Tag Archives: healing

Anglo-Celtic Australian identity

Culture, Decolonising, Healing, , , , , , , , ,

Blog by Lukas

One of the hardest things about being an Anglo-Celtic Australian is not having a culture that gives deep meaning, context, and guidance to the struggles of my life. The stories of Anglo-Celtic Australian resilience I was fed as child just don’t do the job.

I acknowledge the grit, courage and determination of the first settlers and the diggers, but it all seems built on a foundation of lies, denial and disassociation, the best examples being Terra Nullius, the dehumanising British class system, the occupation of Ireland, and the power hoarding structure of the Church.

Subjugation and shame lie at the heart of so much of what makes us who we are as a collective consciousness. We cling to things like our egalitarianism, but elect a Prime Minister who openly espouses ideas like “a fair go for those that have a go”. It’s bullshit. (Image from here.)

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Don’t get me wrong. I’m fond of Australia, and Australians. More than fond. For all our peccadillos, I love us. And by us I’m speaking most about me, the Anglo-Celtic Australian. My tribe, my people. My connection to a nebulous post-white Australian multicultural identity feels so often forced, and hidden behind euphemism and untruths. It has to be, because what came before it has not healed enough to make space for anything real to replace it. It’s pure aspiration, often based merely on the fleeting winds of social convention and social shaming.

I don’t want any of this to sound like I endorse being ashamed of who we are. For me this can only lead back around to denial and anger. But of course this shame is there whether we like it or not. It’s something we must heal. Perhaps it’s THE place to start our work; unconditional love and grace for all that went before, warts and all.

What is the alternative? ANZACS, the grizzled farmer, a game of beach cricket next to the barbie, or even our supposed egalitarian cosmopolitan multiculturalism? To me, they just don’t cut it. Smoking ceremonies and welcome to country? Window dressing. There’s just so much flagrant bullshit at the heart of it all. We need more truth.

Here’s a truth. I’m envious of people who identify as indigenous. I envy the power of their stories, their connection to this land, and their feeling of belonging to something real and carnal. My material and societal privilege feel like a big bag of shame that I am supposed to pretend isn’t there. I envy those who can talk about their burden openly with dignity and without ridicule.

If I’m honest, when I look around at most Australians, and within myself (I am in this as much as anyone), I see scared, subjugated and exploited children, without a solid cultural foundation, without real connection to the land. I see bullies, and the bullied. I don’t see a deep sense of purpose and meaning. I don’t see unfettered spirit in flow. I’m sorry if his hurts to read. It hurts to say.

Wrapped up in all of this for me personally is an overwhelmed, listless, elderless masculinity, and an absent relationship with unconditional feminine love as embodied by a relationship to the earth. The feminine in us all of us seemingly seeks so much to be just more masculine.

I wish I knew more about my own ancestors, and their personal stories and struggles, where they came from, and what that really meant for who they were. Why is everything that they are largely forgotten, and mostly not talked about in my family? Why is the richness of their cultural heritage and diversity reduced to “whiteness”? How can I possibly heal from wounds my kin have picked up on their journey, like their pain of leaving tribal indigenous land, if I don’t know anything about them?

It seems to me that one of the greatest injustices in the modern world is the labelling of only some people as “indigenous”. Different people are indigenous to different places, but we are all from somewhere, originally. And building from that, everyone needs the opportunity to becomes indigenous to the place that nourishes and shelters them, physically and spiritually. (Image from here.)

INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIA[2]

But we’re here now. We have to be indigenous HERE if we’re going to thrive on any kind of deep level. Fortunately, from what I have seen, the original indigenous Australians have nothing but grace and generosity for us Anglo-Celtic Aussies if we’d but commit to truth, and real healing. And that MUST start inside.

I don’t know why I ought to be, and I know reasons why I ought not to be, but I am an Anglo-Celtic Aussie, and I am choosing to be proud of that. I commit to truth and healing. I commit to grounding myself here on this land. I commit to creating for my future ancestors a rich healthy culture that I never had.

Walking the talk of a commitment to creating a healthy culture, Lukas had an opinion piece published today on gambling addiction.

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Power, Force & Corruption

Healing, Spiritual Skills, Values, , , , , , , , , ,

Blog by Valerie

Building on some previous posts about power objects and healing unjust power dynamics, I realised it would be wise to define power and related terms. Energy is defined in physics as the ability to do work, and spiritually I have been taught that work is worship. The ways we work/worship result in beautifully diverse e-motion (energy in motion) reflecting our culture, values, and worldviews. Power is the strength of our work over time. We can use a lot of strength to express a lot of power in an instant by screaming, or we can repeatedly use a little strength and practice our singing for a few years to build a powerful voice.

yallforceWhen energies interact, we get a force, which is a relationship or co-creation. When we think about forces of nature, like a tornado, we can feel awestruck by the immense power of energy the elements of air (wind) and water can co-create. The Force in Star Wars aligns with good/evil, right/wrong binary thinking, so I find it helpful to consider force on a spectrum:

Trust/Acceptance ←——→ Conflict/Struggle ←——→ Traumatic Aversion/Repulsion

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Forces can change direction depending on emotions expressed. For example, your dog ripped the head off your child’s baby doll. You feel angry (TraumaticAversion/Repulsion), give your dog an annoyed look, and yell, “NO! Bad boy!” Rover looks upset, lowers his head and seemingly expresses remorse (Conflict/Struggle). You sigh, pat him, and take the baby doll head from him to see if you can repair the doll (Trust/Acceptance). From an Earth Ethos perspective, forces that place us in traumatic aversion/repulsion are opportunities to experience profound death/rebirth energy, which often results in a process of struggling to let go and experiencing internal and/or external conflicts, and resolves when we are able to sit in trust and acceptance.

