A MESSAGE FROM POWER

[PS -- as soon as I posted this, a huge gust of wind blasted out of the south, filled with dirt and grime, and smashed the geraniums on my porch!]

The Sun joined the Moon today in a message from Power.  “Power” is a force in the universe which comes to the Shaman as a guide or messenger, or in many other guises.  Michael Harner and Carlos Castaneda and many other teachers use Power as an introductory helper for their apprentices.  It is a very enjoyable enterprise to ‘court Power’, and Harner’s book, The Way of the Shaman, as well as others, gives a good account of how to do this.  This is a very good way to enter into the beginnings of a true relationship with the energies of the natural environment, which eventually become a key ingredient in the Medicine Energies.

I use the lunar cycles as an introduction to the energies of the natural environment, because we don’t have to trek to the wilds to observe them.  Today would be the day, third day from the New Moon, to expect to see the first of the crescent moon low in the Western sky, just after the sun goes below the horizon.  In my project of developing skill at the Despacho Ceremony, I am deciding that this day is more appropriate for Ceremony than directly at New Moon.  There is such a crowd at New Moon!

In developing the proper aspects for the Despacho, there are many forms of energetic vibrations that I have to take into account.  As a Shaman, I observe these energies through my Energy Field Awareness.  The Energy Field Awareness never really shuts down.  Unlike most people, my Energy Field Awareness is susceptible to a most pernicious source of energy – Marilyn Monroe.

This morning at 5:00 am, she woke me with one of her trademark dreams.  She presented me with a small box, with the word BEDBUGS stenciled on it.  That got me right out of bed!  I remembered that I had forgotten to take out the garbage last night.  I put on my slippers and hauled the dumpsters out to the alley, checking to see if the frost had hit the plants yet, as forecast.  Apparently not.  But some dog had scored a direct hit in the crushed gravel of the parking area beside the alley.  I got that cleaned up, and went back inside to start my day.  The Internet showed me that my utility bill had gone up $10, and was due three days earlier than usual.  Within fifteen minutes, I had received a noticeable batch of negative inputs!

I turned on the TV for the local news and weather, and had my usual dates and nuts and coffee from yesterday’s Thermos.  A package of info began to unfold within my deeper consciousness.  The ‘bedbugs’ message was pointing me to her attitude toward the people I had met at the Tai Chi studio.  I went over to the vortex to sit, and picked up my tom-tom.  During the drumming, my energies opened further, and I could see that Marilyn Monroe was into a serious penetration of my life force.

One of the first spirits I was introduced to during the onset of my Initiation as a Shaman was the Samurai swordsman Miyamoto Musashi, one of my former incarnations, in whom Marilyn Monroe had also been incarnate, as she is with me.  Musashi was the author of The Book of Five Rings, a manual on the strategy of swordsmanship.  From that book, I picked up a strategy called ‘The Feint of Going-With’.  You allow the opponent to force you into the moves he wants from you, knowing that you will be able to perceive the exact moment to turn the forces against him.

So I decided to go with Marilyn Monroe for the time being; to let her penetrate me however she would, so that I could discern her purpose.  In a moment, I got up and pulled the I Ching out of retirement.  I had put it away weeks ago, after decades of using it daily, so that she would not have that access to my energies.  (Lao Tzu, my original contact on the I Ching, had taught her to be the ‘voice’ of the oracle on January 1, 1993.)

I tossed the coins and received hexagram #54, The Marrying Maiden (MM).  This hexagram is her ‘signature’, having her initials, and referring to the unfortunate situation of the woman taking the initiative in the relationship.  It changed to #21, Biting Through.  My first thought was that she had decided to get out of our relationship – it was a dead end.

I continued with my morning, and got ready to catch the bus, to go over to North Town Coffee for my daily poem and drawing time.  As I came to the bus stop, I saw Power in the sky.

The sun was low in the southeast sky, surrounded by the wisps of clouds typical this time of year in Yakistan.  But then I noticed a distinct wing at the sun’s left side.  Its feathers were long and slender, and fanned out like a cluster of double-edged swords.  A winged sun… as I looked, I discerned a stout tail of hawk feathers.

The bus came, and I got to my coffee, and instead of beginning my poem, I got the beginning of my image for my drawing: the sun, with its wing of swords.  So I sketched it in and went back to cogitating about what to write.  But I was interrupted by the Moon.  I reached over and sketched it in as a thin crescent ‘ear’ on the right side of the sun.

