Category Archives: Spiritual Guides and How To’s

Spiritual Guides and How To's

Slipping Past Common Difficulties While Shamanic Journeying

Leave a comment

This article is written for those that have taken Harner-style, Core Shamanic Journey lessons but still have difficulty either journeying to the other realms or meeting their spirit guardians.

Firstly, I want you to know that you are not alone. Some people journey successfully right away and others take months. There is no grading system in shamanic journeying. There is no shame or blame. We all have different roads and truly, they are all sacred.

In my years of teaching shamanic journey, the biggest barrier I have seen that my students run into is when they think they are not journeying -when they really are! Because their journeys do not match their expectations, they belittle and dismiss their experiences. I have had many discussions with people in class who say, “I wasn’t able to journey.” Then, when I ask them what happen, a story comes out that is really quite wonderful.

Here are some common mindsets that can hinder a journey experience:

  • The journeyer expects a “successful” journey to be fantastical and mind-blowing.
  • The journeyer feels like they need to pass or fail a test about whether they can journey.
  • The journeyer expects their journey to be visual.

Many cultures believe that everyone has helping spirits. They just might not be aware of them. Shamanic journey is an opportunity to do this. Because these spirits have already been around us, many people have a strong sense of familiarity when they meet their guardian spirits, instead of a shiny new experience.

Shamanic journey is not about gaining abilities. It is about going to a place where you can say hello to your helping spirits. Be curious. Lighten up. Have fun. Try to hold a combination of childlike wonder and thoughtful navigation at the same time.

Because language in the spirit realms is different than in our realm, one can expect to receive information from any of their senses. One can feel their environment, smell or know what is happening around them more than they see. This is perfectly valid! A person could be a visual artist in the waking world but not see strongly in the spirit realms. How we perceive fluctuates over time and the intensity waxes and wanes.

Simply put, we all have our own way.

Overall, my advice is to release any expectations of what you think the journey will be like. Lead with your heart, not your mind. Allow yourself to be vulnerable with the spirits. And be confident. Greatly, self-confidence is necessary to open oneself to new possibilities. If you are completely frustrated with yourself, I would ask you to brave on and trust in the process. This kind of effort is recognized by the spirits.

Following, is a list of problems I have heard people talk about over the years and possible solutions to them. I have been gathering these gems over the past few years from various shamanic communities. Some might resonate with you and some may not, but it only takes one to open a new door.

The power runs out of the journey.

Sometimes our mind rushes ahead of the journey and then the journey peters out. Don’t judge yourself for going off. There may have been a good purpose to it. Maybe spirit showed you something that immediately related to a part of your life and you needed to digest it for a few minutes. Many very experienced shamanic journeyers encounter this from time to time.

Things you can do:

  • Play the “What If?” game. Ask yourself what the journey would be like if it was going magnificently and then step into that reality.
  • Go back to the way you came until you arrive at where you last felt the power. Take a moment and follow the scent.

The spirit runs away from you.

  • In this case, the answer to your journey question will likely be metaphorical, exemplified by the journey they are about to take you on. Follow the spirit.

You think that nothing is happening.

I must say, there is no such thing as nothing. There is definitely something happening.

Try this:

  • Slow down and become very, very aware.
  • Check into all of your senses one by one.
  • Do not dismiss anything as unimportant. Feel into it and then decided.
  • Be curious.

You are physically stuck at the beginning of the journey.

I have heard of people finding themselves in a black box or facing a wall. I must ask, “What is stuck, really?” It’s very curious. If you were a child, you would know exactly what to do in these situations:

  • Merge through the wall.
  • Find a crack in the wall/floor to slip through.
  • Sink through the ground.

You think you are not getting anywhere.

Sometimes where you are going takes a long time to get there. Sometimes the getting-there is a metaphor for you to learn from. Keep going through the darkness/whiteness, the tunnel as long as it takes, trusting there will be an end to it. Ask for help from the spirits, with the yearning in your heart that you want to meet them.

The journey is happening but it is very faint.

  • Go down or up a few more levels.

There are many levels in the upper/lower worlds. Let say I go into the trunk of a tree and then plummet down until I land and there is an opening that leads somewhere. If I go back into the tree, I can go down further, asking to be in a deeper lower-world aspect of the same place.

No one is there to greet you

  • If you have met a guide before, telepathically ask them to meet you at the entrance to the lower world before starting your journey.
  • Get very, very still and notice everything you can about your surroundings. Perhaps someone is there but you are too stressed to notice.
  • Put out a call with your heart (not your mind) to the spirits.
  • Go explore the area, feel with your heart where is more nourishing to you. There is a lot to learn from the environment.
  • Try a different day. Make offerings to the spirits on your altar and bring non-physical offerings for them in your next journey.

The spirit seems distant or is ignoring you.