In the example above, if we had come home and seen the dog and laughed, we would have started with emotions of acceptance and trust and had a much easier time. Our initial response and our power to resolve a trauma or conflict into acceptance defines our character. We’re probably all familiar with the famous Lord Acton quote about all power corrupting and absolute power corrupting absolutely; I don’t find that to be true. Some of the quotes below I find to be more accurate. As I see things, we are humans, we are not God/Spirit/Creator/The Force. We can suffer from a psycho-spritual virus that deludes us into believing that we are alimghty Gods/Creators instead of humble human co-creators. This is when abuses of power occur, when we try to live above, or be stronger than, something or someone else.

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I have witnessed moments in which multiple organsiational leaders become corrupt, when the power flowing through their beings overwhelms their strength of character and their moral compasses fail. In that corrupt space we put ourselves above social agreements and laws of nature. I see this as a lack of grounding with deep-rooted judgments and traumas surfacing that are seeking healing. I feel that it brings shame to us all when corrupted people remain in leadership roles while lost in Traumatic Aversion/Repulsion forces. This seems to happen less in social systems with simpler or no hierarchies, and affecting a limited number of people and resources. When I consider the strength of character necessary for someone to wield the power available in certain roles such as being CEO of Amazon or President of the US, I think we are incredibly foolish and insanely ambitious to imagine that one human can embody that much power while carrying values such as grace and humility. To me, indigenous structures of governance with layers of leadership councils who unanimously share decision-making reflect much more wisdom about the nature of power than individual kings, emperors, presidents or CEOs.

Our collective delusions about human’s place in nature has resulted in the social system of capitalism we know is very destructive (well described in this article). At the root of these individual and collective beliefs and behaviours I see existential judgments and wounds that can be healed. We can re-member our connections and acknowledge God/Creator/The Universe/The Force/Nature/ Energies much bigger than us, experience humility and awe, and become more grounded to allow deep healing. Magic is possible:

In that real place the knowledge and the power comes from the ancestors to heal bones through touch within a few minutes, to heal the environment, to travel to the stars. If we are not in this reality, we are not in our indigenous mind.–Apela Colorado

Exercise: Contemplate these quotes about magic and nature and how they apply to your life. Where in your life can you enter into a state of acceptance, or ease towards such a state?

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Deep Grounding/Earthing

Healing, Indigenous Science, Spiritual Skills, , , , , , , ,

Blog by Valerie

I’ve written about ways to integrate earthing/grounding into everyday life, but what’s come up recently is how to take that to a deeper level through ritual or ceremony. If you are an immigrant, or your ancestors were within the last 7 generations (depending how you define a generation), then your connection with land is energetically split between the land where you live, the land(s) of your blood ancestry, and land(s) where you have lived or otherwise feel a strong connection with. Indigenous people who are deeply connected with specific lands and places have a strength and purity of connection with the land that is quite powerful. As one Anglo-Australian writer put it:

In my own experiences with original Australians who are deeply connected to country, I have felt that they are so grounded it’s almost as if the land itself is listening to you, through them.

For those of us who do not have such a depth of connection with land where we live, we can still drop into spaces of earth energy flowing through us when we’re deeply grounded wherever we are. This work heals the places we live now, as well as places we’re connected with through our ancestry. Given all the wars and violence on land in Europe, for example, we can help heal that land from America or Australia while not asking it to physically support us.

There are many rituals and ceremonies to deepen our relationship with the Earth. Here are a few that I have found to be powerful tools:

