Tag: Native American

The Witches Spell for January 15th – Turquoise Protection Amulet

Witchy Cat Graphics & Comments

TURQUOISE PROTECTION AMULET

The ancients regarded turquoise as a powerful magickal aid to ward off misfortune, illness,
and the evil eye. You can use turquoise to make your own amulet for protection.

To begin, during the waxing Moon take a piece of blue turquoise or an item of blue
turquoise jewelry and hold it in your hand for a moment. In your mind’s eye, picture a
blue light surrounding you. Hold the stone to your heart, and breathe on it to charge it
with your power, saying:

Stone of blue, surround me with protective energy.
I am protected by your soothing blue light.

Carry your turquoise with you or wear it as often as you can.
Handle it frequently to keep the spell active.

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Elder’s Meditation of the Day – October 28

Elder’s Meditation of the Day – October 28

“Our religion seems foolish to you, but so does yours to me. The Baptists and Methodists and Presbyterians and the Catholics all have a different God. Why cannot we have one of our own?”

–Sitting Bull, HUNKPAPA LAKOTA

The Creator gave each culture a path to God. To the Indian people, he revealed that the Creator is in everything. Everything is alive with the Spirit of God. The water is alive. The trees are alive. The woods are alive. The mountains are alive. The wind is alive. The Great Spirit’s breath is in everything and that’s why it’s alive. All of nature is our church, we eat with our families in church, we go to sleep in church.

My Creator, let us leave people to worship You in the way You have taught them.

A Walk on the Wild Side: A Lifetime Finding Magick in Nature

by L. Lisa Lawrence

When I sit back and try to identify my first significant spiritual experiences, I can’t come up with just one but rather a series of experiences that share a common bond of nature and wilderness. These experiences span my entire lifetime and began when I was too young to understand them.

I was blessed to grow up on the coast. Some of my earliest memories involve running along the waterline dodging the incoming waves picking up seashells, building sand castles and watching the Pacific Ocean crash onto the rocks and cliffs sending its salty spray skyward. I remember the sun setting over the Channel Islands painting the sky orange, pink and purple. I was never as happy anywhere as I was where I could experience the sand, wind, water and blazing sun.

As a small child, barely 3 years old, my heart stopped beating as a result of respiratory arrest induced by an asthma attack while running on my beloved beach. I can’t recall any “white light,” dead relatives or even the paramedics restarting my heart with an intracardiac epinephrine injection, but I did know that my life ended and began again at the edge of the sea. From that day on, I would always be tied to the water. I was literally reborn to it.

Later, farther north on the coast, as an adolescent drawn to the beach and water, I defied my parents and climbed down a treacherous trail from cliffs to the beach below, only to be trapped in a cave by the incoming tide for several hours. I was not afraid but was at peace, knowing that the never-ending cycle of the moon and sea would let me go home when the time was right. I explored the labyrinth of caves and discovered bats, otters and sea lions that were more than willing to share their space with me and didn’t seem the least bit disturbed by my presence. Time stood still while I was in those caves. When I emerged, I was shocked to see the sun setting, and I made my ascent back up the cliff. I returned to those caves many times when I needed a place to just be — although after getting in trouble for worrying my parents, I learned to check the tide tables first.

When I got older and began to expand my geographic horizons, I discovered the foothills, forests and mountains. As a teenager, I rode the bus from my small costal town up into the foothills to work at a fancy inn’s riding stable on weekends and vacations, shoveling horse poop and guiding trail rides for a mere $15 a day, unlike my friends who were working at McDonald’s or in a fashion store in the mall. My reward for all the sore muscles, sunburn, saddle sores and blisters was being able to escape into the hills on my horse, alone. The pressures of a challenging academic program, teen angst and a dysfunctional family disappeared as my chocolate brown gelding and I ascended the steep hills and galloped across meadows with the wind blowing through our hair. Almost every evening, I watched the setting sun turn the Topa Topa Bluffs a bright pink and listened to crickets and coyotes sing a welcoming song to the twilight. I was at peace. I was at home. Only reluctantly would I come down out of the hills, walk two miles to the bus stop and take the hour long ride back down the hill to “real life.”

