Reverence

Gratitude

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Last night, I miraculously walked away from a five-car accident on the freeway in downtown Seattle.

[This post may not be the best writing, because I just want to get it off my chest, as I will probably be staying home alone for Thanksgiving and it turns out, I have something to say.]

I entered the freeway from 6th and University onto a left ramp, the kind where you gotta get to the right quick, or you will be forced off a coming exit. My blinker is on. I am about to switch lanes, when I see an white SUV coming into that lane I from behind. It is going fast. I give them room; they zoom past me on the right, then crosses left, in front of me. Cursing a little, I merge right. Why couldn’t they just wait? Then the car merges back, hitting the front of my car and it is too late. I spin, clockwise.

I am spinning. I am out of my mind. There is nothing I can do. It’s over. My life is about to end or it is about to drastically change into a chapter of long hardship and pain. I have no control, so I let go. The car is spinning. This ride is about to end. I am about to die. And the car stops, smack on the other side of the five-lane highway.

My first reaction is surprise. I am alive. I am alive! I am not critically injured. And my door actually opens. I cannot see anything because the air bags are hanging in front of my face and my side. There is smoke coming out of my steering wheel where the airbag is attached.

Immediately, there is a man at my door. Am I ok? Can I move? Is there anyone he can call for me? He is insistent. He is there, and I do not have to experience this moment alone. He says there are five cars, total and he can’t believe I am ok. He says I may have even rolled. I say I don’t think I did. He stays with me for a few minutes until the aid cars come and then says, help is here. He will be in the way now, so he is going to go.

The police are here. I am out of my car, now. My glasses are not on my face. We find them, broken. And I grab the tiny stuffed Sasquatch that is right there…put it in my pocket, soft in my pocket. The tow truck is here. The aid car is coming. How did they all get here so fast? Before I know it, when I am not looking, my car is already on the flatbed. I beg a cigarette from one of the tow drivers. A Marlboro. Choice.

The week before I had been in the ER with a knee so back I could not walk. This was my first day without any crutches. I feel no pain in that knee.

All the paperwork and statements. I am bored. I decide that yes, maybe I do care about my belongings. I am stuffing all my maps into a Trader Joe’s insulated grocery bag. I should want these. I love my maps. I see a bear pin that I had tied to my steering wheel. Maybe that is not a good memory. Fuck, no! That was protection! I am alive! With my precious, black swiss army knife that I asked an ex-boyfriend to give me for my birthday, I cut it out. There is the remnants of my last medicine pouch that I’ve kept around. I reach beyond the cup holder, where I’ve looked two or three times in the past few weeks and bring out my missing protection necklace.

The look on the medic’s face tells me it’s not worth the money to take an ambulance. He’s seen a lot and I am… really fine. He says that I’ll be banged up for a few days but I’ll probably be fine. I want to argue because I’ve already said that I can feel the worst whiplash ever spreading in my neck but I can hear that his words are a spell and I will receive that.

They keep asking me if I have anyone to call. I live alone. I do not have family in the state. I hate that I have no one call, so I call my neighbor who is going through so much right now but I know, 100%, she will come get me. I tell her I can get an Uber but I don’t want to be alone. She is coming.

The tow truck driver takes me off the highway and my neighbor picks me up. She thrusts a pack of cigarettes towards me. (No, I am not an avid smoker but she knows this is the moment.) She gets me home and settles me in.

It is so easy to file an insurance claim online. Unbelievable. They have this down. I leave various messages.

I am waiting to cry but it is not happening. I feel elated. I feel held. Clear. I call a few people who love me, as an act of self-care. After ice, bath and more ice, I know, as I go to bed, that the only way I am not going wake up with a frozen neck is if I relax my body and open myself to the Spirits of Grace. I must let them help.

First time to the bathroom, my neck is frozen. Remove the pillow and try again. Sleep on my back. Don’t turn. Next time I am up, my neck moves. Each time is easier. By morning, I am going to work. If I had not already been on anti-inflammatory meds from the previous week in the ER, this could have been much worse.

I look at the police report. Every side of my car was damaged except for the driver’s side. I pull a contained salad out of my backpack and eat it for breakfast, until I bit into a piece of safety glass. Oh! I spit it all out but save the little bit of glass. This seems important.

(Google ‘swallow safety glass after an accident’ and you find some hysterical threads.)