  • Create an outdoor altar and leave offerings of gratitude to the Earth, a tree, stream, rock, landform, tree grove, tree stump–the options are endless.
    • You can symbolically bury power objects to represent something you wish to heal or ground an energy in your life. You can also hang prayers on ribbons or flags or with chimes or bells so the wind spreads your prayers far and wide. Buddhist prayer trees use wind in this way. buddhistprayertree
    • Note: A maypole is an outdoor altar, and so is an outdoor Christmas tree, but once you cut or pot it and bring it inside, you are honouring a tree for giving you its life, which is different to you being generous and honouring the Earth. (Images are from uncredited images on pinterest, and from here.) 
  •  Without creating an altar, you can build a relationship with a place, tree, rock, etc.
    • Pick a place you regularly visit and start to build a relationship. Like building a relationship with a person, this requires giving of yourself and takes time.
    • For example, there is a grove of trees in a park near my home that I felt drawn to a couple months ago. Once a week or so, I go say hi. I either literally say hello to each tree, nod and direct my gaze at each one in turn, or stand at each tree and put my hand on the trunk and take a breath. I stay there for a while and meditate to see what messages and insights they want to share with me, and I psychically share some messages or prayers with them. I also leave offerings, such as flowers or crystals at their base or tucked into their bark, or I do a dance or sing a song, or I leave something of myself that is useful such as my urine or or spit, which brings me to the next example.
  • Share of your body with the Earth, a tree, plant, rock, etc.
    • Sharing may involve simply dancing barefoot) outdoors. Your feet drumming into the Earth and your body performing for a place is a beautiful way to do a ritual or ceremony to deepen your connection with a place. You can try deep breathing to start, let go, and see what movements the Earth inspires your feet to do. You can add in chanting or drumming, but I suggest starting simple so you don’t get lost in your head and stick with a state of flow.
    • Your “waste” is literally fertiliser to many earthly beings. Your urine creates nitrogen-rich soil. Giving your spit may sound strange but with intention, it is a way to physically leave a piece of yourself, and can feel like a better energetic exchange if you are, for example, taking a piece of bark or leaves from a plant or tree.
    • bloodroseI have heard of many magick menstrual rituals, but I prefer to honour the Earth by giving my blood to a flowering plant. This is a very powerful ritual women can do to ground menstrual energy as well as connect with the Earth. (Sorry, guys!) I have also heard of some fertility rituals where men ground their semen and symbolically plant their seeds in the Earth, but I have not tried this myself for obvious reasons! (Image from here.)
  • Do a burial ceremony in the Earth.
    • If you want to do something by yourself, or feel like trying a less intense ceremony, do a lower body burial ceremony.
      • First, choose a place for the ceremony, and ask the land if it’s okay to plant yourself there.
      • If it feels okay, then dig a hole big enough to plant your feet, or your feet and lower legs, into the Earth. Make sure you are barefoot so you feel what it is like to be grounded in that way, and pick a spot where you feel comfortable standing for a while like a tree or plant in the soil.
      • Try keeping your eyes open and closed, or do the ceremony at sunrise or sunset so you can experience the difference in natural light.
      • Do the ceremony somewhere with a view in the wilderness, and somewhere more urban like in your backyard, or in wet and sandy soil, and see how you feel being planted in different environments.
        • Last year, I received dream visions and moved to facilitate this ceremony at a sacred site whose traditional custodians welcome non-Aboriginal people to access the place respectfully, and it felt like ceremony to welcome my husband back home to Australia.
    • If you are called to do some deep body and Earth healing, an incredibly powerful ceremony is a full body burial. This is a death/rebirth ceremony that is timed with the cycle of the moon and ideally takes place at night. For this ceremony, you do need someone to support you. It is physically not possible nor safe to do alone. (Read this for one man’s experience.)burial.jpg
      • First, you and your support person/facilitator choose a place for the ceremony, leave offerings, and ask the land to support your healing. You may get a vision of a place to do the ceremony, or you may do it somewhere practical like a backyard.
      • Once you commit to the ceremony, you and your support person will start to receive guidance around timing and how to prepare yourself and the land. (Image from here.)
      • The day before or the day of the ceremony, you will dig a hole that is almost as big as a grave/cradle for your whole body, piling the dirt to one side.
      • When it is time for the ceremony, you will want to wear clothes that you don’t mind getting dirty and are a bit tight, unless you are okay with insects crawling underneath them! I have done this once wrapped in a blanket lying in the grave/cradle with dirt over me, and I have done it once just in clothes with dirt over me. I prefer the latter, because it feels more intimate.
      • Your support person will sit behind you so you do not see them, but they are able to watch you and hold space, and get you a drink of water, a hat or tissue if you need something like that. There may initially be prayers or music played for you, but most or all of the ceremony will be silent so you can go deep within yourself.
        • The first time I did this ceremony in the U.S., it was a very cold winter night with a waning moon (so emotions could be released/a death ceremony). Initially, I got images of my ancestors from Germany who had been fighting in World Wars, how many people they saw die, and how many of them died on the land. It was painful, and I cried. I then got images of my Jewish ancestors fleeing for their lives while their houses were being burned. It was scary, and my body shook and felt cold. Finally, I got images of Native Americans being slaughtered on the land where I was doing the ceremony. It was sad. My heart was heavy, and I sent them prayers. I lay underground for hours until my whole body was cold and numb and it felt like I was done. It was so deeply healing —  I had no idea I was carrying so much in my body even after years of doing other intense healing ceremonies!

Exercise: Inspired by this post, do something new to deepen your relationship with the Earth and the places around you!

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Healing & Cultural Appropriation

Culture, Healing, Relationships, Spiritual Skills, Values, , , , , , , , ,

Blog by Valerie

In the previous post I wrote about how complex it is to honour multiple cultural identities, ground ourselves where we are now and honour the ancestors of the land, forgive our ancestors’ mistakes and decolonise our everyday lives. This post is a step further, because cultural appropriation is different in the context of spiritual healing. I have learned through experience what cultural appropriation in a healing context is, and the destructiveness it brings. I have also gained valuable insight, lessons, and tools when some cultural appropriation was being done that added a layer of destruction to the person’s offering. We are human, and our healing work is inherently imperfect. (Image from here.)