On the outside, I appeared quite “normal”; I was popular, excelled at sports, held elected office, did well in my classes and was involved in community theater, a church youth group and journalism. But I knew that I was different and often needed to escape to nature, which was the only place that I truly felt at peace. At that point in my life, I didn’t know anyone else that was like me, so being a typical teenager, I just did my best to fit in. I would soon discover that denying your true nature doesn’t work.

If I hadn’t already figured out on my own that I was “different,” it was brought home to me in junior high school when our Methodist Youth Fellowship youth group took a religion test. We were presented with a series of statements and were asked if we agreed or disagreed and on a scale of one to five how strongly we felt about it. Our answers resulted in a numerical score that correlated to a specific religion. Out of the 14 that took the test, 13 scored “First United Methodist,” and I scored “Unitarian.” I’m certain that “pagan,” “witch” and “tree-hugging dirt worshiper” were not included on the test, and that I had, in fact, received the lowest score possible. In our small costal town, the Unitarians were “those pagans on the hill who drink wine and have naked hot tub parties” and were not thought highly of by other churches.

After graduating from high school with honors as part of a group of friends who composed a Who’s Who of well-adjusted overachievers, then graduating from college with a degree in accounting, I spent a year and a half trying to do what was expected of me by taking a stable government job. I tried to force myself to work in a concrete and glass climate-controlled building, and in true overachiever fashion I became the youngest-ever deputy treasurer for the County of Ventura. It wasn’t me. I just couldn’t take it. At the tender young age of 21, I ran off to go fight fires for the Forest Service.

It was there that I found others who also loved nature and needed to be in it as much as possible. Every morning, I would take long hikes in the mountains, encountering bears, mountain lions and eagles that did not react to me as if I was an intruder, but rather as if I belonged there. It was there that I began to have visions of the spirits of the land and to understand my connection to the earth and the meaning of my dreams. I was finally free to be myself and even had others with whom I could openly discuss these things.

Soon, I became a liaison between the federal land management agencies and the local Native American tribes. Tribe members invited me to sacred ceremonies, and elders taught me because they recognized my connection to and dedication to the land. During my time and travels with the Forest Service and Park Service, I was accepted by several tribes.

But I knew that I didn’t belong. I became confused and discouraged that it was okay for the earth to be your religion if you were Native American, but not if you were white. It was as if I was trapped between worlds, not fitting in either. I knew I could never go back to the church I was raised in, and I felt that I would spend my entire life wandering in the wilderness alone, without those of like mind.

As I questioned and explored more, I discovered that my mostly Celtic ancestors also had a tribal culture that honored the earth and that was quite compatible with what I had been taught by Native Americans. I did as much research as I could, found bookstores, covens and teaching circles when they were available in towns near where I was stationed, and I had many mentors and pen pals (this was in the days before the Internet). I finally learned who the woman was who stood at the foot of my bed when someone died or when there was danger. I had inherited my line’s banshee, who skipped a generation from my grandmother to me. I even finally found my way to a few of those “pagan” Unitarian churches.

My formal training enhanced but never took the place of actually being in and connecting to nature. I stood on mountaintops in the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains talking to and honoring the spirits of the land. I sat in sweat lodges in the very womb of the Mother in the Black Hills of South Dakota and had visions that I can’t share here that told me to remain close to the earth. I’ve seen the ancestors in the pueblos of the Southwest and heard the music of the desert.

Each new sacred place in nature taught me a new lesson or introduced me to a new guide; many of them appeared in physical form and would do whatever was necessary to get my attention. High above the Colorado River, a golden eagle buzzed me numerous times and almost knocked me off a 2,000-foot cliff, appearing incensed that I didn’t recognize that it had graced me with its presence and was trying to give me a message. That eagle taught me that there is a message in every encounter and that it is our job to recognize and learn from those messages. It also taught me that the messengers don’t take kindly to being ignored.

I realize that I have come full circle back to the waters of the Pacific. I am blessed to live close to the water and to be able to walk down to it whenever the mood suits me. I often play my fiddle on the water’s edge and find myself in the company of harbor seals, bald eagles and great blue herons. I feel the sun on my face, the wind in my hair and the magick that is all around me. Just as when I was a small child, the water brings me comfort. I experience the elements as sand, wind, sun and salt water, only now I understand what they mean and my connection to them. I am also surrounded by great people who understand as well.

