Season of Love - New Moon New Life Ceremony

• Wow it was great to do New Moon New Life Ceremony.  If you don't count the Thanksgiving despacho which was done only by email, I hadn't done one since late August because of travel and holidays.  Sometimes I always get concerned that the inspiration well is going to dry up, but I feel just as passionate about these ceremonies as I did when I started doing them over 2 years ago.  So thank you for sharing.  

Here is a picture of the mesa before starting

North of Mesa

Mesa Mayor

It felt a bit trite with the holidays but I like to listen to my magic IPod.  When I put it on shuffle, t always seems to play the perfect song.  And lesson to me, Love is never trite.  So also quite perfect as was included in the dreamwork, I had read this lovely little article about God coming down in the form of a child or as love to give people the gift of feeling love.  Here are pieces, with some comments in italics.

“...John, says the Word was in the beginning, that all things came into being in the presence of the Word; that the Word became flesh and came to live among human beings.
The Word, John says, is God, was God, and put on flesh and came to make a dwelling place among humankind. 

The claim is that God took on flesh and became human.  God puts on bone and flesh and tissue and sinew, but not grown-up muscles and skin.  Not the lean, taut skin of an athlete or a warrior trained for battle...No, this is wrinkly-soft, cuddly flesh, flesh smelling faintly of milk and musk, flesh wanting to be swaddled, flesh right out of the tight warm womb.  This is flesh not able to stand on its own, not able to feed itself, or take care of itself.  This is itty bitty baby flesh, vulnerable flesh, homeless flesh, not quite legitimate flesh.  This flesh can be broken, can be battered, can be wounded...This little baby boy flesh needs to be carried, rocked to sleep, changed, and bathed...." To me this shows the power of being vulnerability and knowing when you need to ask for help.  That show's self love.

"This flesh calls on its mother and father and kinfolk to raise it, to love it...All of the people of the village--their heart strings are tugged by this flesh as he toddles about.  'This is Mary’s little baby,'"  When I first read this I read Mary had a little lamb and I'm thinking we now now where that song came from.  And perfect that it's a children's song.  "...It is their boy, too, they say in their hearts.  And they love him.

The claim is that God took on flesh, that Love took on flesh, vulnerable flesh, and came down to be with us."  I personally always have considered God to be a synonym for Love.  I don't believe God is judge and jury.  God is pure love.  In fact I don't feel God as an entity.  God is more of a verb, more of a force of natural law.  "To cause us to love.  To draw out of us the love that babies draw out....  Love that will make you do whatever it takes to feed the child, to give shelter to the child, to sacrifice whatever is necessary to make the child comfortable.  This is the love the baby-flesh causes.  Heroic love..."  

I also love this as I also love the quote from the bible, "But Yeshua said to them, 'Let the little children come to me and do not forbid them, for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs such as these"  And all we need to do is own and love our own inner child and then we realize that we are walking within the Kingdom of Heaven,  It's perspective.  And although service is important, self love is very important.  If we can't love ourselves, how can we expect anyone else to.

So we started as usual with the surrender process.  We did the to Lady Gaga's very apt Born This Way.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLmMsQsp5ZM Because this reminds me of when I read in a book or a bumper sticker, "Be the best you you can be as there is no one else to do the job."  Very similar to my favorite bumper sticker, "You are unique just like everyone else."  Unfortunately in societal programming differences is not celebrated as much as I would like.  And it's our history becomes our wisdom from what we have learned from it and it is the medicine that we bring to share with this world.

After the surrender we did a little condor feather florida water cleaning before the seed planting.  And I also tood the surrender printouts of the All In participants and transformed them into sacred ash.  And to make sure we were listening to our hearts in this situation we worked with the heart labyrinth.  I recently found this through Wavy Gravy, a Buddhist Clown icon, who was become one of my idles.  Here is a picture.  And we started with a drum beat playing the heart beat of pachamama (earth mother) but then switched to something more upbeat with Michale Frante & Spearheads, Say Hey (I Love You).  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehu3wy4WkHs  The beauty of a labyrinth is that there are no dead ends.  There is only one path in.  And like life the path is a bit circuitous sometimes you think you are getting close and then a turn makes you feel further away.  It's a great metaphor.  So we each traced this with our fingers.

Upon every one having a chance to deepen connections to our hearts we went into the seed planting and listened to our hearts, inner child and souls to the theme for our evening, Seasons of Love from Rent.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp5Eyt7knus  Before we journeyed I also shared some quotes from Aleph by Paulo Coelho for some further inspiration.

