiNg BaCk ReaLiTy

The Killing Fields of Canada

homo divinus — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 02:49:02 GMT

WELCOME TO THE WORLD The annual Canadian Harp Seal hunt is underway as of dawn today. It's by far the largest mammal hunt in the world and the only commercial hunt in which the target is the infant of it's species. For 6 to 8 weeks each spring, the ice floes of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the eastern coast of Newfoundland and Labrador turn bloody, as some 300,000 harp seal pups, virtually all between the ages of 2 and 12 weeks old, are beaten to death - their skulls crushed with a heavy club called a hakapik - or shot. They are then skinned on the ice or in nearby hunting vessels after being dragged to the ships with boat hooks. The skinined carcasses are usually left on the ice or tossed in the ocean. Thousands of other wounded pups (estimates range from 15,000 to 150,000 per year) manage to escape the hunters but die later of their injuries or drown after falling off the ice (pups younger than 5 weeks cannot swim). The seals are hunted chiefly for their pelts, which are exported to NORWAY, FINLAND, HONG KONG, TURKEY, RUSSIA and other countries, where they are used to make expensive designer-label coats and accessories. AMONG THE MAJOR VENDORS OF THESE PRODUCTS ARE THE ITALIAN FASHION WEAR COMPANIES, GUCCI, PRADA AND VERSACE. For more information on the hunt and surrounding issues + how you can help stop it for good: http://www.hsus.org/introFlashProtectSeals.html Thoughts... In high school I was asked to debate the pros and cons of the seal hunt. I wasn't into debating or the contention so I 'resolved' this by shrinking my presence and appearing unprepared instead of just screaming bloody murder like I should have. Is it really rocket science to get it that harp seal parents feel every bit as amazed and thrilled and caring and loving toward their newborn infants as people do? How does this awareness possibly resolve itself with the bludgeoning going on. Can you IMAGINE if it was your kid being disadvantageously bludgeoned to death with a pick axe by a 'civilized' grown man right in front of you? …I guess each of us has something that seems the most obvious thing in the world that relatively few others appear to embody. Explaining is the easy part, doing it without mirroring anger well that's another question that. Today is a tough day, as a water sign I let the tears slip and flow as they will beginning with tuning into the protectseals.org site this morning. The hunt started at dawn and I feel the shock of this horrific scene to the core of my bones, while the site's counter flips steadily each second indicating the rising number of baby seals being killed. I can't even conceive that this evil count down is scheduled to continue for 2 more weeks, it's just way too much like it's been every year for as long as it's been going on; How might this situation play out otherwise where all of us survive and thrive, if not 1,000 kinder ways...and so I (must) stay open to Miracles. It's really hard not to judge the soul-less nature of a man (hunter) who has it in him to brutalize a baby of any species. This is no sacred act. It is sickity SICK. When I hear that the government deems that a quota of killing 275,000 harp seals is acceptable, I ask by who's standards. These seals are international citizens like me, migrating through vast ocean waters: What right do Canadian hunters and their government allies have to spring up and start clubbing these wonderful, peaceful creatures just because they have the ill fortune of having their young near this country's coastline? It's no more than a basic issue of entitlement. The hunters are acting in an exclusive, closed environment and it is incredible the lengths the government is going to to justify (read lie) defend this kruelty klub. Domination over Nature is over and we are only just beginning to to get a taste of the effects of this bygone era. The Earth is dying as part of her Rebirth and so are we. Persisting and trying to go back will only cause the pain we feel to be more acute… The only way I can possibly process such labourios atrocities (pick your story) is to know without a doubt that every cell in my being is a prayer and to put everything I am behind the *knowing* that this tragedy will end in my lifetime, which is not remotely close to soon enough. The only way out is to feel the pain and DO. Alchemizing trauma is the norm for change agents, we should be used to it by now but we never quite are the only redemption now being that we are global in scope and on the ground in droves. Another name we sometimes go by is NGO's. …Witnesses and activists on the frontlines need our support, strength and prayers for they are perservering in a very hostile, environment that speaks violence and perceives listening and dialogue as a threat in stead of a doorway to expansion. My heart is fortified knowing some of my biggest heros on the planet are facing off the hunt, like Captain Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd who is uncompromisingly dedicated to his 'clients' of the seas. My thoughts and prayers are first with the harp seals and their families today, also present with all of the rainbow warriors planet wide… I have such profound grattitude for everyone's brevity and endurance. It truly is a privilege to be alive and there's nothing left but to make the MOST of it for the Good of All. ~* CALL FROM THE KILLING FIELDS! “Please Stand With Us and Bear Witness” Rebecca Aldworth has been documenting the seal hunt for 10 years, following is an excerpt from her blog leading up to this morning's events. …I lay down a few feet from them and closed my eyes. They repeated the gesture. After doing this a few times, the seals were fast asleep. And so was I! When I woke, the pups were huddled together just inches away from me. My two new friends woke as well, staring at me curiously. One slid across the ice to me, taking a moment to smell my face before he move on. One of the most tragic things is the advantage held by the sealers. Not only are these pups just days of age and utterly defenseless, but they are absolutely trusting of people. The sealers betray that trust in the worst possible way. I looked over across the ice, and saw one very young seal crawl up to Nigel's camera, staring at him in fascination as he took her photo. It never ceases to amaze me how charismatic these newborn seals are - and how utterly peaceful the ice floes can be …

Answer Me This:

homo divinus — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 22:21:05 GMT

Is 2012 the latest / current / next Y2K?

Happy "Eastre"!

homo divinus — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 06:52:27 GMT

Eastre, also spelt Easter, Ostara and Oestre celebrated at the Vernal Equinox (first day of Spring), approx. 21st March. The Goddess is in her aspect of mother to be. She is Eastre, the Teutonic Goddess of Fertility. Her symbol is the egg, symbolising fertility in nature and rebirth from the long winter months. The seeds are now sown, ready to grow and ripen. The Goddess is fertile, rich with promise and potential life. (It is from the word "oestre" that we get the word "oestrogen" - the female hormone). To the Saxons she was Ostara, in myth she is said to have amused children by turning her bird into a rabbit, the rabbit then laid coloured eggs much to the delight of the children. Day and night are in balance, the union of the Goddess and young God brings all life into order. She represents the blossoming of new awareness, joy in the new life springing forth from the Earth. ~ Wiccaweb

Opening the Doors of Haven

homo divinus — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 20:46:50 GMT

Prophecy of the Cornerstone (From the libraries of the White Horse) By Almine When that which was separated again unites When the libraries of the Horse unite in truth and might This by a blue star heralded shall be This awaited event shall turn a key On the morning of January 20, 2008 I learned for the first time from the Mother of Creation that the libraries I had been translating from, known as the White Horse Libraries, were not whole. They had been separated into two portions, one being in higher realms. At about 2:47 pm PST Mother united them after eons of separation. This coincided with the advent of the blue star — Comet Holmes — whose current appearance was first noted in October 2007. When the libraries are united, it will set other events in motion — like turning a key. When the two shall be one another event shall come A cornerstone shall be laid, for the reign of the Mother and Father will have begun Let purity reign; let lies be done away Let the destructuring of the old begin this day After the libraries had been united, the Father laid the first cornerstone of the Mother and Father's joint reign on Earth. The cornerstone consisted of an incorruptible box, its beautifully carved wood originally from the Caucasus Mountains. That which was placed within I am not allowed to disclose until the other cornerstones are laid some time in the future. This event precedes a destructuring of earthly systems that are not compatible with the purity and truth of the Mother's and Father's long prophesied joint reign on Earth, which was initially described in Opening the Doors of Heaven. Swept clear by the Mother many souls have died On Earth in empty bodies the soulless do hide When social tyrants that have governed are all done away Soulless bodies that linger shall no longer stay There are many soulless bodies on Earth because they have not earned the right to live as the Earth ascended into higher realms beginning in February 2005. They have lingered because illusory institutions have remained. As these social structures are dismantled, there shall be many 'deaths' but technically they are already dead. Three more comets shall come to herald the Holy Reign A larger one that's pink, a smaller purple one, then a small red one yet again As each one comes, another cornerstone is laid More shall destructure, let Mother's children not be afraid "Verech nahur usva bevechstik u-aresvi Kelesh klahusbavik/nechve ustavi" Great is the glory of times to come For the reign of great peace has begun

