A Love Fortunate Lulu

So one day I’m at an event focusing on the environment that a dear friend is sponsoring and everyone there is an activist of sorts for the environment and changing the world.  I often, but not always, find that activist people that want to create change through activism have a tendency to use fear and an intensity that I find to be a turn off (and this is coming from a pretty intense person). I feel they are often using the same negative tactics, similar to greed and control, to create a positive change.  That just feels oxymoronic to me.  Some may say that at least the change happened, but I don’t personally find it motivating and I don’t believe that changes that come from fear will stick because something else can scare the person and make them shift again. And since that is my truth and I planned on sticking to it, I state outright to the group that I am a devout NON-activist and share, blah, blah, blah...  After my friends comes up to me and says what the hell were you talking about, your a love activist.  I smirk and I say, I guess your right I am.  Well that took the air out of my tires but made my heart sing a little louder.  I’m a big fan of love in almost all of it’s flavors mostly the unconditional kind as I find it to be the single most transformative force there is in the world. 

I say unconditional because it helps to be unattached to the outcome, but don’t worry there is always a law of cause and effect principle that makes you become a magnet for love and other fucking fabulous treats in your life.  Excuse my language but I think of the word fuck to be like MSG, it’s a flavor enhancer and may be prone to excessive use of the word.  But for the rest of this blog, I’ll call it an FFT.  

The buddhists say that attachment leads to suffering and this may not be the buddhist reasoning but I get it because if things change, and, trust me, according to the law of nature, they will, then it’s gone or changed.  But change doesn’t mean something has to go downhill, it could be better and actually be an FFT.  And a loss may actually bring you freedom but I’m digressing.  So the Lulu reason for non-attachment is that your image my be too limiting that you couldn’t have even imagined how supercalifragilisticexpialidocious of a manifestation you may find.  And if your looking for the smaller less fabulous treat, you’ll miss the cracker jack surprise.  And also the MOSTEST important other reason I act lovingly is because it feels great.  Sometimes I think I can feel my heart smiling.  Truly I do and when the corned of my heart turn up in delight, it just tickles from the inside out.  I’ve also learned to accept that not everyone you love can appreciate the love as it happens.  So if I’m attached to someone returning it directly, I may be disappointed.  And as I’ve learned in life, I can give in one place and then I receive unexpectedly in another.  Our muggle perspective is too small and in truth we’re all connected.  So although it may appear to be coming from a totally different person or instance, it’s not. In truth, since we’re all connected a little further from the epicenter of the love quake on the universal love fascia. Hope I didn’t lose you on that last one.  

The universe is huge so the ripples of cause and effect that your particular love expression incident my be riding, may be having an impact on the moons of jupiter.  Oh those lucky aliens on jupiter.  OK I’m being dramatic, but you get the picture.  And heck if I was attached to being a NON-activist, I wouldn’t have declared myself a love activist and may not have owned it in a way that has lead me to write this blog or throw love letter writing parties.  So experiences like that is what leads me to trust.  As they say those that are hardest to love are those that need it the most.  So I can also think of it as charity, but to be honest that feels arrogant.  However, I do trust that just because a person isn’t receptive or acknowledge it in the moment, it doesn’t mean that your expression of love can’t be like a time release capsule that has a delayed effect.  And if I want to reach jupiter, I have to own that because of the limitations or time and space that may take a while or if the person I’m giving love to has so many walls or negative thought patterns, my love incident may have to do a little extra navigating and work circuitously to have an impact.  Or maybe it’s a time bomb that explodes there heart open in a way that makes them orgasm or practically orgasm from the ecstasy of it all.  I’ve had experiences like that and it wasn’t sexual love, it was the unconditional kind but it left me practically screaming OMG!!!

And this leads me to the love fortune of the day and how my new love fortune blog commitment .  But one more word about attachment.  When I decided to go to Soul Cycle, my intension was exercise with an attachment to getting in shape and feeling healthier and happier.  First I knew that meant I’d probably lose weight but because I never weighed myself, I don’t know how much I lost, I never imagine what you see below which is a picture of me in October of 2011 just a month or two before I started at Soul (and made other changes) and last night.  

