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Spiritual Guides and How To's

How to Make a Talisman or Sacred Power Object

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First of all, what is a talisman or power object? It can be a power necklace,  amulet, a sacred flute, a medicine bundle or a healing drum. It can be a healer’s tool to use in helping others. I can be a protection or a portal to clearing energies.

A power object is where the metaphysical meets the physical, where it is bound, met, married, sealed or kissed together in a form that allows for the metaphysical to be rooted in the solid. It emanates the energies drawn forth upon its making and the intentions of its maker. Depending upon how it is made and how it is treated, it can have a limited lifespan or it can have a life of it’s own, taking on rhythms of sleep and waking states.

There are two ways to make a talisman. One is to play the role of the magician where you are like a cook, gathering the right ingredients, mixing them with elemental energies in the time with the seasons or moon or sun cycle and being very, very careful to hone one’s intentions clearly, fueling such item with emotion or other such source. This is how most beginners work and the results can be perfectly fine as long as the cook can keep a good focus and put disclaimers on your work such as “I invoke this amulet with ____ intention for the good of all and according to free will.”

The other way is to do it in partnership with the helping spirits. Co-creation. In this case, the initiation of the entire endeavor is often a calling, the forming of it is more like sculpting, being a process of listening, revealing what is already there. It is a specific vibration being asked to be brought forth into the physical so that it can manifest it’s signature here This way is more advanced because you have to have some skill in communicating with the spirits and most importantly, you have to know who your spirit helpers are. Having tried and true, benevolent spirit guides allows us to really open and trust. This level of trust invokes deep intention from ourselves and with that, more fuel.

Let me talk about spirit guides for a minute here. Power animals, totems, guides, spiritual teachers have our best interest in mind. Their total purpose in their relationship with us is to help us be better, more healthy, more loving people. They don’t have moods, don’t play tricks, they don’t get sick or busy or lost and don’t throw our lives into chaos. You can choose guides like that, but really, there’s no point. Isn’t life hard enough already? Even if you are aligned with a Goddess of the dark mysteries like Hecate or Kali, you can choose to only work with the benevolent aspect of that goddess.

Ok, back to co-creation. The entire purpose of being on the spiritual path is love and love works better when we do things in partnership. One helping another, two in tandem, sparking the creative together. The spirits actually get really excited and put way more oomph into something if you are doing it for someone else than if you are doing it just for yourself. They love that love stuff. The spirit guides can help us hone our true intention ,too. It is not simple as pie to invoke a true intention into an item without help. With our wonderfully messy human emotions and fears and pride and hopes, it can take a tremendous amount of mental discipline to infuse an amulet with purely creative and loving intentions without a shadow of a doubt. When we allow our benevolent guides to enter into this making, we can trust that they will fill our sacred creation with pure love and intention – for it ‘our’ sacred creation, not yours or mine. This sacred item is shared with spirit. After it is made, it contains mystery, continues to teach us and changes and deepens as we grow with it, as we tend to it well.

Let’s dive in.

The first thing to do is to spend a lot of time mulling on the what’s and why’s of making the sacred creation. Are you making this item because you want to bring healing and love into the world, are you working for protection, for help in a clear mind, closer connection to your helping spirits? Or is this sacred item being made for your helping spirits as an offering to them?

As in all things metaphysical, we stay within the bounds of free will and privacy. That means stay away from healing for people, human or otherwise with out permission and avoid scrying into other people’s lives. Sometimes we think we know what is best for someone but ultimately, we really don’t. It would be awful someone did a healing for someone else and averted them from a disaster that was about to change their entire life for the better. If you are making a spiritual gift for someone and you want it to be a surprise, go ahead and make it. They have the choice to receive the gift or not. There is more on that at the end of this article.

If your true intention is to gain more spiritual power the rest of this article might not make any sense to you. When we are yearning for power, we are really yearning for healing. True personal power just emanates when we have found our way to wholeness. Power from other sources (helping spirits, elements) is to be used for healing for self and others. Focusing on love creates more love.

So, here we are, mulling on intention. Driving around, picking up the kids, mulling, mulling in the back of our minds. Is this for my own healing? Is it for clarity? For a new drum? What is the drum for? Intention is everything in any kind of manifestation magic. It is what guides all the decisions around materials, shape and song. This is why you need to have intention as figured out as you can before beginning. It doesn’t have to be complete; the stuff you can’t figure out, Spirit will help you with along the way.

By the way, this intention-setting is exactly the same that a designer goes through before making a TV ad, except that person is manifesting energies of need and desire so you open your wallet instead of manifesting energies of love and healing.

In this conversation, you want to also feel around to discover ‘who’ is asking for this talisman to be made. Is it your guide for personal healing? Are the ancient trees asking you to bring their energies into the world? Are you crafting a salve for medicinal purposes or a healing amulet for a friend? If you know who or what wants to come through, then you can direct your questions that way when you are working. You can send your love and appreciation that way, too.

Next, think about materials. What carries the energies that need to be embodied? Are they gleaned or made in a way that has minimal impact on mother earth? Do you support the industries that made it? Do you require the skill to make this item or do you need to hire someone to make part or all of it? Does that person carry energy that you like? You don’t have to include the craftsperson in your process but you do want to be fond of what is coming from their heart. When I make sacred items, I will have most of my materials gathered and then do a sort of ‘whatever I have in the house will fit in’ game. If you are working with crystals, ask the crystal what its nature is and whether it wants to take part in this venture. Crystal are beings and some crystals already have a set energy signature. It isn’t going to be an effective component if it’s job doesn’t harmonize with our intention.