Uber. Light rail. Talk with Mom. Bus. Work. Shut the office door. Phone calls from insurance, car rental, optician’s office… nurse. Nurse says go to urgent care. Fear of internal bleeding! Uber.

Long wait in Urgent Care. I am texting a lot of people, mostly my Mom. I don’t want to be alone. I have spent enough of my life alone. I give this to myself. The doctor doesn’t find anything worrying. I am set up now. Pharmacy. Long talk with insurance guy at the pharmacy. (I was the entertainment.) When I hang up, an old woman befriends me gives and me a ride home. Even waits for me to get flowers for my neighbor.

I am alive. I am held.

I put on some drumming to find out what this incredible strength I feel is. I’ve been feeling super-positive since I bummed my knee out and went to the ER last week. It is the anti-inflammatory meds? Am I still in shock? How long can you be in shock? Immediately, I am taken to the scene of the accident, in the spinning car, contained by the poufy, white air bags. Time has stopped and yes, there are soul parts there, still hanging in the air. One by one, I call them back, telling them the accident is over. Love.

I ask about why I am feeling so strong? This has been going on for the past few months as drama after drama has not rocked my boat…but this is incredible. I am told, ‘you are getting stronger’. And, the more you open to us, the stronger you become.

I ask how I can express my gratitude and they kind of laugh. They say, you don’t have to do anything but remain open to us. That is gratitude. Repay us that way. We cannot help you if you do not allow us to.

This, my friends, is the lesson I want to share with you. Gratitude, to me now, is the act of opening to the forces that take care of us. And it’s not just to the spirits. It’s to all the people around you who want to help. Let people help you. It makes the world go around.

Blessings to you and your kin. I hope your day is just perfect for you tomorrow. Thank you.

There is a cuddly Sasquatch in my coat pocket.

Tasara

Spiritual Activism

Yes, your magic has power.

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We can weave from common threads a world of strength and beauty.

Say it 25 times.

Or say another sweet phrase you have found in your heart.

Yes, your magic has power. Immense power, and now is the time to concentrate. Listen to the rain, the wind, the traffic, the children. Calm yourself, and chant. Offer your chant as one thread in a great weaving of the common ground. Embrace all the other weavers who are trying the same, speaking out, fighting in the courts, working the campaigns, staying by candles in their living rooms.

Before the votes are counted, your magic has beautiful power to affect not only the outcome of this election, but how people behave themselves, by calming and raising the collective environment. Do we come together? Do we see our nation as beautiful, rich with many colors? Do we find that voices resolve to a mature tone, a higher collective self, a strength and forgiveness?

Please be with me in this time so we are not all alone, watching a horror spectacle. Join with me and chant, sing, rock, hum. Know our collective tone is real and is not separate from the whole.

I do not write these things for money or promotion. I write to you because if I don’t, my heart will burst. I invite you to be a part of this community. Do, comment, react, laugh, share, connect. That is what this cyber-space is for. It can only be nourishing if you participate.

Blessed Be.

Spiritual Activism

Spiritual Work You Can Do – The US Presidential Election

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I wanted to repeat a shamanic journey I’d done before. I planned to ask the Spirits of Kindness to take me to the beautiful future I want to live in, so I could experience the world in this state and to draw the energy back here to manifest.

But my spirit friend brought me somewhere else. She said, “You are not alone,” and dropped me off at the Great Web of Light. The web of millions of people who hold together our collective healing vision of a future where we experience equality, peace, justice, honorable relationship with the land and all the beautiful things that many diverse people dream for.

She said, “Be a part of it.”

I plugged myself into the circuits and felt the white-blue light stream through my body. I was reminded that the Spirits of Kindness cannot do their work without us working as hollow bones and/or sacred witness. I was told to trust. No, not to trust, but to keep my awareness on this reality, the reality of all these people from all over the world, dreaming for a balanced, flourishing, loving world. It is important to focus on the collective dream.

This is what we must do. Hold the dream.

People are already getting their mail-in ballots around the country, so the time to do this work is now.

I was also reminded from an elder in the Wombs of Peace online ceremony today, that what we focus on is what is manifested. Another elder stated that we need not build peace. We can activate peace.