  • Ask yourself if they are really ignoring you or if you are not paying attention to what they are showing you in nonverbal ways.
  • Just hang out with them to get used to their presence. Enjoy.
  • Give them a gift.
  • Try to communicate with them telepathically.
  • Ask them how to get to know them better.
  • Ask them if they are there to guide you. If they say no, ask them to take you to a guide that wants to work with you.
  • Power up and insist that you need to understand what is going on.

The guide doesn’t have a clear face or shape and won’t reveal it’s name.

This is actually common in journeys and there is a good reason for it. For some of us, if we are not able to name or see clearly a guide, it becomes easier to interact with the multidimensionality and mystery of that being.

You are confused about where you are or what the guide is doing or saying.

Ask questions. You are a sovereign being and get to be an equal partner in these interactions.

You wonder if you are making the journey up.

  • Ask yourself, “How do you know you are not making it up?”

The cultures that practice shamanism have very different world views than modern cultures do. One of these views is that everything has a spirit. Another view, for some cultures, is that there is no such thing as fantasy. Every experience is true. Knowing that one cultural mindset is not more real than another is a gift that the field of anthropology give us.

The more important question is “Is this experience helping me in my life?”. Shamanism is about trial and error, not faith.

  • Send the inner mental judges to a luxurious sanctuary, far, far away until you’ve been journeying for a while. Later, you can make your own conclusions about whether this practice is useful for you.

Long-time guides in the middle world through another spiritual practice who are used to meeting you in the middle world are not meeting you in the upper/lower world.

You guides may not understand why you want to communicate with them in a new way, so you might need to telepathically let them know before you journey that you want to meet them in these other worlds. If they still show up right when you close your eyes, tell them where you are going and ask them to meet you there. The advantage of being able to travel with them is you can expand your personal spiritual cosmology and encounter things you cannot encounter in the middle world. Explain this to them.

It is also possible that the spirits that want to meet you in the upper/lower realms are not the same spirits. Spirits often play specific roles in our lives so try to have an open mind. Perhaps your personal pantheon is about to expand.

You were able to journey before but now you are having trouble.

  • Are you cutting corners on creating sacred space before you journey?
  • Are you trying to get to the lower world a different way you did when you were able to journey? Go back to the way that worked for you.
  • Have you done something to insult, dismiss, belittle or dishonor the spirit? (boasting, neglect, behaving in an uncompassionate manner).
  • Check your attitude around you relationship with the guide. Are you in true partnership or are you using them to ‘get’ what you want? Try having a journey just to give them a hug and enjoy them.

Outside Help

Lastly, it might be helpful to get some private sessions with a shamanic practitioner. Here, you would be able to talk through your journey experiences and even talk your journey out loud while you are having it so you can get help in the moment. A practitioner could also journey for you to find out what the issues is or do a power animal retrieval for you.

Resources

It can be very inspiring to go back to the basics, no matter how much training you have had. The classics may have little jewels you missed the first time around:

The Way of the Shaman by Michael Harner
Cave and Cosmos by Michael Harner
Shamanic Journeying by Sandra Ingerman

I hope this helps and if you have any more suggestions that worked for you, add them in the comments!

Tasara Jen Stone

COVID-19 Pandemic, Spiritual Activism, Spiritual Guides and How To's, Spiritual Sociology

Rubber Bullet Talisman

Leave a comment

Send me your rubber bullets and I will build an altar for us.

It will contain the power that struck the hammer,
sending them, cutting through the air.

It will be packed with the force of cold, negligent denial
of all wrongs done from slavery until now.

It will be charged with the emotions of our people
on the streets, shouting until they can’t speak,
marching until their bodies hurt,
retreating through tear gas and chanting in unison,

of those tased in the car
while police slash their tires,
merely for being there.

It will hold the memories of those who held out their hands,
those who risked their lives,
those who crossed the lines,
those who took a knee for peace.

It will be purified by the mere act of picking it off the street,
turning it in one’s fingers,
and taking it home
to channel such
into societal transformation.

Take your rubber bullets
place them in a small dish.
Surround all that passion
and song
and force
and rage
and grief
and sweet bonding,
with petals
and nurturing sounds.
Then, light a candle
to hold witness to us all
as you shine in your heart to envelop us
with your sweetness.

Take your rubber bullet,
pierce it with a hot needle.
Pull a strong thread through the hole
and make yourself a garland.
Make yourself a thing of beauty,
wrought from the forges of rebellion.
Take it with you always,
to fuel your revolution,
which is our revolution,
to crystallize your truth,
which is our truth,
to remind you,
never,
never to stop.

Spiritual Guides and How To's

Clearing the Medicine Channels

2 Comments

As long as many of us are sitting around at home these days, I want to bring up something that causes spiritual gunkiness. I do still work full time, but the free time I have is mysteriously vacuous. That is why I am able to write this.