This conjunction of moon and sun seemed to tell me that today would be the day to consummate my Despacho ‘Kooti’ Ceremony, to ‘cut the cords’ between me and Marilyn Monroe.

After my walk home (a mile), I decided to have breakfast, and after breakfast, I lay on the yoga floor to initiate the RDSE (rest, digestion, sexual energy) sequence of Ayurveda.  I was there for over an hour.  This is what happens when Marilyn Monroe is ‘feeding’ on my energies.  When I got up, I drove back to the coffee shop with my computer, to have a free blended mocha and write this.  It’s mid-afternoon now, and I’m wondering what will happen next.  Will there be a ceremony?  (I cast another I Ching before coming over here, and it recommended a Ceremony…  --but everything must be ‘correct’….)  We’ll see.

Next day…

Well, I got home, and there were things to do, and I was anxious.  There were blockages all through my energy system, my mind and my body.  After I finally got settled in from the journey to the coffee shop, I found myself wandering around looking for the next thing to do.  I was mumbling to myself.  Then I knew it was time.

I went out to the sacred grove next to the parking area along the alley, and everything seemed ok.  The tall sunflowers, and the huge sprawling vine of the squash from Sergio’s garden next door, which grew up into my tree and on into the parking area, hanging large squashes high in the branches, proved to be an effective screen to ward off the killer chi from the alley and the apartment building across the way.  Lots of plants and the plywood fence screened the fire area from Sergio’s yard, and no one was around.

I got my tiny pieces of wood, a few splinters from a cedar shingle, some newspaper, and went outside to put a fire in the large cookie tin.  The fire burned nicely, and I brought out the small despachos I had prepared, with the bay leaf quintus wrapped in napkins, and a note regarding the aspects I desired to be eliminated.

One by one they went into the flames, were consumed, and soon the ceremony was complete.  No hay problema!

I looked up to see the strong crescent of the moon just above the horizon to the south and west, not at all obstructed by the darkening gray cloud bits strung throughout the sky.

Everything had gone well – quite well, I thought.

Last night I had two dreams.  One, in deep sleep, showed a man’s face.  He was dead.  He had brown hair and a trimmed moustache/beard.  His face appeared to be perhaps covered with water.  The second dream, just before I woke up, was very similar.  A man’s face, same sort of beard, but maybe not the same person, equally dead.

During my shower, (a very good place for knowledge to emerge from the energy body / or the Medicine) I realized that the man had been Jesus.  Already volunteering for next moon’s despacho!

MOVING WITH THE MOON

NEW MOON early this morning (10.15.12) was a big relief here in Yakima.  Our high sage climate, shielded from the weather by the Cascades, and far from the major weather systems of the rest of the country, has been very warm and dry much later into the season than is normal.  The UV in this dry climate was hard on my eyes, after cataract surgery two years ago, and my energy field was much more comfortable being indoors most of the time.  So I began to lose my physical conditioning.  The cooler weather lets me walk again, and the UV is down to 4, so I'm mostly comfortable.

But as a Shaman, I'm tuned to more energy systems than regular people, and it's difficult to discern them all, and to bring them into a balance which allows me to perform the tasks of daily life on top of the things I need to do as a Shaman.

I began my practice with techniques from the 'core shamanism' of Michael Harner, whose works spawned the many 'shamanic practitioners' who practice all over the globe these days, nearly 50 years after his work first came to my attention.  My Initiation as a Shaman took me away from his techniques, and transformed my energy field in ways unlike anyone else I'm aware of.  My universe is much more complicated than that of the ordinary practitioner.

One difference that I'm very much aware of is the years of work I did leading up to my contact with the Spirits in late 1990, when I was about 47 years old.  From my early 20s, I dedicated my life to study of transformational techniques.  It seemed practical to me to try to change my perceptual mechanisms by altering my personal consciousness.  LSD was a major influence, as it was with many in my generation.  Plant psychedelics changed my life.  Marijuana is a major asset in expanding the perceptual awareness of the body's energy field.  The marijuana deva unites with human consciousness as it flows throughout the body and auric energy field, and extends this awareness into the world at large.