"Dreamers can't be tamed."  To that I say, Thank God.  "If you rely on experience, you'll simply keep applying old solutions to new problems...It'll take a huge effort to free yourself from memory, but when you succeed, you start to realize that you've capable of far more than you imagined.  You live in this vast body called the Universe, which contains all the solutions and all the problems.  Visit your soul; don't visit your past."

Each person then spoke they're inspiration to the circle and transferred it into one of the spider mums.  For the All Ins, I did it on your behalf.  Now that we had fed ourselves we then went into prayer for others.  The All In Prayers were printed on the piece of paper in the mesa that is an origami heart. (If you look at the picture of the mesa mayor it's at the top)  That was transferred into our garland of dreams Guru blossom (taking from the metaphor of mala beads) and each attendee had an opportunity to put in their prayers for the planet as well.  It was all woven together and place in the center of my mesa.   And sent them some light, love and unity with a few extra chants.

We closed the mesa and I sent everyone off with our prasad, this time in the form of gold and silver colored kisses.  In the tradition of the Pachakuti Mesa we say silver is the tears of the moon and gold is the sweat of the sun.  All of it alchemy.  In addition, all got a heart shaped mirror compact.  So all can remember to love themselves when they look in the mirror.  And interestingly on Facebook the day after the New Moon I found a quote post by Katie Byron.  "If you want to see the love in your life, look in the mirror"

After guests left I went to my NYC version of the Ganges and offered the garland to the East River.  I apologize as I forgot to take a picture of the garland on the mesa or in the river which I typically do.  I guess I was so excited about kicking into gear.

Thanksgiving Despacho

It's always a treat to share and doing so in the despacho was no different than the other ceremonies.  Thank you for all the music.  Before any of you shared I decided to search on Thank You.  Little did I know there were so many goodies.  I also added a few more as music really expresses gratitude for me better than my prayers and you can dance to it too.  So here is the play list if your interested.

I took pictures in pieces as a despacho often gets layered.  So I started with the traditional florida water, cornmeal circle, tobacco and coca.  Here is a picture although I immediately enhanced it with half salt (for healing) and brown sugar (for sweetness).

I had then transformed your thanks for the past into sacred ashe.  That was put on top of the healing and sweetness and then topped with traditional shell with untu (aka llama fat) and the cross).

Well as you can see I enhanced with sweets, corn, grains and soon added herbs and more and more sweetness.

Lastly I added your thanks for the present in the form of origami hearts and your dreams in Origami birds.  Hearts, because that is how I see you,  You can see the hearts even have an opening in the front with the wish that all your hearts remain open.  And birds for your dreams so that they may take flight.  I blessed each of your hearts with some sacred ayahuasca and each of your birds with some lotus flower oil.  I also then added some red and white carnations and glittery angels and hearts.

And here resides the despacho in the west of my mesa until I offer it this evening to the East River, my NY City version of the ganges.  As always thanks for sharing and wishing you the abundance that is returned to us in ayni/sacred reciprocity when we live a life of gratitude.

Remember Your Jingle

Well this was certainly an interesting New Moon. This month as the dreamworkers know was inspired by Mattie Stepanek who truly was a messenger that spread the word about people sharing their heartsongs and to play after every storm.  And the other thing I learned in reading his biography is that he was a prankster. Which was apparent just before I sent the New Moon invitation since I "accidentally" lit a sparkler instead of what I thought was an incense.  I laughed and realized he was being channeled more than I thought.  And interesting how his theme was play after every storm and low and behold we had Hurricane Irene blow through here on the East Coast.  So the timing on that theme was more perfect than I could have imagined.  And although the core of the rain had stopped earlier on Sunday, it was still quite windy.  The MTA had not restored yet so we made this month dream work only.   I actually enjoyed that although the ceremony recap will be a little briefer since I didn't have any extemporaneous speaking in the room.

So as always I opened the directions and called in the sombres aka soul essence of each of the dream workers and lite participants.  Here is a photo of the opening altar.

I went straight into the surrender and I did this to Letting Go by Seal. (Interestingly Youtube didn't have a clip of it, so your on your own if you want to listen to it...you can get a clip through Itunes)   There are always things that bubble up to be surrendered in both attachments to the positive and to the negative.  I love the freedom of letting things go and see which things are meant to stay.  For me although inspired by someone like Mattie who despite his handicaps was truly Messenger as the book was titled and really had a profound impact, can make me feel like a slacker.  That was one of the things I let go.  And I am currently reading a book he wrote about Peace and in it are some emails to Jimmy Carter where he even expresses his self doubts.  Pfew that was a relief.  So was he handicapped, maybe physically, but emotionally and mentally he was more than above average and as he also says we are mosaic.  We each just have to follow our heartsongs and it doesn't have to be huge and pronounced on Oprah.  We just need to make a difference and continue our unfolding.  So below is one of many poems by Mattie called Unfolding that I find quite profound.