There is a law of energy which states that while we are in our human bodies, there is a limited amount of attention we are able to give. It’s similar to the limited amount time we have per day, but balanced with our energy levels. No kidding, right? Pretty boring. Tell me something new.

Well, I won’t tell you anything new, but take a good look at your altar. Is it cluttered? Is there stuff there, that has blank or dead energy? Take it off, then, and see how your altar feels. Look at your medicine bundles, talismans and sacred items, on your shelves, in your drawers. Are you in the plenty with magical items?

Now ask yourself, “If I were going to give proper care to all of these amazing beings, do I have the time to do all that?”

Which items are not even energetically open to you, and which are sleeping, waiting for another chapter in your life? The ones that are not open to you simply do not belong in your house anymore. Heck, I know this. I kept a gorgeous crystal for ten years trying to like it, trying to connect with it, but it wasn’t until I gave it away that it came to life. Years later, it was returned to me and my relationship with this stone person was totally different.

There is a difference between hosting a family of helping spirits and collecting amazing items because they are beautiful. As practitioners, we are tenders and students of the talismans we keep. The stone people need conversation and clearing, or they will remain static. Talismans need recharging, animal totems need offerings and they all need love. Our relationships in our magical support team need to be constant, in and out of ceremony and developed over time. So, just as there can be too many cooks in the kitchen, too many lovers, there can be too many teachers, too many children, too much medicine.

I’m thinking, healers in subsistence living probably only have as many magical tools as they can carry in a satchel, or for community ceremonies, what their assistants can bring along with them. The core of a healer’s power is in a raw hunger for connection with the Spirits of Kindness, an inextricable relationship with the earth. The rest, though sometimes truly critical, is supportive.

Having all this stuff can create a heaviness in the air. They sit there and breath in and breathe out and don’t say very much. The crowd can cause us to have superficial relationships with many spirits, while our deeper relationships are neglected. This can make it difficult to enter clear, strong invocational spaces. We might feel a longing for the times when we felt the spirit running strongly in our bodies. It can be confusing when beginning ritual if we are not sure which items are needed. There can be an oppression of choice, instead of feeling our old friends leap off the altar.

If this hits home for you and you are thinking, “Yes! I need to gift my medicine items!”, keep reading.

There is a proper way to move magic. If you are moving stones, love them and and clear them. There might be energies in them that you don’t want to pass on to your friends – lingering emotions, stuff from old ceremonies. If you are parting with a talisman created for a specific reason, perhaps it serves no more purpose. Perhaps it needs to be dismantled, returning its energies to earth, air, water, fire. Put that time of your life to rest with gratitude and new understanding. Seashells might want to go back to the sea, stones back to the great outdoors. If it is a totem, sit quietly with it in sacred space and whisper to it your feelings. Ask it where it wants to go. Then when you gift it to someone, don’t expect them to keep it. Magical items are just that, magical. It might take a few passes for them to wind up where they need to go.

It’s a lot of work, right? Yeah, that’s what I am thinkin’, when I look around my sacred space at all the preciousness I have collected and feel stuffy. Too much work.

It’s time to lighten the load, keep the energy moving and open up our lives for new inspiration, new vision and a new sense of freedom.

Blessed Be.

Tasara Jen Stone

Seasons of Healing, Spiritual Guides and How To's, Spiritual Sociology, Untangling

Unraveling the Curse of Original Sin

Leave a comment
One of the greatest curses cast upon the human race in the last few thousand years is the concept of original sin. Some religions insist it is incurable. Others claim that it can be wiped clean with baptism. Regardless of theological interpretations, many of us who are laypeople carry a deep-seated sense of being an awful, rotten, bad person. Shame is the great motivator for many of our actions, often without our realizing it. This curse struck not only those who believed in original sin, but everyone else too, as it was distributed through the collective psyche. Too often, events, people and situations are qualified as good or bad, which traps them in a fixed state, not allowing them to be multi-dimensional. When we are good, we can look down on the bad, while still afraid of being bad. When we are bad, we can never be good. Either way, we cannot grow. I cast down this curse. You are not bad. There is no mark on your soul…. Tasara Jen Stone More in The Ancient Bones of Ceremony, found in paperback and eBook at: Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Audiobook in production.
Sabbats - seasons, Spiritual Activism, Spiritual Guides and How To's

The Ancient Bones of Ceremony

Leave a comment

This book has no recipes for ceremony. Instead, it takes you on a journey through the stages of creating your own. Through this experience, you will deeply understand the energetics of what makes ritual powerful.

Cover

Step into the mysteries of the ancient ways as you travel on an allegorical journey to explore the many dynamic aspects of what makes a ceremony transformative for yourself, your family and your community.

Weddings, rites of passage, baby blessings, funerals, yes, and also life changes that are not typically honored: loss of relationship, divorce, new home, new job, eldership and retirement.