Beyond doing your own spiritual work, I urge you to take the time to listen to the Oct 13th 2024 Wombs of Peace ceremony on YouTube once it is uploaded. The theme was “How to find ground in the eye of a storm? – The holy-land and other whirlwinds”.

There is a beautiful meditation to embody stillness in the storm and then stories from women present about doing sacred work for peace while in the war zones. Painfully, one woman present was hearing bombs drop in the next neighborhood from her house.

W.O.P. ceremonies are very strong. There is a palpable, deep, grounding, loving energy that can be held together over Zoom, as we listen to indigenous wise women from all over the world.

I’ll see you in the web of light, the dream for a better future.

Blessed Be.

Tasara

Spiritual Activism

Apolitical Spirituality is an Oxymoron

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Subtitle: Turning Off the News is Hurting People and What You Can Do Instead.

If we continue to separate politics from our spiritual life, we will wake one day and find we are being persecuted for our spirituality. It happened to shamans all over the world. The witches were persecuted. The monks in Tibet. The Uhygurs in China. The list goes on. Why do we think we are different? Even more poignant, why shouldn’t we care about others?

Pagan/shamanic cultural world view is that everything has a soul. Our entire experience of the world is about being in relationship with everything around us. We honor the collective soul. Cutting ourselves off from the collective is harmful to ourselves and to the collective.

But I am Preserving My Mental Health by Ignoring the News!

No one said that paying attention meant you had to run the woes of the world through your energetic system. That will make a person sick. It is perfectly alright to bracket your concerns and focus on key issues. 

We must weigh the mental stress the news causes us against the persecution that will happen if we stay idle. Also, take into consideration that taking action – in any form – is moving energy. Stagnant energy twists, degrades, sickens. Emotional response is grist for the mill. Moving energy is life, a salve to depression.

Think of the people that cannot ignore the news because they are already suffering under the harmful governmental policies. Yes, I am talking to the middle-class white part of my audience. Not acting in defense of the other is how Nazi Germany happened. Othering has been going on too long in this country already. We have been gaslit and psychologically traumatized into silent apathy, and we must fight to win our souls back.

Think of all that awareness we push underground to avoid the news. It has been growing in a deep storehouse of emotional energy, love and concern, fear and anger waiting for you to tap into it. When it comes out, it will be HUGE! Use it for whatever you see is fit for you in this time, in your life. To be fully yourself, show your colors, to honor and support others, to stand strong, to express your rage, your sorrow, to MOVE the energy. Create relationships with people not like you. Defeat Otherism.

The Writing on the Wall Couldn’t Be Clearer. Fascism is Very Near.

We are not immune. Our legal protections are diminishing every day. We cannot meditate or pray our way to freedom and true democracy. The whole notion of democracy is participatory governing. Living and acting in the mundane world!

We already have witnessed:

  • women traveling across states for critical medical treatment
  • state laws that require the 10 commandments be posted in schools
  •  children ripped from their parents at the border
  • our lives surveilled through the wires and cameras in almost every corner of public life
  • people losing their jobs because they publicly oppose genocide in Gaza
  • humans and animals dying from the overheated planet    

And now the supreme court has flipped our presidency into a kingship with the stroke of a pen. 

Democracy itself is about to crumble. Where will we be then?

Trump is not making threats. He is making promises, 

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2024/04/politics/trump-campaign-promises-dg

and his language is scary:

“root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our Country….”

What Can I Do? What Power Do I Have?

Plenty, and I’m sure you can do one thing in each of these categories without a lot of effort.

Power with the Spirits of Kindness 

Root yourself in your purest intentions and values and use your spiritual skills to find direction. Here are some ideas for shamanic journey intentions:

  • How can I stay awake to what is happening and use the energy, rather than be harmed by it?
  •  What is my role in this world at this time in history?
  • How can I shift my world perspective to be ‘us’ and never ‘them’?
  • How can I make people around me feel included?
  • How can I support the issues that are dear to my heart?

The Spirits of Kindness want to help us, but they cannot help us if we do not go to them!

There are lots of things you can do on the spiritual plane but that is covered in another article. [link] This is about our spiritual work on the beloved, messy mundane plane of existence.

Power of Being Fully You

Corporate culture has overcome human, non-work culture. This has caused homogenization and contrary-opinion policing. 

I miss the days when you could walk down the street and see people wearing their freak flags, expressing loudly in public their views, getting a little obnoxious and laughing out loud.