Born of the

Dust of humility,

Spread on the

Wings of pride,

Carried by 

Winds of hope

I grow with the 

Ebbing Life Tide

So also attached here as I listened to Seal's Letting Go, I simultaneous did the burning of your surrender emails.  Here is a picture of the burning (since I was alone, I took a picture for your viewing).

After that rather than speak I went straight into the planting seeds.  I did that to two songs.  The first wasn't planned but that psychic IPod of mine, played You Are The Light of the World from Godspell.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzyHcAkCYHI&feature=related  It's a nice reminder and I like it because it makes me want to get up and dance.  I followed that by Tim McGrath's Live Life You Were Dying  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiOcW_YR1G8  Which is what Mattie did because he was. It's interesting to think of living like this..  In fact there are many few people that I know that actually say that they if they died tomorrow they are happy with what they are doing.  Some some may say it's time to make a drastic change but I have another synchronicity here. 

During the hurricane what else do you do but watch movies.  So I wound up watch How Do You Know.  Not my favorite movie but the ending has an interesting story about Play Doh.  Play Doh was originally invented as something that was used to clean soot off of wall paper in the times when we had wood and coal burning stoves.  It was called White Goo.  As we changed to gas and electric, there was no more soot and no reason for White Goo and his business was going under.  However, the inventors sister in law who happened to be a nursery school teacher discovered that the children preferred the white goo to modeling clay.  So she recommended he color it and call it Play Doh.  So the Paul Rudd character says he keeps it around to remind himself that   "We are all just one small adjustment away from making our lives wonderful."  And although not a great quality here is a clip on Youtube so you know I didn't make it up - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyOwmNA0HCk 

Oh and of course I transferrer your dreams into a blossom rose.  I used Purple since that was Mattie's favorite color that represented piece.  And of course a sun flower for our prayers for others and the planet as a whole.  This time I forgot to take a picture on my mesa but caught it in the East River which I went to that evening.  You'll see the by the blurriness of the picutre that the river was still active from the hurricane winds but better blurry then never and it really felt good to feed the river with dreams rather than the fears over the hurricane destruction.

PS Your dreams also got transformed by the fire and will be going in the jar with me to Peru when I make an offering with all your prayers and dreams...the honor is all mine.

Partner With Your Soul...New Moon New Life Recap

As I mentioned in the Dreamwork this month, I really wanted to call this month stop being mean to yourself.  And the main reason is that most of us would not speak the judgements that we do of ourselves to someone else.  And although we do not say them out loud, our soul's have very sensitive hearing and will not speak our soul's calling and wisdom to us if we are going to mean and debate it's advice.  So it's time to treat our soul's as a partner and stop with the inner negative chatter, it really doesn't help anyone.

But I went straight into the core of the summary.  Here is a picture of the altar.

We opened the directions and each person introduced themselves to the mesa.  And for those not present (aka Dreamworkers and Lite participants), I called your sombres into the ceremony.

Again I get ahead of myself as of course the first thing we did was the surrender process.  And as I suggested for the dreamworkers we did it accompanied to P!nks song Please Don't Leave Me http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eocCPDxKq1o&ob=av3e   The song is intended as a love song but as I keep stressing our relationship with our soul should be like that of a lover.  I do find it funny that often when I'm looking for songs to use in ceremony, as many of you know, I like to find popular songs or showtunes as metaphors.  And I often find that love songs are often perfect metaphors for the struggles that we have with our love of self, our soul's and god.

One thing that the dreamworkers don't know is a line that I actually read just before the ceremony started that I the following spoke into the mesa.  "The tragic sense of life is not unbelief, pessimism, fatalism, or synicism.  It is just ultimate and humiliating realism, which for some reason demands a lot of forgivenes of almost everything.  Faith is simply to trust the real, and to trust that God is found within it--even efore we change it.  This is perhaps our major stumbling stone, the price we must pay to keep the human heart from closing down and to keep the soul open for something more."  It's from a book called Falling Upwards and thought it was perfect to enhance the surrender of the mean thoughts that we have of ourselves.  It's a book about the second half of our lives and how we learn and improve ourselves through our past and mistakes.    It's filled with other gems.

Post the currender we also cleaned ourselfs off with the loving and efficient water process.  I had been at my sister's earlier for my nephews birthday and found that she had these napkins in her bathroom that said Live, Love and Laugh.  And that is pretty much my mode of operating, so I took a few to dry our hands and set the tone for the seed planting process.