Achieving Golden (Masculine) Energy Balance

homo divinus — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 23:39:20 GMT

"Raphael, patron angel of healers, was given responsibility by the Creator for making the earth a fit place for all life, as well as for aiding humankind with the healing of all maladies. He is guardian of the sacred knowledge, or science, of healing and therefore when we work with him he makes it possible for us to develop a full understanding of our own wonderful powers of recovery. If you resonate strongly with Raphael's sacred name, it also suggests you may have an inherent healing skill that you should develop. You may, however, need self-healing first, because the stressful process of life depletes energy levels, and we must continually re-balance this energy to maintain good health. Life force energy (also called Universal Source or the Quintessence) is the gift of Spirit and contains unconditional Love and the pure harmonic of Light, including all rainbow colors. Ask Raphael how you can learn to channel this to strengthen your immune system, thus enhancing the body's self-healing ability, and sealing it in with his golden ray. If you genuinely desire to give healing to others, you must strive to be centered and whole yourself, for in a mystical process the healing creates a synergy between individuals' higher selves allowing Love and Light to flow between. 'I come on a pure golden spiral that flows from Father Sun to manifest all life on Mother Earth. It is the glorious energy ray whose nurturing warmth brings you joy of living, banishes darkness and enlightens your life and future. My task is to guide you towards knowledge of self-healing, harmony and balance so that you can use this knowledge for self and others. Consider your life as a canvas on which you can create any picture you like. To do this, however, you need health, else your picture will be faint indeed. You also require balance and harmony between the active, gold side of you and your passive, silver side. Gold is the aspect of you that makes decisions, using logic and analytical skills, and takes action accordingly — the power of your will and mind. Your silver side — your feelings and intuition — is ruled by the Moon, whose Guardian is Gabriel*. The two aspects meet in third eye chakra. If you would receive my golden rays close your eyes and breathe my energy. See the spiral of gold travel anti-clockwise down through your crown, circling your heart and into your solar plexus (solar chakra). Absorb as much gold as you can, for the solar plexus is the place where emotions may have been suppressed and where your will power is located. To empower your will and mind use them to actually ignite the Sun within you, harnessing its power at all — even cellular — levels. I will assist you to finally send it up to your right brow where it joins with the corresponding silver energy spiral of Gabriel*. If you work at this you will gradually attain true balance and harmony. As your will is empowered, nourish it with your heart, using your power only with Love. This brings true wisdom and opens the Way to crown chakra and Oneness with All.' " ~ Angela McGerr, Healing the Wounded Healer First

MaYaLaNd * ReDuX

homo divinus — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 22:03:50 GMT

"If we reach the understanding of what we actually are, there is no better remedy for eliminating all suffering. This is the heart of all spiritual practices". — Kalu Rimpoche "… oneness with Spirit in which the mystery of life is no more." — Paramahansa Yogananda There is one more point in understanding the true nature of energy and our relationship to our spiritual path, the Divine. With out first breath, we enter the world of illusion, Maya, where we believe our lives are separate and apart from our Source. The physical body, physical senses and desires, attributes of being — the ego part of us, wants to declare uniqueness, our personal power and absolute rule. While at the same time, spiritual impulses, emanating from the soul come into our consciousness through the psychic senses. The battles between these two undeniable influences create the ever-changing ebb and flow of life events. The soul demands we seek harmony and attunement with all that is. The human part of us, acting like a petulant child, musters all available forces to be different, unique and all the things of self. With the evolving complexity of being, one path remains, to balance and harmonize these two points of duality with the oneness of Spirit. Where do we begin? A first step may be to create the desire in the forefront of our consciousness to blend with and personally know Divine energy. That would mean our spiritual growth needs attending in the exact same manner as our physical life. As with any effort we put forth and to advance on the spiritual path, we need to have a sense of what we are working toward. We know what we are supposed to be seeking though the teachings of the Great Masters that have walked the earth. But how does that translate to our individual being, living a life based upon karma remaining from other lifetimes, and limited by the confines of the human consciousness? It may seem crass, but by rearranging our thinking and formulating a plan, we can begin to understand our unfolding spiritual consciousness and draw nearer to the oneness we wish to experience. Another important step deals with the constant search for our truth. On a personal level, that means telling our truth and listening for the voice of conscience, the Divine voice within. By standing our ground, listening to our spiritual pacemaker in the face of the demands of others and life, we can be certain of being on the right soul path. For most of us, the path to our personal truth and higher-consciousness is strewn with the corpses of outmoded ways of acting and operating in a demanding and unrelenting material world. Pulling our life back to us, not allowing others people to direct, effect or influence our thinking is a major step in the advancing states of spiritual consciousness. We also have to do our part by working hard to create the right conditions and opportunity to feel the experience of oneness in our life. We can eat right, monitor the company we keep, meditate, pray, as well as practice all the other spiritual techniques. Slowly, focusing on our truth, motivated by the impulses of our heart and soul, the ego starts to surrender. It is then that the Divine creative energy begins to gather strength as the stronger force in our consciousness. As we continue to grow, the need to live in self-centered consciousness diminishes and can eventually disappear. The end of the dramas of life is in sight. The experience of oneness comes to everyone with time, study and meditation. With advancement coming from within, in the form of self-understanding and becoming more spiritually conscious, we begin to recognize the long-held thoughts that keep us separated from the greater light. To walk through life seeing everything as one-energy, transforms the core of our being to state of eventually being with that energy. And we can get to this important step by looking within, observing our inner workings, and learning what creates harmony within us. In time the harmony and peace we desire will no longer come and go in each passing moment. As we continue our efforts to attune and align ourselves with the God of our Heart, all that we need will be provided for us. What our lives hold is our truth. No longer will we feel the need to be beggars at the banquet of life. Our opportunity comes from holding in every thought moment a sense of the Divine presence that pervades our universe, and knowing we are not ever alone. In the next few weeks, begin to define what it would feel like to experience the sublime energy of being one with all that is. Journal on the issue of your truth and try and discover how closely you are living in accordance with the voice of your higher-self. Think of how many times you choose to follow the path of another, rather then listening to the voice of your higher-self." ~ Stephen Thomson

Free BASSing + Co.CreaTRIXzing... '08

homo divinus — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 22:00:37 GMT

"A year has just ended and as with the beginning of each New Year, a new cycle of universal energy manifests on our planet. At midnight on December 31st, this influx of energy represents the ever-changing Divine consciousness behind all creation on the earth plane. The fresh start to the year represents a new flavor of energy that manifests and support the evolution of our soul. It is the backdrop behind everything we will experience during the months to come. The new energy brings gifts of life and is to use for our journey during the year. This is another opportunity to play out and experience all that we are, incarnate at this time in the evolution of our world. The year 2008 vibrates with the number one. In Numerology, when the vibration of one is present, it is a very important time of new beginnings. In our personal lives we invent beginnings and endings; they give our lives a sense of time and space. With the one energy comes a lot of personal thinking about who were are, what we are feeling and want. During this period seeds will be planted that we tend, nourish, and grow. This is done by our conscious and unconscious actions. Also, there are the impulses and voice of our higher-self speaking to us, clearer in this cycle than many others. We all receive direction from the deepest part of us, the soul voice, about what we need to do to move our lives forward as spiritual beings. For all of us, the biggest obstacle we face in our journey is our body, aligned with the physical senses. This is the battle ground for all of us, especially when it comes to inertia. Our progress is dependent on our ability to wrestle control of our lives from the sense nature of our being. We are all familiar with the whole range of challenges that comes with the demands of the body. Our job is to cleanse and harmonize ourselves of anything that creates a distraction and takes away our sense of peace. This can be a whole range of things from the things we eat and drink, to too much noise, and/or the dramas we create. When we quiet the body and the senses, we automatically receive many new spiritual opportunities. We can start this year differently by creating a list of resolutions for the New Year that has only Spiritual goals. Remember — expanding our soul consciousness, deepening our connection with the Divine from a body-based experience is what the earth journey is all about. This exercise takes the place of mundane concerns like losing weight or stopping some habit. Although this may seem foreign or strange, why shouldn't we apply the same methods and techniques we use in our material life to our spiritual journey? After all, we are here to experience a spiritual life and our personal truth. And we can make a plan for this too. It's not just about our material worth and experience. Think about the need to commit some time each day to consciously moving from the outer to the inner world. One way of doing this is to include a period of meditation in our daily routine. This practice clears our minds and harmonizes and heals our bodies. When we enter into a deep state of meditation, our soul has direct access to the Divine energy. We can attune with forces and sources far greater than anything we can know in the physical world. Contact with the Cosmic Masters is not uncommon at these times. The healing of soul and body are guaranteed. The New Year is a great time to assess how we have grown in our spiritual consciousness. Our soul-based motivation is for a deeper connection to our Spiritual path. Only we can answer the deep personal questions that come from the mind-soul connection. Are we listening to the voice of our higher-self, the spiritual pace maker in our consciousness? Are the spiritual practices we observe being honored in our daily life? Or are we approaching our spiritual work from an intellectual and abstract place? Do we practice our beliefs? As we look at our lives, are we becoming the person we aspire to be? Here are a few suggestions to get started on a List of Spiritual Resolutions for 2008. You may want to create a list and use it as the basis for working in your journal, along with some plan for action. I want to plan time each day/week to devote to spiritual practices/study. I want to live my truth as a spiritual person. I want to expand my intuitive abilities. I want to simplify my life. I want take at least one class or do one retreat during the year. (Notice the use of the word want, rather than need) All of the above will strengthen your connection to the part of your Being that creates change. As we contemplate the ways in which we want to change, or begin anew, it will be helpful if we think of that process as a spiritual one." ~ Stephen Thomson