I have met many people over the last 20 years who can be described as “natural witches.” They draw their energy directly from nature, work with herbs and stones for healing and are attuned to the cycles of the earth. Their mysteries come to them directly from nature, and their magick has an organic feel to it. They may or may not have had formal training, but no matter what their experiences, there is something special about them.

My grandmother, a Scorpio, was such a woman, although I don’t think she would have taken kindly to being called a witch; then again, I could be wrong. We never talked about it. She was by all accounts the original “wild woman” and certainly looked the part, with long raven hair cascading around her face and shoulders, reflecting red in the sunlight as she stood in the desert greeting the rising sun. Well into her 60s, she would wander the desert alone in search of stones, herbs and adventure. She lived on her own terms, not giving a rat’s butt what anyone else thought about her, and preferred the company of the earth and its creatures to that of most people. When she did choose the company of others, they were always artists, writers, musicians and other Bohemian types. My mother, in bouts of exasperation with the wild and difficult child I was, often said, “You’re just like your grandmother.” Writer Earl Stanley Gardener wrote a piece about her entitled “The Desert Nightingale.” He knew she was special.

I wish I had been able to recognize and appreciate the magick in her. By the time I grew into an adult and began to understand, she was gone. But her spirit remains in the mountains, desert and ocean, and in me.

How does a woman with a legacy of wildness, whose spirituality is explicitly tied to nature, survive living in an apartment in town? It has been challenging, but it has expanded me.

Six years ago, when I moved to the Pacific Northwest and attended my first indoor circles, I was shocked to find that many groups here held rituals indoors. I couldn’t imagine how anyone could connect with the elements or the gods in a building.

I got over it after experiencing my first winter here. It’s all very well and good to be outdoors, but if your fellow participants are getting pelted with freezing rain, with soaking wet feet in the dark of night, they’re going to be distracted. I work alone and in small circles outside whenever I get the chance, even in crappy weather, but for larger, public events it’s easier to be indoors.

It’s much simpler than I thought to connect to the elements while standing inside a building. Going on a simple guided meditation can connect me to the earth, feeling its coolness, inhaling its heady scent of decomposing leaves and pine needles and reveling in the feeling of fertility. With a little work, something as insubstantial as a few two-by-fours and some shingles isn’t a barrier. If I’m in the proper state of consciousness, it doesn’t even seem to exist.

Even living in a city, wilderness is all around. Wilderness exists at the edge of the water, in a local park or even under a tree in a backyard. I have seen the fey dancing in a hanging basket of flowers on a patio in an apartment complex. The Cascade and Olympic Mountains are a short drive, in a car or on the bus. In a little over two hours, I can be standing on the beach looking out at the vast wilderness that is the Pacific Ocean or across the mountains harvesting sage in the desert.

I have experienced and learned much in the last 20 years from many different sources, but the times in my life spent in direct connection to nature, to the gods, to all this is, without religious structure or human-imposed limitations, have been the most powerful times in my life.

Every place in nature, and in pockets of nature in the city, is sacred. Each place has its own energy, song and spirit guides. Go on… take a walk on the wild side and see where that journey takes you.

June 20 – Daily Feast

 

Everything is fresh and new on a June morning. Someone performed a miracle while we slept. The air was cleaned to crystal clarity, the rising sun glistens on every leaf and blade of grass. The hills are new green from spring rains and the horses that graze there are sleek and shiny. Such rewards, such a as s dv, are for the early riser, the one who greets the day with thanksgiving and praise. Regardless of how many tagalongs from yesterday threaten, they cannot break the spell of the beauty at hand. Another opportunity, another splendid day that is so oblivious to the schemes of man. To go with it, to rise with the morning mist, is to know the freedom and restoration in the soul of the American Indian.