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In my experience, once we are out of crisis, healing within a market economy context is limited. There are different power dynamics, feelings and experience when meeting in a therapist’s office for 50 minutes for $100, and when with meeting a caring community member in a home, or while walking and talking with a friend in a park. As I wrote in a previous post, please RUN AWAY FROM people who say they are fully healed or ascended masters or anything like that unless you want to join a cult, because delusions of grandeur and beliefs around exceptionalism and/or superiority are not conducive to healing. Also from a previous post, keep in mind that:

“A common mistake when examining myths of other cultures is to interpret them with symbols and values of our own culture” (Gleiser, 2012). Common values of the dominant Western cosmology such as competition, hierarchy, individualism, and the primacy of the nuclear family greatly limit our ability to embody indigenous wisdom (Thibodeau & Nixon, 2013). When this happens, ceremonies can “become empty of their power” (Rael, 1998). 

Consider the difference between participating in a plant medicine ceremony in the jungles of Peru with a shaman who spent decades apprenticing with a teacher and working with plants and spirits of the jungle deeply connected with the land and its ancestors, versus participating in a plant medicine ceremony in an apartment in a Western city facilitated by someone who got the medicine from such a shaman and perhaps studied with the shaman for a short period of time.

I don’t mean to say we should never participate in a ceremony in an apartment with a medicine from a foreign culture and land. But if we do, let’s do it with awareness and help it be as safe as possible. I ask for my own guidance in a form that resonates with me (either prayer or meditation usually). I acknowledge the limitations of the healing work I am considering participating in and ask if it is right for me. If I get signs and insight to move forward, then I ask what I need to do so that it is in balance. For example, when I offered an ancestral trauma healing workshop earlier this year on land with which I have limited cultural connection, I received guidance to donate participants’ gift economy offerings to an Aboriginal advocacy organisation. I also verbally thanked the ancestors of the land during the workshop for supporting our lives and the healing work.

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I will share the following story to offer a contrast of an experience of cultural appropriation with a man who called himself a shaman and worked with indigenous people in the Amazon, Mexico, and the Southwestern U.S. He quit his day job to do healing work full time and did so within a gift economy and invited me to participate in a group healing ceremony supported by the tribe in the Amazon. He gave us all a protocol of how to prepare for for three weeks, which I followed. Two days before the ceremony, he said he had new information and changed some things, which I found strange. My husband said he had a bad feeling, but I still trusted the man. I got a sign there was danger ahead, and I felt shaken but kept going. The ceremony changed again the night it took place. At one point, the so-called shaman stood over me menacingly while I was laying on the floor, yelled at me and called me names. I told him I found the behaviour abusive, but I never heard from him again and did not see him after that. When I wrote the couple running a school for shamans in the Southwestern U.S. who recommended him on their website, they said that he had lost his mind, that he was threatening them and they were scared of him, and that putting his information on their website was not an endorsement. I later realised that the tribe was split in their support for his doing that ceremony within their lineage, with their healing tools, away from their land and culture, and that my own cultural heritage was so filled with conflict that I was able to provide the group with a reflection of this problem he was denying. What a messy, valuable lesson he gave me. Here are some less extreme examples of cultural appropriation I have experienced:

  • People charging money for community healing ceremonies traditionally offered within a gift economy or by donation, and/or facilitating ceremonies without integrity:
    • e.g. for a sweat lodge: charging a fixed fee, failing to configure the fire and lodge correctly, failing to honour the land and lineage ancestors, failing to clear the space and clean up the lodge before doing another ceremony
    • e.g. calling oneself a spiritual counsellor in a modern city and charging $100/hour without any formal counselling training or supervision from another counsellor
  • People of mixed cultural heritage identifying with only one ancestral blood lineage,  denying their own complex wholeness, then projecting that dissociation onto others whom they are supposedly offering healing to:
    • e.g. studying curanderoismo healing with someone from rural Mexico and identifying as an indigenous Aztec healer when the person did not know one of their birth parents, grew up in one U.S. state, and lived in another U.S. state.
    • e.g. identifying only as an oppressed African-American, indigenous or Jewish person without acknowledging other blood lineages and cultural heritages

heartheal.jpegI have a lot of compassion for the messiness of embodying Earth Ethos in modern multicultural cities. This is my life! And it is hard, messy work. It’s important to give ourselves and each other grace and trust that we all do our best. For a beautiful story from someone of mixed cultural heritage about honouring all of her complex heritage, read this by Lyla June. (Image from here.)