The Secret of Pan's Prowess

homo divinus — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 19:27:43 GMT

"Since w*Om~yN are still oppressed and kept down today, many of us have a strong desire and need to reconnect with our source, our roots, to a time in our pasts when the world's people all had reverence for the sacred feminine. We're also spiritually starved. In learning to love ourselves after so many years of believing we had no proud heritage, women (addressed to the Yin in All-Yang follows same... :) need powerful role models and images that refresh our spirits and minds. Many of us actually live our lives centered around and with wimmin, and we rely on spiritual tools to depict our reality; C.Om-uN^iCAtiOn access is one of the pathways to power. If media is bombarded with superficiality, detracting memes and violence we can turn our attention/intention toward images that will refresh our spirits and reaffirm our REAL*ity. Changing our ingrained basic beliefs is possibly the most important step in our liberation; to re-train our minds and psyches to believe in ourselves and each other, and to rediscover the Beauty and Passion of the Earth and the Great Goddess of t.e.n.t.h.o.u.s.a.n.d. names. ...New powers overtaking cultures have always changed or destroyed that of preceding societies. Alexander "The Great" destroyed 8,000 years of women's herstory when he burned the matriarchal libraries. (This is why many herstorians are adding 8,000 years to the present date). Many sources agree that the tarot was created to replace the old, wise knowledge that was being lost by the onslaught of patriarchy. Some say magicians from many countries gathered to create the cards; others say that the gypsies carried their knowledge throughout the tarot. The hostile Christians tried to destroy the tarot by collecting and burning any decks they could get their hands on, in an effort to destory the Pagan culture. Further, the tarot has *always* been linked to the kabbala, paganism and witchcraft. ...Hierarchy thrives in an atmosphere of dualisms and oppositions. If we are part of a cycle or circle, we are connected to eachother, but if one of us is "higher" than the other we are separated. Hierarchy invariably leads to oppression and power-over relationships, such as queen/subject, master/slave (excluding xrated version of course ;), rich/poor. In an effort to rid ourselves of power-over thinking, we remember that the aspects of the Goddess are present in all wimmin and correspond to cycles of birth, life and death as well as cycles of the moon - New, Full and Dark. ...Energy of the Maiden expresses new life, birth, adventure, independence and springtime. The Mother expresses the Fullness and maturity of life abundance, fruitfulness, the full moon, maintenance and nurturing - summer. The Crone is seen as the waning or dark of the Moon, psychic wisdom, the Mysteries and secrets of death and the Universe - wintertime. These archetypes are powerful affirmations for women today because they validate all aspects of our womon-selves and can help us to heal parts we have rejected or shunned. In the area of biology, Mary J. Shirfey, in her book "The Nature of Female Sexuality", presents that the female actually precedes the male as a physical form. The huwo/man embryo first takes the female form before either becoming male or remaining female. Research by feminist herstorians has uncovered information that matriarchies predated patriarchies throughout the world. In myth, the male dieties originally appeared as sons and consorts of the powerful goddesses. Only later, when men rewrote(!) the myths, did they become male father gods. Today we have a male-dominated culture. It appears that the younger gender - men - overtook the older gender - women - and with it virtually wiped out 8,000 years of knowledge and herstory. ...Pan was one of the Goddesses' mythological consorts. He can be found in many ancient mythologies, characterized by his sensuousness, creativity and love for the Goddess. His names are many: Gwdion, Tamuz, Arigus Og, Dion or the Horned God. It was this carefree, poetic and sensual figure that was transformed by the patriarchal myth makers into the Devil. Thus, men have internalized repression and guilt towards these qualities in themselves, calling them "of the Devil". By the same token, a man reclaiming the image of Pan is undergoing his liberation. Pan-spirited men exude the presence of good-heartedness: gentle and sensitive, loving and caring, active in parenting or nurturing in the world. He shows concern, is genuinely empathetic and cares for the well-being of all. This is the man who is actively engaged in overcoming the effects of patriarchy, who is supportive of women's liberation and hu/woman rights. Men need to know they have the power to change. Can he still cry? To what extent have his feelings been cut off? A Pan man strives to overcome his conditioning which goes deep, and is reinforced by a phallo-centric society. Can he still laugh? Or is the child part of his ego smothered with male rationale and logic? He lets his child self out to play. This is a political man, gay or straight, who is trying to change his actions in positive ways by developing gentleness and self-love. This includes giving up macho power and power over womyn and children, as well as tuning in to the natural beauty fo the planet, recognizing magic, lunar consciousness and The Goddess. In many male hero myths, the central figure appears as a trickster god, one who plays pranks and perpetuates deception. The clever male ego can be capable of this. Misguided men use womyn's liberation ideas for personal gain. Or men may use the intellect, traditional "man's territory", to gain power. The feminist principle may still be active in him, but he may be "selling out", or perhaps he means well and needs some consciousness raising from his brothers...prompting the choice to stop being ripped off, or to take space to get one's bearings." ~ Ffiona Morgan, Daughters of the Moon ...TaLkIN back the Thymes :) p.s. From Wikipedia: PARTHENOGENESIS "A parthenogenetic offspring is sometimes called a parthenogen. As with all types of asexual reproduction, there are both costs (low genetic diversity and susceptibility to adverse mutations that might occur) and benefits (reproduction without the need for a male) associated with parthenogenesis. Asexual reproduction existed alone from the beginning of life on Earth for many epochs. When sexual reproduction arose (presumably through mutation) it introduced a means to expand genetic diversity through the partial contribution of the male, providing more options for the survival of the species in which it began. Many species followed this reproductive path successfully, some to the exclusion of the asexual pattern from which it arose, some enabling both, some retaining the capacity to revert to asexual reproduction—if necessary, and yet others that abandoned sexual reproduction and reverted to the asexual. There are species, such as some Kalanchoe plants, that once had the capacity to reproduce sexually, but wherein no males ever have been discovered and the species reproduces prolifically via its retained asexual methods alone."

Reclaiming Personal Power

homo divinus — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 00:36:50 GMT

"We are moving into a time of instantaneous creation; we will have a thought and feeling and our physical reality will instantly change (Internet/Web). We are aware of this already when we imagine future events taking a specific course and they do, or we think about someone and they call on the phone. All of us have seen examples of this type of creation in our everyday lives. We are starting to know what's going to happen before it does. This can be scary. Most of us are hesitant to fully take our power is that we are not clear about how our lives would change. Fear of the unknown. Can we handle it? What if right now you were a thousand times more powerful? How would you be? How would that feel? What would you do with such power? Would you be safe? Would others be safe? We don't realize we can create our own reality all by ourselves!! If we choose to we also have the ability to create with others. Most of us were taught and believe we must co-create with others. If we do not realize we are all creators, each of us on our own perfect life journey will tend to judge the creations of others based on how we believe they should create. Only when we first become responsible creators, aware of what we create in our own lives, can we truly co-create with another person. We choose to ignore our First Impressions. If an answer comes, Do it or Don't do it, Yes or No comes in that flash of instant enlightenment we elect not to trust it. The answer came to fast, and like good Canadians (and Americans) we work hard to talk ourselves out of it. What we failed to recognize was in that instant, that light bulb moment it was Great Mystery Speaking! We can have a relationship with ourselves and the wider world without others telling us how to do it. We are each born with a 'perfect essential self', yet slowly over time we talk ourselves out of it as we buy into the dominant opinions and beliefs that surround us. This conditioning starts at birth. As children we have not yet learned to cognitively think for ourselves and as a result we look to those around us for opinions and feelings from parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles. As we walk the earth walk this early conditioning can dominate our lives. It is the responsibility of each of us to keep our hearts open, and our eyes and ears sharp so that we can dance the individual dance, sing the songs and speak the words that will elevate our lives and those around us and yet still meld with the greater good. With the gift of personal power comes responsibility and accountablity. How we walk in the world reflects on ourselves and our communities. How we conduct ourselves creates a positive or negative world view. Each person already has everything she needs to walk the earth walk. There will come the 'right' time when each person will align with the twin elements of Wisdom and Courage to tap into all these gifts. Wisdom to know that a change needs to be made, and the Courage to execute the change(s)." ~ Shannon Thunderbird

Memory and the Song of Divine Discontent

homo divinus — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 00:25:45 GMT

"'I did this’ says my memory, ‘I cannot have done this’, says my pride. Eventually the memory yields." (Nietzsche) Within all of us is the constant struggle that occurs among the ego, guilt and a need for spiritual peace. The 'G-word' - Guilt, that insatiable mischief-maker who sits at the source of our sense of unworthiness and with great glee often rewrites personal histories and memories until we believe the new world-view we have created for ourselves. The late humorist, Irma Bombeck once remarked that "Guilt is the gift that keeps on giving." Lack of self-worth causes the door to the truth to remain padlocked. The ego cries for peace, yet remains firmly entrenched in familiar patterns of self-deprivation and self-hate. The ego seeks and probes but insidious little voices whisper, "You are safe here in my dark heart, why change, it's what you know"; You are comfortable here and know your predictable responses"; "Do you really want to go into uncharted territory?"' "Stay with me, stay with me." And so we do and remain within our perceived safe but illusory world. When we honour our memories, we are hearing the truth of our existence. We are acknowledging the words of the Ancestors, we are respecting them - it is disrespectful to ignore the teachings from the Spirit World for it holds our memories, our personal history. Each day we walk in the real world we remember our Ancestors and their lives which created our memories. It takes courage to do this because often the memories are things we want buried in the mists of time never to be brought into the light. However, if we continue to define ourselves by that which we do not want to see, we give it life and control and we become a walking, living bad dream in our illusory world. But, when, we turn to that which frightens us and welcome and honour it as an integral part of our existence, after all, both good and bad memories have defined who we are at this moment in time, then we reclaim our lives, and the memory(s) no longer has the power to control our present reality. Our heads come up, we step forward with confidence and stride towards our endless personal horizons. ~ Shannon Thunderbird