Other Shamans use a wide variety of entheogenic plant helpers, but I was happy with LSD and marijuana.  One thing that distinguishes my work from others is the Surrealist project of Alchemical Transformation, which focuses on thwarting the natural ordering of awareness which shapes our use of language, and therefore limits us to perceptions easily within the range of the Ordinary State of Consciousness (OSC) described by Harner.  The Surrealists used automatic writing to actually alter the transmitting mechanisms of the language system, so that newer ways of understanding could develop.

This technique, combined with focus on dreams, helped me come into contact with my Muse, as a young poet.  This muse later manifested to me in the person of Marilyn Monroe, after I had broken through to actual contact with Spirit, using the divining rods.

The divining rods brought the actual energies of the spirits fully into my body.  I became One with my spirits, and they became One with me.  We became simultaneous incarnations, all of them within my own physical body.  This resulted in a level of physical apprehension of the universe not available any other way.  The use of entheogens allows one to enter a world of spirit in a powerful way, but it is very different from sharing the consciousness of Living Spirits in the OSC.

Through this sharing I am hooked up to the various influences I mentioned in the opening paragraphs.  These influences include the Medicine Energies, which are forces of planetary and nature consciousness which exist all around us, but are only brought into a unified field of awareness through the actions of the Shaman.  This is the world I live in, in my little apartment and the bits of land around it.

Early in my career as a poet, I was influenced by the philosophies of the Eastern religions, and the poets who practiced these philosophies.  Simplicity of life allows the spirit to flow and expand, as opposed to the compression of the spirit resulting from the hectic pace of the consumerist lifestyle.  Without this simplicity, I would be dragged through life unaware of the forces around me.  Without the training of psychedelics, Surrealism and poetry, (and YOGA!) I wouldn't have the perceptive abilities I have now.

Lots of free time, and a trained, expanded awareness are essential to the true spirit lifestyle!

By training the Energy Field Awareness to follow the changes of the moon, it is possible to begin to detach from the pull of daily consciousness and to remove oneself from the grasp of the hands of the clock.  Since I'm not off at work all day, I can follow the moon.

In the I Ching, rain is seen as the coming together of the yin and the yang forces of the atmosphere, which have their own 'moods', just as the moon does.  These moods of the atmosphere are greatly conditioned by the lunar flux, just as the tides are.

In our daily lives, we have moods as well.  Training our awareness to the flux of the moon, cycle after cycle, season after season, year after year, allows for a gradual synchronization of our moods with the moods of the outer world.  (Marijuana is a very great assistant in this process!)

So I've been trying to bring the art of Ceremony into my life, as a means of organizing the various flows which move through the tattwas of my days, and bring the appropriate influences to bear at an exact time, to achieve a certain aim in the spiritual realm or in the physical world.  I'm only a few moon-cycles into this practice, and there are many tools which I'm discovering I need to invent in order to harness various aspects of the energies I'm trying to work with.  All this takes time and work, and I find myself missing the moment, with the performance of the Ceremony itself.  This Moon, I realized something that had come to my attention a few weeks ago, at a Full Moon.  I don't have to tie my Ceremony to the moon phase!  In fact, there is actually too much going on in the various energy aspects of my life at the turn of the moon, to allow for Ceremony of this type.  Other shamans don't have this problem, due to the nature of their practice.

Today, as the moon gradually moved off the exact moment of conjunction with the sun early this morning, and as I went through the work that needed to get done in the day, I watched the bright sunshine of the morning hours gradually give way to a slight overcast.  I was in my normal New Moon droop.  My energies are verrrrrrry low during New Moon; or they can be more active, depending.....  I had my mind on trying to bring the Ceremony to a stage where I could work toward completion, but finally realized that wasn't going to happen.  So I let that go, and returned to focus on my own condition, so that I could get my energies cleared up.

I sat in my vortex, and began my forward bend technique of moving my energies, and noticed a deep feeling of despair, of emptiness, of being unfulfilled, alone, and powerless.  As I moved my energies around in my body, it occurred to me to just let go.  Let everything drop.  Go with it.   What was I clinging to?  As I let it go, I began to sing.  I felt better.  I reached for my little tom-tom.

As I drummed, my energies finally began to focus.  I could pull my energies up from my root chakra, and bring them into my singing and my drumming.  I felt better.  I picked up my larger hoop drum, and began to work it.  Right away, the drum took me to a place of Power.  I had hit on something.  I was able to focus of the issues I had been trying to deal with through Ceremony.  This seemed much more direct.