And you will see your seeds were printed and woven in with our ceremonial blossoms until the making of the garland of dreams.

So we also did the dreamwork process along with The Dog Days Are Over by Vicci Martinez.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6oPcBvx3nQ What I failded to mention to the people in the room was that this was from a show called the Voice where people compete to make their dreams to come true.  So we don't need to compete but it's time to remember the Dog Days Are Over as long as you let them be and you partner with your wise and loving soul.


We transferred the seeds of the inspirational seed planting ritual and created the garland of dreams.  

Well each of the individual flowers were in the individual yellow spider mums.  I like that I often use spider mums, not only are the easy to weave quickly and they are pretty but the spider medicine shows how we are weaving our dreams and lives into a beautiful garden.  The lovely orange colored sunflower was used for the prayers for others.  The prayers for others.

In the room we waiting to do embody our dreams that were in the water from the ceremony until the chocolate eathing ceremony and yes, we did that to Everybody Rejoice from the Wiz.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-NiH1kH3-E

As I believe the spirit worlds is always rejoicing when they see us and feel us connect in a heartfelt way with our souls and all there wisdom.  And we should do the same rejoicing every day for ourselves.  Typically I go direct to the East River to offer our garland of dreams; however, I decided to let it really absorb all the medicine in the mesa.  I kept it open and am off to the east river once I hit post on this blog.  As you know I don't like to leave any scraps and I'll be converting the papers with your seeds into ash.  Instead of offering those, I will be putting them in a jar I have and will take your seeds with me to Peru where I will offer them in a very sacred location.  

Ahh!! Live Free...New Moon New Life

So Saturday was definitely a Woo Hoo of a New Moon Ceremony.  This month I took my mesa on the road.  So I packed up and took the Long Island Railroad out on Fourth of July Weekend.  It was a beautiful day so the train was packed with beach goers and holiday celebrators.  I couldn't help but giggle at the irony of me and my mesa off to ceremony while others were off barbeques, volleyball and tanning on the beach.  Not to judge as any of those were fine options, but definitely different choices.  And I guess it started with the ultimate freedom to choose to do exactly what I wanted to do, which was honor the full moon.  


It was such an honor to be invited to lead the ceremony at the land of my friend Maddie and Bob's.  Their land is truly a sacred place.  And there were so many options for ceremony and fire.  As the theme was to live free, I chose to do the ceremony Al Fresco outside of the tipi.  There home is right on some water so we truly had all of the elements present.  I was really honored to have some old time mesa carriers to the ceremony and this time we were blessed with the presence of the wisdom of two young elders, Alex (3) and Danny (1).  It's amazing how children are the wise ones and so connected.  Alex loved the condor/florida water cleansing and was quite the despacho maker, but I'm getting ahead of myself.


And actually the start of this new moon was about a week ago when I was considering the new moon dreamwork.  I had been thinking of using the story instead of a journey based on a recent empowering experience I had although I wasn't sure if "it would work".   Well spirit gave me my answer as I walked down into the Union Square subway station and Citibank has taken up bill boards throughout the station about creating our stories.  Obviously they were taking a different perspective, but I was particularly giggled at this one.  

Do I need to say more on this affirmation?


It was nice to set up the mesa on grass and earth.  After laying the ground and before others as promised, in private, for those that gave me permission, I read your stories of surrender into the mesa.  And one tricky dreamworker took the theme of freedom to heart and gave me the option to read.  So the reciprocity began even before the ceremony had officially started.  But I find that always to be the case.  It is an honor to assist you in the surrender of those false beliefs.  Once the ground was laid, Bob started a beautiful ceremonial fire that sat in the east of the mesa. Sorry I wasn't very good on picture taking this New Moon, but here is the mesa pre-ceremony.

And for a close up of the west and the north.  In the west, the Dr. Seuss shoebox was doubling as a despacho container.  And you'll see the hearts, I put your seeds in the west which is the direction of unlimited love, which is the perfect nurturance for your dreams.  In the north is the prayers for others on the birds to carry those prayers to the support of the unseen world.

We opened by chanting the directions.  Each person introduced themselves to the mesa and spoke their reason for being there.  I called in each of the dreamworkers and lite participants into the circle.  And for the new people I often share a little bit of my story and this time I shared something from the movie Contact.  I had been reminded of this movie a few times recently so I decided to watch it that morning.  At the end when Jody Foster's character is speaking of her experience at a congrassional hearing her words explain exactly why I keep doing this work more eloquently than I do.  But then again she had a script writer.