An Open Letter from a Witch

homo divinus — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 03:32:48 GMT

I am a witch. I do not worship Satan; I am not interested in Satan. Satan was invented by the Christians. Satanism is a form of Christianity. I am not a Christian. I don't go to church on Sunday. Jesus is NOT my savior. He was simply a holy man who lived 2,000 years ago. I am not afraid of going to Hell because I don't believe in Hell any more than I believe in Satan. I am eternal. I am not evil. Telling people I am a "good witch" or asking me if I am a good witch implies that there are evil witches. There are evil people in the world, and there are people who chose to work with the forces of nature in a way that harms others; those people are NOT witches. The central law of being a witch is: "if it harms none, do as you will." Please don't ask me about sacrificing cats or desecrating churches. I love cats. And I don't go into churches or synagogues unless a friend from that religion invites me to some special occasion. And if I DO enter a church, I am not struck by lightning. And if a Christian or a Jew or a Buddhist came to a pagan ritual, our gods would not strike them dead either. Isn't that something to think about? Wearing a pentacle is no different than wearing a cross, crucifix, or Star of David. If you want me to take off the symbol of MY religion (and Wicca is a religion, protected by the same First Amendment rights as other religions) because it's offensive, you need to make everyone of every religion do that. The five points of the star signify the four elements of Earth, Air, Fire & Water, and the fifth point is Spirit; encircled by the World. How that can offend anyone boggles my little pagan mind. An image of a tortured, dying man is more offensive, yet thousands of people openly wear crucifixes every day. Also, don't ask me if I'm in a "coven" in that half-horrified, half-fascinated tone of voice. If I want to talk about my coven, I will bring it up. If I am a solitary practitioner, I have no coven to discuss. In any case, our rituals have candles, food, drink, poetry, dancing...yes, there is a knife but it only cuts the air, not anyone's flesh. I don't drink blood. I am not a vampire. I wear black because it keeps negativity away and because it looks better on me than orange and purple polka dots. If you want to ask me something related to MY religion, ask me when the next full moon is. Or the next blue moon. Or what a blue moon IS. Ask me about herbs. Crystals. Healing. Even ask me to make you a love potion. But I don't cast spells on other people and I won't cast a spell on you to make you prettier, thinner, more desirable. And I won't cast a spell on your quarry to make him/her love you. Trust me, you don't want that, you don't want the karma that involves, and neither do I! That's a form of manipulation, taking away someone's power, infringing on their free will. Not nice at all. And I also won't cast a binding spell to make someone STOP doing something to you. Spell work is about co-creation. A witch works with universal energy, with the gods, to tilt the engine of probability somewhat. Need money? Don't try to ensorcel your boss to give you a raise. Simply ask the universe to increase the flow of abundance in your direction. That infringes on NO ONE's free will. One last thing: giving me a book about the Burning Times is like giving a book on the Holocaust to a Jewish person. It's not funny and is rude. Yes, I do go to Salem, but not because any of those poor executed people were witches (I think the jury is still out on some of them), but because there's cool pagan shops there. If there were cool pagan shops in a town called East Cowflop, I'd go there. Please don't try to make me ashamed of who I worship and what I am. Please don't try to convert me or "save" me. Don't throw holy water on me. Don't leave little pamphlets on my desk or windshield. I don't need to be saved. Witches are proud of the fact that we don't recruit people to become witches. We simply ARE, and those around us see how we think, how we act, and our inner peace, and only when someone says "how do I become a witch?" do we take them into the fold with us. I will NEVER leave a religious tract with anyone. I don't have one, unless you count this letter. I am not asking you to convert. I am only asking you to understand. If you don't want to understand, just leave me alone. Author unknown

Empowered Forgiveness

homo divinus — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 01:19:03 GMT

In life there will always be times when we are affected by the actions of another person. When this happens, we often receive an apology. More often than not we say, “It’s alright,” or “ It’s okay,” and by saying this we are allowing, accepting, and giving permission for the behavior to happen again. When we say “thank you,” or “I accept your apology,” we are forced to sit in our feelings rather than ignore them. There are many of us who feel that it is easier to brush off how we really feel than to express our discomfort with something that has happened to us. While this may initially seem like the best thing to do, what it really does is put us into an unending pattern of behavior; since we are not honest with another person, we continue the cycle of letting them overstep our emotional limits time and time again. By doing this we place ourselves in the position of victim. We can put an end to this karmic chain by first acknowledging to the other person that we accept their request for forgiveness; often a simple “thank you” is enough. To truly create a greater sense of harmony in our relationship, however, we need to gently, and with compassion, express our innermost concerns about what has transpired. By taking a deep breath and calling upon the deepest parts of our spirit, we can usually find the right words to say and verbalize them in a way that lets the other person recognize the consequences of what they have done. If we can remember that our response to others is important, we can begin to realize that trust and forgiveness go hand in hand. And when we react in a way that engenders a greater amount of honesty and candor, we will establish a more positive and empowering way of being and interacting others. The Daily OM ...9 STEPS TO FORGIVENESS: 1. Contact your beliefs and feelings about what happened and share them with people you trust. 2. Commit to yourself that you will do whatever it takes to feel better. 3. Realize that forgiving does not necessarily mean reconciling with the others or condoning what they did. 4. Realize that the distress you feel is coming from your interpretation of what happened, not from the incident itself. 5. Learn and practice a stress-management technique (yoga, breathing techniques, martial arts, meditation, etc.). 6. Realize that you can control only your own thoughts and actions, not those of others. 7. Turn your attention from your hurt feelings to finding a way to achieve your goals that does not involve changing the other person's behavior. 8. Remembering that "a life well lived is the best revenge," realize that your negative response gives the other person power over you. 9. Change your story so that it no longer dwells on victimhood, but focuses instead on your strengths: your ability to cope and to grow, and your heroic choice to forgive. Spirit of Maat E-zine

Affirmation Inspiration * Vision * Strategy *

homo divinus — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 21:02:07 GMT

"Scorpio time is a deep one somehow for us all. As leaves fall to the ground we are reminded of our mortality and the passage of time. Every life is a cycle and every cycle has a life with birth and death meeting at the point of the next spiral. This is the eternal promise and hope, as we each face the void of an unclear yet certain end. The mystics, masters and dream seers ever encouraging us to realize that the void is light, the majestic something within the nothing that the high priests of our materialistic age refer to as source. Nature reveals her eternal renewal process of cyclic turns from galaxies, to waxing and waning moons to spiral sea shells all the way down to spiralling DNA. Yet, still we are assured by the educated intellects fed on death and delusion that life is a straight line, beginning somewhere and culminating in a final end point of remorseless extinction. The greater victims are the ones who yield their inner knowing to such shallow conclusions, blinded by the blind. This imaginary fear is the toll of hidden dark lords and black magicians who profit from the irrational fears that stem from their pitiful rationalizations and malicious manipulations for power. Yes these same said are the greatest victims of the lower mind lost to dark facts and forces even amidst proofs and discoveries of inner worlds and realities untold celebrated by the more evolved of their ranks. Is it any wonder that in our age of technological wizardry we have and are creating a harder world than reality requires – slaves to things in fearful rebellion against the black void in hopes to fill the bottomless pit of their despair at the expense of nature’s grace? The timeless truths speak of souls who have taken bodies to experience the veritable wonders of creation and to grow and evolve yet the delusion weavers assure us we are merely bodies and the soul is a myth. In this there is truth for when we yield our popular and short-sighted interpretation of the word ‘myth’ to illustrate fallacies to the greater understanding that myths are allegorical stories revealing sacred truths, we see how even our use of words deceive us. This time of decay is the right time to contemplate upon the ways that nature reveals the eternal cycles of death and renewal. The air will cool and snow will soon fall and then spring will come again. In like kind, souls will take bodies and live in them and eventually leave them too only to take a body again once they return from the great something that we now name nothing." ~ Michael O'Connors Weekly Horoscope