We are in relationship with mother earth and every manifestation of her, rock, bone, clothe, song. We are not guardians, tenders, rulers or rapers. We are as of the earth as any of these things and beings. We are in sync, in balance, in relationships. We are in love.

Clear the materials in the many, many ways there are to clear materials: water, fire, earth, salt, sage, moonlight…once again, it’s all about intention. There are hundreds of book on how to do this so I won’t spend time here laying those ways out. But don’t use a recipe from a book unless it is perfect. Ask your helping spirit to help you figure out what seems right. You might want to find out if any animals involved had a good death and ask what you can do for them if they didn’t. Think of the people who made the parts, whose lives touched them. Realize the vast resources already in play just to create the materials and get them to your town. Take the time to be in a space where you are profoundly in tune with this and how this yet-to-be-made sacred creation already is a gift from many parts of the earth. Awesome!!

Create a sacred space to work in. Once again, there are many books on how to do this and be sure and do what is meaningful to you. Be mindful of what sort of music or media is on when you are working because all of this energy is going into your item. Well, not all of it but anything intense that happens, around you or inside of you.
Begin! Have fun! This is the dance between you, your hands, your heart and spirit. Listen, smile, cry, ask, learn. Stop working when you get tired or your concentration wanes. You want to be enthused and not lose perspective. But at the same time know that sometimes, work is just work and you cannot have precision focus all the time. If you wish to have a consistent flow of intention, make up a song or a mantra that supports your intentions and sing.

Be easy on yourself and keep listening. For example, I was working on a talisman once and I started thinking about how cool it was, how all my friends were going to be so impressed when they saw it. Then I immediately felt terrible because the last thing I want embedded in my medicine tools is pride. I thought I ruined it. I started beating up on myself. But then I felt a pulse come from the item I was working on. It was love. It was self-forgiveness – and I found that the element of self-forgiveness was being sewn into the power item as well as everything else. A gift from the heart of the item itself, which had already begun to bloom even though I was far from finished with the physical making of it.

Awwwww. This is the co-creation part.

The stopping for breaks is awesome. Once enough work has been done to warrant a break, the dream has been awakened and is more alive within us. It keeps growing even when we are not working on the physical item, so lingering questions get answered before we go back to work. The breaks also allow time for Spirit to work on the talisman without us. It is a beautiful process.

Sometimes we fall into trance and let Spirit take over our mind and body, doing much of the work for us. Don’t be afraid to cut away entire sections that you thought would be just right but no longer seem to have a purpose. Every single part of the sacred creation must have a purpose or it does not belong there. Often we have a knowing that something should be there and that the purpose will reveal itself to us at a later date.

This is a process, not a feat or a project to finish and cross off the ‘to do’ list. So relax. Make some good tea. It will be done when it is time to be done. Get excited. Be a kid about it. Listen. Feel the elements of color, form, line. If you find yourself going through a cathartic experience, keep working. All that pain coming up is held in love and your partnership with spirit is the true element in play.
When the sacred creation is finished, physically, spend some time meditating with it or journeying (this is a shamanic method) to find out it’s nature. Ask it to teach you about it’s medicine, how it is to be used. Ask it how it wants to be blessed. If the item really feels alive, ask it how it wants to be tended. Some items like cedar smudge where others like sage. Some want to sleep for periods of time and some like to be talked to. You will find out. Some want to be wrapped in a clothe and kept hidden when it is not being used. It’s all about relationship.

When this creation is spiritually fully blessed and birthed, find out from it how public it wants or need to be. Some items are entirely private. Though it is wonderful to share and rejoice with friends about these wonders, never boast. Boasting will diminish your relationship with it and hence, it’s effectiveness.

If you made it for a friend, when you present it to them, share everything about it, each part and what it means, all the energies running through it and what it told you about how it wants to be cared for. Tell your friend they have free will to accept or reject this gift and once you have given it, you have to let go of it. Let go of its meaning and purpose as well, for the gift may totally transform in the hands of the receiver into something else. Someone made me a gift once that turned out to have a very different purpose than what she had heard it was for. Who knows, maybe as I grow with it, it will include what she intended. It is very possible. These things are mysterious.

Allowing mystery is allowing growth, giving respect to the spirits and … is totally fun.

With deep gratitude and joy, be glad that you are having yet another experience into the deep learning about this ever-changing, ever-mysterious thing we call love.

by Tasara

Spiritual Guides and How To's

Tips in Finding a Spiritual Teacher or Healer

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Effective spiritual teachers are doors for us. They embody the personal work they have done and the intimacy of their relationship with their helping spirits. They create a safe place for us to do our work and manage group dynamics in a way that allows everyone to share freely.

Healing is an art form. Each healer’s techniques grow and flower over time as they are taught by their experiences, human teachers and spirit guides. Because of this, each healer may present their Way a little differently. Some specialize in Divination, some in beautiful co-created Ritual, some may have learned from Native American culture, some are rooted in Celtic Neo-Shamanism.

Finding a teacher or healer that is good for you may be a confusing process, so here are some tips that may help you along the way. In all cases, listen, listen, listen to your own sweet heart.

Boundaries: A good spiritual healer or teacher has excellent boundaries. This means that they will not ask you to do anything you are uncomfortable with. It also means that they will be very clear on what is expected of you in your role as a student or a client.