Things have gotten so bad, it is revolutionary to voice your opinion, to appear out of the norm, to attend non-consumer gatherings of people.

This is not a time to hide who we are. There has been a creeping pressure over the past 10-15 years to ‘fit in’, to ‘appear normal’. Our freak flags have been discarded or stuffed in closets. We are wild creatures. We are shamanic, pagan, witches, aligned with the spirits and the land and moon and stars, the sun, the rocks the rivers. We are non-binary, gay, straight, neuro-divergent, from many many cultures and subcultures, economic backgrounds and when we do not show it, the overculture mows us over.

There has been a creeping pressure to not talk about politics, to not rock the boat. There has been a subtle fear in the air, supported by the fact that we know we are being surveilled.

Without diversity we all start to think the same. Or at least think we should think the same. Homogeneity is bad for creativity and it’s no fun at all. Express your unique self.

  •  Put a sticker on your car (gasp!) that reveals something about yourself that you wouldn’t share at a corporate job. It’ll make a lot of people feel good and make some other people’s mind spin a little.
  • Wear clothes that you really like even though other people may not.
  • Find an open mic and revel in the humanity. You don’t need to agree with everyone. Just let their thoughts blend with yours and see what happens.

Money is Power

Don’t think your $5 $25 $50 $200 doesn’t count. It most certainly does. Candidates using the anti-corporate funding-raising model have done plenty fine working with millions of small donations. 

  •  Decide who is doing work that makes your heart sing and give them some money. Done.

Voice is Power

Speak to the government, to our neighbors, family and friends. It changes minds. It changes culture. 

  •  Write to your representatives and sign petitions. Look for petitions that you wish were out there. They probably are.
  • VOTE! You know the voting records are dismal. Voting is the one big power that can change the face of our futures – IF PEOPLE VOTE. If you were on a sinking ship and you had the choice between burning it down and fighting over the life raft or installing a mediocre captain who can at least get the holes patched before we all die, which would you choose? Would you choose?
  • Look up letter-writing campaigns to voters in swing states

Here is an ACLU petition calling on Congress to pass a constitutional amendment overturning the ruinous Supreme Court decision.

When we don’t speak up, our representatives are even more swayed by other forces. When they hear we are behind them, they can be brave. When they hear we are watching, they have to keep themselves somewhat in line. That’s how democracy works.

Information is Power

New information that is received by the mind changes the mind. Educate people. Educate yourself. Read books, even ones you don’t agree with.

Collective Action and Culture Is Power

  • Refuse to be isolated. People are good and some of us have forgotten it.
  • Refuse to stagnate. One way to get moving is to ask yourself what the questions are inside yourself and then go find the answers. Rinse and repeat.
  • Find ways to forge relationships with other humans from backgrounds you do not understand.
  • Learn about nonviolent communication.
  • Seek out other perspectives online and learn about the new progressive movements going on. What are you curious about?

That’s What I Got

Spirituality and politics have something important in common; they are both rooted in our deepest values. The values are the same.

I wouldn’t ask you to do these things if I wasn’t doing them myself. We all have a gift and there is no time to wait. Whatever it is that makes you shine, please, SHINE.

And yes, put your thoughts in the comments.

Tasara

Cernunnos, Mediumship

Pan – Cernunnos

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I caught his eye, he smiled at me
and we both knew that everything had fallen apart.

He could no longer be my god
and when I was honest with myself,
he never really was.

I never really liked his version of the wild hunt
for I was only good at being hunted
and the grandmothers shut me down on that long ago
after they tired of watching me die.
Again and again,
only to wake up alone,
again and again.

So this god, he reeled on,
in his fancy way, twirling with the ladies
and spinning his magic through the trees.
So much fun,
so much stress leaving me as the melodies faded.

My fingers touched the pool.
Silence blossomed.
My every bone toned with the music of the night sky.

And through the near branches, the face of another came,
eyes of wisdom awaiting my reply.

I invited him into my camp
and we told each other stories.

He of his sons and me of my poetry.
He of the green-gold gleam deep in the forest
and me of my hollow bird’s bones
a secret channel into the light high, high above.

Together we laughed at the oddities of life
and cried with the beauty of the same.

He spoke of the dead and me of the very, very brave
while his horns climbed into the darkness like a spider web
melting into the trees above us.