Since I have learned much of this stuff the hard way, I offer you the following suggestions of what to consider when seeking spiritual healing:

  • Intention & Identity
    • How do YOU see your role and identity in healing work done within the context of a human relationship? Are you looking for practical tools? Emotional support? Plant medicine? Ceremonial healing? A spiritual elder? Escapism? Adventure? Gratification of curiousity about an ‘other’ culture?
    • How does the other person see their role? Do they call themselves a healer or shaman? Do they say they are healing you? Channeling healing energy? Facilitating healing? Holding space? Offering medicine? Helping you connect with your inner higher self? How does the other person identify themself?
  • Cosmology & Culture
    • What cosmology/cosmologies do you embody? What perspectives and beliefs do you want to learn more about and bring into your life? To let go of? How do you relate safely to people with different cosmologies and/or cultures?
    • Is the other person’s cosmology related to (a) specific culture(s) or lineage(s)? How do you relate to the other person’s cosmology? What ancestry does the person have?
  • Place & Form
    • What physical place supports your healing (e.g. a sweat lodge, therapist’s office, church pew, a home, etc.)? Is the place relevant to the culture or lineage on which the work is based, or has it been adapted to your context in some way? What form supports your healing (e.g. talking and listening, music, dance, energy work, laying of hands, artistic expression, etc.)?
    • Where is the person willing to meet with you, and what forms of support are available? How does the person honour multiculturalism, modern places and forms? What cultural and place-based relationships does the person bring? If the person is working within a specific cultural context, how has the person received those teachings?

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Colonial Disconnection

Decolonising, Healing, Indigenous Science, , , , , ,

Blog by Lukas

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One of the many MANY things about my life and worldview that has changed since I’ve known my wife Cloud Clearer has been seeing things more clearly from an indigenous perspective. And in this I don’t mean indigenous Australians. A lifetime of my best effort at open hearted learning would be nowhere near enough to truly know their suffering. And I certainly don’t mean nativism, which so often takes the form of destructive, oppressive tribal occupation.

I’m talking about indigenous in the form of a deep, dare I say spiritual, connection to place. A felt and emergent sense of belonging in which one’s existence is symbiotic with, dependent on, and unshakeably connected to the Earth. A oneness that means all that happens to earth, happens to a person, and what happens to a person is also happening to the Earth. This is opposed an egoic mind, floating in desperation and disconnectedness on top of the earth, plotting the ways in which all other things around it can be exploited for its survival, as though one were necessary for the other. An indigenous worldview, or Earth Ethos, understands that the exploitation of the land is ultimately a self-destructive act.

I spent the day driving around Western Sydney today, and it hit me so hard how disconnected, and therefore desperate, we are. Billboards, trucking supply chains, retail superstores, and development. Everything a commodity. And I don’t mean to pick on the West. The older areas of our colonial civilisation are just pretty scars, made so long ago it’s easy to see them as somehow natural, as though European energy has somehow always been here. And herein lies one of many white Australian delusions: It is not that there isn’t something wrong in a felt sense about the tens of thousands of newcomers setting up mini colonies in our big cities. I believe there is. I feel it. But the delusion is that we were, or indeed are, any different. Just ask any indigenous person.

(Images are the first two found for the google search ‘colonialism’, from here and here.)

Exercise: What is one way you can support indigenous well-being? Consider learning which indigenous people have lived where you now call home and how to honour them, such as donating to a non-profit like this, or a local one like this in Australia. Consider integrating Earth Ethos ceremony into your everyday life to feel more deeply what is happening in your body and with Mother Earth. You might try beginning and ending each day with intention through prayer, mindful movement, breath-work, sound, or spiritual reading.

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Cultural Shadows & Reflections

Culture, Decolonising, Healing, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Blog by Valerie

Our lives are an endless series of resolving tensions, or reconciling polarities. We navigate this process based on stories, beliefs, and spiritual tools we’ve learned, which differ by culture. Culture arises from the Earth below, and for the majority of us who come from immigrant, slave, refugee, or forced migration lineages, our sense of culture has been disconnected from land(s) of origin. This creates cultural shadows and reflections, which are different things.

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Think about a reflection from a lake: if the surface of the water is clear and still, the reflection maintains its form and colour, but size may be distorted by angle of perspective, uneven water surface, if we are bigger than the body of water reflecting us is able to show., and by warmth of the water – just look at the difference of the reflection of the trees from water and ice.

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Now think about a shadow: it distorts form, colour, and size. So it is a rather messy reflection of blocked light. The way shadows work, the closer we are to the source of the light, the larger the shadow appears. Placement and perspective have a huge influence on us, from how we see ourselves to how we survive in different environments.

Survival is primitive, root chakra, grounded energy. All Earth environments have a unique nature, which is why I agree with the perspective that Australia always was and always will be Aboriginal land. This is nature; we all know that Earth environments and human cultures are diverse. We would aboriginalland.jpegnever expect someone from Northern Europe to have the same culture as someone from Australia. But when a bunch of people with Northern European ancestry move here (many unwillingly), what does that mean for the culture of the people and place now living on land we call Australia?

Most of us today are experiencing such a cultural transition. We are reconciling polarities of disorientation and loss as we let go of what does not serve us anymore, and trying to ground ourselves where we are. The lived experiences of our ancestors, the myths and teaching stories our elders have passed down, and collective wisdom that has allowed our lineages and tribes to survive has reached limits. Coming from cultures that are disconnected from the Earth where we live now, unpack a lot of shadows. Some of us fret about sustainability yet cling to old cultural stories and ways of being, while others seek to adapt and grow by learning through diversity, taking risks and trying new things. We seek new cultural forms to ensure the survival of our lineages and tribes, which requires sacrifice and risk. (Image from here.)

shadowbookWe literally become bridges between the land and cultures of our ancestors and a new land and culture. Our wild and crazy human journeys allow landforms like mountains and lakes, and trees that have been grounded in one place for centuries to travel vicariously through our reflections and learn what we’ve seen and experienced. What rich gifts we bring when we allow ourselves ground in a new environment. (Image from here.)