Accessibility: A good teacher is available to answer your questions during instruction. They do not try to make things sound more mysterious and powerful than they are. They are also comfortable with not knowing everything about how the universe works.

Deferring to the Spirits: A good healer or teacher will never tell you what they think is “wrong with you”, what they think you need for healing or interpret your journeys for you. They will honor your unique relationships with your power animals and guardians.

The first thing a neo-shamanic healer does when encountering a client is go on a diagnostic journey to find out what that person needs and how to go about helping. This is a safety precaution to take the healer’s ego out of the picture and enable them to be a good “hollow bone”, allowing Spirit to work through them for the benefit of others.

A good teacher knows that all they can do is show you the door through teaching  – that it is you who must walk through the door. They know that no one is going to find their own Way through imitating them. Expect to be encouraged but run from those that want you to put them on a pedestal.

Compassion: Love heals, not techniques. If you do not feel heard or cared for as a person, do not work with that healer or teacher.

Safety: What is most important is that you feel safe with the healer or teacher you have chosen. If you find yourself coming home from sessions feeling smaller and more insecure than when you came in, something is very, very wrong. If this is happening on a consistent basis, you do not need to have a reason to leave. All you have to do is listen to your gut and go. Figure it out later in the safety of your own home, with people that love you.

Sometimes our sacred yearning is so strong, that we rush to sign up for every session we see, forgetting that important steeping time between classes. It is good to stop the brain sometimes and ask the heart: Is this what I yearn for? Or do I really yearn for a circle to practice what I have already learned? Or do I yearn for community? Or was there a different class that matches my spirit more closely? Or? Or?

Take your time. The real learning is happening inside of you, the real practice is today.
Blessings upon your path.

Tasara

Spiritual Activism, Spiritual Sociology

Happy Martin Luther King Day. May we Be the Change that We want to See.

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Shamanism is a Path of Love and as all in paths of love, it requires the kind of courage that our leader Martin Luther King had. Shamanism is not about how far you can get out there to meet the spirits but what you bring back for your community, how skillfully you can bring it back and how effectively you can deliver the medicine with love. It is a path with concern for the health of community.

This is why I encourage you, even in the rooms where spiritual people go to seek peace, especially there, to speak your truth.

In the alternative spiritual subcultures, spiritual people can sometimes be so afraid of conflict that silence opens the door for the old illnesses of the dominant paradigm to take root in our sacred settings. But believe it or not, conflict is a sign of healthy community. Conflict allows deep passionate differences to be clearly seen. Without it, there is no true growth. In political and spiritual circles alike, it is extra important for people to be aware of the value of conflict because in political and spiritual circles, conflict is inevitable.  Why?  Because in both politics and spirituality, if we are true to our path we are being motivated by our deepest values. When our deepest values are crossed, it causes strong emotional response. It’s kind of like math.

If you have tried to speak your truth and experienced being shut down with words like “you are being negative” or “you create your own reality”, don’t let this push you into a place of self doubt.  Even if you were not entirely correct in your words, that sort of response only means that you are pushing up against people’s fear.

Every movement, whether spiritual or political comes with its rhetoric. When the rhetoric is used without context or insight, it becomes dogma. Dogma is often used to control others. The rhetoric of positive thinking and positive speaking has become dogma in many corners of our subculture and our nation. It is sounding a lot like the old “don’t rock the boat” of other oppressive cultural ribbons of the past.

Conflict is a place where people are outside their comfort zone, in a place of vulnerability and risk. It is when social interactions are not all tied up in a bow over a neat package. It can be scary, a place with high stakes, where bridges are easily burned…or deeper understandings made or where trust and growth can be forged. Without this risk we cannot learn about each other.

This is the practice of love. Love for the self requires speaking one’s truth. The cantankerous process of speaking one’s truth is more healing than the silence of covered wounds. Don’t let anyone pacify you with that “everyone has their own truth” dogma (remember that dogma is good rhetoric used in ungrounded and out of context circumstances, often as a way to wield power). We have a common truth, too. We CO-create our experiences together and in order for us to live together we have to negotiate. Truth is “what is” and if “what is” is not working for all, rather than shut each other down, why not break the box open? What’s the worst that can happen? Burned bridges and the old familiar isolation? Isolation is the prison of the developed countries. It is long due that we break out of that prison.

Have faith. Courage was explained to me as not a circumstantial thing like bravery but a way of living. Take heart. Truth is inevitably more healing than the silence of covered wounds. The courage to be oneself will allow others to do the same.

None of us has this stuff down all perfect. This essay is not perfect. It’s just a draft. Perfection is the enemy of love anyways-we all, so beautifully imperfect. We are going to make mistakes. We are going to wish we were able to say things differently. I do. But better to say something imperfectly than to not say it at all. There is not enough time to worry about being liked. If we are silent we will drown.. as gay activists around the world know too well, silence is death. Death of the soul and for many death all around.

Thank goodness we live in a country where speaking does not mean death. This gives us extra responsibility to speak when so many others cannot.

Let’s co-create our realities for common cause to bring more love and healing in the world for everyone, not just our friends and people like us. Let’s tune in today to the massive power behind the speeches of Martin Luther King and allow ourselves to be infected with that fire, to be inspired to do whatever it is that we are called to do.

much love,

Tasara

5 Lughnasadh: Reaping, Sabbats - seasons

The Great Gate

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The weather turned and so did I. The dark came down early, the day ended, so I closed the doors. The shutters took a snap. I wondered what the night might bring. I am done. I am tired. I am taking off all of my tools.