~ To the Indian, words that are true sink deep into his heart where they remain; he never forgets them. ~

FOUR GUNS

‘A Cherokee Feast of Days’, by Joyce Sequichie Hifler

Elder’s Meditation of the Day June 11

“Behold, my bothers, the spring has come; the earth has received the embraces of the sun and we shall soon see the results of that love!”
–Sitting Bull, SIOUX
Spring is the season of love. Spring is the season of new life, new relationships. It is the springtime that really reacts to the new position of Father Sun. New life forms all over the planet. Life is abundant. New cycles are created. Mother Earth changes colors, the flowers are abundant. It is the time for humans to observe nature and let nature create within us the feeling of Spring. We should let ourselves renew. We should let go of the feeling of Winter. We should be joyful and energetic.
My Maker, let me, today, feel the feelings of Spring.
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The First Direction Of Divine Creation

The First Direction Of Divine Creation

Author: Erik Stearns

I have a question for you. How does each of us, when we experience our paths, our own experiences, our own belief systems, and our own spirituality, create our own mythos? What is mythos? Here’s one way to explain it. If one looks at the story telling traditions of many cultures, we see that this art is based on stories illustrating how the culture sees itself as part of and in relation to creation, connection to the divine, connection that spans its citizens, and ways of looking at things that represent the perceived unknown, and the exploration of the mysterious, and resultant rediscovery and insight into itself.

Buffalo Thunder, a fellow Shaman, friend, and somebody whom I consider as a spiritual brother and elder, shared a very interesting story in a conversation we had based on this very topic.

Long ago, there was a nation torn apart by warriors who were fighting with each other, and who had divided the clans against themselves; family member against relative, friend against friend, and individuals against themselves. In addition to threatening the end of their society and culture, it threatened the very survival and existence of the people.

So the Elders and the chief got together in an emergency meeting. The anxious consensus was that something had to be done and now! So the chief was consulted and he asked what the argument was about.

“It’s the warriors, Grandfather, ” said one of the elders. “They’re fighting over which creation story is best or even worse, whose is true.”

The chief, listening in his quiet strength, thought about it and nodded his head sagely. “Call a talking council. We will sit down and each person will tell their story and all will listen.”

Later, the council was convened amid grumblings, accusations, and a more than a few thinly veiled threats that traversed clan boundaries. Seeing his people in this state required that every part of his essence had to come from the quiet inner strength that walked with him on his quest to be as he was.

“I’ve called this council so that we might share what it is that some of you have found a difference worthy enough to divide you. It seems that you wish to war with each other and destroy what seven generations back and beyond have worked so hard to build. What is it that is so valuable to you that you must use it as an excuse to hurt each other and yourselves?”

One of the young warriors stepped forward in defiance of the fact that the elders had such interest in their affairs and worse yet, wanted to mettle in their battle. “It’s the creation story, Grandfather! The other clans have different stories that don’t tell the truth of what really happened! They are wrong! We tried to tell them so, but they accuse us of blaspheming the stories given to us through generations by saying that we’re wrong!”

The whole tribe erupted in passionate and defiant cheers, shouts, accusations, and threats directed to their unwanted spokesman and at each other; a scene that left the elders to shake their heads in dismay. How could they do such a thing? These people were family, friends, teachers, and students! Had they not learned anything? Or was there something even more sinister at work here? Had the teachings and wisdoms of so many generations been lost? Did they not pay attention to the stories of the different worlds and transitions from one to another? Did they not remember what the wisdoms taught to those who would listen of how to traverse the changes?

The piercing hunting cry of Eagle Spirit swooped in on the den of anger and immediately silenced the self-righteous insurrection. But it didn’t come from outside the lodge. All Eyes turned to the center where their leader gazed at each and every soul in that space at that moment with the glance that would have made any adept at the “I dare you” skunk medicine, proud. His eyes were clear and sharp like Eagle, inviting anyone to speak out of turn, much less in anger. He knew where the respect, at least for now still resided. If they wouldn’t listen to each other, then they would listen to him.

When he completed his tour of looking into each person’s heart, he produced the talking stick and held it for all to see. “Each person will say their piece. We will hear each of these stories. Respect and honor will be given and no one will speak unless he or she holds the stick. You will keep silent until the time comes that you do hold it.” The people knew It wasn’t presented as an option at all. The opportunity and the ground rules had been given, and the choice in their immediate destiny was theirs to make. He stepped forward and handed the stick over to the first presenter.

It was a tale of Ictoma, Spider who fed upon the Great Void or Great Mystery to spin her web, traveling through the cosmos, each step another thread spun and how she traversed existence, back and forth, in all directions, weaving and joining together everything that is, was and shall be. It told of her making places in father sky the paths and homes for the stars, and how she hung Grandmother Moon and Grandfather Sun in the heavens so they could watch upon Earth Mother’s and Father Sky’s children.