What drives us onward through the pain? What makes us want to endure the challenges of reconciling such vast polarities of energies in order to survive? It’s an innate, profound joy and gratitude that we are alive and embodied. And if we are open and humble enough, we can learn a lot about how to survive in our current environments from indigenous elders in person and in spirit. See if you can allow the Aboriginal elder’s joy in the video below to spark a memory of never feeling lonely because you are so connected with your environment and nourished by Mother Earth. 

If we remain shut down, overwhelmed, and closed to connecting with our new environments, we miss opportunities to ground polarities and transform ourselves, and instead become stories of fallen civilisations or evolutionary dead ends.

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Shaman’s Illness

Healing, Indigenous Science, Spiritual Skills, , , , , , , , ,

Blog by Valerie

Many indigenous cultures have a concept of a “shaman’s illness,” which is simultaneously a traumatic ego-death and initiation in the form of a spiritual crisis. Modern people experiencing shaman’s illness may have multiple traumatic (often near-death) experiences, which can be physical, mental, and/or psychological, as well as spiritual. Such experiences create opportunities for a person to see the world in a new way. A shaman’s illness brings intense experiences that destroys life as a person knows it and shatters previous identities and ways of being that the person was attached to. The gifts of such a brutal illness are an awakening of a huge amount of energy that can be redirected from being destructive or dissociated into being healing and empowering. As a person heals and allows a new identity to be created, the person rises like a phoenix from ashes of a fire and is reborn into carrying a wound as a medicine for others (Pendleton, 2014).

phoenix-rising-from-the-ashes.jpgI have witnessed many people experiencing a shaman’s illness. When people reject or resist it, they usually end up dissociating the destructive energy and becoming very challenging externalising personalities (like narcissists or sociopaths), or internalising the destructive energy and creating diseases such as quickly metastasising cancers. I have witnessed multiple people do both of these things. When people accept the calling of the illness, there are different speeds of doing so, which impacts the way the illness plays out in a person’s life. I have seen some people slowly accept that they are experiencing shaman’s illness over many years and bit by bit change their paths so that over time more aspects of their lives are working. Some (including myself) dive directly into the fire and allow our lives to become incredibly chaotic as our identities are re-forged and often become overwhelmed at the amount of emotion that needs to be processed and the whirlwind pace of life changes that occur. (Image from here.)

Seeing the world in ways that are outside one’s mainstream culture and being sensitive to feelings and experiences that others are blocking or numb to is a big responsibility and often triggers feelings of rejection, social/cultural alienation, doubt, confusion, fear, shame, deep grief, and anger. Learning to pace oneself is part of the journey, but if you are resisting the illness, your life will keep getting harder. What I see often is that the illness brings up such intense feelings of loss of control that people find it hard to “let go and let God” and are unwilling to allow their lives to flow into mess and chaos required for healing. I have received messages a few times that I will be kicked off the planet if I did not take make certain choices, and I have seen others similarly forced to face primal survival fears. The following are keys I’ve found to accepting a shaman’s illness:

  1. Faith in a guiding force/God/divine intelligence/Higher Power bigger than us;
  2. Trust that whatever comes into our lives is meant to help us;
  3. Willingness to experience death;
  4. Following signs, synchronicities, and symbols in dreams and everyday life; and
  5. Finding tools to ground intense energies and forms to express dark emotions.

angrylovingpeople.jpgIt is helpful, but not necessary, to seek support from someone who has been through similar things. Such people can give you compassion and empathy, guiding wisdom, and tools to process wounds and express energy. But it’s vitally important not to delude yourself that any human is a fully healed Jedi-master, all-knowing figure. If someone says they are, then RUN AWAY FROM THEM, because that person is dangerous and delusional and is on a path of becoming a cult leader or something else you don’t want to be involved with. It is important to think of illness and healing as processes, not finite endpoints. When someone says they have “healed” a wound as intense as sexual abuse or parental abandonment, I am suspicious; and when someone plays power games, disrespects, or in any way puts me down, then I know that person is ill and cannot support my healing anymore. I have no tolerance for these behaviours, even when people are unaware. I either change my boundary and create space or make someone aware of their transgression, and if they then don’t own it and work through it, I’m done with the relationship. (Image below from here.)

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I do this because I have learned through my own shaman’s illness that setting fierce boundaries shows that I value my life and my energy, and that I do not need to prove my worth by battling (e.g. convincing, power playing, manipulating, etc.) anybody. Most people who justify harmful and dangerous behaviours are carrying unprocessed primal survival fears. I rarely feel afraid of dying, though. In some ways it would be easier than being here and going through all the trauma my body is still carrying. Working with my shaman’s illness so that I become a medicine person instead of sick or dissociated is a journey of experiencing alchemy, of metaphorically turning dirt into gold as my darkest experiences become fertiliser for the growth of beautiful flowers in myself, others, and the environment. Mircea Eliade says a shaman is a “healed madman,” and Rumi says, “In their seeking, wisdom and madness are one and the same.” If you’re reading this, maybe like me, you can relate to these.