The great forces of deconstruction say purge, purge, purge. The gates are yawning open and the maw of the crooning crone is soon upon us. The crisp air, the taking stock, the pull into retreat, these things we cannot avoid.

She calls, she calls, she calls.

She says look, let go, cover your eyes, it doesn’t matter because in the folds of mystery you cannot see. Time for the sacred to take the helm. Time to sleep. Time to sleep.

Who are your spirits to stand beside you in the dark? Where is your candle stick and your flint stone? What forms out of the dark are down the road?

Is it the nurturing womb of stasis? The crone’s cave? The turning spit of dismemberment? The hallows of memories past, released from their cages to fly through into the void? Who will help you?

Prepare, prepare, prepare. Prepare to lie down. To be one, to be naught, to not be, to be only what is left after everything else has left.’Tis the season. We come, we came and now there is nothing.

Sleep, sleep, sleep.

by Tasara

2 Ostara: Awakening and Rising

Beloved. Us. Shadow divine.

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When this light comes in, it comes like a radiant star,
massive crystal, inviting embrace,
Warmth, glints, then crazy streaks all around us
to clap for, to raise our our hands for..

It presses on the vibration of our skin,
presses those frequencies to sing in a new way.

This light has been invoked by the thousands that gather, pray, seek,
concern themselves with the future of our planet and our relations with it’s peoples.
Peoples of the soil, the winged air, the forests and lakes, of the city buildings.
Millions. Millions praying, millions responding.

I have felt it reverberate like a cosmic shockwave during the Earthdance prayer for peace, sink into the deep lands of the power animals at the shamanic gatherings, resonate with highest of beings and portals at the devotions of Beloved. Where-ever people have gathered in love I have felt it. You have felt it too, I know.

This light, is light of light,
brought gently down for us to come into.
It is what it is and we glow in its presence,
the seed of star inside us invoked.

We see each other and we see the divine. We bask, we smile big. We cry.
We see the light in each other’s eyes, hearts, flame ignited.
We do not understand what it is but we want more.

We look to each other and then looking deeper, we can find shadow.
We find dankness – and then we are down.
We want the light to be everywhere, we want this bliss to remain.
We forget ourselves.
We are down.

We forget the light’s purpose to clear darkness. To distill from the shadow, divine.

Beautiful, beautiful darkness.
It will always be darkness but the things it carries in its soft folds can turn.
It can be shadows of wonder, hidden treasures of healing, deep knowing of the listen and the love.
Needed secrets we unearth for the sharing.
Dark womb, a place of comfort and rest.

But the light warms and the light pulls. It insists,
That which does not belong in the dark be drawn out!
unhealed bruises, shameful secrets, cyclical stories of loss, forgotten grief.
Fruitless communication patterns. Fear without reason.

— Beautiful – yearning  – never – replied – to —

The radiant star coos to the darkness.
Tugs. Comforts. Finds the edge of weeping, brings us joy.

It calls these misplaced things, so the synesthesia begins
it is a blessing, a relieving, a feather breeze, a reconfiguration
for some, a crushing – for then

I must remember, remember myself before a time when I do not remember.
A way when the earth beneath my feet cooled my skin and my wholeness spread out and touched the tree roots.

In the eyes of our kin, we see the pain, we see the drawing.
We see the divine. We join in on the drawing With the power of our seeing, we draw out that hidden strength and we sing.

‘It’s ok. YOU are ok. You are or you would not be here. You are Beloved. You know the way.
I see you. I know you. For I know myself. You are part of me.
We are all there with you. We are one.’

Coo, coo. Come into the light. And come.

A storm of emotion is merely a storm.
Connect with sky and strike the ground,
where I am, why this happened, who I want to be.
Love myself through the dismembering,
resonate with the grist, open old pains to the wind.

I want compassion,
I want to flower the world with it from my heart and then I am bounced out.
I must try or I am not myself.

Learn, harmonize, love, new imbalance pulled from the shadows.
Repeat, repeat, repeat.
The path of love is the path of love is the path of love.
Steady, rocky, sure. Committed, confusing, clear.

If we were meant to control mystery, mystery would not be.
Our hardest constructs crack to allow new being.
Our energies resolve to allow access to new planes.
We do not reign. We join.
There are other forces there and then there is trust. Devotion.

When this light comes, we rise again
we can hold more than before
a new shadow falls away
a new love is born

We only have to align and pray.

And try, and love.

Again and again.

by Tasara

Spiritual Sociology

FaceBook: Psychic – Socio – Political Intrusions

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(Written by someone who has real live friends who tease her about the fact that she won’t accept their “Friendship Invitation” on Facebook.)

People have been having a field day lately with Facebook and it practice around violation of privacy.  They are slippery around how they design the UI, ever changing, ever deceptive, hard to find controls..

There is another, even more elusive aspect, which I think also needs to be noted.

The Battle in this Country is for the Mind.
We sit at our computers, seemingly alone, or next a handful of people. This physical reality makes it natural to put our guard down. But we are not alone. We are connected with hundreds, thousands of breathing, living humans on the other ends of their computers. Because everything happens in cyberspace, cyberspace becomes

an extension of our minds. We are quiet, typing away, our bodies unmoving, information and emotions rushing through us like the natural conduits that we are.

