A Path with Heart

Carlos Castaneda told us all about taking the ‘Path with Heart’ he also said that if you were already on a Path that you found had no Heart, then there would be no shame in leaving it and taking another route.

How many times have we found ourselves on a Path that we know has no meaning for us any more, even if it did in the first place?

There are so many occasions that we find ourselves saying yes when we really want to say no, and just to be clear this is where you recognise the feeling of a no Heart Path!

What Castaneda was saying was about enthusiasm, inspiration, joyful anticipation, and there being so much of all of that, that we carry on immune to the pains of being the first to make that route through all those obstacles.

We are so wrapped up in the bundle of aspirational, energetic flow of the dream about to come true that we can’t hear naysayers! Those mountains are molehills, those figures and facts are for other’s businesses not ours.

It may not even be a business it can be anything. A new look for our life. A new outlook on life. A different belief about who we are in this life. Anything at all.

Understanding it is there waiting for us, is one thing.

Reaching out, taking action and making it happen is another….yet another is sustaining that change and making it our own and be identifiable as the person who now is….

For many of us, our lives were mapped out via someone else’s expectation of who we should be. Historically this would happen

To Know Where You’re Going, Remember Where You’ve Been

Not saying at all that other’s ideas of what we should be doing and where we could be going with that thing we do is wrong…at least it’s not wrong for them… but is it right for the individual they are making decisions for?

It is ultimately our choice to either live our lives on the back of someone else’s expectations and desires or our own.

The thing is, it’s all about the consequences of choosing to go our own way.

When we do there will be many nay sayers who will so enjoy ‘I told you So!’ They may well be super smug at the news of an apparent failure or setback that ‘could be seen’ as a failure but isn’t necessarily so…

Come on. Did you really think that even if you had gone out and done what others expected of you, it would be all plain sailing?

It can be more daunting to go out on a limb, to go your own way, to take the plunge etc. etc. etc. that doesn’t mean that you can’t change tack and look in other directions to make life work for you, the way you want it to be.

We can, you can, they can. Even when things are set in stone, they can be ‘weathered out’

We don’t really want to wait that long though.

The one thing that may help with your decision to do what you want as opposed to what you perceive is being expected of you is to ask the question.

‘Am I doing this for me, for my wants and needs or am I placating, easing, allowing someone else’s ideas and expectations to be mine?

You tell me which is going to be the more fulfilling and inspiring.

When we are doing what we really want to do, something we have passion and drive for; we become more at ease in ourselves. We become content. We are also inspired daily to see what we do as something wonderful and fulfilling.

There is always at least one Maverick in a family, why not be the one in yours…. I know I am the Maverick in mine!

How Do You Feel When You Look At The Stars?

How does anyone feel when we can see a night sky? Diamond bright pinpoints of light; some older than our own planet, wink and twinkle suspended above us, as we marvel and endeavour to make sense of what and why it is all happening.

That is, if we take time to notice at all.

At the time of my birth, the Plough, or the Great Bear [Ursa Major] was in the Sky. Little Bear following on [Ursa Minor] has since become an inspiration to me for a story of how a Mother and Cub became constellations. It intrigues me as to how any Constellations formed.

Chaos. That was the state of play at the time of the Big Bang; was it not?

It is said the Greeks first looked at the Sky and tracked the ‘wandering lights’ calling them ‘Planets’ they may have in the Western Hemisphere, it is however just as possible that the Mayans were tracking those stars too, even earlier in time. We have less evidence for that since the data on that was destroyed by Conquistadors and the Priesthood sent from Spain to relieve the Natives of their Gold and replace it with something less than was evidently good for them.

We are not the only beings that look to the night skies, the Wolf sings to the Moon, letting the other members of the Pack they are there. The lone Wolf also sings to the Moon and the Stars.

Birds and even Butterflies and Moths, Cetaceans and so many other creatures are mindful of the night skies.

It is only at certain phases of the moon, in certain seasons that the seas become a massive nursery of new life.

How do they know? How do they calculate the right time, the right phase? It’s as if they have an inner clock that is energetically wired to the changes happening around them.