October 2011

Feb 2013

I also believe that if I were attached to the number of pounds I would have gotten into the numbers frustration game and not gotten to where I feel like my body and my Soul are now in sync.  And have I told you I’m pretty much ridiculously happy.  And if I weren’t open to limitless possibilities, I never would be surrounded by people that make me humble in my ability to be loving and thoughtful.  I never expected that I would meet a group of more outstandingly loving and creative people in my life.  So what started as exercise turned into a loving community.  Talk about an FFT.  I would just show up and be Lulu and the people that have become my Soul Family (too many too name and I don’t want to leave anyone out) have improved the quality of my life in a way that is better for my heart than lowering my cholesterol would be.  

So on my 48th birthday, my Soul family spared nothing in making me feel like the luckiest Lulu in the galaxy.  And although the day was truly a cornucopia of so very many precious moments and actual gifts that I received, I have to tell you about one because this is what has gotten me to to commit to blogging, which I’ve been wanting to do, but my inner judgement voice kept telling me that you don’t have anything that interesting to share or hasn’t been shared before by people far more expert or entertaining than you.  Oh don’t fool yourself just because I’ve declared myself the person that puts woo hoo into woo woo, I have my share of negative thought patterns.  And that still may be true, but they don’t share it like I would so.  I’m turning up my nose and sticking my tongue out to that negative voice.

See I told you I digress.  So the gift I referenced was from Austin Bone and Danny Kopel is a box of 365 love fortunes.  

So this is what 365 Love Fortunes Look Like

Yes they gave me a box of 365 reasons of why they love me.  Crazy, huh, I’m truly humbled by this gift.   After all, I would be hard pressed to think of 365 lovable things about me and as I go through this process, I may think that Austin and Danny were doing some really good drugs or were talking about another Lulu when they wrote that love fortune.  I mostly plan on blogging about the love fortunes I receive and how they play out in me and as I chose to share the actual fortunes.  But since I’ve recently started hosting Love Letter Writing Parties, you never know where this will lead.  I will be very honest on my process as I believe that I am a work in progress that has so much room for improvement on being loving.  I’m no saint nor do I want to be one.  That being said, I've definitely attracted a lot of loving people,  so I may be on the right track after all.  So through these blogs I plan on sharing from my heart and that includes the cracks as well and I will not pretend to be a Stepford optimist. Mostly I'll share from my experiences.  After all one of my favorite quotes from one of my teacher is, "Would you rather hear from someone that says this is my experience or this is my believe.  After all you know what a belief system is, BS?"

I digressed again.  Back to the gift...  To honor non-attachment and one of my mottos in that we own nothing and are just care takers until someone else can benefit, they recommend I share them.  So I can pass on these love fortunes to unsuspecting strangers, work associates, friends or all of you through these blogs.  And I wish I could say that the recommendation to do a blog for each fortune cookie came from Rachel Schwab, she is so insightful considering I didn’t even tell her that in my annual birthday tarot reading we discussed me doing some writing.  

I did start picking fortunes yesterday so I’m a day behind on the blogging already.  But since todays love fortune is “I love how unconditionally loving you are.”  I think I covered that effusively above.  And I don’t want to lose you and have you feeling like your reading the unabridged version of War and Peace, I’m going to cut it short.  Besides I just want to relish in how love fortunate I feel.  So I’m going to comment on fortune number at another time.  Oh did I tell you that I think linear time is too limiting so we’ll see how this blog thing goes and please provide feedback...I feel passionate about sharing and want to hear as well as spout my Lulu-isms.

A LOVE FORTUNATE LULU!!!!

Ringing in 2013 With A Despacho

So thought I'd send you some of the pictures of the progression of the making of the despacho.  As I mentioned a despacho is a offering of gratitude and prayers to the spirit world that so graciously supports us and supports us even more when we interact consciously.

To give you an idea of the evolution through it's making.  I put together my own little kit and put in some traditional and less traditional items (kind of like me, a melting pot).  In despachos, you typically have some animal fat to feed the physical aspects of your life, flowers for the emotional aspects (I forgot the red carnations I had sitting in the North of my altar, I'll go back later and offer but no worries, I had some dried rose buds from one of the most joyful birthday celebrations I've ever had), minerals for the spiritual aspects and man made objects for the mental.  Then you add some libations, incense, sweets, grains, herbs, etc...  I'll explain some that I added to give you my personal reasoning (I won't give you details on every piece).