The end of the legend was greeted by a nod from the chief as he said, “And so it is.” Of course this didn’t sit well with the others as a tide of grumbling and harsh comments were hurled.

“How can you accept this story when you heard none of the others?” asked one of the disgruntled participants.

“Would you like to be escorted out by the guardians?” The chief asked in response. The dissenters backed down. No one would show anger to the children who stood as council guardians.

With peace somewhat established, the second warrior was offered the talking stick and the crowd was regaled with the story of how Turtle with her shell helped to shape the mountains, canyons, valleys, hills and oceans of Earth Mother and how Turtle’s shell carried Grandmother Moon and grandfather Sun and the Star Brothers and Sisters to their homes in Father Sky.

The chief nodded again and said, “And so it is.” The same cycle happened again and again with each succeeding story, but each time with less unrest until everyone had his or her say. At the end, he spoke. “Now you see that each one of us has our own perspective; our own story.”

“How can you say this?” raised the protests, “when you know what the story of creation is? It’s not the one you told a while back.” Shouts of agreement punctuated the statement.

“It’s okay that each one of us has our own creation story, ” said the chief. “You see, our elders teach us that creation is an infinite number of possibilities that arise from the Great Mystery. We know creation as a process that gives birth to each moment that we experience. Each created moment is different, but all the instances come together as one to relate to one another and therefore each of their influences is passed on. This makes the tapestry of the cosmos. So therefore, we are of one creation.”

More uneasy grumbling arose. “Should we call council and have this man removed? Has he lost his mind?” But that was replaced with a realization that he was right. It explained the path, to and of all our relations to a tee. So from then on, more stories were shared and passed on. Aho metaque yoyassin.

Each of us has our own story and we, being reflections of one another are each other’s storytellers. Whether it comes from the Native American traditions and the stories of Kokopelli, or the story of Shaha, the storyteller of the African nations, we are shown in legends that every time they are invited in on a council meeting to hear the decisions of a group or an individual, and are asked what they should do, the storytellers would always say, “It’s your story. I’m just your storyteller. I only speak the truth of what is. How do you want it to be created?”

From that point on, I began to realize that what we say, think and what we do manifests what we want. Even though we think that we don’t want it, we eventually realize at some level, that yes, we did need or want this. We took the journey to learn the lesson.

I was studying with a couple of Pagan, specifically Wicca High Priestesses, and I was told about the Law of Three or the Law of Ten. What we do is returned to us three or even ten-fold, depending on what you do or what you believe. But this came across as baffling to me. If classical physics says that you have an equal and opposite reaction to every action, the conservation of energy, etc., how can this be? How do we get three times as much energy as what we put in? There has to be an equal and opposite reaction, right?

This also came at a time when in meditation, I saw these two snakes forming this perfect circle by swallowing each other’s tail. Neither snake would swallow more than what had been swallowed of them, preserving the balance of the circle. So how does what I was being shown and what I was being told equate to one another? When I asked about this, they didn’t know. They had just accepted the laws as being “as is”. Personally, that strikes me as being dangerous, because in that sense, we give in to blind faith by surrendering our power.

I was at a paradox in my search until I realized that there was more to the symbol than I realized. A subsequent vision appeared to me where the circle became greater and then smaller and greater again, all the while, the serpents being in perfect balance with each other. The way that this balance is maintained is that the circle has infinite amount of room to grow and shrink, as it needs to. The balance is ensured by the great potential. Needless to say, I was amazed and awed at what I found. Now, what amplifies the returning energy? Thus what is also behind the attractor energy or the cause? There are a couple of things. First is the energetic impact, this can manifest in any variety of ways such as: physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, etc. Then at the same time, the universe always seems to have this consistent way of measuring how much of what we need and can handle, and most fascinating: what we need in that moment! Energy through the auspices of the vast potential of “what is” is infinite, therefore automatically conserving energy. Nothing is lost. It allows for things like the Law of Three and the circle of serpents to coexist without conflict.