For many of us, the formats provided by higher authorities are not enough, and imitating traditions of other cultures is controversial. We need to return to the bare bones of ceremony and create transformative events that are personalized to our own lives and the culture we live in. This is where our power lies.

With Tasara Stone’s careful guidance, you will learn to:

  • Identify your heart’s yearning and turn its message into a pure, ceremonial intention
  • Create beautiful metaphors and symbolic language to express your heart’s need
  • Invoke and maintain sacred space
  • Perform ceremony with effective, safe practices

For public ceremony you will learn to:

  • Identify community needs and desires
  • Empower others to participate in the ceremony-creation process
  • Manage large groups of people when the energy is unpredictable
  • Hold ethical and safe space for others

Tasara Stone’s lyrical writing, which includes prayers, blessings, and paeans of gratitude, transports us to a sacred landscape where our heart’s needs are treated with utmost care. We tune into the light that glows at our core, connecting us to all of life. We spend time with Mother Earth and her elemental spirits, who teach us to walk the sacred spiral path. We learn about the importance of aligning ourselves with the cycles of growing and dying, accepting and letting go. Only with this wisdom and love can we craft and experience ceremonies that are truly transformative.

Tasara Stone offers us not only a practical guide, she gives us a powerful and moving experience of the energies that will nourish our practice. Her words root us in the very soil out of which ceremony grows. Fully engaged, heart, mind, body and soul, we come to understand how the wisdom of ancient times can help us cultivate an authentic spiritual practice in the midst of modern life. This is another essential gift of The Ancient Bones. As we contemplate the lies and distortions that bombard us daily, we come to understand ceremony as a way of creating alternative stories for ourselves, ones that give our lives true meaning.

Access The Sweetness Within You.

Sing Your Song.

Shine Your Light.
———————————————————————————

Where to Buy

Paperback/Ebook
Bookshop is my favorite, because they donate to local bookstores.
Also, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and many others.
Audiobook
iTunes Store / Audible, Amazon / Audiobooks.com / AudiobooksNow / AudiobooksNZ / Authors Direct / BajaLibros / Beek / Bokus Play / BookBeat / Bookmate / Chirp / eStories / Fuuze / Google Play / hibooks / Hummingbird / Instaread / Kobo, Walmart / Libro.FM / Nextory / NOOK Audiobooks / Papaya / Playster / Scribd / Storytel

BACK2

If this book touches your heart, please help others find it by leaving a review on the big bookseller sites.

Spiritual Guides and How To's

The vast majority of shamanic cultures do NOT USE hallucinogens!!

The vast majority of shamanic cultures do NOT USE hallucinogens!! Get over the current hype and learn the facts. Sonic driving is what brings us outside of time and into the the worlds of the spirits. Partaking in entheogens can interfere with shamanic practices because the spirit of the plant is too strong and can interfere with a clear experience navigated with a myriad of other helping spirits.. shamanism with entheogens is an entirely different technique that bring on information in an entirely different way.

what people see (0;00;26;10)

Michael Harner is a world renowned cultural anthropologist who specializes in shamanism and has done his homework. He did start out with ayahuasca but quickly discovered that the drum, which other anthropologists thought was merely an accoutrement, is actually the main tool of the shaman. Or rattle. Or click sticks. Or bow. Gongs.

About entheogens and shamanism:
“From a shamanic point of view, the spirits of such plants not only have power, but they also have their own personalities and messages, which impinge significantly on the nature of the experience. Auditory drumming in many ways does not carry such influences.”

“… a Russian ethnographer who had spent 28 seasons of fieldwork in Siberia, told me that the real Siberian shamans normally employed only the drum to change their state of consciousness, rather than the psychoactive Amanita muscaria mushroom. The mushroom, Simchenko reported, was mainly used by nonshamans who have been unable to journey successfully with the drum alone. Also, he told me it is usually difficult to maintain the discipline necessary for the shamanic work when the Amanita spirit takes over the body.”

both quotes from Michael Harner’s latest book: Cave and Cosmos

This is the same man who wrote Hallucinogens and Shamanism, (a tract of very dry anthropological accounts.. ).He is well versed in the cultures that do use entheogens as well.

So please, please do not equate shamanism with hallucinogens. It is just not true. Being a shamanic practitioner requires years of training, self-transformation, difficult shadow work, empathic and empathetic skills when working with clients and fore-mostly, deep and long-standing relationships with specific (not general) spirits that help the shaman retrieve healing for others.

And some personal notes, the longer one practices, the more sensitive one’s system becomes, so yeah, I have had quite a few unfortunate hallucinatory experiences where I get pushed into places where I am in fear for my life or my sanity or my spirits can’t reach me or the spirit of the plant won’t leave me alone to do my work. Plant spirits are middle worlds spirits. They have a personality and a WAY, an energetic signature which DOES something. They are not in the class of entirely compassionate upper/lower world spirits that most of us prefer to work with. Yes, they will always “bring stuff up” and often there is a big mess to clean up afterwards but it does not always happen in the most compassionate or healing way. Do I need to cry for 12 hours? Or am I just being retraumatized? Do I need to feel insane to find healing?