We shared the drink of friendship
and he was no longer a god to me,
but a friend who brought me medicine when I needed it
and accepted mine with joy.

2009 Tasara Jen Stone

Image created with AI by Adobe Firefly

Mediumship, Panther

Panther

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There in the night creeps a friendly panther. She knows where she’s going and never speaks to anyone. She melts into shadows like dark butter and when she is around, usually, you do not know. She is a listener and she…she feels with her blood, which steams sometime when she is excited. What does she get excited about? The curve of things, the space between doorways where no one stands, a glint of light reflecting off the windows.

Panther, she moves from place to place with private grace. She eats misfortune. What? She eats the debris of people’s troubles she finds scattered across the path. She eats them up, and then she roars and heads back into the forest to contemplate what she has learned from the trouble she ate.

She is not a service. She doesn’t care. She is just curious, not interested in speaking. When she is content, she hums and her eyes sparkle green and the rest of the forest becomes more condensed in some way. More…tight and together with itself. Sleeping creatures smile in the welcome rush of black and green comfort.

Go to the forest and find the panther in her nook on a low, long branch. She will take you to places that you can only find with her. She will lead you to your heart in the thick of wild branches, deep pools, and muddy patches under the ledges. Go there and lie down where she leads. Your bones will condense. Your body will drink from the earth and your blood will steam.

She likes the sway of her back in her journeys, the way of getting there, the curling into dark crevices. She likes to remind you of your own. She’ll sniff you out but only if you are looking for her will she make her presence known.

2008 Tasara Jen Stone

[image generated by AI in Adobe Firefly]

2 Ostara: Awakening and Rising

Faith. Joy. Hope.

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JOY is something that rises from within, an inner fountain, clear, rushing upwards. It is our inherent response to our connection with oneness. A burst of joy can make us giddy.

When we HOPE, we prop a window open to a brighter place so that light streams into our dark world. It does not call to any specific outer force or being.

FAITH is opening oneself completely, to allow the Spirits of Kindness and their whole ecosystem to flood in and perform their loving work. An act of faith is taking a seemingly unreasonable action with the knowledge of forces in play.

DEVOTION is love fest of mutual devotion between oneself and the Spirits of Kindness. It is an event, a conscious practice.

These wonderful things may be a natural human experience but they don’t come easily for many of us when living in this world. What I mean is, you are not alone if you can’t relate.

Joy is something I knew nothing about until I was in my forties. No wonder I was so annoyed with the “fluffy bunny” spiritualists of the time. They drove me mad. I remember one time I confessed to a new friend over the phone that I was spiraling, and if I kept heading in that direction, that the spiral would lead me to suicidal ideation. She reacted severely. (This was the second time in my life I was yelled at for talking about suicide).

She angrily shouted, “Everyone is at the party, where there is a well of light and joy. Why can’t you join us there?”

When I finally cleared enough trauma to feel the natural phenomenon of joy, I experienced it as a fountain. It is a song. I know I am happy when I catch myself singing.

Hope is something I always had, but in a more tragic sort of way. Like someone lost in an endless landscape of despair just crying inside that things must get better some day.

Not like today when it feels more like a choice – a responsibility even. I take this action and it clears my metaphysical environment. Life must go on.

Devotion and faith? Well as an ex-Catholic, those two have been tough ones. After my particular fall from the church (and it was a fall) I vowed to never again swallow, hook line and sinker another philosophy. I would have my own thoughts. So it was ten years into my pagan and shamanic practices until the topic of faith and devotion started opening up for me.

It started with my shamanic teacher in the early 00s. I almost left Janine’s classes because she was really quite so fluffy bunny. She referred to her spirits as ‘her team ‘ and smiled a lot about it. But she also showed up to class in her sweatpants and T-shirt unlike other teachers who dressed like they were going out on the town. I thought that part was cool. I realized she was genuine and I watched her in quiet awe. I didn’t get it but I loved it. She really cared about me too.

After she died, I came across a musician who performed kirtan in the most sublime way. And her voice is gorgeous. The call and response, the heightened sense that came from the practice. I volunteered to perform my light projections for her shows for free so I could support her vocation.