There was more to it though. When I was receiving my Reiki Master’s attunement, I was taken through a meditation to where I would journey through the great void to the Cosmic Inipi, the sweat lodge where the Star Elders and the others who exist beyond the worldly veils reside. It was the journey that showed me that this void is the playground of creation. Some would call it God/Goddess’s playground. This is our playground. We are all iterations of this creative consciousness. So are the rocks, blades of grass, clouds that float, and drift, the hairs on our heads are all born of sentient thought.

Consequently, we being self-aware, we too have a hand in creating Creation. This void is exactly what the Buddhists talk about. It’s the “no-thing-ness” that the Buddhists would refer to. What’s more, the most astonishing thing one might find in witnessing my journey, was that I went inside, not anywhere else.

Now the inside is referred to as the “seventh direction” of the medicine wheel. The other six being East, South, West, North, Earth, and Sky, with the seventh being the inside of one’s self – the direction of divine connection. So I got this wild hair up a certain area of my body and decided to do an experiment. Next time I do ceremony, why not honor the inside direction first? That would indeed prove to be a hard habit to break considering I’ve done it the other way so many times before.

But upon doing that, I realized that here’s where the power resides, because I’m honoring the fact that I’m a part of creation and that creation is a part of me. It is all one. Because I did this, I was able to draw the power that I needed. I plugged in the wiring first, rather than last. Because of this, I saw that we could be so powerful; because we realize who and what we are created as, and the vast potential that is there for us to be.

In my subsequent celebration, Spirit put a hand on my shoulder and asked, “What is your story?” Now I needed to think I’ve studied many things from different religions, philosophies, shamanism, science, quantum physics; I must have touched it all at one point or another. But I still needed to think about it. So I took the dive and went deep within to the time when there was no thing and no time.

There was only the vast potential. Nothing yet had existed thus far. The first thing that I saw was an empty cup. It was full of nothing. I could put anything in it such as water, wine, stones, pens… hell, Lagos for that matter. Whatever I wanted in there could be put in that cup. It was also something my Aikido and Kung Fu Sensei was showing me at one time while teaching me how to tap my center as a power source.

I had studied many traditions from Christianity, to Buddhism, many forms of Paganism, including Shamanism, to the sciences, including cosmology and quantum physics. Nothing that I had studied though prepared me for the pure astonishment of this confirmation I was about to experience.

So Spirit comes back to me and says, “Now you know what to do.” I stilled myself and thought and thought about it. It was then that I saw this little tiny essence in this great vastness. It then extended itself into a random direction and immediately found that it could extend in the opposite direction. Thus it became a line and the first dimension was born. The line realized that it could grow in another direction and yet another and became an infinite plane, then expanded in another, forming space which could give birth to geometries and shapes and such, then expanded again in another direction and another producing more dimensions. Consequently other essences did the same thing.

This produced infinite number of collisions between dimensions producing moments in creation, all instances. Thus abundance of possibilities and causalities were created. Every little decision and its possible results came into existence all at once. Albert Einstein said, “All times, all possibilities exist all at once.” He was right based on what I was experiencing.

So I began to move through all these instances of people’s lives and mine. I saw the effects of my actions on myself and that of other people’s lives, and their actions upon mine. I realized then that I can move anywhere in this cosmos of ours. I can experience anything I want to. I can move anywhere in this grand tapestry as long as I believe in it. Give it the voice and let the potential carry it. It’s there. That’s how we manifest it.

I literally fell out of the meditation with this feeling of “Holy Smokes!” It was an “Oh my god” moment! We have all the potentials and thus all these creation stories. This one was mine. Therefore as a result, that story became my mythos or my story. “My-thos”, just like everyone has his or her “thos” or their story.

So when we realize the vast potential of what we can be and what others can be, we realize that we are infinite in our power. Why? Because we are parts of the same creation and that creation is always a part of us. What is your story and how do you create it?

One way we can think about this is in the way we pray. Just as there are any number of ways for a story or what we consider reality is created, so too are the number of ways that prayer is offered. Essentially when we pray, we are focusing on a certain action to happen. We are focused on a specific manifestation with at least varying forms of results and successes. We attract that focused upon target to be present in our experience. So how do we do this? Pray that whatever you intend, is. Don’t pray “for” it. If you do that, you are focusing on the lack and therefore that vibration or energy is sent out and thus, that is what is echoed back. Pray that it is. For instance, instead of praying for rain, pray rain. Don’t pray for healing; pray healing. The same goes for peace or whatever you wish attracted to you in that moment.

