This is a multimedia piece, which is why it is in the pdf format.
You can get here: http://www.littlelight.info/FieldGuide.pdf
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There are two sections:
1. Spiritual Checklist for attending the summer festivals
2. The Shadow Side of the 2012 Movement
by Tasara
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
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
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
She swims under the ocean, goes where I go.
Pulls canoe through the stars, to where I don’t know.
Her back, steaming mystery, hard-coded resolve.
Jeweled eyes marble black, into which I dissolve
Glints of forge-fire, emerald, yew
Pools in the darkness, deep chasm blue.
She’s lodged in my body, strong, loud and unshown
a monster of chaos, black feathers explode
ca cawing with laughter, “make sense, discard,
make sense, discard, discard, discard, discard”
old friend, my heart, my guide by my side
without whom my life would be calmer but blind.
by Tasara
my heart is open
it is like a lotus reaching out, touch beauty in all directions,
knowing roots into the muck of the underworld
my womb is a moonflower
not luscious red but gorgeous, lily white
teasing and gracious, open for spirit to come in
my soul rings in tune with the stars, today
there is a light that pours forth upon me
and I am grateful
for one day
grateful
by Tasara
I reached out
far
very far
and I fell.
I fell into myself
back
into
my deep, deep well
and was washed over with relief
to know that I cannot harm myself
with leaving
for I will always be there.
Like a child tottering along the edge of a rail and
the mother who won’t let her -.
Because it is back with myself where all things reside
where the moon is the richest
and I can safely lie on my back
in the summer dewy night
and look up
eyes awonder, up at the stars
private and safe
the sweetness of the night.
It is in the well
where the sacred resounds
with edges and echoes
that reach far beyond its thick moss.
It is here where the dreaming is strong
the mind is at peace
and the churning, more meaning
Chaos reaches high above the sky
order sifts between its heat waves
dust sinks and rises
patterns on the land
I come
and I go,
traveling far within the crevices
the ravaging land, untamed
yet holding wildness only in moments
when the wind turns to look at you
or me or them
and then the storm picks
one of us
and we fall back within
to realize that we
have never left
that the beauty in awe is remembering.
by Tasara
I reserve myself
and the fragrances within intensify,
dreamt to potency,
ready to be tapped like nectar.
I pour out
and my heart learns its opening once again, as it was lifetimes ago.
I don’t stay sure
for sure is in motion,
in the bicycle’s wheels spinning beneath me,
clear day, summer beach, tempestuous storm.
There are two songs singing their wares all around and inside of me.
One old, it’s source unkind, pointing, pointing, pointing at me.
The other, a luscious garden, so new I forget, I forget in some waking days that it can be.
The rasping song, so old and known, plays and plays,
needle scratching the phonograph’s ear.
The other remains.
It has become, like a blossom that will not fade.
Their musics swell and flow.
I am riding my bicycle.
Joy streams like a blue ribbon.
Or three. Red, green, blue.
My colors blend.
I take the low road by the river, feeling happily endless,
before and behind, balanced in the middle.
by Tasara
I have been through cinder, nettle
Drowned in flood plains all amore
I have walked through, death and barren
valleys, never finding golden ore.
There’ve been chapters, many chapters
Filled with glue and glass and stone
Times when I was living under
surfaces to me unknown.
My traveler’s stick, my hard-earned wit
it kept me sane and safe and sore
My lantern it seemed overwhelmed
but now I know it was much more.
I shunned the sun for what I knew
the dark spark drew me while it grew
it drew the magic all around
but was so intense, those there were few.
Chaos ensued, the years went by
the sparks did come, the sparks did fly
and then one day I met a man
who returned to me my soul, this guy.
The globe of light, it filled my middle
The world became less like a riddle
I lost my friends who were not true
I learned to love to hear a fiddle.
I tracked the source, the gift to give
So I could help some others live
My eyes adjusted to the light
My sorrows melted through the sieve
This joy I find when in the road
come from love and laughter told
but also from my weathered boots
that tell me of my older roots.
For if I fall, I do not fear
as much as when in elder year
There is comfort yet to know
that love and light can only grow.
by Tasara
I asked to be shown the extent of the Faerie Realm. Not as how it is portrayed by artists around me or talked about in tales but in a way that would be meaningful to me.
Faerie. It IS the inbetween place, which is why the inbetween places are portals to this realm. It is the inbetween place between the physical and spirit, mortal and timelessness. The interplay, a tension of the inbetween, that magical line generates a super intense force of creativity. It actually birthed the faerie creatures in the first place, organic matter liking to create.
But it creates more. It creates physical-half-physical access points to the sacred. To the most rooted forces of the elements as expressed through the elementals, divine forces of their own. The elementals manifest as dryads, nymphs…the trees and flowers and streams themselves charged with a magical potency, all tended by the faerie creatures, some spawned from such divinity, some created as byproducts of human expression. Human virtues and foibles manifested in energetic creatures that behave on their own, driven by the vast power of creativity come from the crack between here and there.
Hence the faerie realm is not one of infinite wisdom and compassion but a playground of beauty and light intermingled with all expression and deeds capable in the middle realm.
For many, getting to know the faeries opens portals to the Gods and Goddesses, Angels, Power Animals and many other beings that hang out in realms beyond the Fey. There are Gods and Goddesses that are multidimensional, causing trouble as well as joy and there are others that are completely divine, only pure passages of light and compassion. We can choose to invoke the aspects of compassion and leave the rest.
I want to align with those that are divine. I want to shine in the light of my own blessed divinity, spilling over for others around me.
by Tasara