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Honouring Our Ancestors

Healing, Relationships, Spiritual Skills, , , , ,

Blog by Valerie

If we want to honour our ancestors, who are they? As Dakota Earth Cloud Walker explains, our human ancestors are more than our blood lineage. They also include ancestors of land/place, past/present/future versions of you, and ancestors of traditions that are important to you such as leaders of religious movements or fields of study. Non-human ancestors are abundant too, from minerals that have been here millions of years which nourish our bodies and fuel our vehicles, to plants that feed us and animals that provide us with companionship. When participating in a sweat lodge ceremony, rocks that are heated and brought into the lodge are often referred to as grandfathers and grandmothers. This reverence is a reminder that our bodies are made up of atoms that came from these other beings’ forms and that we are all alive from an animistic Earth Ethos perspective.

Genealogy Clip Art.gifA Druid blogger points out that feeling our non-human ancestral connection during this time of rapid climate change and extinction is a painful opportunity to witness loss and engage in mourning. We all know of painful events that took place on lands near our homes, and we know of ancestors who behaved in ways that don’t align with our values. I grew up on land from which the Cherokee were forcibly removed, on which African Americans worked as slaves, I have known Nazis and rapists in my blood line, and my lifestyle is reliant on resource-rich technologies that disconnect me from the Earth so that I buy most of my food from grocery stores and spend 40 hours a week in an ungrounded office. As a Wiccan blogger said, “If you show me a family that has no problems and no family history of pain, abuse, and all the people in it have been and are kindly saints – I will show you either a fool or a liar.” (Image from here.)

Given this messy reality, how do we practically honour our ancestors in their fullness and complexity?

First, we honour ourselves. An Earth Ethos perspective is to set boundaries but not to completely block energies from our lives, because what we avoid tends to grow bigger and bring in more destructive energy than if we try to turn that “shit” into fertiliser. Keep in mind that you wouldn’t be here if not for your ancestors.flowers2altar.jpgancestral altar.jpg Second, “if you don’t have an ancestor altar, you become the altar.” I spent most of my life in a lot of danger and had multiple near-death experiences. My ancestry is full of trauma, and I wanted to create space to show I was in relationship with my ancestry, rather than things happening to my body and in my everyday life. When I began an ancestral altar practice, I created one human and one non-human (tree) altar outside. Over the first few months, two human ancestral altars were completely destroyed during thunderstorms. I was so grateful that the trauma and violence had left my body! The human ancestors settled down after many offerings and ceremonies to make amends for wrongs they’d done. (Photos: the destroyed human ancestral altars from years ago)

Today I have the human ancestral altar inside, a non-human altar outside, and leave regular offerings at both. Some ancestors I honour directly; for example, last night I burned a candle to honour ancestors who offer me spiritual support, and I left a small glass of beer with gratitude for my Germanic blood lineage. Today at my non-human altar (a fern tree in the garden) I buried some jewelry. I have been doing that for some years, as I have many Jewish ancestors who were jewelers and were quite greedy and ungrounded, so giving jewelry back to the Earth is one way I make amends and heal that ancestral trauma energy. Whether you have an ancestral altar or not, our ancestors receive the intentions of our offerings. Honouring someone through dedicating a work of art or a good deed, or planting a tree on clear-cut land can honour ancestors and heal ancestral trauma. If you are interested in creating an ancestral altar, you can access guidance here.

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Peace Circles

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earthethospeacecircleBlog by Valerie

“Stories are medicine…embedded with instructions” that guide us about how to live our lives (Estés, 1997). Practices of talking circles, or peace circles, have emerged within many cultures throughout known human history, though most modern Westerners don’t understand underlying cosmological foundations of these practices, which come from indigenous cultures. The talking circle is a metaphorical life tool of the medicine wheel. Being aware about what we are doing allows metaphor to bring ceremonies like talking circles to life (Rael, 1998). It is no mystery why, in Australia for example, when people with indigenous ancestry facilitate yarning circles, a type of talking circle, it feels different than when Westerners do. I learned why while working for a decade in the field of restorative justice. When we encouraged people to put altars in the middle of their circles, I had quite an aha moment when I saw what people were using to metaphorically represent the heart centre. “A common mistake when examining myths of other cultures is to interpret them with symbols and values of our own culture” (Gleiser, 2012). Common values of the dominant Western cosmology such as competition, hierarchy, individualism, and the primacy of the nuclear family greatly limit our ability to embody indigenous wisdom (Thibodeau & Nixon, 2013). When this happens, ceremonies can “become empty of their power” (Rael, 1998).a