One person I’d love to meet and just “talk shop” with is author and consciousness researcher Greg Braden. He relayed this story during a recent interview on “Coast to Coast AM”.

A group of researches was investigating prayer, so they went all over the world to talk with various religious people and spiritual practitioners about how they prayed and what the process behind it was, and generally, what the secret was to prayer and how it was made successful. One day these researchers visited this Pueblo village and during their stay, a shaman decided to invite the scientists to witness a rain ceremony. Now to give a little background to this story, there was no forecast for rain, just like so long before, and by meteorological observations, conditions weren’t going to change any time soon.

The researchers took the shaman up on his offer and they headed out to a nearby place in the dessert. The shaman quietly sat for a minute and meditated to get himself centered and connected with his surroundings. Then he called in the directions and stated his intention for rain. After performing what seemed to be preparation of the sacred space, the medicine man quietly sat with his eyes closed for a few minutes.

Suddenly he opens them and says to his audience, “I’m hungry. Let’s go get something to eat.”

The scientists looked at each other and then back at him and asked, “That’s it? You’re not going to do a dance of some kind or anything like that?”

“No, ” he replied. “I’ve already let Great Spirit know what it is that I wish to happen.”

After the food was eaten and appetites satisfied, the shaman took his charges back to the village where a nice big and dark rain cloud had formed overhead and had begun to pour. The researchers in stunned amazement asked their subject what he did.

“It was simple, ” he said with casual aplomb. “When you were observing me meditate, I created the experience in my mind, right down to the way the rain sounds when it hits the ground, how it looks when it falls from the sky and how it splatters on the ground and village walls. I could smell the earth after being watered for the first time in a while. I could see the flash of lightning; hear the roll of the thunder as it echoed the truth of what is. I felt the raindrops on my skin. I could even feel the energy of Father Sky as he gives his gift to Mother Earth. I could taste the renewed sweetness of the air, and so on.”

His audience listened as he continued. “I paid attention to all my senses and created the story around what my senses would tell me, living the experience, and in doing so, I created a vibration that would happen in return. I was very specific in what I was creating so there was no doubt or question of what I had in mind could exist. As you can see, this is the result. This is how it is brought into our present tense.”

So this begs the question: Why do we live in a world where we focus on the illusion of separation, when the answer is so simple?

So what I’ve given you today is a couple of great secrets in experiencing ones own personal magick. No, this is not ‘magic’ that is based primarily on illusion, but that of co-creation, because that’s really what it is. When we help the creator create something out of seeming nothingness, or even if it’s a linear or logical impossibility, if we believe it, we have faith in it, and we know that it is; there is nothing that we can’t manifest. There is nothing whether you consider positive or negative or right or left or whatever; there is nothing that you can’t manifest. If you believe it, and you want it, and you pray that it is, then it is. You are connecting to that divine source within, not within your body but within your soul or spirit – that little essence that is you.

When we incarnate into different densities; such this physical dimension, we come deep from within Source. We come deep from within Spirit’s heart because of the fact that our hearts are resonant or “in rhythm with Mother Drum”.

I find this to be true. Our hearts beat the same beat. Our hearts beat the same rhythm so why can’t we create? Well, we can. There is no such thing as “can’t” as far as the cosmos is concerned. If the universe doesn’t know the definition of the word “no”, then why should we when we, when we are the architects of our lives? And so therefore, why should we fear anything – especially that of lack or something that may seem different or strange to us?

We know who we are and so therefore, we can respect and love one other in one peaceful creation and this gives credence to the phrase that becomes the heart of my path: known as “Aho Metaque yoyassin!” Roughly translated, that means “To and of our relations.” This includes our relations to each other, our relations to Spirit, our relations to everything that is, and our relation to ourselves, because all time really exists at the same time.

So when you realize that, you begin to walk in your own power and nobody can take that away from you. You have discovered your own divine right. When you have discovered your own divine right, then you take your rightful place in creation and move on from there.

So what is your story that you create?

Footnotes:
Adapted from the speech given at the First Spiritualist Church of Austin July 9, 2006