Sonic driving is pure power, clean and clear. I have taken part in many, many shamanic ceremonies that kicked my ass and sent me to process my shit for months afterwards. I’ve channeled the divine so strongly that it took me a week to physically recover. This is no small beans over here, with the drum.

It is also potentially dangerous taking such substances in unprotected environments. I regularly have clients (and so do my colleagues) who are people who need extraction healing, depossession or soul retrieval after such experiences. This because when your field is entirely open and you are traveling outside your body, it leaves a space for other spirits to come in. It is no light thing to do, so please, please, do not engage in such practices out of sheer peer pressure because it is what ‘everyone is doing’. “Everyone” is not speaking about their true experiences..only the bliss ones. There are many kinds of personality types and some of them are emotionally/psychically closed down that they are pretty safe using psychoactive substances. Because try as they may, they are just not going to leave their body. But for those of us who are super empathic and open, it is an entirely different ball park.

On a happy note, there are some underground facilitators of hallucinogen experiences who are trained in helping your process in the moment. This can be quite valuable for those under such careful care. But this is not shamanism. Shamanism is the practice of going into an altered state with a clear intention to visit one’s spirit friends for the purpose of bringing back healing/insight for the good of one’s community.

Shamanism is not something you ‘get into’. It is a way of life. It is a world view. It is who some of us are.

by Tasara
————————

Please see this very relevant video: Michael Harner on Sonic Driving vs. Entheogens

Spiritual Guides and How To's

Healthy Bonds or Cords to Cut?

Leave a comment

You may have heard of cord-cutting in your travels around the alternative spiritual subcultures. I first heard of it when training as a Witch. What you do is you literally invoke a clothe cord to represent the bonds between yourself and someone that you wish to be parted from, and at some point in the ritual the cord is cut with a very sharp pair of scissors.

This is a powerful act of magic but as the years have flown by I have realized that I don’t want to cut anything. Cutting seems violent and there are so many other ways to free oneself from unhealthy connection with other people.

Fire Dancers
I learned in Reiki how to become a channel of healing energy for another person without using an ounce of my own. This is safety 101 in the healing arts – safety for self and client, as we do not want to be sharing personal energy. I might go home drained. I might literally pick up someone’s illness. I might expose my client to something I am going through.

In my training as a Shamanic Healer, I learned that one should never walk away from a healing session energetically drained. One might be worn from the physical exertion of a larger event but overall, facilitating healing for another person should make one feel filled up. Exuberant. Humming. In tune. Ever so grateful. If it doesn’t feel right, then one should journey to the spirits to find out what went wrong. And ask for a clearing.

We don’t share our personal energy in the healing arts ever. We try to be clean. We try to rid ourselves of unhealthy connections or ‘cords’ with other people. These connections can be like tentacles connected to our power centers where we are being drained or draining others.

Getting deeper into Shamanism, I learned about intrusions, where one person may inadvertently send energy in rage or despair to lodge in someone else’s body. I learned that mainstream culture’s description of love as ‘giving one’s heart’ to someone else (or ‘taking one’s heart) is actually soul stealing and giving. I learned how to return soul parts to others that I had held onto without knowing it.

What I didn’t learn was how to identify healthy bonds. I actually didn’t think of them. I was so concerned with ridding myself of unsavory connections with other people that I stripped myself clean. I had this feeling of aloneness, telling myself that energetic independence was right. I felt…lonely.

One day I was doing a clearing for myself because I was afraid of falling into yet one more dysfunctional relationship when I caught myself ready to cut a heart bond with a friend. Hey, I had to stop.

We humans are social creatures. We are meant to get close to each other, to have empathy and support each other. It’s ok to need someone, if we understand the difference between needing and .. well, needing.

At this point, I was teaching the same methods I had been taught in my classes. I had to open the discussion to my students. What do healthy bonds look like? In a shamanic journey, tears filled my vision of open arms held around another, hands over the shoulders. It was comforting, beautiful and most importantly, there was choice. Either party could step away at any moment.

bondscords

Ah, it’s about choice. Healthy bonds are a choice, not entanglement. Identifying healthy bonds is simple because they feel nurturing and free and open. Unhealthy cords can feel exhilarating in a captive sort of way, like a drug or a high. They can also feel gunky or guilty or obliging, but healthy bonds make us feel right in the world. To know someone loves us wholly, to feel accepted for all our faults. To know that they think well of us, not to wonder. To feel more sane, bigger, fuller.

