One Body of Love
There is no doubt about it, this is our time. Donald Duck (Trump) has got to ruling the world with his other cartoon characters. They are the right people for this time, “Trust the Universe” is a wonderfully applicable phrase. If we are sitting on the fence awaiting our time to act this is it, because we are also the right people at the right time. In the natural law spelt out by the “I CHING or Book of Changes” it is clear that when a situation becomes extreme to the final point it has to flip over and become the opposite; as in winter which becomes so intensely winter that it has to turn towards summer, in TCM terms Yin becomes so Yin it has to change, so it flips over to become Yang.
Sacred Drumming has come to all of us as a gift from the great mystery through Grandfather Wallace Black Elk - if this is our time lets figure out how we can peacefully use the power of the drum to call upon these changes to happen, like a coin spinning in the air and flipping from tails to heads. Every Sunday evening we are drum healing as a group, every day we are including the drum in our meditations, using the drum to call upon the visible and invisible powers available to us. If we get off the fence, find our power and purpose as a team and family we will become one body. One body of love.
(The following is from Ranata Ash Facebook page)
If you want to support the fight of the Lakota people then please contact me so we can brainstorm for ideas on how we can help.
I admire their courage and determination to stand up for the basic rights of people to have clean water and a place to live undisturbed from laws that in this case go directly against the rights granted to the indigenous nations by the first amendment of the American constitution.
This is the time to stop sitting on the fence waiting for others to take up the lead. We are all leaders when it comes to upholding basic human rights and preserving a world worth living in for our children and children's children.
Will it take courage? Absolutely..
Will we have to make sacrifices? Yes...
Will it be worth your while? This is the question you will have to answer for yourself.
We can either be for freedom or we can continue handing over control to the fat cats who want to have it all for themselves without regard for the remaining 90% of humanity. And without regard for a beautiful planet that is being exploited, abused and disrespected at an unprecedented rate.
This is an excerpt from Chief Seattle's Speech of 1854:
"The fathers' graves and the children's birthright are forgotten by the white man,
who treats his mother, the earth and his brother the sky
as things to be bought, plundered and sold,
like sheep, bread or bright beads.
In this way the dogs of appetite will devour the rich earth
and leave only a desert."
It seems not much has changed since then - indeed it might have gotten far worse. And we - as a collective - are allowing it to happen.
WE NEED TO WAKE UP!
Finding an authentic way of connecting to our ancestors is an essential part of a healers path.
So much of our exploration, illness, habit patterns, addictions, and in fact all of our human characteristics are based upon our connection with our ancestors. In modern scientific terms we call it hereditary or genetic makeup. Right through from ancient times this understanding of our connection with those who have gone before us has been present in Shamanic medicine. It is drum that can take us there.
As a student in London I was walking down Kensington High Street, out side a book shop was a stack of books going cheap, new bright and shining to my eyes, the cover was yellow, orange and red. Lame Deer Sioux Medicine Man by John Fire Lame Deer and Richard Erdoes, I picked one copy up giving the shop keeper three pounds. What a book, I have read it over eight times and each reading gives me more. One particular theme travels through this book which I want to copy out. “I am no wino but I am no saint either. A medicine man should not be a saint. He should experience and feel all the ups and downs, the despair and joy, the magic and the reality, the courage and the fear of his people. He should be able to sink as low as a bug, or soar as high as an eagle. Unless he can experience both, he is no good as medicine man…..Sinning makes the world go round. You can’t be so stuck up, so inhuman that you want to be pure, your soul wrapped up in a plastic bag, all the time. You have to be God and the devil, both of them. Being a good medicine man means being right in the middle of the turmoil, not shielding yourself from it. It means experiencing life in all its phases.” Great, this means it is OK me being me and you being you. Growing through our shadow land with a sense of wonder and adventure. This planet, this world we live in is a place of transformation and evolution and we only get stuck when we hold onto fear, which paralyses us like a rabbit being confronted by a weasel.