Here it is:

I had an experience. I can’t prove it.  I can’t even explain it but everything that I know as a human being.  Everything that I am tell me that it was real.  I was given something wonderful.  Something that changed me forever.  Avsion of the universe that tells us undeniably how tiny and insignificant and rare and precsious we are.  A vision that tells us that we belong to something that is greater than ourselves, that we are not alone.  I can share that.  I could share....  That everyone if even for one minute can feel that awe and humility and the hope.  That continues to be my wish.

Yes it is my wish, that each person experiences awe, humility and hope, or, as I now termed into the acronym, Ahh!  I hope they experience it at least once and preferably on a regular basis.


I was also reading a book call Leading From Within.  It's a book of inspiring poems for leaders.  The foreward is by Madeleine Albright.  She reminded us of the passengers on the plane that went into the Pentagon on 9/11.  One of the passengers had left his wife a cell phone message that said.  "I know we are going to die, but some of us are going to do something about it."  And that is what freedom is.  The freedom to choose to do something about it, whether it be in action or in our perspective.  As Madeleine reminds the readers "We are all mortal.  What divides us is the use we make of our time...  So our plane has crashed.  What are we going to do about it.  We have lived our lives but we have not led."  And the best way to lead our lives is to be reflective, intentional and self aware.  And that is the intention behind doing this ceremonies.  To foster this.  So by participating we are also leading.


I then lead the surrender process.  Since I wanted to allow plenty of time to get the stories behind our false beliefs about ourselves.  I had this group accompanied by two songs.  Yes Wilson Philips, Hold On http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi9w_aaF34U   followed by a new favorite song called Inventing Shadows by Dia Frampton.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01rZ7Se9Jgc  This song really speaks to the meanies created by our mind.  And that is what needs to be re-trained.  I also think that she is a perfect example of someone who is living her dream.  She was a contestant on the recent talent show, The Voice.  She did not win but she was certainly free to shine and win.  The night after she performed this she was the ITunes top seller.


So each person spoke the title of their story of surrender into transformation of surviving to thriving as they offered it to the fire.  The grand transformer helping reduce the density of any angst into ash.  We made sure to clear away any dust with a little extra florida water and the aid of the condor and hence the element of air.  We made sure our personal gardens were weeded so that we can plant seeds.


So we journeyed with each of our inspirations to get insight into our personal next steps towards our dreams with the accompaniment of George Michaels Freedom  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hg2PR52ukmE   We placed that into an origami heart.  I have to say I need to work on articulating my origami making skills to a group but they were made and each of the seeds of the attendees and dreamworkers went into an individual blossom that was placed into the garland of dreams.  The lite participant shared a blossom.   The blossoms this time were lavender spider mums.  I love all flowers but I just realized how perfect the use of these are as the spider will assist us in weaving our dreams into the greater web of life. We of course topped the garland with our prayers for others and the planet.  We put those all into a sunflower, which seems like an obvious flower of choice.  Yes, to let our lives shine bright.  Also the center of the sunflower is in the shape of a fibonacci spiral which is a sacred geometric symbol allowing our dreams to be spiraled out into the world.


We closed the ceremony portion, but no folks, there was more.  We followed with a despacho which is an offering of gratitude to the unseen forces for all they have provided and for future support.  This one was chock full.  And you can see the team working on this under the direction of master Alex,

The primary guides of the mesa have certain preferences.  For the Tirakuna of the south we provide an animal product.  In Peru, they often use llama fetus.  I was all out; however, I did have some llama fat from a past trip, some beef jerky and a mouse.  A mouse is not typical; however, when we were walking on the land earlier someone pointed out that a mouse had recently passed and in mind was offered to us for the despacho and to help the mouse in the transition.  That means we have some mouse medicine, which according to Animal Speaks is about attention to detail.  "Mouse medicine can show you how to focus and pay attention to detail.  It can show you how to attain the big things by working on the little things. "  So perhaps the perfect ally to help us attain our big dreams.  The western guide, the Auki's, like flowers.  We used the red and white carnations commonly used in Peru.  Remember carnations shares the etymology coronations or crownings and flowering of our lives.  The Northern Malkis, aka tree spirits, enjoy mineral products .  So we add salt and stones, minerals as well as gold and silver foils (which also represent the sweat of the sun and tears of the moon).  The Malchula Aulanchis of the west, aka ancectors, like man made products.  By default the despacho is man made but we add some other items.  Pieces that mesa carrers have made as well as candies, like Good and Plenty.  Spirit enjoys the sweetness.  We also add aromatics, life staples (like corn, nuts, quinoa....) and libations.   We covered the despacho with all of your heartfelt dreams aka heart songs.

  We wrapped it up and offered it to the fire.  This despacho was then offered to the fire.