Imagination Liberation

homo divinus — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 03:18:23 GMT

"Let me remind you who you really are: You are one of the chosen ones. You're a luminous being. A primordial miracle. A resplendent avatar. You are a deity in disguise--not a Buddha or a Christ, but of the same lineage and made from the same mojo. I want to be sure you get what I'm saying. You're an immortal messiah. You have been around since the beginning of time and will be here after the end. Every day and in every way, you're getting better at playing the mysterious master game we all dreamed up together before the Big Bang bloomed. Let me put it another way. You're a rebel creator longing to make the whole universe your home and sanctuary. You are a dissident bodhisattva joyfully struggling to germinate the seeds of divine love that are packed inside every moment. It's time to remember. You are a shimmering burst of spiral hallelujahs that has temporarily taken on the form of a human being, agreeing to endure amnesia about your true origins. And why did you do that? Because it was the best way to forge the exquisitely unique and robust identity that would make you such an elemental force in our 14-billion-year campaign to bring heaven all the way down to earth. You and I are freedom fighters scrambling and finagling and conspiring to relieve all of our fellow messiahs from their suffering and shower them with more blessings than they know what to do with. * Lately, I must admit, our work has seemed almost comically impossible. Many of our brothers and sisters believe that everything is upside-down and inside-out. Is war really peace? Is slavery really freedom? Is ignorance strength? How did it all get so insane? Even many of the smartest among us seem to have lost their vision. Cynicism has become a supreme sign of intelligence. Compulsive skepticism masquerades as perceptiveness. Mean-spirited irony is chic. Beautiful truths are suspect and ugly truths are popular. At this peculiar turning point in the evolution of our 14-billion-year-old master game, it ain't easy to carry out our mission. We've got to be both wrathful insurrectionaries and exuberant lovers of life. We’ve got to cultivate cheerful buoyancy even as we resist the temptation to swallow thousands of delusions that have been carefully crafted and seductively packaged by those among us who bravely volunteered to play the role of deceivers. We have to learn how to stay in a good yet unruly mood as we overthrow the cockeyed mass hallucination that is mistakenly referred to as reality. Maybe most importantly, we have to be ferociously and single-mindedly dedicated to the cause of beauty and truth and love even as we keep our imaginations wild and hungry and free. We have to be both disciplined and rowdy. That's especially thorny because of the fact that a genocide of the imagination is raging world-wide. It threatens to render our imaginations numb and inert and passive and tame. I know you know what I mean. Aren't you psychically assaulted by dangerous images every day? Don't the media relentlessly blast you with their trendy doom and gloom fixation, barraging you with messages about how bad life is? Doesn't the entertainment industry force-feed you insipidly paranoid scenarios in the same way a French foie gras farmer crams eight pounds of corn down the gullet of his prize goose every day? Aren't your eyes and ears constantly scalded by blistering harangues to buy stuff you don't really need? Isn't the sacred temple of your imagination pounded ruthlessly by smart bombs whipped up by evil advertising geniuses in their Madison Avenue laboratories? Hasn't your ability to envision the astounding intricacy and richness of the web of life gotten hijacked and hooked on decadent fantasies about new possessions that would allegedly make you happier? Your imagination is supposed to be the engine of your destiny. It is the wizard's wand you can use to design your future. Your imagination is your power to create mental pictures of things that don’t exist yet and that you want to bring into being. Every human creation on this earth has begun as a vision in someone's imagination. Your imagination is also your very own all-purpose joy stick, your snakeskin bag of magic tricks. It's your remote-control channel-changer, and the only reliable rearranger of anything anywhere anytime. It's your X-Factor, your wild card, your wicked funny instigator, your Goddess-sanctioned trouble-maker -- your swarming, terraforming, always-morning brainstormer. Love desperately needs your imagination. As psychologist James Hillman says, "For a relationship to stay alive, love alone is not enough. Without imagination, love stales into sentiment, duty, and boredom. Intimacy fails not because we have stopped loving but because we first stopped imagining." Your imagination is the single most important tool you have in your daily fight to be free. It is the source of every act of liberation you will ever need to pull off. But how can your imagination flourish--how can it dream up scenarios that energize you to create your own version of heaven on earth--if you are forever deluged by dazzling psychic toxins that sting and sap and wound your lust for life? Too many of our brothers and sisters have fallen victim. Their swarming terraforming always-morning brainstormers have been cruelly fooled into acting as if their deepest desires are impossible lies. As a result they live incoherent lives corroded by chronic anxiety. I for one am no longer willing to tolerate the epidemic obsession with big bad nasty things and flashy trite empty-hearted things. I say it's time for us to re-consecrate and regenerate and lubricate and liberate and take back our imaginations. Here are my demands. DEMAND #1: I demand that Amnesty International launch a crusade against a form of terrorism I call the genocide of the imagination. DEMAND #2: I demand that you periodically go on a media fast. For a week at a time, once a season, avoid all TV, movies, novels, yalk shows, newspapers, magazines, and Internet. DEMAND #3: I demand that you learn to tell the difference between your own thoughts and those of the celebrities who have demonically possessed you. DEMAND #4: I demand that People magazine do a feature story on "The World's Fifty Sexiest Perpetrators of Beauty, Truth, and Rowdy Bliss." DEMAND #5: I demand that you wear underpants on your head and dance naked in slow motion whenever you watch movies on TV about tormented geniuses who create great art but treat everyone in their lives like crap. DEMAND #6: I demand that you refuse to be entertained and entranced by bad news--by stories whose plots are driven by violence, abuse, terrorism, bigotry, lawsuits, greed, crashes, alcoholism, disease, and torture. DEMAND #7: I demand that you seek out and create stories that make you feel that the universe is friendly and life is on your side. You could hunt down stories about how, for example, rising rates of intermarriage are helping to dissipate ethnic and religious strife worldwide; how the violent crime rate in America has been steadily declining for 30 years; how death rates from cancer are shrinking; the birth rate among teenage mothers is the lowest it's been in six decades; acreage devoted to organic farming is increasing rapidly; the number of refugees and weapons sales all over the world are way down from the level they were 15 years ago, and how the actual bare naked truth is that levels of literacy and education and political freedom and peace and wealth are steadily growing all over the world. DEMAND #8: When you're too well-entertained to move, screaming is good exercise. Which is why I demand that you scream now and then whenever you're soaking up slick crap generated by the imaginations of people who are devoted to money, power, and ego instead of love, reverence, and play. * There is another force that fuels the war against the imagination--and that's fundamentalism. The fundamentalist takes everything way too seriously and way too personally and way too literally. He divides the world into two camps, those who agree with him and those who don’t. There is only one right way to interpret the world, and a million wrong ways. The fundamentalist not only enslaves his own imagination to his belief system, he wants to enslave our imaginations too. The liberated imagination, God forbid, is taboo. In one of her poems, Diane DiPrima declares that a war against the imagination is raging worldwide. "The only war that matters is the war against the imagination," she says. "All other wars are subsumed in it." If she's right, then the war against terrorism is a symptom of the war against the imagination. The war against our civil liberties is a symptom of the war against the imagination. The war against the environment, the war against the poor, the war against some drugs--all symptoms. It's the fundamentalists who want this war. They fight it and force everybody else to fight, too. And who are the fundamentalists? It's not just the usual suspects; it's not just the religious fanatics of Islam and Christianity and Judaism and Hinduism. There are many other kinds of fundamentalists, and some of them have gotten away with practicing their fundamentalism in a stealth mode. Among the most successful are those who believe in what Robert Anton Wilson calls fundamentalist materialism. That's the faith-based dogma that swears physical matter is the only reality and that nothing exists unless it can be detected by our five senses or by technologies that humans have made. There is no inherent meaning or purpose to the universe, the fundamentalist materialists proclaim. There is no divine intelligence. The universe is a dumb accidental machine that grinds on endlessly out of blind necessity. I see spread out before me in every direction a staggeringly sublime miracle lovingly crafted by a supernal consciousness that oversees the evolution of 500 billion galaxies, yet is also available as an intimate companion and daily advisor to every one of us. But to the fundamentalist materialists, my perceptions are dead wrong and utterly idiotic. There are many other varieties of fundamentalism. Every ideology, even the ones I like, has its share of true believers, fanatics who judge all other ideologies as inferior, flawed, and foolish. I know astrologers who insist there's only one way to do astrology right. I know Buddhists who adamantly decree that the inherent nature of life on earth is suffering. I know progressive activists who sincerely believe that every single Republican is either stupid or evil or both. I know college administrators who would excommunicate any psychology professor who dared to discuss the teachings of Carl Jung, who was in my opinion one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century. I know pagans who refuse to consider any other version of Jesus Christ beyond the sick parody the Christian right has fabricated. There are true believers everywhere. And they don't like to hear that there are at least three sides to every story. They don't like to hear that everyone has a piece of the truth. And here’s the really bad news: Many of us here, including me, are infected with the fundamentalist virus. Each of us is fanatical, rigid, and intolerant about products of the imagination that we don't like. We wish that certain people would not imagine the things they do, and we allow ourselves to beam hateful, war-like thoughts in their direction. We even wage war against our own imaginations, commanding ourselves, sometimes half-consciously, to ignore possibilities that don't fit into our neatly constructed theories. Each of us sets aside certain precious beliefs and symbols that we give ourselves permission to take very seriously and personally and literally. Our fundamentalism, yours and mine, may not be as dangerous to the collective welfare as, say, the fundamentalism of Islamic terrorists and right-wing Christian politicians. It may not be as destructive as the CEOs who worship financial profit as the supreme measure of value and the scientists who ignore and deny every mystery that can't be measured. But still: We are all infected, you and I. We are fueling the war against the imagination. (What's your version of the virus?) This has got to stop. We are primordial miracles. Resplendent avatars. Deities in disguise. Rebel creators. We are wrathful insurrectionaries and exuberant lovers of life dedicated to navigating our way through this peculiar turning point in the evolution of our 14-billion-year-old master game. It is our sacred duty to keep our imaginations wild and hungry and free, and to make sure that all of our fellow messiahs, even those who volunteered to play the roles of ignorant deceivers, have the chance to keep their imaginations wild and hungry and free. How might we start curing ourselves of the virus and move in the direction of becoming more festive, relentless champions of the liberated imagination? For starters, we can take everything less seriously and less personally and less literally. We can laugh at ourselves at least as much as we laugh at other people. We can blaspheme our own gods and burn our own flags and mock our own hypocrisy and satirize our own fads and fixations. We can enjoy the pleasures of healing mischief, friendly shocks, compassionate tricks, irreverent devotion, holy pranks, playful experiments, and crazy wisdom. We can inspire each other to perpetrate healing mischief, friendly shocks, compassionate tricks, blasphemous reverence, holy pranks, and crazy wisdom. We can be humble enough to understand that it's a crime against life to act like a know-it-all who has everything all figured out." ~ Rob Brezny