We had that.

We still have that, we just find it hard to find it and release it from the cubby hole of gunk and stuff and technology and stresses. If we bother to look for it at all.

Even though it’s muffled chimes ring on, under it all.

We don’t look up.

We don’t see anything beyond a rectangle of technology, that is our world now.

Shall we one day, instead raise our eyes to the Sky again and wonder at it’s magnificence? Will we still know the mythology of the constellations? Shall we understand the dying light of stars long dead, shines still as it traverses distances that we cannot conceive?

Shall we look up and know that is where we began?

What is it to understand that we are the stuff of Stars? How does that translate to mundane tasks like paying the Taxman, paying rent, paying….and working in order to pay…?

When we dream are we dreaming on beams of Starlight? Is it memory? The being in the deepest of darks, our way lit only by those pin spots, themselves now only the stuff of dreams, since never discovered, never charted we can only see an impression of what and where they were; their existance shown by the beacon of bright energy diminishing as it travels to the ends of the Universe.

How is it, to conceive of that? The magnitude of it all?

How do I feel when I look at the Stars? Humbled, connected, a part of and apart from, small, a speck of dust from one, the only evidence of it’s existance… Powerful that this element is within me. Consciously aware of the knowledge that I am, here, now, a being who is all of this and more.

Purposeful and joyful and sad all at once.

I seek the moon, I seek the Plough, I breathe in the night air, I open my throat and I HOWL ! I celebrate the night Sky I celebrate being. I call upon any with the eyes to see and the ears to hear and the heart to love and the will to walk forward.

Such a feeling is that.

Bloganuary: Describe Yourself As A Tree

Shamans & Trees

There’s a lot of Folklore and Magick centred around Trees. Faeries live in them and or their roots. Dryads merge with them to hide in plain sight. The Faerie Forest is filled with stories of magical, mystical things

So how do I choose to be as one tree? There is of course that ONE tree – the Tree Of The World Yggdrasil.

Yggdrasil the treewhich stands in the Middle World and whose branches reach out over the 9 realms and is the centre of the Cosmos, holding it all together; in Viking Lore if the tree falls all the realms fall with it.

Trees and creation stories. Trees; they are ubiquitous in the tales of our being. There is tell of a saying about knowing the Shamans of the World, they are the birds who sit on the topmost outer branches of the tree. They share the tree with the other birds but they sit apart, on the highest, outermost, exposed branches. This is a paraphrase and more of my take on what was written. It is true though. There are many of us who are a part of, and still apart from our relative communities.

To be a tree. It is my wish to be a tree. I can do this when I leave this earthly plane. The physical part of me can nourish the roots of a new tree.

I admire the fae-ish Silver Birch, who can be seen shiny-bright under the Moon; standing elegant tall and silent strong.

The chitter chatter of Faeries in the Hawthorn, from the sleepy roots to the bustling branches, there is so much magic in this tree. So much magic that the lone Faerie Thorn is never disturbed for fear of the incumbant Fae taking their revenge.

If you have ever been travelling in Ireland and Scotland and have viewed a lone tree, in a field or on a roundabout, or in the middle of a bypass and thought to yourself, ‘I wonder how that got to be there.’ Then it is possible that what you are looking at is a Faerie Hawthorn Tree.

The mythology around these trees is well known to the older generations, and is being lost as time goes on, however, the legends come back to the fore when roadways, buildings and land purchases are being made and one is found to be somewhere in the picture. The power of the apocryphal stories involving the repurcussions of uprooting these trees is impressive.

The sturdy steadfast Oak. The magical choice of Druid lore and mistletoe. The Seasonal Sentinel of Ancestral knowledge and more. A tree whose age is measured in epochs, whose roots are the anchors of time.

The Mountain Ash AKA the Rowan Tree, a Spiritual Guardian and tool of the Druids, (they did a lot with Trees and have a whole calendar based around them). It’s a resilient little tree and the berries feed the birds long into the late Autumn, those Druids used those berries and the bark to dye ritual clothing black for lunar ceremonies. It’s known in Scotland as a protector against enchantment and Witchcraft. It has mythologies globally. For such an unasuming tree it has a massive place in Cultural history across the World.