I interrupt this blog to share a, "You can't make this up experience".  I often put my itunes on shuffle as I work on my computer.  And I'm not using a sacred playlist, so basically anything from showtunes to folk to hard rock to kirtan can pop up.  But just after I complete talking about the guides and how we feed them and how this was covered in your heart songs, the song Hummingbird Heartbeat by Katy Perry goes on.  Yes it's synchronistic because of the heart but also because the Hummingbird also referred to as Sewar Q'enti is a very sacred ally of the mesa which is the bestower of joy.

So I think we did really good work here guys.  So I am going to end this right here.  Yes the despacho was offered to the fire and well received, which means it was a good burn.  And simultaneously we offered the garland of dreams to the water also in the back yard.  It's a canal that eventually leads out to the ocean.  So we used a balance of transformation with water and fire to manifest your dreams.

A True Honor!

Snap Goes The Rubber Band of Resistance

Hurray!  The rubber band of resistance and procrastination does not stretch to infinity and beyond.  There is a limit and mine has finally gone snap.  I finally inaugurated my Couch to 5K IPhone application.  Yes, the one that I have had for at least 4 months and had collected the proverbial cobwebs.  

I am not announcing this publicly because I am proud.  In truth it is because I hope the shame of not sticking to this after having announced it will help me keep my commitment.  I used to love running and exercise.  I even thought I wanted to be a personal trainer at one time.  I know the benefits yet getting back on the bandwagon has been tough.  I surely wish my love of self was stronger than my fear of shame.   But I have to pat myself on the back for knowing myself. Right?  After all, fear of shame has a good track record with me.  It got me to quit smoking 2 plus years ago when I partnered on the endeavor with my dear friend.  Well maybe it was pride of not letting friends see me fail.  Yes, pride and shame, opposite ends of the same coin huh?  And, in truth, you may not care if my lethargy was leading me to be a candidate for the next season of Biggest Loser, but I’ll pretend you do and I’m going to use pride aka the fear of shame game, to be kinder to my health. Juicy rationalization or not.

I do feel that I have to give some credit for this big snap to Ann Randolph who lead a phenomenal workshop at Kripalu called Sharing Your Life Story.  It was a 5 day writing and improv workshop.  I know at Kripalu, you may be thinking it was a bit woo-woo.  Don’t get me wrong, I do like to dip into the woo woo pool.  I’m an ex-junky of  woo-woo workshops.  And some may call my Lulu Loving Life healing and ceremonial practice a bit woo-woo too.  But if you’ve been around me, you’ll realize I prefer  things a bit tart and spicy.  If it’s too sweet and syrupy, I go into diabetic shock.  What I found refreshing, and the beauty of this retreat, was that participants could be as cathartic as they wished as long as they were willing to take responsibility for coping with the potential angst.  And we focused on the prize of creation.

Ann provided creative and inspirational exercises and prompts for both, our improvisational and writing exercises.  Silly me I thought I was just going to be focused on writing for the sake of writing.  The transformational impact took this ex-workshop junky by surprise.  Based on my extensive and diverse workshop experience as well as my personal diligence and dedication to my personal transformation, I feel entitled to say that I’m a person who has processed a lot of her shit and garbage.  Don’t let my expletives demean the intent of the words, nor connote a bad thing.  After all what do you think fertilizer aka manure or compost is composed of?  And what does fertilizer create? Yes, the answer is a beautiful garden.  

Sure I know the onion has many layers and was was still delighted at the additional insights I received about my life experiences.  I constantly preach that our wounds are also our medicine and it has became crystal clear that there is such power in expressing ourselves in story, whether it be written or performed.  After all we can only tell our stories if we have survived our stories.   And, in becoming the story teller of our hardships and life circumstances, we release the hand cuffs of victimization and transmute surviving to thriving.

I left this workshop feeling inspired, confident & courageous.   And I’m savoring the lingering taste of creativity and possibilities. I left reminded of why I started to blog.  After using it as a way to keep friends abreast of my life when I was living in India, I thought I would continue sharing my love for life, it’s humor and the metaphors that help me grow and trust.  Instead it has turned into a place for me to keep an anthology of the New Moon New Life Ceremonies that I hold every month.  Don’t get me wrong, I do love  the ceremonies which are filled with playful metaphor; however, I love so much more than that and life is inherently filled with metaphors that can be transformative catalysts a.k.a. insights or personal aha’s, or, at the least, a giggle.  I enjoy finding the metaphors amongst the silliness and craziness life provide and using the shit to create a blossom.  So why not share it.  And to play the fear of shame game one more time (after all practice makes perfect), I commit to blogging at least once a month other than the New Moon New Life recaps.  I’m the first to admit that it’s a fine line between wisdom and a good juicy rationalization so I’m going to let you take responsibility for what my sharing evokes and continue to keep loving life and blogging about it...