Now when I ask my guides to do clearings between me and my loved ones (Shouldn’t any person I become close with be a loved one?), I don’t ask them to cut. I ask them to do their work in love for both parties. I ask for healing and ask them to respectfully not enter the other person’s field unless I have been given explicit permission. I watch them clear, unravel, bless, shine light. I ask them to show me where the healthy bonds are and bless them too, so I can learn their beautiful qualities and know how to distinguish them from the other intimate feeling of having someone deep inside me in an addictive way.

Some of us need to learn these things. We didn’t have loving role models when we grew up. There is a difference between clearing the rubble after an argument and pretending that the original problem can be sent away. Clearing lets the light back in and opens up breathing room, so that the problem can be worked on with fresh energy and continued compassion. Joy even. Trust in the process allows us to take space if we need it or enjoy other things together before going back to look at the issue. If we do need to take space, it does not have to mean energetically cutting ourselves from the healthy flow of love and respect that underlies our relationship.

Intimacy is a hard thing to figure out. It is mixed with new openings, knee jerk patterns, complete terror, loving patience and forgiveness. Sometimes what feels like an unhealthy cord is just PTSD. Just, right? Fear that focusing on oneself makes one a mean person or terror that the relationship will be damaged by the act of it, these things can be unlearned. I’m not sure which is harder to have but learning to distinguish between PTSD and unhealthy cording can aid us in figuring what kind of help to get. What form of love to go and get.

Let’s put a touch of love on the topic of cord cutting. Better yet, let’s never cut cords. Let’s love them gently, unravel them with great compassion for all the fears that allowed them to be created in the first place. Let’s return their energy to source and call in the great healing spirits of soothing light to clear the debris and put ourselves to rest, down in nice, warm pillows after a deep salt bath.

It’s ok to love and to be loved. Let’s journey more and more for our beautiful visions of what healthy bonds look like so we can learn them deeply and begin to put our trust in them. They are goodness bridges, these bonds. They are the ones we should be standing on. We’ve come this far, let’s trust that we can keep their channels open and cleared with the kiss of sun streams given to us by the Sacred Ones.

by Tasara

** Thank you to my dearest friend for teaching me some of these wisdoms through your relentless trust in the beautiful mystery of our meeting.

Spiritual Guides and How To's

A Spiritual Path is a One Way Street. This is a Law of Energy.

2 Comments

A spiritual path is a one way street. This is a law of energy. You take one step and everything about you and everything about the path changes all at once. Take one more step and you are in. The path itself becomes your tether to this life through an ever-shifting forest and what comes to you, in challenge or exhaltation, comes across the way you are walking. It is specific to you.

IMG_2467
You don’t get to go back. You don’t get to change your mind because, unless you are just tasting around, unless you are just workshop shopping, unless you are just riding the trance high from one cosmic spiritual hipster event to another, when you finally pack your bags and get out on the road, your commitment will have been heard. The silent vow that you made deep in your heart will already have been accepted. If you turn around to go back, the forest will have changed by new awarenesses that you can’t take away. Try as you might, journeying back would only mean moving on, to a home that will never be the same and a knowledge that will never let you rest again in the ignorances of before.

This is why so many people are afraid of letting go and submitting to their spiritual hunger. They can feel the danger. They know that to give up control of what happens in the spiritual practice would invite other forces to participate and for power to be given to the unknown. To accept the quest of wisdom will mean to begin the irrevocable unwinding of avoidance patterns they have set up in order to keep their lives going the way that is most comfortable. Some people are aware that their marriage would not survive a spiritual awakening. Some do not want to face the difficult conflict they see would arise with their job. Even those of us fully committed to the path know that eventually, we all have to contend with, rather than bury the realities of our sick, abusive society.

Stepping onto a spiritual path is a dangerous thing. Dangerous because we are all good people and once we know the truth, we will not abide by what we tolerated before. We will have to change and change means loss.

But it will be so good to let go of what does not serve us anymore.

We will know when we have found our real spiritual path because we will become consumed. Unseen forces from the other side, alerted by our desire to evolve, reach over and pull us in. We become enamored, star-struck, empowered, entranced, lured, unstable, dismembered, turned inside out, renewed..but under it all our drive is our hunger for wholeness, for love, for deep communion with the blessed compassionate spirits. For soul food. As we are dragged into the shadow, we are taught ruthlessly about our own imbalances. We are faced with a choice: find our strength and spiritual allies or die. Die a spiritual death, die in our purpose.. die a long death of acceptance or a short one of physical illness. If we are going to die, we might as well die all the way, forget who we are and come out the other side to live in the light of awareness and wisdom of love.

There is no spiritual path without shadow, this wonderfully sticky personal mire that captures us and won’t let go until we have understood it’s every mechanism. With this knowledge we are able to dismantle the patterns that have been, and free our vital life energy. Then and only then can we return. Like flowers in the spring we arise and when we resume our lives, it is with more power, more traction, more vision and more consciousness of the assistance we receive from the other side. We are now in the revelatory work of learning new ways of creating, of play, of new constructs of pleasure. We know ourselves in a new way and we are strong. Our ability to love has increased.