It is the last frontier, our minds. Everywhere you go there is some sort of marketing trying to influence your mind. It’s either politics, religion or open your wallet. First, foremost and always, it’s open your wallet.

Facebook is the pop culture of online social networking systems, designed to create and maintain shallow relationships temporal, fleeting messages that one must keep up with in order to not miss a thing. We are addicted.

Facebook is the physical manifestation of Addiction, designed and controlled by people who want something from you. Everything about it designed to hook, hook, hook and keep you there. Mind-numbing games, hope of lost or new love, a platform for attention and countless emails in your box bringing you back, one click away.

Finding the many little preferences that turn off all these various features with hooks takes far more thought and time than most people are willing to spend. That is the whole point. You are not thinking. Actually, you are supposed to be focusing on something else (like your job). You are not thinking, so it is easy to let seemingly unimportant things slide… or slip in. Facebook is not important, we know but then why do we allow it to occupy so much of our minds? It blows me away that there are human beings paid to use their precious passion and creativity to come up with such endless ways of generating community spam.

Never forget. The goal of Facebook is not to create community, to enhance culture, to support the arts ..it is to make money. Never, ever forget that. It is no big brother.

Lack of personal boundaries
One classic aspect of addiction is lack of boundaries – in relationships with addicts or use of mind-numbing operatives.  The entire premise of Facebook is to have lots of people we barely know in our intimate mental space as much as possible.  In some ways it’s like become a psychic overnight and becoming barraged with information that may or may not be meant for us. We are privy to things we don’t want to be privy to, things that may upset us or bore us or make us want to respond. The point is, we are wasing energy on things that are not life sustaining.

We also have access to the movements of people’s activities, events, rsvp’s.it’s kind of like sanctioned open snooping. It’s not really snooping because people are sharing. Some things could not be turned off if we wanted to turn them off. This takes away from our precious energy, time and creativity thinking about things that we truly care about, preventing those good things in life from being able to grow. Like weeds in the garden.

In normal human relationships and daily existence, there are lots and lots of people that we don’t really want or need to think about every day. But on Facebook, there they are. They wanted to “connect” and now they are in our field as often as they post. If there are unresolved issues with that person, there it is. If they narcissistically talk about themselves all the time without commenting on anyone else’s posts, there they are. If they are people best left in the past, the past comes back. We are being encouraged to have unwanted and often inappropriate intimacy.  Why do we keep these people on?, we ask ourselves and go back to our coffee.

The guise of intimacy as a hook.
Those who become enchanted with the specter of real human connection with more people may find themselves over-sharing. They may be over-sharing for other people’s taste but more importantly, they are over-sharing for their own self comfort as well. Over-(self)-exposed creatures tend to go through period of cutting tons of friends out to gain a sense of psychic privacy….which leads to another thing.

“What’s on your mind?”
Is that a question that you ask people you don’t know very well?  They why are we answering it to a platform of hundreds of people? And why that question? What other questions could there be? How would it shape the communication and human interaction that happens up there? How about “What do you love to do?” “How are you going to save the world?” “What are you working with?” “What do you need help with?”

Friend
Words have power. Over history, governments and political parties have misused.. twisted words to change public consciousness and response to those words and ust them in a different way.  During times of war, words are often stolen from the peace movement and redefined and deployed to mean something else. This weakens the original use of the word.  Peace-keeper, friendly fire, collateral damage, preemptive war.

This is not new stuff. This is marketing. Take an image or word that invokes human emotion or attachment to and attach it to something else.. a product. Embed both deeply into the subconscious.

This “Friend” thing is the trophy hook of Facebook. To use the word incorrectly is the first and most powerful way of bending one’s consciousness to being fooled in some subtle way that all these people are actually friends. But deeply, we cannot change the meaning of the word Friend. Which makes these connections seem so .. personal in some hard-to-put-your-finger-on, creepy, subtle way.

Some people have a hard time saying No in real life. This can get out of control with friend invitations on Facebook. For me, if someone has 2000 friends, I’m like – no way. If they look interesting and are in my town, I refuse their friendship but ask them out for tea. I’ve had plenty of people get upset with me but no one has come out for tea.

De-Facing ‘Friends’
The HOOK is the guilt about letting go. We let go of people all the time in our minds but on Facebook it is not silent. It’s public. Eventually the other person knows and even though it’s not personal, it’s personal.  So rather than being honest about who we want in our cyber-consciousness, we let them hang on.

Hence the Hide button. You can hide those annoying people who are constantly on the verge of reporting their next nose picking but they still pop up!  Everytime one of our other friends comments on their post, there they are.

Why don’t we have control over what and who pops up? Why?

There are solutions. Read ahead.

Make your Own Facebook Policies
OK, Facebook is a big sucking psychic octopus…of time, energy, thought, creativity and focus, but it doesn’t have to be that way. It can be used for community building, appreciation of our loved ones and warm regards but only if we take control of how the information flows.

I got a little freaked out with too many connections so I came up with a way to cut them down and do as much I could to not make it personal. I am a community organizer and wanted to push all the wider connections to my Facebook “pages” where the information flow has to be more intentional. Hey, maybe people will actually talk about the things we supposedly have in common with somewhere! Let’s see. I posted a warning that I was cutting community connections. Then after I did, I put on my profile the following:

“HERE’S HOW I PLAY THE FACEBOOK GAME:
If you want to follow my work, thanks! See pages (list of Facebook pages with my public activities). If you want to be my friend, call me, meet me for tea or be a pen pal. Love Is Stronger Than FB.”