Total Receptivity Under Skeptical Times

This morning, before sitting down to blog, I was reflecting on why did I choose the theme or TRUST this week.  And I was trying to think of the inspiration and my rational mind said it's because of an epidemic that I have found to be rampant.  I call this dis-ease the OLD Perfection Paradigm.  This is the belief that we are less than perfect because for some reason we feel that we don't stack up because of all programming that we have inherited from our families, the media, our communities...    All too often, I hear really awesome people doubt themselves all the time and it makes me a little sad.  And we know that sometimes hard times and challenges come up.  And this event may trigger negative thought patterns and make us feel like we are NOT enough to handle it or they need something that the don't have whether it be money, education or training, ...

If you noticed I do use the word WE here as it's also important to realize this is an epidemic and I too am not always immune.  But feel fortunate that I do have a few tools in the medicine cabinet to help eliminate it.  After all it's a process and we keep peeling away, one layer of the onion at a time.  After all even the Owl in the Tootsie Pop commercial, asks how many licks does it take to get to the center of the lollypop.  Hmmm, perhaps this months prasad should have been a tootsie pop so we can try it out for ourselves or a tootsie roll so I can give you the yummy gewey center without the sucking (metaphor intended).  And what would be the fun in that.  However, I have digressed and that is not this months surprise although perhaps a new inspirational treat is foreshadowed.

So the NEW Perfection Paradigm and the truth of the matter is, the only thing missing is trust in ourselves.  My wish for the world is that we all welcome what is occurring to us right now and who we are is absolutely perfect.  If it's yummy enjoy it and of it's a lemon make lemonade.

Another thing that was going on around the same time and it happens to me from time to time, is I start pondering my life and then I start to giggle with delight.  I start to giggle with delight as I realize that if, like in the Christmas Carol and the ghost of current Lulu came to visit me about 15 plus years ago and showed me that I was going to be never married at 46, clowning in Costa Rica, traipsing off to India and Peru to visit temples and work with healers or doing shamanic lunar ceremonies every month I would have dismissed it as a bad dream or I may have even made every attempt to make that not happen and perhaps may have choices to intentional thwart the prophesy.  Heck 15 years ago, I hadn't even fully embrace the name Lulu yet, I was very much Lisa, not even Lisa Hari.  Yes, my middle name on my birth certificate although not intentional on my parents part is one of the Sanskri name for God.  And funny how I had shame around it as a child but now am quite proud.  Just shows how we can tranform, huh?

And  although I definitely had an image of who I was going to be and where my life was going, I'm so glad that my soul was whispering  "Go For It" loud enough so that when the breadcrumbs were being put in front of me, I said what the heck let me follow them.  I certainly could not have written the script of my life.  And, without hesitation, I say THANK GOD for that, as I have a feeling that if I lived the script that was in my head there would have been much more needless suffering and if I knew it in advance, it may have taken the fun and wonder out of it.  I have to say my life has been a blast across the spectrums of highs and lows and I truly wouldn't trade in any part of it because they have made me who I was.  I have to admit that it was more a deep sadness than trust that motivate me.  And if I had not had the sadness (as unpleasant as it has been at times), I may have been more complacent and never explored a Life truly worth living.

Oh wait, I was blogging to give you guys a summary of the ceremony and not a diatribe about my life, let me continue.  We started the ceremony by calling in all the participants.  The attendees introduced themselves to the mesa and I called in the sombres of each of the dream workers as well as lite participants.  So thank you again for participating.

So because of all the above I was pondering trust.  And like the aconym I was given once for fear which is false expectations appearing real, I easily came up with one for trust - Total Receptivity Under Skeptical Times.  I really would change the word skeptical for challenging but then we'd have truct and not trust :).  And like Dr. Stone, founder of Polarity says, "Obstacles are God's design to make man with a spine."   I truly believe that the core to being a trusting person is allowing yourself to be fluid and receptive to all that life has to offers.  Sure, sometimes life brings in some clunkers, which is why we have to be fluid, like Tai Chi, and let things move through us and not hold onto anything.

I also realized that I was never really taught about the importance of receptivity until later in life and boy how it would have shifted my life if I knew it sooner.  I know, I know.... I just told you Obstacles build man with a spine and I don't want to be spineless and it certainly has empowered me to know this from my experiences rather than something I was told from someone else or read in a book.  After all another favorite quote from one of my teachers is, "Would you rather learn from someone who says, this is my believe system or this is my experience.  After all belief systems are just B.S."  However, I will admit that it can help to hear the belief system and follow up with the homework, or should I say dreamwork, that turns the belief into an experience.  And when we come up with an idea based on our experience, it's truly an innovation.