The Eucalyptus, the comeback kid, from raging fires this tree returns Phoenix like from the ashes.

There are so many, so many that I could write a book about the relative merits and stories of them all.

Which wood I choose?

In my garden I have Acers, Japanese Maples in pots. One day it is my wish that I have a garden of my own in which they can grow. A peaceful medatative space. I have a deep connection with these trees since I have watched them grow and helped to nurture them along.

That is one thing.

My way of thinking is that when we remember what the Tree is, what they do, and how they are the lungs of the Earth, then we might be more respectful of them. We might be even more respectful when we can think of ourselves as Trees. Connected, communal, beautiful, healing and having a World wide connective root system, so each knows what is happening to another from anywhere in the World. The hosts of Dryads and Elemental beings. The source of the homes we build, the fuel we might use to heat those homes, the fuel on which we might cook the food we eat. They even feed our animals too. They give us shade in the Summertime and protect us from wind and so much more. They are hospitable friends who we have taken for granted for so long.

There is a song by KailashKokopelli , ‘I Am A Walking Tree https://youtu.be/MQwG1vfM4lw and so I am already a Tree – a walking tree.

Shamanically the Tree represents the 3 Worlds, Upper, Middle, and Lower Worlds. These Worlds that we can connect to.

Let’s be Walking Trees together.

The Salve of Solitude

Solitude is a state of mind and being for me.

I can be in a space with anything from one other to 500 or more and still be in a state of solitude. I believe that we are in that state naturally. It is a sense of Self, not of being alone or overlooked. That is not solitude that is loneliness – as I see it.

The mind is a Universe of solitude. For some it becomes filled with fast moving thoughts and ideas, inspirational blasts of energy spark off, firework like, and they find it nigh on impossible to close the door on those intrusions.

Yes, the mind is our Universe, our very own.

We can travel light years in the time it takes to have the notion. Somewhere on the other side of the Universe, the mirror of that reflects the very same notion.

We have such power, such a wealth of Resource and yet we actively, voluntarily chain ourselves to dogma. Dogma that is not even our own, but handed down in whispers each keeper adding or subtracting from the original so there is nought but the skeleton of the message left for us to make some kind of sense.

Therefore I travel within my Universe. I will look for and sometimes find another Universe that is at one with my own, not the same, similar in it’s make up.

I suspect that there have been many who have discovered the solitude of the mind lately. It has been recorded that this cessation of constant chatter, for some has caused distress. They have forgotten to remember the natural state of solitude in the womb, even when there are multiples, each one is its own Being. Each one nourished by one umbilical cord to the Source.

Is it that which we seek so ardently? Are we always seeking that one Source? The solitude, peace and comfort, the fertile dark of the womb, do we look at Space and wonder how we connect to Source without a physical umbilical cord? Is that why people feel disconnected and lost now?

Source has always been manifested in the physical, but has all ways been metaphysical. The transferance of our Universal minds to a gadget, a search engine, has physicalised the miracle of the mind’s ability to seek out information and store it. There is now and has been for some time; outwardly focussed validation of Self, of identity. Solitude has not been sought for many as they see it as a vacuum. Perhaps a desert of being with just themselves. It makes no sense really to be afraid of oneself, and yet we are many of us, strangers to ourselves.

I go inside for solitude, and in that state I perceive and understand many wonderful things. I meditate on these and when I feel that I can take the hustle and bustle and noise of the other’s chaos of having to be seen to be popular and right and frenzied, then I will bring myself back to the party, oft times to hear someone say to me, ‘Cheer up, it might never happen.’ a vapid platitude to which I have been known to answer, ‘It just did’.

A Dream That Became…

The Potala Palace, Lhasa, Tibet.

When I was about 5 years old, something happened that has had a lasting effect on me.

I was awakened by an unfamiliar voice. It was a gentle voice. It did not however, belong in my house.