And when time has passed and we have known all that we can know, we return to the shadows, delving for more.

by Tasara

Spiritual Guides and How To's, Spiritual Sociology

The Quest for Spiritual “Power” and Spiritual Awareness

Leave a comment

What is it about Power?

Power. Power. Lots of people seem to be seeking power in their spiritual, self-evolutionary.. path of power.

Personal power, spiritual power, the power to, to… what?

The power to impress? Who? Oneself?

Ironically, power is all around us. It is in the air. It is in our bones. It runs through our emotional body. Most of us are knocked over, overwhelmed day in and day out by power coming from sources around us. So, there is nothing to look for. As for our personal power, it too is enormous, but often smattered across a myriad of interests, concerns and emotional investments which we may or may not have consciously chosen to engage in. How are we able to truly experience the magnitude of our personal power when it is rarely centered in one place?

The focus we need is not in finding power. It is in removing our precious energy from the activities, people, habits and media that do not serve us. We need to bring it all back to the core. Then we can redirect the power both around us and within us to align with our true values. This way we may become effective channels for powerful change and healing in a good way.

We can lose personal power through trauma, through soul loss, in power-animal disconnection as well as through entanglement with other beings or spiritual systems. When we commit ourselves to the healing journey, over time, personal power returns to us. It returns sometimes in big satchels all at once, through rejuvenating lifestyle changes. It can come in a POW through a major spiritual healing to be wondered at and re-embodied over time. Personal power can also come back to us like the tide, sure and steady, gradual and reawakening, as we grow and learn to root our passions from the center instead of always reaching out.

So, our quest is not in finding power but in reclaiming the power connected to our bodies so we can focus it towards the areas where we do our life work. Then we will naturally experience deep healing, have courage to face up to our fears and then with all our extra energy, lavish the world with our unkempt, beautiful passion. Our raw, wild power has been too long held down by twisted, mangled ideas. It’s time to clean them out.

May our values be our true beacon. Those values which guide us to right action, which the power-filled spirits can get behind and support. May our spiritual training be in learning the secrets of Power-With, as we learn to open ourselves to the vast resources of wisdom and dedication from these Spirits of Kindness willing to be our partners in bringing discordant energies back into balance.

For, we do not do anything alone. We do not create without resources. We do not affect without connection and we do not bridge without other parties. The way to move power is Together. This is more healing, individually and collectively than anything we could attempt to do alone. “Working with” requires that we work through our fear of other to learn discernment and then trust. Trust, fundamentally, in ourselves. Trust, always, in the allies we have met in the other planes. Trust, gradually in the people who we have forged our bonds with, based on the values that we hold in common.

Power is in aligning ourselves to our values so that we may be a clear channel and in learning how to redirect power to align with our clear selves.

So, I ask you, why do you want magical power? What will you do with it? What will you do? What is it for? Are you clear?

If our goal was to gain personal power and we hadn’t sorted out what are values were, what a convoluted message that would be to the spirits!

Would you really want power if you weren’t clear?

And Spiritual Awareness?

What is spiritual awareness? To be aware of stuff that our physical senses do not pick up, right?  Some people find themselves infinitely frustrated in this area, a-liking themselves to a board or a little pea when it comes to spiritual awareness. Before striving to leap into the realm of the ‘claire’s’ (clairvoyant, clairsentient, etc.), it may be helpful to ask oneself how much of the physical senses are really being paid attention to, to begin with. When you listen to your loved ones are you really listening? Are you aware of their posture, the subtleties in their voice, the strain on their face perhaps? Are you using your mind to understand the context and history of the conversation? Can you listen to all of that in addition to the words that are coming through? How is it that you know what someone else is thinking?

When you have revelations or ideas, do you allow them to fill you and flesh out or do you take just the information part and keep flying? When you have ‘gut feelings’, what part of your body do you feel them in? Do you “see”, do you “feel”, do you just “know” in your heart?

Asking oneself these questions can really help get a scope of what is already there. Spiritual awareness is just an extension of physical senses. The lines are blurry, so it is easy to discredit something that feels so..natural as not spiritual.

Why do you want to be spiritually aware? Are you not getting the information you need already? Are you following your heart’s desire and your true values or do you need something supernatural to tell you something you already know?

One wonderful thing about developing spiritual senses is that it allows us to know deeply that we are not alone. We can communicate with our spirit guides with lucidity. We can understand the connections between events in our lives more fully through more senses. We can actively partake in the vast web of energy that we are part of. We can merge and make love with aspects of nature that make us feel passionate.