So why are we not receptive.  It goes back to our education.  Yep, schools focused on the three R's, Reading, wRiting and 'Rithmatic.  For me that is the wRong three R's.  I want to create another new paradigm and change required Three R's of Education to Receptivity, Reactions and Responses.  I believe I've been pretty clear on the importance of receptivity so far.  Afterall it's the key word in the acronym for trust; however, I will spend a little more time elaboating on how I would differentiate between our reactions vs our responses.  In my dictionary a reaction is more unconscious and basically it is the initial response to a situation and is often based on our programming.  Our responses are our actions that are based upon our reaction (or our understanding of our reactions).  The reason I diffentiate is that if more people understood their reactions, their response may be more kind and in alignment with how they would prefer to behave.

Let's face it, life is going to present us with challenges or people, whose behavior really pushes our buttons.  And rather than blame the situation or the person and making ourselves look like a victim, we can look closely at our reaction and what it is truly triggering inside.  Is it triggered by a shameful belief that we are not good enough.  Or perhaps it's triggering our mightier than though judge that knows the cardinal rules better than anyone else.  So if we understand why we had that reaction, like I want to run and hide or perhaps I want to rip someones head off, we can respond to the situation more responsibly and from a place of wholeness.  We can't control the actions of the others but we can work towards understanding our reactions so we don't respond from our wounded places.  There are too many people that are acting from their wounded place and, in my opinion, that why we have wars.

So I've elaborated on it from a blog sense but truly only touched the surface on this topic.   I could right a book about understanding our reactions, but I don't need to as there is a trusty resource.  If you want a resource on working with your reactions a little more, Echkart Tolle has a great chapter (chapter 5 to be specific) entitled The Pain-Body in his very insightful book, A New Earth.

And, although I thought I was done, I just want to stress how important I feel it is to understand our reactions.  And I do mean UNDERSTAND them, DO NOT JUDGE them.  They happened for a reason and we need to love our imperfections.  In my case,  I can tell you it certainly wasn't a conscious trust that lead me down the path.  But through my experiences I see the value of working the New Three R's and that leads me to give you another thing I read that motivated me to make sure I am lovingly diligent and understanding my reactions.

I was reading Stephen Levine, who is a psychiatrist and Buddhist that has done some really amazing work with the dying.  And the important thing that he stresses is that you die as you have lived.  So we can't expect our patterns to all of a sudden change we learn of our death.  Sometimes, people know in advance when they are going to die and have the time to make amends and be more loving than they could have with family and friends.  In many cases, deaths can happen by without warning.  (Actually as I type this I realize this may have been inspired by Ram Dass who has many amazing books himself, but it's about the story not the teller.)

I've been told that Ghandi's last words after he was shot was, "Ram, Ram, Ram..."  Ram is the name of a God in the Hindu tradition.  I have to add that he spoke Ram adoringly and not in a bargaining or damning manner.

So think of the last time you were cut off while driving in traffic and your reaction.  And depending on circumstances that can be the last event of your life.  Do you want your last words to be "Oh Shit or that Mother....." or your name for God (and if your atheist, you can use the word Love as a synonym).  You want to mean it and not speak it like a script or because someone said you'll have a better after life it you did it.

So we went into the surrender process, to release any of the old patterns and programming that keeps us being receptive, keeps us from feeling loving towards ourselves, our lives and those that cross our paths. We did this to Bless The Broken Road by Rascal Flattes.  (For a link - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkWGwY5nq7A)  Because as I said earlier, it's our entire life that made us awesome, even the "broken" parts.  

So now that we have surrendered and a receptive, we go into the seed planting.  As I said it's about our experiences more than our belief systems, so the only way to really trust is to Live Life and make it the medicine we share with the world.  So we go into our true unmasked self inspire us with the seeds to be planted.  This we did to no other than Dolly Parton's, Better Get To Living.  (For a link - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKeulwZ3sGE )

And as I often say, you can't make this shit up.  As I type this, I have my itunes on Shuffle. And what song just came up but Dolly Parton.  Not the song we did the seed planting, but I Will Always Love You.  And as much as I can go into more about the ceremony the prayers for others and garland of dreams of which each of your seeds was transferred into and then offered to the East River.  I leave you with  the lyrics from Dolly that still ring in my ears and are my sign that I've done enough typing.

And I hope that you have all

That you ever dreamed of

Oh, I do wish you joy

A I wish you happiness

But above all this

I wish you love