I think of what a devotional practice looks like in shamanism. Journeying for the simple purpose of spending time with our friends on the other side. Mediumship, inviting the benevolent beings in for a moment of time. And of course, repetitive praise chanting in the traditional way.

There can be momentary devotion without faith in the day-to-day.

On Monday morning, I went to the  beach in this dark, dark season of wet. I went to clear my head after too much time in my cave applying for jobs and stressing over the fact that I have six weeks of unemployment left. Walking across the foot bridge over the railroad tracks, I saw a whacky woman coming towards me. She had a crazy colorful hat and she was carrying a little boom box that she was singing to.

She came closer and I recognized her. A few years ago I met her by the same water. She was singing and because I missed my music jam, I stopped. I had my flute, as always, and played for her. We sang together. She told me that she came every morning to sing to The Lord. I recognized beauty in her devotion and loved that about her even though I would never sing to The Lord.

She is a small, elderly woman from somewhere in Asia. As she walked towards me on the foot bridge, we exchanged greetings and I said, “I remember you. We sang together.”

She remembered and laughed and said in that loud joyful way that the Vietnamese women do when they greet you at the nail salon, “How are you? “

Without any warning I almost burst out crying. I said, “I am not doing good.”

“Not good. Not good why?”

“I cannot find a job.”

Well, this elder gave me a good, long lecture about faith. She told me about how when her husband died and she didn’t think she would make it. How things worked out.

She insisted. “You have to have faith! You have to have faith and the Lord will take care of you!”

And she said, literally three or four times, “But you have to believe it for it to happen. You have to believe!”

I thanked her and asked her name. Song. Of course. Song.

As soon as I turned away to walk down the hill, I was bawling. It felt so good to cry. So good. How do we make it through life without this delicious release?

This Imbolc morning, I went to the lake to play my flute. The crows were moving downtown, having left the Bothell roost. The sky was filled with their river of raucousness which appeared and faded, horizon to horizon. I played screechy sounds to them but then relaxed into a tune. I played both high and low flutes and when I was done, I saw a pattern in the clouds like two curved brush strokes with an opening in the middle, swooping down to the land. I turned to the water and look at the rafts of ducks in the distance. Two small groups fluttered into the air, outwards, landing on the water again. They left an area of clear water in the middle. The scene was like a door I could just glide through into a life that was easy, with fertile ground. 

I looked up to the sky again and I knew what faith was.

Tasara Jen Stone

Spiritual Activism

Stay Awake in Times of Crisis

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There is a cry going up in the world for humanity.
There is a cry for justice, for a cease fire, for accountability.
A cry for seeing each other as the precious gifts we all are.

This cry is a collective song being sung from every corner of the earth. Join in this song, this cry, to make it louder, to be nourished by the communion of it, to save the soul of humanity.

Do not hide from the news to preserve your sanity. Turn up the glorious song of freedom and let it fuel you. Sing it wherever you can, to your friends, your family and to your representatives. There is never a time to not shine. Let your shock, dismay and all your emotions about what is happening in the world fuel your next endeavor. Will it be prayer? Will it be art? Will it be conversation? A long-planned or unexpected life change?


We must be whole. We cannot allow ourselves to become compressed any longer. The world is insane, but that does not mean we have to be. It is best for Mother Earth when we are in rich relationship with her, when we allow the Spirits of Kindness to nurture us, to allow inspiration grow within us. It does not do anyone any good to not be well, even when others are devastated.

We must shine. Each of us has something different and unique to contribute to this song of the world. When we are in our personal song, others can hear it. They are lifted and in this, can hear their own song. We must shine for the world.


We must be big, not small. When we are in our true light, there is room for everyone. We cannot allow outside forces to dictate the psychic environment we live in. Instead of suffering, we can bring our own environment to the common space.

This is a form of spiritual activism.

For those of you who have been following me over the years, you may have noticed my own long struggle to get back to my service to you. I’ve suffered under oppressive work situations, oppressive situations of my own making, physical ailments, fatigue and I earned a master’s degree while working full time. Just like you, I can feel like I am underwater, but I continue.

Right now I am applying for jobs in a new career because the field I have been in has been toxic for me. Once I have made this shift, I will be able to devote my energies to my calling again, informed by my studies in Instructional Design. My soul does not turn away from my master plan even when I forget it myself.