I was not afraid, more curious. I have always been just that; curious, and as Alice would say this was indeed, ‘curiouser and curiouser.

I lay, listening for movement, any indication of another person in the room or next door in my Parent’s room.

All was quiet.

I whispered, ‘Mum’ and waited. She had bat like hearing and I can tell you it was impressive; what that woman could hear when we didn’t particularly want it heard, and with only one ear! The other, well she burned that ear drum out with peroxide when she tried to dye her hair as a teenager. This night however, this night she must have been sleeping with her ‘good ear’ on the pillow, and Dad was snoring. I was alone with the disembodied voice.

As I believe most children of this age do when confronted with situations that are not entirely ‘usual’ and there are no Parental guides; I looked for instances where I knew there would be a ‘how to react’ and I didn’t have one really, so I did what I have done since in these situations. I decided to ‘wing it’!

I sat up in bed, in the dark and I waited. The voice hadn’t seemed at all menacing, it actually sounded like someone does when they are trying to stir one from sleep in the morning. He’d said my name three times in increasing volume and intensity. There was no shouting, just an increase in the volume and that kind of importance factor. The ‘you really have to wake up now’, tone.

As I waited and my eyes adjusted to the dark; it never occurred to me to turn on the bedside lamp, it seemed like it wasn’t really so dark at all. In fact it was quite light really. Then a tiny speck of bright light pierced into my awareness. There at the end of my bed a couple of feet off the floor, something was happening.

The bright thing looked like a tiny square tile, and it was glowing golden yellow. It sort of flipped open like a book and became another tile of light, and another and another. These were not all golden yellow, these others were blues and greens, a mosaic of tiny tiles of light in my room; not just randomly there but coalescing into a form.

As the form took shape there was, I realised more happening, there was sound! No, not the voice that had awakened me, but a tonal sing-song kind of chant and a deep long bass tone. I had never heard such a sound before…then how could it be so familiar?

Being 5 or so, I didn’t dwell. After all there was this truly wonderous sight in front of me sitting, suspended, somehow at the end of my bed. He was beautiful. He was peaceful, he was entrancing. He was made up of these greeny blue, turquoise tiles and the golden yellow light. He sat legs crossed with something in his left hand and his right was held up as if in greeting. At least that is how it looked to me at the time. He was exotic-bright. He was in my room. I was woken up to see him. I wanted so much to go with him, I remember leaning more and more toward him.

And then he was gone.

From that time onwards, when I was in distress, emotionally, mentally, physically I would have a dream. It was also after the ‘visitation’ that I became fascinated with Tibet and everything about it.

I dreamt that I was with a group of people and we were travelling in Tibet. We found ourselves in the mountains and there was a monastery. We went through these fantastically painted doors and there was a long room, banked up on each side behind rows of butter lamps were monks. Their robes red and orange, their faces serene, they chanted a sing-song chant I remembered. At the end of the room there was a stone dias, upon which a lectern stood. There was a single long window just above and behind the lectern and on the lectern was a great tome of a book.

Each of us in the party took it in turn to ascend to this lectern and as we approached the book a monk appeared from one side with a circlet made of iron. This was placed on our heads as we read a page of the book. As we read the light spilled from the window behind us and illuminated the pages of the book. To me as I waited my turn it looked like they were being bathed in the light. Their faces shone in some otherworldly way.

My turn.

I was suddenly there, at the lectern. The book was the grandest, most unique thing I have ever seen. The binding was what looked like wolf skin, I had my hands there and there was that energy, it was red, from what I could see of the edges, but it was what was written on the pages… before the Monk placed the circlet on my head I could see some kind of language there, it made no sense to me. Once the circlet was on my head, everything changed. The light was so bright, it cold burned my eyes. They were not what I was using to read. There was something else going on. It was indescribable. What I remember is, this was the relating of the journey of my Soul through time. This one set of passages in this book was the story of me. There was the future there also, it was there, I read it.

They took the circlet from my head and I was no longer able to remember the information. It seems the future will unfold as it is written and not to be ‘edited’ by me. Though, I have an idea that there is a way to do it.