I drummed and sang myself into a state of Power.  I was able to bring all the aspects of my situation into focus, and issue a Prayer, an Intention, regarding the issues.  It all came out in song and drumbeats, very strongly, in perfect resolution.  It had all come together.

The drumming came to a conclusion, and I got up.  I looked outside.  It had begun to rain, hard.

This is the kind of thing referred to in the I Ching as bringing the rain.  This happens as a result of a certain kind of lifestyle dedicated to Consciousness, Awareness, and Spirit.  By living a life which allows me to be aware of the 'changes' (the I Ching, or Book of Changes), and to move with them, I have, over the years, been able to become a Shaman, and am able to deal with the special horrors which beset one of such a persuasion, as well as perform the duties of my normal life, few though they be.

During which time, I have observed that many of the maladies which beset people who are chained to the OSC (Ordinary State of Consciousness), can be resolved by changes in lifestyle which result in changes in Consciousness, which enables normal people to live lives of health and well-being.

MORNING MOONGLOW THROUGH CLOUDS

Sometimes the moon drags on like a bad movie.  Any time after Full Moon can be called the Dark Moon phase, depending on how you feel.  Knowing what part of the cycle you're in can be a big help if times are difficult.  You can usually count on some kind of change as the cycle progresses.  If nothing else, following the lunar changes gives you something else to think about.

In Yakima (Yakistan, as I like to call it), we're sheltered from the rain of the Puget Sound area by the Cascade Mountains.  We're in the rain shadow.  More than that, we're in the 'donut hole'.  The weather hits the Pacific Northwest from the Bering Sea, coming over Vancouver Island and Puget Sound before hitting the mountains, which catch most of the moisture.  The mountains run all the way down the Pacific Coast, but are broken near Portland, where the Columbia River enters the Pacific.  The winds come through the Columbia Gorge, some distance south of Yakima, and circle up the backside of the Cascades, bringing us an unusual South Wind, called the Chinook, after the salmon of the Columbia River.  It's usually a warm wind, bringing air from the desert southwest.

Yakima is tucked in behind Mt. Rainier, at the tail end of this northward Chinook flow, which mostly travels to the east of us, so that satellite photos show an area of zero clouds right over Yakima, even in stormy weather.

This summer has been long, hot, and very dry.  Hundreds of wildfires have plagued the Eastern Washington forests, as dry lightning has hit us several times during the summer.  Smoke has been a constant factor in the atmosphere.  Temperatures have been unusually high, and it's still warmer than usual for this time of Autumn.

This morning, Friday, as I went out for my daily pre-dawn check-up on the premises, I noticed a faint moonglow in the east, blurred by a thin layer of cloud cover.  As predicted, the weather is changing, a few days before the New Moon on Monday.  The clouds are very welcome at my house!  I'm more suited to the moisture of the Seattle area.  Even though the UV index is much lower this time of year, my aging energy field is very sensitive to the intensity of the sun under the lack of moisture in the skies.

This waning moon time has been very busy for me, after suffering from the intensity of the summer.  Lots of projects getting ready for winter, which can hit very abruptly, any time now.  And I've been learning the art of the Despacho Ceremony.

Practicing this ceremony is a very good way to bring together the many strands of energies which run through the tattwas of your life-path.  The practice of lunar observation and the culmination of the moon phase in ceremony of this type calls for bringing exact definition to aspects of the journey which need to be changed in some way, or celebrated.

The Medicine Energies are strong in my apartment and in the yard I've created.  It's time to corral these energies and bring some concrete benefits to my life and practice.  I missed the moment at the last moon phase, due to incomplete preparation and interference from Marilyn Monroe.  So I'm giving it another try this time.

I've been able to invent some techniques and develop some equipment which will help to gather and hold the specific energies I intend to work with.  Now I have a few days to bring it all together and perform the Kooti Ceremony to cut the cords binding me to The Monroe.  This time, I have the Ayni Ceremony tools which I lacked before.

Now, I just have to manage to control the energies of my life-path with enough discipline to be able to bring off the ceremony at an appropriate time.  Hopefully, the change of weather accompanying this change of the moon will enable the authorities to lift the ban on outdoor burning which has been in effect most of the summer.  I realized that my last burning would have been a violation of the practice of Ayni, or 'right relationship', because of the burn ban in effect at the time.

There are so many factors which shape the tattwas!  I enjoy developing the discipline to recognize all the relevant forces which affect the ceremony, and learning ways to work with them to achieve a harmonious outcome.