Shortly afterwards one person removed themselves from both of my pages, I assume upset that they had been “defaced” but it was only one. That seemed pretty good. Anyone who is really my friend would have called if they were upset.

What else happened? My world instantly gained a mental and psychic peace I had not felt in a while. I am infinitely grateful to myself for taking care of myself and not looking for approval or asking permission first.

I’ve spent a few hours in the FB account settings, too, really thinking about what I want to be public to whom. It’s worth it. I found that we DO have control over which of our own interactions pop up on other people’s walls. Look up Settings>Applications>Wall>Advanced

Behind the Curtain
OK you know this but maybe it’s time to pull out of our subconscious the fact that everything posted IS saved. And don’t fool yourself thinking that the company does not use, sell and lend that information to all sort of parties, including the gov’t.  To delete posts on your wall through history, you have to do it One by One. I am a moderate poster, averaging one a day and it took me an hour or so to wipe my wall.

So if you ever want to cancel your Facebook account (which is a feat of it’s own if you can find the preference), you might want to delete your stuff. If you don’t, they won’t. That’s for sure.

by Tasara

Spiritual Guides and How To's, Spiritual Sociology

A Street Guide to Attending Summer Festivals/The Shadow Side of the 2012 Movement

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This is a multimedia piece, which is why it is in the pdf format.
You can get here: http://www.littlelight.info/FieldGuide.pdf

Please share this freely, but please…pass the link to this page, not the PDF.

There are two sections:

1. Spiritual Checklist for attending the summer festivals
2. The Shadow Side of the 2012 Movement

by Tasara

4 Litha: Ecstasy and Devotion

I Give you the Sun

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Sometimes a person’s heart breaks because there is not enough room for the love that wants to flow through it. The heart breaks. Fresh cracks become fissures and into the fissures pour a molten elixir of fire. This burning salve drops deep into a space called the Will and cools – and here, we decide to live. But from the shape of the curved rock walls around us, we know that we cannot live the same way we did before.

Form explodes into nothingness. Fear springs up but there is no cliff to leap from. The cliff is gone too, leaving fear to dissipate in the wind. We grasp to nothing. No walls, no fear, no one else, only silence.

Such is the season of darkness, one survived through death, transformation and back into life. It is not destiny, however. Roads do not all have to be mottled with hardship. Not all dark seasons are conducted like the forge.

I give you the Sun’s rays for your season of darkness. I give you the glowing cup, brimming with gold to remind you that there is warmth even when we are not looking for it. That the natural state of your life as a flesh and bone mammal is heat. Whatever you do, in dance or in hibernation, may you be comforted with this knowledge, which is as constant as your own beating heart.

Dance in love this winter, the dance of wonder or the dance of despair, a dance of confusion or a dance of joy, each dance inherently loved simply by the truth of your expressions. Watch your fingers move, the lines they draw, speaking that which you could not previously say.

Rest sure this winter. Curl into your caves with the ancient mothers and sleep your wonderful sleep. There is time for work and there is time for dreaming and in this season, when we listen, the Mysteries do sing.

There is a Sun for working and there is a Sun for lazy morning stretching. I give you the lazy morning kind. The kind where it’s okay to be alone for gentle thinking, playful thinking, curiosity. The lazy sun dissolves the urgency from life and assures us, smoothing down the bristles.

There is a candle rooted in all of us, a candle which cannot be blown out. It is a fact. We cannot get away from life. Life is relentlessly persistent. It refuses to be ignored. With every step we take, around us life teems. The girl in the cafe. The quiet winter trees, the screech of tires on the highway. There is someone in there. There is life. There is life.

—————————————————————————
SUN

I draw this circle ‘round myself,
around myself,
around myself.

And from the center I send out light,
I send out light,
I send out light.

To east, to south, to west, to north
and four more in-between
I paint the rays in red and gold
for creatures seen, unseen.

I do not need to wander far
for all I need is here.
I am a seeker nevermore
and laud my treasures near.

by Tasara

Raven Speaks

Raven ‘Gets’ the Light

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One of the Raven Stories: Given to Tasara by a raven

[Meant to be read Out Loud.]

The people were living in a dark time. They didn’t really know it because that was all they had ever experienced, day after day, foraging for food by smell, bumping into things that other people had moved into the trails sometimes.. They had a way of living that was just fine, with berries and nuts and a story here and a story there but there was something missing…something they knew they missed somewhere deep in their bones but without knowing it in their heads.

But Raven knew it for sure because she had been to places of light and of dark and seen them both, along with everything in between. She was a great traveler and a great shape-shifter. She traveled in the dark so often it was as natural for her as a fish swimming in the ocean. She could see perfectly well in the dark. She could see the souls of beings and see their veins running fresh with hot blood. She could see the blocks in their patterns and their hidden secrets as well. She could see the curves of the dark cavernous walls and feel their vibration, and she knew them to be in the inner vessel of the Great Mother’s womb.