My new offerings will be geared towards those who are on the sacred path for the long haul. The main banner will be spiritual activism. What is spiritual activism? How do you define it? For me, my spiritual activism is helping you find what you are called to do in this world and assist you in creating a manageable scope for it. Also, when we explore and understand our own creative process, it is much easier to allow it to happen without self-judgement. There will be some hybrid offerings, (online/in person).

Thank you for hanging in there with me. Holding circle is my happy place and I am so looking forward to being there again with you. Hopefully, in the meantime, I can provide a little bit of inspiration.

Much love,
Tasara Jen Stone


(Inspired by watching and listening to activists from all over the world on ‘Democracy Now!‘.)

Spiritual Activism

A Shamanic Response to Atrocities in the Middle East

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This list may have grown if you come back to it later.

Hello my friends. I’m sure you have been following the heartbreaking stories coming out of the Middle East. I will not repeat them here but it is clear that we are witnessing war crimes, millions displaced, families decimated and in it all, no mercy. Both Palestinians and Jews are calling for a stop to the violence.

As a shamanic person, there is much we can do. If you truly believe that we are all connected, that we are all one in some invisible way, your actions have certain impact, just as a person’s silence or non-doing allows forces of destruction to continue on undisturbed

Here are five things you can do:

Psychopomp Ceremony, Sunday, October 22nd at 2-3:30pm

I will be hosting an online ceremony to assist the souls of the dead who are ready and willing, in crossing over into the light.

Psychopomp is not a safe practice to do on your own without training.
In our ceremony, we will be inviting the psychopomp spirits to do all the work while we hold space and bear witness. Please register at this link.
– Virtual sacred space via Zoom will be open at 1:45.
– No one will be admitted after 2:05pm.
– The meeting will not be recorded.
– Please prepare sacred space before you sign in and be ready to work.

If you know me personally and have been to my home in the past, you are more than welcome to come in person. Let me know if you are. Bring some snacks and we can have community time afterwards.

It is my view that psychopomp also relieves pressure on the world at large. The more unrest souls we have in the physical plane, the more intrusions, overshadowing and possession we experience. This affects human motivations and actions, including some of our world leaders.

Personal/Group Shamanic Journey for Healing

There is a way to assist through your work with the spirits and still honor the ethical boundaries of the free will of all beings. The method was developed by a small group of shamanic practitioners who met in retreat and worked with the spirits over a long period of time. It is spelled out in a little book called Shamanism without Borders which can be found here in e-book or print: https://shamanicpractice.org/…/shamanism-without…/

The organization that hosts free, online shamanic ceremonies to aid global catastrophes is here: https://shamanicpractice.org/shamanism-without-borders/

Journey to Comfort Those Trapped Under the Rubble in Gaza

Here is another thing you can do immediately (10/17/2023).

Journey to your helping spirits and ask them to ask the helping spirits of the 1000 people trapped under rubble in the Gaza strip to comfort them, to lessen their terror, to give them some faith and hope. Whether they are about to perish or be rescued, they have a great journey in front of them. Lessening the trauma is greatly needed.

Using Music and Dance

You can use dance, repetitive rhythm, drumming, chanting, fluting, strumming to express your own feelings about the situation into the world. Any sort of healing involves getting energy to move and that includes energy in your own body.

Know that you are not alone. Hear the grief, anger frustration of the collective and join the song. Feel the togetherness. After expressing your own, perhaps bring your songs of comfort, kinship and love into the collective.

All shamanic cultures are very, very expressive in their practices, until of course, state sponsored persecution of shamans. Lying down still and silent to journey is not normal. We engage and invest our physical energy into our work and it comes to life in powerful ways.

Write to your Representatives

Many of us overlook or belittle the small act of writing to our representatives. What can an email do? A lot! Our representatives need backing from their constituents to make their voices stronger in legislature.

You can look up your representatives here: https://www.house.gov/
And here: https://whoismyrepresentative.com/

“Never again” means “Never again” for all peoples. As I heard someone say, the hardest part of being human is staying human when under circumstances like these.

What Other Ways to Support Healing and Balance in Israel/Gaza Strip are You Practicing?

Please, put your ethical (not interfering with the free will of others) shamanic ways in the comments so others can benefit.

Thank you for all the work you do for healing in your own life, your family and your community.

Blessed Be,
Tasara Jen Stone

May you break free from the patterns that bind you.