Nature as Revelation and Source of Healing

homo divinus — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 02:15:10 GMT

"When you wake up to the Divine Consciousness within you and your divine identity, you wake up simultaneously to the Divine Consciousness appearing as all other beings. And this is not poetry and this is not a feeling, this is a direct experience of the divine light living in and as all other beings. And until this realization is firm in you, you do not know who or where you are. You do not know that you are God in disguise, and you do not know that you have been born into a totally sacred, totally holy creation in which all sentient beings from the smallest flea to the largest whale are nothing less than God Herself. And this has to be the core realization for a future humanity, because only from a realization of the divine identity of all things can grow the kind of humility, the kind of tenderness, the kind of wonder, the kind of awe and the kind of respect that are necessary for human beings to live in peace with each other, for human beings to live in balance with their environment, and for human beings really to work with the divine forces of love and knowledge to recreate the world in the image of God. ...To awaken to the sacredness of the body and of embodiment is to know yourself increasingly, and increasingly normally, as a divine human being in a divine world. Nature is not dead or other or simply a set of gorgeously complicated interlocking systems as many scientific and some religious philosophies would have it; what mystical awakening reveals is that nature and all things and beings in it are sacred both in their origin and in all their relations and holy particulars. As the divine light in consciousness works on and clarifies and purifies all your physical senses and divinizes them, the essential beauty and glory of nature will become clearer and clearer, more and more astounding, and more and more revelatory of the glory and beauty of the Divine that is everywhere appearing in and as all things and beings in nature. The mountain reveals itself as divine stability; the waters of the sea as the always-flowing divine power; the tiger as divine strength; the anemone as divine delicacy. As this holy awareness deepens and as the great adventure of marrying light consciousness to the body's emotions, actions and thoughts begins and becomes more refined, nature starts to unveil even greater secrets. What the growing marriage between body and spirit deepens is the sense of divine identity between you and every other sentient being and the knowledge of the holiness of every thing and creature in the universe. As you learn to bless your own body as the manifestation of God more and more completely, so a faculty for blessing all other creatures grows more and more rich in you until every flower, every passing animals in the street, every fall of sunlight on the snow peaks, every sudden fall of rain, becomes different notes in one long and endless symphony of divine presence and divine love. 'Everywhere and in everything my Beloved appears', sings Kabir. 'I see Him every time I turn my head. What wonder and what bliss!' What this marriage between you and your body and you and your body and nature and the light Source of all things makes more and more obvious to you is two interconnected revelations. The first is that all living things are equally holy and equally sacred. I am not more holy or sacred than the worm in my garden or the little cricket suddenly lost and bewildered on my white carpet because he wind has blown him into my drawing room; I am not more important in the web of life than the slug or sea horse or ladybug. A frog appears to me as beautiful as any archangel. While it is true that I have been graced by God with the consciousness to participate in Divine Origin and see all things flame out with Origin, that does not entitle me to believe myself special; it makes me a partner in that divine humility that is manifesting itself as all beings and all creatures, in what a great Christian mystic of the thirteenth century, Angela of Foligno, called 'the unspeakable humility of Divine Love that hides itself in the Creation and takes on all shapes and forms within it.' The second revelation that the marriage of body and spirit brings is that all human beings, precisely because they have been graced with origin consciousness, have the responsibility to serve and protect the creation in and under God, following with reverence the laws of the Father-Mother as revealed in and through nature in her relations and rhythms. As the child of the Father-Mother consciously aware of my origin in that light that is the origin of all things, I have a final and inescapable responsibility to treat all things and beings with divine love, divine respect, and divine tenderness. The more I do so, the more I will grow in my own human divinity and the more I will experience, with ever greater intimacy and wonder, the Divine Presence in every rose, every bird, every shifting play of wind in the grasses, every fern and poke weed. One of the greatest and most reassuring mystical experiences of my recent life was seeing my cat Purrball blazing softly in divine light at the top of the stairs, licking her paws. From the moment I first saw this beautiful tabby sitting resignedly at the back of a cage in the pound, my heart contracted in love for her. That love grew and grew in the weeks and months that followed; I never knew that I could feel so unconditional a tenderness for any creature. I experienced each moment with her as a direct, almost deranging blessing that I began to know was taking me deeper and deeper into the scared heart of the Father-Mother. It was as if she were the 'worm' on the hook of divine love and that divine love, using her as bait, was drawing me into an ever deeper realization of the holiness of all things. Because I loved my cat so much so suddenly, every animal I saw in the street or on television, even animals that I had before disliked or been afraid of, such as cockroaches, boa constrictors, and alligators, all became not only startlingly beautiful but also profoundly touching. I had known for years about the horrible ways in which we treat animals in slaughterhouses, cosmetic factories, vivisection institutes; I had also known many f the facts about the extermination of animal species that our environmental holocaust is causing. Loving my cat more and more made all these forms of knowledge suddenly inescapably real. Every time I saw the face of an abused animal, I saw the face of my cat in pain; every time I read of the disappearance of a species of fish or insect or bird I saw her face being wiped out by darkness. I realized that the Divine had given me my cat to open my heart finally to the living horror of what we are doing to animals and the natural world. At first the immediacy of such naked knowledge scared me. I believed that a great deal of mystical experience had already opened my heart; I was not prepared for this rendering of another veil by love. But as I surrendered more and more not only to loving Purrball but to loving all animals and things in nature in her and through her, I found that I grew in heartbroken love for all things and beings menaced now by the environmental catastrophe human greed and blindness are engendering, and that from that heartbroken love came a more and more passionate desire to do everything in my power to help others awaken to what I was being shown. I remembered what an old Indian chief had told me years before at a conference in New York: 'When you allow yourself really to fall in love with the world, your whole being becomes full of a mothers passion to protect her children, and a fathers hunger to see them safe and strong.' And then the moment came, when on evening, after I had been down to the fridge to drink some milk, I came back up the stairs to our bedroom and saw my cat at the top of the stairs surrounded by a nimbus of dazzling sweet diamond light. Every aspect of her seemed supernaturally precise in that dazzling light; each whisker, the white under her chin, the shining of her eyes, the 'M' mark on her forehead, all were utterly clear; It was if I had never seen them before, never loved or adored or revered them enough. I realized that if I completely married my body, heart, soul, and mind together, I would see all things with this sacramental passion, burning with the glory of God. What the Direct Path has brought me to, then, is the knowledge that I am one with all things and beings in a divine awareness and energy that streams from the light. It has also brought me closer to the love of the Father-Mother for all things, and the protective passion that arises naturally from that love. I at last am really beginning to understand what the Lakota Indians mean when they say that all living things are their relations, and to feel some small part of the love that drove St. Francis to love the larks rising from the dawn fields of Tuscany and pick up the worms from the paths near his hermitage." From Chapter 3 of The Direct Path, by Andrew Harvey

Flex~Ability

homo divinus — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 23:57:34 GMT

"And so - times change and so do we all. You may have noticed that things are changing on the global level and on the local level. This is not surprising because in order for our world to go ahead we must begin to equalize and have balance. I know that we all want everyone to have peace, food, shelter, comfort and the other good things of life and so this may require a little more sharing. I believe that sharing will be more welcome than it is frightening. There will be changes however and we will all see that to some degree. Don't worry about making great sacrifices. I don't feel that that is going to be the case but we may have to accept the fact that our image will change, that we may see ourselves as others see us and that we may also be able to see others as they see themselves. And this will be ultimately a very good thing though there will be some moments of shyness and even some embarrassment. Still, when viewed on the world front it will be a good thing in time though there will be a few bumpy roads yet to come. Think of it as something that ultimately creates a more benevolent society and remember to keep up your sense of humor. If we can laugh at ourselves and laugh through the pain when it comes we will be able to feel a sense of kinship we have not known nor experienced before. It's surprising how forgiving people can be when we're able to laugh at ourselves and feel pride in the accomplishments of others. We'll get through this thing, this life, this world and I believe we'll do it as brothers and sisters with each other. Goodlife to you all and goodnight." ~Robert Shapiro

Stop Canada's Seal Slaughter: Action requested in October c/o Link!

homo divinus — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 04:50:31 GMT

*Props* to the people who are unjustly on trial today and tomorrow essentially for witnessing Canada's evil nemesis on a global scale, the 'annual' seal slaughter... The unified voice of an ever-loudening worldwide call to end the seal hunt needs to be fully heard out, not penalized and harrased in backwardsville yang dominated court systems that don't employ sincere listening skills in the first place. Some (get) real dialogue is called for by expanded means... Supportive actions for the seals & witnesses can be taken c/o this link: ~Mitakuye Oyasin~ (All my Relations...& Tks) http://www.hsicanada.ca/seals/seals_actions.html Tell the DFO: No More Restrictions on Observing the Seal Hunt Each spring, observers go to the ice to document the Canadian commercial seal hunt and bear witness to the cruelty. Over the years, the government has imposed increasingly restrictive conditions on observers in an effort to hide the atrocity of this slaughter from a world outraged by it. On *Thursday and Friday, October 18 and 19*, the HSUS/HSI ProtectSeals team will stand trial for documenting the hunt, accused of crossing the 10-meter barrier they are required to maintain from seal hunters as a condition of their observation permits. This was not the case, and we have the evidence to prove it. At the same time, Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) is trying another tack: proposing amendments to the Marine Mammal Regulations which would clarify the terms under which the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans could refuse any person an observation permit for the seal hunt. Please tell the DFO and Prime Minister Stephen Harper right now that you support the right of the ProtectSeals team to observe and document the hunt, and that you will not accept these amendments to the Regulations or this cynical attempt by the Canadian government to cover up the cruelty it is allowing to take place. Use the forms on the above link to submit your comments. Please take time to personalize the letters—it is important for the government to know that each letter comes from an individual concerned about the seal hunt. In 2007, more than 215,000 baby seals were killed in Canada for their fur -- clubbed, shot and skinned in the largest commercial hunt of marine mammals in the world. Once again, the Canadian government is trying to block observation of the commercial seal hunt, and we have very little time to act. Join me in protecting the right to bear witness to the hunt and expose its cruelty to the world. Please take action today to help end the cruel seal hunt by sending the Canadian government comments on the trial of the ProtectSeals team and proposed amendments to the Marine Mammal Regulations. Comments are due in October!