She wanted her human companions to be whole and balanced, thinking not only would it be nice and nurturing but that it would also be a whole lot more fun for her. It was time for them to go live somewhere else, anyways. So she donned her traveling cloak and became a half raven, half man.  A wily man, full of spunk and adventure, all ready to take on anything, to call on all sorts of mysterious and cantankerous powers in order to accomplish his means… or goals…or means..or whatever.  😉

Then he ventured off. But he was barely out the door and he got a craving! And you know how that sort of thing works with a raven..cravings…curiosities…. 🙂  So he went down to the wide, wide Cauldron of Compassion that is hidden underneath the Tree of Life and dipped and SIPPED his beak into the pure and delicate liquid gold. Yummy-nummy!

The priestess who tended the Cauldron just smiled at his greediness, watching how he treated this elixir like candy, seeing the path he was about to take.

He went and climbed the highest branches up until they were only tendrils so light there was nowhere else to step but right onto the white-sketched avenues of the upper realms. He waved at Spiderwoman but didn’t get too close because he knew that she had a job for him and it was impossible to say no to Spiderwoman.  He steadied up the crazy ladders to see what was up there..only finding stardust and not much real light so to speak for his naked bodied friends down in the caverns.

I mean, there was lots of light, being so close to heaven and such but there wasn’t what he was looking for. He knew it only by color and feel and he felt he needed the color and kind of light that the Sun seemed to have.  The Sun had so much of it, he thought that perhaps he was a big thief that needed to be taught a lesson. Maybe the Sun was the whole cause of this problem with people bumping into things and not being able to look into each other’s eyes – ever. It was the Sun. And he was a big thief.

So he concocted a plan. He jumped up onto a passing asteroid and went straight towards the sun, pretty unnoticed until he saw a piece of the most perfect light he could find, in shape, smell, size and song. He grabbed it as he was passing by!  But it was sticky, which he did not expect. His cloak stuck to the sun piece and he was pulled off the asteroid like a bad accident swirling, to find himself floating in the sun realm, all without direction or paddle or anything. The sun piece was like glue…or lava… it certainly was not a piece of anything but rather a blobby, fluid, unmanageable thing. The more he tried to manage it, the more it changed shape on him.. and the more he just got it all over himself. What a mess.

Oh what a mess. And on top of that, he was hot! Ooooo so getting so hot ooooohhh!! OOOHHHHHH!!! And he burned, burned, burned, the sun liquid burned all the way through him until it reached his stomach, where the Elixir of Compassion was still from his morning drink.

The combination of the two golds sent a shock through him and at this moment he thought he was going to die but instead he heard the voice of the Sun saying, “Son. What in the world are you doing?”

“Thief! Thief! I am teaching you a lesson and returning the light to the naked people!”

“You funny man, you, Raven being. You have spent so much time in the Darkness that you have forgotten that one does not have to steal any light from anyone. One only has to ask. And one does not have to cross great divides to find it. It is found everywhere inside, outside, alongside and inbetween. This sort of light cannot be stolen, only given. And just because you amuse me with your antics again, I will tell you another secret; it is in it’s nature to grow when given. HOW COME DO YOU THINK I GOT TO BE SO BIG?!?”

And Raven was tumbled back down to the earth, feeling all fried and a bit broken from landing on a protruding root at the bottom of the Tree of Life.  Stars were whirling around his head but he batted them away, annoyed that they were not the kind of light he had ventured off to get.

He lie there for a long time, dying, singing about dying, getting bored with not dying, until he heard a sweet song from beneath him. It was the lady of the Cauldron of Compassion, singing to him. He crawled, dramatically, to her entrance, until he found it easier to just walk in and find out what she was doing. She was singing, sweetly, as I said, and smiling at him all at the same time.

She dipped a ladle into her pool and served him a nice cup of golden elixir broth. As he reached out to accept it, it turned into a bowl of delicious elixir broth. He almost dropped it in surprise and that made her giggle.

She said, “You see?”

And he GOT IT and said, “Oh yes. I knew that.”

Which made her giggle again.

“Would you like a ‘to go’ lid for that?” she said.

“Well.. yes. I was just going to say that.”

So she bundled up the elixir of love and compassion for him. When he handed it to her so she could do that, it grew a little bit so she had to go find another container. When she handed it back to him, it happened all over again but she knew that was going to happen and had put it in a container with extra room in it just for that reason.

Raven was beaming now, all beamy and smiley and unable to think of anything to say, (especially anything smarter than she probably had to say) so he did a little bow, quirked a Raven quirky noise and traipsied out the door….to make his way back to the darkened cavern. Where his naked people friends were.

But on the way down there, he kept thinking of trouble. The trouble was that the darkened caverns were suppOSed to be dark and if he brought light down there, there wouldn’t be any place for darkness to be anymore.

So he came up with a beautiful plan. He snuck down there really quiet with his ‘to go’ container all covered, slipped back into his Raven Beauty warrioress healer clothes and then … then she ladled out the dinner soup of the night with little drops of compassion in each bowl. Not too much to blow the ceiling off or even brighten a hovel but enough to lighten the hearts of his little naked friends and show them the way out of the caverns to another place. Their time here was done and she knew it was wise and best for them to take what they have learned about being in the dark and find a tree somewhere with bright sky and sun overhead.

After dinner, she set some dim sconces up on the walls, fifty feet apart, so people could find them, one by one, wooed by the self-love in their hearts to the love in the guidance to move to a new place. It was really, really fun work to do. Gold meets gold and things just grow. Naked people come but naked people gotta go at some point, y’know? Momma’s gotta make room for more naked people comin’ in!