Consider the difference between participating in a plant medicine ceremony in the jungles of Peru with a shaman who spent decades apprenticing with a teacher and working with plants and spirits of the jungle deeply connected with the land and its ancestors, versus participating in a plant medicine ceremony in an apartment in a Western city facilitated by someone who got the medicine from such a shaman and perhaps studied with the shaman for a short period of time. (Image is a screenshot from an online gallery of Amazonian-Andean artist Juan Carlos Taminchi of ayahuasca visions.)taminchiartThe depth of relationships, and the experiences, feel quite different to participants. Similarly, instead of peace circles as a tool to help control behaviour or improve the way people speak and listen to each other as is common in westernised restorative justice practices based on a Judeo-Christian worldview, an Earth Ethos peace circle is an opportunity for a communal spiritual experience based on an indigenous cultural cosmology. Because of the intentional use of metaphor, it ought to feel different to participants (and certainly does to me) than simply sitting in a circle (or around a table where we are blocked from connecting with each other physically) and passing around a talking piece. Many indigenous peoples use oral traditions to preserve cultural wisdom. Verbal repetition and physical embodiment of teachings keeps them pure (Rael, 2015). An important aspect of any medicine wheel ceremony, including a peace circle, is purification or cleansing, opening participants’ hearts for sharing wisdom as a community. Purification is often symbolised through the use of smoke, or smudging.

ent.jpgHealing of, and prevention of, dis-ease requires ceremony. Ceremony is an important human practice connecting the visible material/physical world with the invisible, spiritual world. Life feels empty and unsatisfying when we do not do enough ceremony, and ceremonies are most powerful done regularly and intentionally in community (Rael, 1998). Disease in indigenous thinking is caused by natural and supernatural forces, where natural forces include things like cold air, germs, or impurities in food and water, and supernatural forces include things like upset social relations between people, with ancestors, or other beings such as spirits of the traditional custodians of a place (Sussman, 2004). (Image is a depiction of one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s land spirits called the Ent, a tree spirit) Western concepts of unconscious or subconscious drives are similar to indigenous concepts of such spiritual forces (Holliday, 2008). When we focus our energy on cultivating healthy invisible environments based on values such as acceptance, non-judgment, inclusivity, compassion and empathy, we help purify our own hearts and the collective unconscious, or the spiritual realm. Indigenous thinking teaches that our social reality is based on a fundamental understanding of life in which humans are interconnected with all of nature, and by participating in an Earth Ethos peace circle, we literally embody Mother Earth together by sitting in a circle with an altar at the centre honouring the interconnected web of life we are part of. If you want to join an Earth Ethos peace circle, please contact me for more information.

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Questioning Cosmology

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Blog by Valerie

Stories are great teachers. They help us give meaning to events, teach core values, and inform our understandings of social order and individual identity (Engel, 1993). We each carry stories, personal mythologies, that form our core values and beliefs, help us understand our place, and guide us on our path. The concept of empathy, of deep listening and heartfelt storytelling, is central to oral-based cultures, and even in cultures that privilege the written word, such practices are considered deeply sacred, like the Catholic Confessional, or an important part of daily life, like meeting a friend or family member for a chat/yarn. (Free use photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash)

In practice, empathic listening, and the safe sharing stories, is limited by the cosmologies of participants. When we share a story with someone, and that person is in a state of being in denial/judgment about what we are saying, we experience rejection/lack. When we receive this reflection, we tend to feel shamed. And especially as children, or because we feel fear of being exiled from our family/tribe/community, we carry this shame in our own hearts and minds, fuelling feelings of low self-worth. Rejection is a deep pain to process, a lack of feeling whole. And most of us have inherited much of this due to ancestral trauma. An Earth Ethos suggests that those of us who are involved in violent behaviours, in whatever role (victim, offender, or bystander), carry elements of shame in our very senses of identity (Thibodeau & Nixon, 2013; Sawatsky, 2009). This shame, often referred to as “sin” creates feelings of lack of worth and dissociates us from fully being present. We fear social exile, and rightly so, because without connection with other people, it is hard to live. (Image from here)

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When I did research with sex offenders, I heard a lot about the depth of social shame they felt. I heard about some men who were disturbed by sexual thoughts of children and were too terrified to seek help until they acted on it, and others who did seek professional help and were reported for abuse they had not committed. I felt an intensely painful energy in the space of social stigmatisation where so many of these people and their family members and friends, these fellow humans, live.

compromiseI encourage you to connect with your own cosmology and question rejecting/violent statements/thoughts like “He should have known better”, or “It serves her right.” Such words indicate an internalised denial/judgment and fuel shameful, painful feelings inside you, the person you are speaking/thinking about, and our collective culture. Even when we believe/think something is wrong, we can still hold that aspect of our cosmology with compassion and respect. These words are pointers to places of yourself that could be further explored, unpacked, and transformed. Dangers and fears come in many forms, including physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual. Watching an interview with someone who has killed another person, for example, may trigger emotion you are carrying and show aspects of your cosmology that could be shifted from judgment or denial/lack into compassion and empathy, and gratitude that you did not need to learn such a lesson the hard way. (Free photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash)

Exercise: Reflect on how many compromises you make in the name of “social harmony”/fear of change, and when it is important to you to go against the grain. See if you can connect with an aspect of your own humanity that is unfamiliar, like your “inner prostitute,” “inner abusive parent,” or “inner murderer”, and be with the discomfort that comes up in order to hold people in that space, and yourself, in more compassion and gentleness.

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