Ripples on the Surface of Being

homo divinus — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 20:56:32 GMT

"The world and time are intrinsically connected. When all self-seeking in time ceases, then you can be in the world without being of the world...The world promises fulfillment somewhere in time, and there is a continuous striving toward that fulfillment in time. Many times people feel, 'Yes, now I have arrived,' and then they realize that, no, they haven't arrived, and then the striving continues. It is expressed beautifully in A Course in Miracles, where it says that the dictum of the ego is 'Seek but do not find.' People look to the future for salvation, but the future never arrives. So ultimately, suffering arises through not finding. And that is the beginning of an awakening—when the realization dawns that 'Perhaps this is not the way. Perhaps I will never get to where I am striving to reach; perhaps it's not in the future at all.' After having been lost in the world, suddenly, through the pressure of suffering, the realization comes that the answers may not be found out there in worldly attainment and in the future. That's an important point for many people to reach. That sense of deep crisis—when the world as they have known it, and the sense of self that they have known that is identified with the world, become meaningless. That happened to me. I was just that close to suicide and then something else happened—a death of the sense of self that lived through identifications, identifications with my story, things around me, the world. Something arose at that moment that was a sense of deep and intense stillness and aliveness, beingness. I later called it 'presence.' I realized that beyond words, that is who I am. But this realization wasn't a mental process. I realized that that vibrantly alive, deep stillness is who I am. Years later, I called that stillness 'pure consciousness', whereas everything else is the conditioned consciousness. The human mind is the conditioned consciousness that has taken form as thought. The conditioned consciousness is the whole world that is created by the conditioned mind. Everything is our conditioned consciousness; even objects are. Conditioned consciousness has taken birth as form and then that becomes the world. So to be lost in the conditioned seems to be necessary for humans. It seems to be part of their path to be lost in the world, to be lost in the mind, which is the conditioned consciousness. Then, due to the suffering that arises out of being lost, one finds the unconditioned as oneself. And that is why we need the world to transcend the world. So I'm infinitely grateful for having been lost. The purpose of the world is for you to be lost in it, ultimately. The purpose of the world is for you to suffer, to create the suffering that seems to be what is needed for the awakening to happen. And then once the awakening happens, with it comes the realization that suffering is unnecessary now. You have reached the end of suffering because you have transcended the world. It is the place that is free of suffering. This seems to be everybody's path. Perhaps it is not everybody's path in this lifetime, but it seems to be a universal path. Even without a spiritual teaching or a spiritual teacher, I believe that everybody would get there eventually. But that could take time. A spiritual teaching is there to save time. The basic message of the teaching is that you don't need any more time, you don't need any more suffering. I tell this to people who come to me: 'You are ready to hear this because you are listening to it. There are still millions of people out there who are not listening to it. They still need time. But I am not talking to them. You are hearing that you don't need time anymore and you don't need to suffer anymore. You've been seeking in time and you've been seeking further suffering.' And to suddenly hear that 'You don't need that anymore—for some, that can be the moment of transformation.' So the beauty of the spiritual teaching is that it saves lifetimes of unnecessary suffering. ...So it's good that people are lost in the world. I enjoy traveling to New York and Los Angeles, where it seems that people are totally involved. I was looking out of the window in New York. We were next to the Empire State Building, doing a group. And everybody was rushing around, almost running. Everybody seemed to be in a state of intense nervous tension, anxiety. It's suffering, really, but it's not recognized as suffering. And I thought, where are they all running to? And of course, they are all running to the future. They are needing to get somewhere, which is not here. It is a point in time: not now—then. They are running to a then. They are suffering, but they don't even know it. But to me, even watching that was joyful. I didn't feel, 'Oh, they should know better.' They are on their spiritual path. At the moment, that is their spiritual path, and it works beautifully. Even when I'm interacting with people or walking in a city, doing ordinary things, the way I perceive the world is like ripples on the surface of being. Underneath the world of sense perceptions and the world of mind activity, there is the vastness of being. There's a vast spaciousness. There's a vast stillness and there's a little ripple activity on the surface, which isn't separate, just like the ripples are not separate from the ocean. So there is no separation in the way I perceive it. There is no separation between being and the manifested world, between the manifested and the unmanifested. But the unmanifested is so much vaster, deeper, and greater than what happens in the manifested. Every phenomenon in the manifested is so short-lived and so fleeting that, yes, one could almost say that from the perspective of the unmanifested, which is the timeless beingness or presence, all that happens in the manifested realm really seems like a play of shadows. It seems like vapor or mist with continuously new forms arising and disappearing, arising and disappearing. So to the one who is deeply rooted in the unmanifested, the manifested could very easily be called unreal. I don't call it unreal because I see it as not separate from anything. All that is real is beingness itself. Consciousness is all there is, pure consciousness." ~ Eckhart Tolle

Prepared without Purpose

homo divinus — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:07:04 GMT

"Dedicated to the experience of readiness, imagine yourself walking on a slippery side walk, having to bend your knees and take each step without any assumptions. This way of walking and this experience of readiness help us to find and maintain our adaptability - our ability to respond skillfully to whatever arises. One of the instincts that Fall brings into all life is called an Adaptive Pause. For example, a cougar slips while chasing a rabbit and cuts her shoulder on a broken root, injuring both flesh and skin. This cougar naturally goes and eats a bunch of grass, cleaning out her digestive system and then she finds a place to rest. This cougar allows herself to become stiff, allowing her body to regenerate - to reorganize itself. Another more human example would be a sudden change or loss. Imagine the experience of the death of a relative, or the experience of a divorce. Sometimes things change so fast and so much that we lose our ability to completely rely on ourselves, other beings or creation. When our sense of reliance on ourselves, our bodies, our relations and even creation becomes challenged it's time to take an Adaptive Pause. An Adaptive Pause is a conscious retreat from situations that will tax our adaptability. It's a time to reorganize your resources and perhaps some priorities, to find your sense of readiness, and do nothing. It is in this state of readiness and conscious recuperation that we can truly heal or become whole again." ~ Michael Smith

What there is

homo divinus — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 01:38:57 GMT

"Nothing is. There is no final enough of wisdom, experience - any fucking thing. No Holy Grail, no final satori, no final solution. Just conflict. Only thing that can resolve conflict is love, like I felt for Fletch and Ruski, Spooner and Calico. Pure love. What I feel for my cats present and past. Love? What is it? Most powerful painkiller what there is. LOVE." ~ William Burroughs last journal entry

<<<Respect>>>

homo divinus — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 21:46:37 GMT

Resisterville, B.C. Many Americans opposed to war find a home and support in Nelson Brian Hutchinson, National Post Published: Friday, October 05, 2007 Robin Long found his way here last month. It was, perhaps, inevitable. Considered B.C.'s counterculture capital, Nelson has become a haven for U.S. Army deserters. "I wanted to be with other war resisters," explains Mr. Long, 23. He's been AWOL since 2005, when he deserted his infantry group before its scheduled deployment to Iraq. He no longer looks or thinks like a U.S. soldier. His hair is long, his clothing dishevelled. He hooked up with "a bunch of hippies," he says, and crossed the border into Saskatchewan. Mr. Long met a Canadian woman. They soon had a child, whom they named Océan. But the couple had a falling out, and Mr. Long hit the road again. He travelled to the B.C. Interior, picked fruit for wages in Kelowna, and then hitchhiked 560 kilometres east, to the bucolic Kootenays. Nelson, he says, agrees with him. "It's a beautiful place," he says. It's where he hoped to "find a house and live. I'd like to raise my child in Nelson. It has really cool teaching methods and alternative parenting groups." Mr. Long's hopes were dashed on Monday, just a few hours after he walked into a social services agency, where he applied for welfare. After lunch at a local soup kitchen, he headed to a small park, next to a popular head shop where marijuana is smoked freely. He met with a few acquaintances. One of them fired up a joint. They had just finished smoking, he says, when a Nelson police officer appeared. He seemed friendly, Mr. Long says. "He said he didn't know us, and that it was his job to keep Nelson safe. He asked us for our names and birthdays." The officer processed the information, and discovered that Mr. Long was wanted by Immigration Canada and the Canada Border Services Agency on grounds that he is in the country illegally. The subject of a Canada-wide arrest warrant, Mr. Long now faces deportation to the United States, where he faces sanction. At the very least, he will spend time in a military prison; the maximum penalty for deserters is execution. Local activists, including several Vietnam war-era draft dodgers, held a vigil outside the Nelson police department, where Mr. Long was held before being flown to Vancouver for an immigration hearing. He is the second U.S. deserter to be apprehended recently in Nelson, which has a population of just under 10,000. Last year, U.S. Army private Kyle Snyder was arrested after Nelson police allegedly forced their way into a home where he was residing. CNN dispatched a correspondent to the city, to try to answer why this place has become a sanctuary for deserters. Her report saddled Nelson with a new label: Resisterville. Residents sympathetic to the young AWOL soldiers claim the city's Mayor and its police chief have launched a crackdown, in an effort to reverse Nelson's peacenik image. Klause Offermann, a retired union activist, filed an official complaint against the Nelson police department following Mr. Snyder's arrest. He claims the police acted illegally. An external police investigation was conducted, and a report was delivered this week to the city's Mayor, John Dooley. "It's right here, inside my briefcase," says the Mayor, sitting behind his desk at city hall. "I haven't read it yet." As chairman of the city's police board, Mr. Dooley says he takes any complaint against it seriously. But he denies there is a campaign to cleanse Nelson of its hippy-dippy heritage. "We are a peace-loving community, and proud of it," he says, noting that Nelson has a long history of military protest, going back a century, when Russian Doukabours came here after refusing to take up arms at home. It's estimated that 40% of American men who dodged the military draft in the 1960s and 1970s wound up in B.C.; the majority settled in Nelson or the nearby Slocan Valley, where many still live. U.S. draft dodgers received amnesty from president Jimmy Carter in 1977. "They are part of this community's fabric," Mayor Dooley says. "No one has ever made any so-called edict against the war resisters. But I'm kind of a cut and dried person. I think [the Robin Long arrest warrant] is the same as a case of drunk driving or spousal abuse. I expect our police to uphold the law." Tolerance goes only so far. Three years ago, some Nelson residents hatched a plan to erect a statue downtown in honour of war resisters. Word spread, and city hall received an avalanche of angry e-mails and a letter from American war veterans, some of whom threatened to boycott Nelson's increasingly important tourist trade. The statue plan was shelved. A war resisters "homecoming" was not welcomed, either; it was moved to a neighbouring city. But more U.S. Army deserters arrived, including Brandon Hughey and Ryan Johnson, both of whom have refused deployment to Iraq. They each have applied for leave to appeal deportation orders, and are waiting for separate court decisions. Like Mr. Long, they have claimed refugee status, and want Canada to accept their position that the U.S.-led war in Iraq is illegal. In the meantime, they say they will continue to live in Nelson. They are not allowed to work in Canada, and so must depend on social assistance and kindness from friends. Yesterday they were in Vancouver to show support for Mr. Long, who was released on a $5,000 surety. He is now staying with a Canadian war resister in Langley, a Vancouver suburb, at least until his next immigration board hearing, likely in two weeks. He holds out little hope of being allowed to remain in Canada. "I'll probably be deported in two to five months," he says, "and I'll probably be going to prison." He'll serve his time, he says, and then head north to join his friends. Back in Resisterville. http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=eb7eb231-b6b6-4537-8525-f04d5f847d9d&k=0