I dreamed that dream for years.

Then in January of 2019 I received word of a pension I ‘forgot’ I had. I also saw that my friend and Teacher, a Nepalese Shaman was taking people on pilgramage to Mt Kailash. I immediately knew I was going on that trip.

I was 60 years old. I finally got to Tibet.

I finally saw the butter lamps and heard the chanting and most amazingly I heard the bass tone of the Tibetan Horn the way I remembered it. I had heard it on the film Kundun by Martin Scorsese and recognised it. I had seen one in a shop window on Glastonbury High Street, but when I was in Tibet, so high, the atmosphere, the energy, the knowledge that a whole culture was being quietly and incrementally erased brought that visitation sharply into focus.

I have never dreamed that dream again. It stopped shortly before going to Tibet. The one thing that I brought back with me though, the one thing that made my heart and Soul sing when I found him in the deep dark belly of a shop in Kathmandu… my visitor, with his robes made of shiny turquoise tiles…

Shifting The Shape of Success

What does success mean to you?

Ikagi: a Japanese concept to show meaning of life and…

What is success to you? Is it the culmination of years of work and effort to the expense of all else? The idea of the Japanese concept of Ikagi is about understanding and making meaning of purpose; our purpose in life.

Each of those circles represents some part of our lives: That which we love, that which is our passion, that which we deem our mission, our profession and our vocation. Last but very much not least; that for which we would be paid.

The circles are all linked, and they all intersect to reveal one space where Ikagai is found. The fulcrum. The one distinct but intangible thing that glues it all together. The concept that is the meaning maker of it all.

Perhaps the Ikagai is the key to our connection with Spirit.

As it encompasses all the psychological aspects of duty, care, passion, drive and the twin ideals of vocation and mission, all that is left is the inner Divinity of a Higher Self perhaps?

In Hawaiian Shamanism the Huna idea of the Aumakua, which is also deemed an Ancestral Soul part that is carried by us through reincarnation; it knows all, it has experience and knowledge we could never have access to other than when we connect with it fully.

There are many times we put success down to intuition, just some idea that came from nowhere… know where… Think on that for a moment.

To know where to think so that the answer may be found.

We have a train of thought; therefore we have stations, platforms where knowledge can alight and board that train of thought: there are ocasions where missing the train or derailment can be variables in this metaphorical journey.

Where are the limits of your imagination?

Have you spent time thinking and mithering over ways to become successful in a venture? Did the thought ever occur that this venture was not what you really wanted; deep down you were less than invested in the idea of it?

Did that Dastardly Sabateur, the deeper ensconced Opponent, rise up and whisper in the dark ‘do you really think you will do well here?’

Let’s talk about limitations for a moment.

When you talk of what you want to do; what you want to be successful doing, do you ever hear yourself put a limit on that?

Any time there is a ‘but’ in the sentence there’s a place to start. It might be that you don’t want to be seen as arrogant? This is someone’s opinion and not a fact. Arrogance is all about the energy behind the action. The word is the descriptor of that energy. So listen to the limiting descriptors YOU say, not what others gift to you.

Limitations are ubiquitous in life. We get them from our parents and Grandparents, we then progress to our peers when we go to nursery school and onwards. There is always some ‘A’ type personality, which may even have been you yourself, saying ‘you can’t do that because…’ and whatever goes at the end of what they say, it really should be ‘because I don’t believe I could do, like, be that, so don’t you dare make me look weak by doing it instead.’

Somewhere along the line though they evolve from remembered phrases to thoughts riding on the great horses of emotion and then they become edicts we live by, that we now believe to be true.

I invite you to be Limitless this year. I invite you to seek out connection to your Aumakua or Ikagai or your Higher Self, whichever floats your boat.

Find out how limitless you can be by learning to Journey to the Drum. We are holding Shamanic Journeying taster sessions for beginners the first is on the 26th of January https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/237520659687 come and have some fun. Reconnect with your inner Child and your SuperPowers!

Shamanism Scotland

Truth, Myth & Everything Between is in the Story

Category: Shamanism