As the people gradually made their way to the higher tunnels, where the light leaked down, they went into a state of shock, stumbling a bit for not being able to understand the things they saw and match them up with what they felt. But then they remembered their night ‘vision’ which was not something that had anything to do with their eyes, but with other senses they did not have names for.  When the sun finally hit their eyes, if you had been there you could have seen flint in them, a permanent mark of passing through the dark, a knowledge that would never wash away, ever, as they held each others hands as they used to in order to find their way…as they walked into a brilliant golden sunset.

One night, to discover the glories of fireflies and singing night birds and moon flowers before the full intensity of what was to come, came – and it sure did come with the next morning.

The people learned that connection could be warm, not only from survival. They learned that if they gave, then the giving made what was given even larger than it was before. They learned that they could not control or shape or bind or hold what was given… they learned lots of other things too that could just go on and on.

And the Raven walked back into the darkness. There was much work to be done in there.. and a whole lot more space to do it in. She smiled and cackled and played with the sconces as he gathered them all up to return their light back to the Lady of the Cauldron. What would he do with all that stuff anyways?

The next plan at hand was to spy on the people in a fortnight and find out what in the world they were doing.

by Tasara

4 Litha: Ecstasy and Devotion

Angel

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angel

When she came into being she was in awe.
She saw everything as luminescent,
gentle, feathery white
with a tinge of angelic blue.
Angels-from-the-stars blue.

Everything was so light she could have been blinded but for the grace of the feathers that held her at bay from the realm of big dreams. Big dreams that held forces too powerful for her vulnerable being.

She thought, “What have I done to deserve being in the wonderful place?“

Deserve. Deserve. Deserve.

Deserve reverberated from the high canyon walls that were slowly etching themselves to being across the skyline.  The word became meaningless to her and dropped from the sky, when just a moment ago, it was so packed full of stuff and yearning, of a breaking to understand her badness.

She felt as if she had crawled there. Slithered through dark tunnels. Her body must be aching with pain from all she remembered, but it didn’t. She didn’t remember the coming or even knowing of a here to achieve.

Achieve. Achieve.

Achieve dropped from the sky, meaningless onto the canyon floor, which had become a large pond, silvery, with wisps of white curling above its surface, pearl ripples moving out from the center towards her, beckoning her to the water’s edge.

She stepped forward and her moccasins had gone white. Her dress was unrecognizable as tears sprung from her eyes.

“Who am I?” she thought to herself, feeling foreignness but also a rush of the soundness of home-coming.

Who?

So forward she came, leaving her memories behind and her walking stick at the entrance to the tunnels, which were closing fast.

When she reached the still pond, instead of gazing downwards she was overcome with an urge to fly. It ran through her every fiber, kissed with the surprise of a new feeling, echoing of an old, ancient experience she could not fathom.  She reached her arms upwards and spread her wings.

“I have wings!”

And when she pushed downwards, she was transported immediately to a place of grey. In a trance she stood, her wings gracefully trailing the air around her, her heart an open portal from which the white flowers of spring flowed freely, grey receding into form, form becoming colored and people drawing into smiles. She witnessed relief and joy, the remembering of the wisdom of self and she rang with gratitude for the place in which she stood.

She did not mourn the place of grace that she had been whisked from so quickly for she understood that to know a place is to embody it, that she was always there and that deep knowing of such energies transformed her into the nature they held. She knew the nature of such feathery, gentle white energies was to give. To celebrate, to pour forth and to rest in ease, sleeping in starlight, every worry and woe truly soothed.

She looked back at her life. The worlds shifted again and she was standing there feeling everything, seeing all that had happened. She tremored, afraid that she had to go back and struggle as she had struggled for so much, too much of her life. There were work issues, friendship issues, esoteric and spiritual crises, chaos. But mostly there was disbelief in herself and that was something she could no longer grasp even when she tried, out of a strange combination of habit and duty. She grasped and grasped at all of these old things but it was so much easier to beam. And so much more pleasureable! The beaming made her slippery and disabled her from grasping onto anything at all. She pulled very hard then and lost her footing. Shwoop! into the air, spirals, floating back, returning her gracefully back on her feet.

“This is….uhh…nice.” she said out loud, with a little bit of remorse.
Nice. echoed back to her, but it was different than before, not so holy.
“Funny.” she said, and laughed with herself and this voice that was just along for the companionship and the fun.

Funny. Ha ha. Funny. Tee hee!!

She was not alone. But she had known that just from her state of being. To know this place of feathery white was to know that she, nor anyone else was ever alone. That we all are nestled in the embrace of all other and that healing is ever present. That she was not something special or unattainable. That she was an extension of who she had been before and that in her state, she could see the angelic state of all beings around her, no matter what they saw of themselves. That to see them in this way brought it out.

She knew also that her angelic light had grown from the peat of the underworld, that she could not possibly be who she was if she had not learned what she learned from her travels in the unseeingness of the dark worlds. Her catalog of pain and confusion was no longer an energetic base but a breadth of energetic attunement that allowed her to resonate with all beings – to see their full spectrum. And enhance the grace which already exists.

“Ahh, I knew that!” she laughed as she thought back to all of her poems and teachings on what makes a healer. A healer is to see someone’s beauty- from a place of beauty.

“And as in all things, this comes in varying degrees.” she thought as she fluttered up into the ethers, the sky, or whatever this stuff was. Sparkles burst from her toes just because she wanted them to.

“Being an angel will be fun.”

by Tasara