So we start with the initial mesa.  In my tradition, the NW to SE access is considered the routa de wirachocha (route of great spirit) and is considered the path of manifestation.  So in the NW I put each of your gratitude messages.  And at the end, the point of manifestation I put your creations.  You'll see I printed each on origami paper and then folded them into hearts which felt quite appropriate.

 I started with the initial consecrations using florida water, corn meal, tobacco and coca kintu and quickly started.  The ashes of your gratitude.  I burned them so they would be compost and put it at center of the entire despacho as a life centered around gratitude is great.  I surrounded with coconut palm sugar (a low glycemic sweetener so you can really digest and enjoy the sweetness), some quinoa (a peruvian staple grain for sustenance) and a circle of some pink sea salt for security & healing.  Oh in the very center is the tradition shell with llama fat topped with a cross (mine was add hock made from a neem stick I had from India.  Neem trees are considered the tree of life in India and every home has one in it's front door.

 Below you'll see I started to turn this into a sun disk.  With some more bath salts with copal (high vibrational sweet smelling incense) and chia seeds (talk about life force providing) rays and on the bottom some neem leaves (wanted not only the body of the tree but it's beautiful, abundant creations)

 In the Northwest to SE you'll see dried flowers.  These were gifted to me from someone and they were in meditation with Gurumai, a a beloved guru of the Siddha tradition) and the bar of chocolate is made by a place named Lulu.  It's raw chocolate and chocolate aside from yummy provides dopamine and magnesium which is good medicine for the emotional/mental health and muscles (that help us move about in this world with fluidity), respectively.

 Added more erms in the sun spokes with some salvia (visionary plant), sage (cleansing) & cedar (also cleansing)

 Yes the metaphorical good & plenty plus licorice is also good medicine.  Along with some gummy bears in the colors of the rainbow and some more yummy sweetness and I love the transparency of them)  There are also those dried rose buds I mentioned from the most joyful birthday of my life (I laughed for 4 days except when I was sleeping but maybe then too), a turkey feather (although they don't fly, it's symbolic of your flight), so gold sun disks/glitter (yes get your glitterati on).  You'll notice in the pink ream there are some gold and silver disks.  Those are M&M's.  I had them made for a ceremony with Mesa & Meditation, my too favorite M words and the symbolism of the gold is that it is the sweat of the sun and the moon is the tears of the moon.

 Lastly was the placement of your hearts/creations.  In front of each individual heart/creation is a pair of yanantin hauyuros.  Hauyuoros are the red beands you see and they are for protection.  Yanantin is sacred couple and it means it both literal and metaphorical way.  There is a male (with black dot) and female (no dot, pure red) representing the balance of male and female energies.  Although balance is always relative.

Then I tied it up snug as a bug in a rug with some gold and silver thread.  I had been playing a playlist while making this despacho of songs that are more spiritually metaphorical for me.  While I was tying this up, I realized I Want To Hold You Hand was playing.  It reminded me of how much fun it is to share, to help others by holding their hands and, in turn, let's not be proud, let others hold our hands when we need it.  I then bundled in a cloth and yes I took this to a New Years Eve spin class.  I put this behind my bike so it had the exuberant, joyful and introspective intentions of the ride.  Plus I rode for you people and I added some sweat to realize your dreams.  We spun from 11 into midnight.  It was the ride of a lifetime for sure.  (I forgot to mention this and this is a post publishing edit.  In a you can't make this shit up moment and how spirit works in mysterious ways.  When I  originally booked class I got bike 20 as the best available.  Although not expecting anyone to cancel since it's a prime class, I asked to be put on a better bike list.  Because you never know if you don't ask.  This was with the hopes that someone else got a hot date to replace it  Sunday, I received an email that I was on bike 9.   9 happens to be the number of completion leaving us ready to start a new.  So couldn't have been a better number for the despacho to be behind ending 2012 and start 2013. 

 I later went over to the East River which is my NYC form of the Ganges and made a love offering.  Thank you for sharing in this blessed event.  As I said I was out of the ceremonial loop for a while and really enjoyed sharing this through the ethers with each and every one of you.

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!