Just as there are many people who are trying to become spiritually aware, there are many others who are trying to find a way to shut down those senses because they have become overwhelmed.

glossy power copy(overwhelm)

This ties into the previous section about choosing where to engage our personal power, where we choose what to pay attention to and what not to. This can be very easy or it can seem ever-elusive. Spiritual training can help one gain sovereignty over one’s psychic boundaries and be free to choose when and where to be open to the broader energies of the world.

Bless the Boundaries, Preserve the Power.
Healing to Get Us Started.

Because, really, there is a time and a place for spiritual information. In our culture of sensory barrage, our constant exposure to the oppression of choice, we forget that small, dark quiet places can be nourishing. We forget that by being open forever, we will inevitably drain out, fade, become less potent, lose power.

Nurturing personal power is the number one priority in life. Sound awful? Sounds healthy. We really, really cannot be of service to anyone when we are depleted and broken. How silly. In order to contribute to this gem of a world, we need to be in touch with the gem of ourselves. Too many of us in the developed worlds have become like ghosts of ourselves, passing from day to day, unable to track or get traction or trace the real story of how we got here.

This power stuff. It’s so important. It’s like money; we decide how to spend it. But if our bank has been robbed or the treasure hidden elsewhere than in the chest, then yes, it would be the right thing to seek the help of an experienced shamanic healer. Power loss is considered an illness and major power or soul loss is something that we need the big stuff – meaning LOVE – to bring back. Love is two or more people doing for each other or another. That is why healers are healers. They become a hollow bone from a place of utter service and love to allow the ultra-super-loving spirits to come in and take care of you.

Let them take care of you. When’s the last time someone took care of you? We are not looking to be bigger or better or special. We are looking to join Indras web of infinite jewels as the jewel that we are.

Some folks cannot reach their power or awareness because they have such massive loss. Or because they are blocked by intrusions or a lost soul hitching a ride in their body. Helping these souls release to their heaven, removing the intrusions can get the whole system moving again.

It’s getting complicated, right? That’s what makes it so much fun! We all have our Tolkien maps etched into our bones as we pass from one entry to the next, scratching down our notes and picking up what sustenance and skills we find along the way. Oh, and then there are friends! Don’t forget to make friends on this journey. We all might look like freaks to each other but that’s why we love it. Each gem, so unique; each person, doing their very best. Earning due respect just for that – doing our best stuff.

The Trick in the Searching is in Being Present.

If we are seeking power, maybe we are not being aware of where our personal power has been spread out to or how we are letting external powers affect us. If we have no sense of power, then we may need a healer.

If we are seeking spiritual awareness, maybe we have not been still enough to understand the plethora of information that is around us, for the messages of spirit are manifest in every aspect of our experience: in our relationships with people, with the world, in the patterns of the mud splattered on the metro bus ad, in the way that woman walked in front of our car and how we reacted to it, in our own frustrations, in how we treat our bodies…

If we have become completely blocked to any message but dullness or same-flavor pain or anxiety, perhaps we need to see a healer.

In general, if we are seeking at all, maybe we are trying to make our present match a picture of the past. Maybe we think the future is .. “right around the corner”. There is no “right around the corner”. It will never exist here. It is all happening here.

When we are in our power and utilizing all of our senses, physical and metaphysical, the patterns of our world make sense. We understand that there is nothing to do. Nothing to plan for, only to be in the dance, in the present, on the wheel. Trusting in ourselves to do what we feel will align with our true values. For that is all we care about. Staying true, to our values and our word. Staying in integrity and watching the world fall into place.

Knowing we are not alone.

by Tasara

Spiritual Guides and How To's

Hollow Bone

Leave a comment

Being a hollow bone is availing one’s body to the spirits to be used as a vessel for the healing spirits to come through and do their work for the good of others.

It is dedicating one’s life to the continual retransformation, clarity and care of this vessel so that it may be able to be the purest channel possible.

hollow bone

It is through the disciplined training of the mind that we are able to track energetic patterns, distinguish between the past and future, time and place, emotion and atmospheric pressure, to be able to cut through to the truth, and further to be able to release the mechanism of the mind completely and fall into experience, or stasis–whatever may be needed for the work at hand.

It is the earnestness of the effort of the heart opening and reopening, as boundaries shift and become more seasoned, allowing the right light in, the distracting elements out, in order that we may expand in love and not falter in it.

It is the endless, ever-shifting dance of relationship with every aspect of life and the living, from which there is nothing excluded.

It is the passion and joy of communion with the divine, as manifested on every spectrum from the formless, through to the metaphorical spirits, down to the lusciousness of the corporeal divine.

This being a hollow bone is not a world view.

It is a reality, a station and for many, not a choice.

It is an algorithm that continues to unfold the patterns of love in their multi-layered aspects, reflecting the ever changing state of it’s vessel, one that stretches that vessel to it’s very limits, many times beyond them, creating a symphony of open and closure, of birth, growth, clash, renewal, terror and bliss.

It is life itself, and everything that comes with it in unabashed nakedness.

by Tasara