Peace had no Borders

homo divinus — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 21:22:51 GMT

Yesterday Robin Long a war resister that has been in the Nelson area for a few weeks was arrested on the street by the Nelson PD. We were told that he would shortly be sent to Vancouver, and then deported back to the United states to be court martialed. Tuesday the 2nd we will be at the city police building on Stanley street at 10 am to show community support and watch for Robin being transferred to Vancouver. We are working to gain his immediate release but in the case that he is deported we are contacting groups through out Canada and the United States to stand with Robin. We would like to get as much support as as we can at the police station but if you are unable to make it here are the numbers to the city police (250) 354-3919 and Mayor Dooleys Office, 352-8263 (or email to mayor and council c/o bdionne@nelson.ca) with your support for Robin Long. -- **Nelson War Resister Support Campaign** nelsonwrsc@gmail.com http://www.resisters.ca/resisters_stories.html Robin Long Robin Long is from Boise, Idaho. He received orders in March 2005 to report to Iraq and meet up with his new unit 2-2 IN in May. "I still don't think that Bush has proven we have any reason to be over there, and I would be wrong to be a tool of destruction," Robin says. He served two years as a tanker in the US army, at Fort Knox before he left and came to Canada in June of 2005. He traveled by hitchhiking from Tofino, BC to St. John's, Newfoundland, and as far north as the north shore of the St. Lawrence during the summer months. "I have really enjoyed this beautiful country, I'm reminded everyday by its wonderful people that I made the right decision. I remember that a soldier is just a uniform following orders, a warrior is the man or woman that follows their conscience and does the right thing in the face of adversity." He applied for refugee status in Thunder Bay.

Rite Action

homo divinus — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 23:37:39 GMT

"Open my grave when I am dead, and thou shalt see a cloud of smoke rising out from it; then shalt thou know that the fire still burns in my dead heart -- yea, it has set my very winding-sheet alight." "If the scent of her hair were to blow across my dust when I had been dead a hundred years, my mouldering bones would rise and come dancing out of the tomb." "I have estimated the influence of Reason upon Love and found that it is like that of a raindrop upon the ocean, which makes one little mark upon the water's face and disappears." ~Hafiz

Eyes Wide Open

homo divinus — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 15:44:59 GMT

"Realization involves a deepening in self-understanding and self-transcendence since it is the unconscious activity of self-contraction that is keeping one locked into one's currently limited sense of Reality... The view of Reality being presented here implies that what we must 'find' is even now the case. In fact, it is always already the case. But we are not currently aware of it. In order to become aware of it, we need not go anywhere else. We don't have to wait until after death. It is, rather, a process of becoming more sensitive, more aware now. God is Real, God is present right now, in this moment and every moment; and in every moment, we are not truly separate from God. But we are genuinely suffering a sense of separation (from God, from everyone, and from everything) that is our own doing. If this act of separation could be understood and undone, we would be able to be directly aware of (and ultimately identified with) God right now. It is as though we are closing our eyes, and making all kinds of poor judgments about what to do with our lives (including walking off cliffs), without being in a position to be fully aware of what we are doing. In such a situation, clearly, our highest priority is to open our eyes! In addition, we are constantly and actively being acculturated out of the direct experience of God, because everything is reinforcing the view that 'separate self' is factual and fixed, and nothing is reinforcing the view that 'separate self is an activity that produces suffering unnecessarily and which can be transcended. We described the Great Realizations that one proceeds through on the way to the Full or Perfect Realization as permanent shifts in our identity. Because sense of self or identity is created by our unconscious activity of self-contraction, these Realizations necessarily also correspond to increases in understanding and progress in transcending the self-contraction. We first understand and transcend our own primal, separative activity as it manifests in that fraction of Reality that is our current Realization: the material sphere. Having mastered our self-contracting activity on this level, thereby allowing our body-mind to be fully absorbed in God, the Spiritual Reality becomes apparent. It is something like Maslow's 'hierarchy of needs', where he suggests that, generally speaking, our needs manifest themselves in hierarchical fashion. For example, 'physiological needs' such as air, food, and water, generally command one's attention and energy when they are not met, and generally must be cared for, before one gives much attention to 'love, affection and belongingness needs'. In this same kind of manner, the physical level of existence must be brought into equilibrium and rested in God (as God is manifest at that level), before the next 'level' of Reality makes Itself known in any kind of stable way. But once the Spiritual has been Realized as one's stable, primary Reality, one must then learn the same mastery of the self-contraction as it manifests on this level. As long as there is still a 'me' and an 'other' (whether 'me' is body, spirit, or Consciousness), self-contraction – the activity of separateness – is still being engaged, and must be understood and transcended at the level in which it is still evidently manifesting. Thus the final mastery of this act of self-contraction at its most profound and primal depth occurs in the identification with Consciousness itself, still separate from manifest existence. When that most primal gesture of self-contraction is understood and transcended, God is Most Perfectly Realized. The paradoxical state of Most Perfect Happiness, in which there is no 'Me' (even a Divine 'Me') over and against an 'other' (even the entire universe) is an Indivisible Unity that is impossible to imagine from our current viewpoint of being identified with a separate physical body. But that state of Most Perfect Non-Separation is the final and Most Perfect Fruit in this process of self-understanding and self-transcendence. It is in this sense that Socrates' famous dictum, 'Know thy self', has ultimate import. ~ Adi Da

Masters of Ecstasy

homo divinus — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 00:40:34 GMT

"Medicine is used to denote a sort of 'spiritual power' which may be sought, increased, and used for many purposes including healing. A 'medicine song' is to be understood as a song seeking or applying this spiritual power. A medicine man or a medicine woman is an individual who has successfully sought this power and has in some way demonstrated their possession of it to other individuals. A medicine wheel (or power spot) is a place possessing in itself spiritual power, and it is also a place to which one may go to gain or use this power. All that is a part of the Universe is imbued with Spirit and all is therefore sacred. However, objects, beings, people, places may through various means become particularly dedicated to the expression of this spirit and therefore may be specifically spoken of as sacred. A 'sacred pipe' is made to become especially sacred and when complete, special ritual is performed in order to embue it with this special quality of particular sacredness. Some things are 'made' sacred, other things are recognized as already being sacred. Chanoopah is a Lakota work used by Wallace Black Elk to mean a sacred ceremony, a sacred tool, and a 'state of grace'; the present state of being sacred. Rather than being a static identification it is an 'active' word implying that you are doing something. The Shaman, a mystical, priestly, and political figure...can be described not only as a specialist in the humans soul but also as a generalist whose sacred and social functions can cover an extraordinarily wide range of activities. Shamans are healers, seers, and visionaries who have mastered death. They are in communication with the world of gods and spirits. Their bodies can be left behind while they fly to unearthly realms. They are poets and singers. They dance and create works of art. They are not only spiritual leaders but also judges and politicians, repositories of the knowledge of the culture's history, both sacred and secular. They are familiar with cosmic as well as physical geography; the ways of plants, animals, and the elements are known to them. They are psychologists, entertainers, and food finders. Above all, however, shamans are technicians of the sacred and masters of ecstasy.' [Shamanic Voices, Joan Halifax] Is a medicine woman/man a Shaman? In a sense, followers of the medicine path are all shamans when they have received their vision. They have communicated with the spirit world. In a more technical sense, 'shaman' is the word used to denote a particular fashion of communication with the other world." ~ Paul Silvert