MALIBU BARBIE BEACH PARTY 2010

Hi there.

There is another benefit this month in Malibu that I wanted to bring to your attention. Another good time for a great cause. Among the items up for raffle you will find…

The Dreaming: Dream Circles.

The Dreaming: Dream Circles

I wrote about this painting recently and it is part of the Shamanic Journey / Awakening to the Spirit World book review. You can find that blog post here.

I will most likely be at this event.

Don’t forget your checkbook. We have more than 100 items to raffle and auction off, including hots sailors and sailorettes.

If you can’t make the event you can always make a donation directly to the Van Ness Recovery House through their website. Van Ness Recovery House Donation Link.

Malibu Barbie’s USO Beach Party

Benefitting the Van Ness Recovery House

ADVANCE ONLINE TICKETS: www.MalibuBarbiesBeachParty.org
$12 Advance / $15 At The Door

Sunday August 22, 2010
11:00 am 8:00 pm

• • Beach Play 11:00 am
  • USO Tribute Drag Show and Competition 2:00 pm
  • Raffle 3:30 pm
  • Sailor/ Sailor-ette Auction 4:00 pm
  • Silent Auction 12:00 5:00 pm
  • Dinner Caravan to Neptune – 8:00 PM-10:00 PM

Please remember to bring a picnic basket. Guests are expected to bring their own lunch and refreshments.

Don’t forget your check book for the silent auction and raffle. Prizes already include a weekend in Palm Springs, a spa massage package, a family pack to California Adventures and Disney Land, and more than 75 other super hot items!
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ADVANCE ONLINE TICKETS: www.MalibuBarbiesBeachParty.org

TO DONATE SILENT AUCTION OR RAFFLE ITEMS:
Call Fundraising Committee Chair Carlos Cortez at (323) 620-8810 or “Contact Us” at www.MalibuBarbiesBeachParty.org
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Van Ness Recovery House

Donate online to the Van Ness Recovery House in Los Angeles at:http://www.vannessrecovery.org/donations.html

The Van Ness Recovery House is a licensed and certified alcohol and drug recovery home designed to provide opportunities to the gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender and heterosexual communities. All services are offered in both English and Spanish.

We provide a highly structured and safe environment, where the residents learn how to make healthy life choices while receiving direct experience with the 12 steps of recovery through an intense schedule of meetings, alcohol/drug education and discussion groups.

The House was opened in May 1973 as a Joint, co-operative effort of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center (GLCSC) and a group of dedicated and visionary members of Alcoholics Anonymous. In 1976, the Van Ness Recovery House separated from GLCSC and became an independent non-profit corporation dedicated to serving the needs of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender and heterosexual men and women, regardless of their ability to pay, who suffer from the debilitating effects of the disease of alcoholism and/or drug addiction.

The Van Ness Recovery House opened a 20-bed facility on Beachwood Drive in 1973 and became aware of serving its first HIV-infected resident in 1984. The program has since served 1,632 HIV-infected residents. In the past five years, 61% of transgendered clients entering the program have been HIV-infected, 80% of all residents have been HIV-infected and over 86% of the residents have been homeless, having had little or no reportable income of the previous year. Over 2500 men and women have been given a new start in life thanks to a community that cares.

Our goals are simple and straightforward:

•Increase the length of abstinence from drugs and alcohol
•Decrease STD/STI occurrence
•Increase HIV and mental health medication adherence
•Increase the length of free time
•Develop an expanding network of culturally appropriate role models
•Increase employment rates
•Provide safer sex information and empowerment to the populations family/partners
•Create a replicable model program

The Van Ness Recovery Home does not discriminate in services or employment because of race, color, sex, age, national origin, handicap, sexual orientation or HIV antibody status. We would like to emphasize that although we largely target the gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender community, we also have an extremely high success rate with our heterosexual clients.

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Be well,

Scott K Smith
http://lifencompass.com

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Transmutation News: Sandra Ingerman || Shaman’s Death

I was reading through this coming months Transmutation News, thoughts on the Shaman’s Death. I am aware that the last few chapter reviews were about Death and Dying and I thought the newsletter, on the tail of these posts was an important connection to the last three articles in Awakening to Shamanism.

The following contains a few excerpts from Sandra Ingerman’s newsletter, Transmutation News.

((EXCERTPS))

Transmutation News August 2010

“When one embarks on a spiritual journey there is a process of dying to the ego – spirit sculpting us to be greater spiritual beings. And this journey of the shaman is filled with initiations that keep asking us to let go of our egos and a separate state of consciousness that can lead us to a unity consciousness and an experience of light that brings forth our clairvoyant, psychic and healing gifts.

As our ego is carved away at by our spirit, divine light can shine through. It is like a burning away of what keeps us separate from our spiritual state and what prevents our spirit from fully shining through us.

I have written about this many times in my books and also on the Transmutation News.

I think that the setting the intention of “the experiment” with the working in community groups brought me personally to a new stage of the shaman’s death.”

Then

“We are all on a journey – and we are all at different phases of the path – that will ultimately lead to a whole new evolution of consciousness. I think we need to move away from the focus being on the process of individuation. Individuating I think has been necessary on many levels but it is time to grow away from being so self absorbed into a consciousness of unity.

But first a death must occur before we see the possibilities.

When I was in my late teens I experimented with taking LSD. One night some of my friends had taken LSD and we went to a Grateful Dead Concert. At the concert I was separated from some of my friends.

I went into a real place of “ego death” there was no “me” and there was no “other” we were all one. I was in a glorious state of being.

I wanted to tell my friend Robin something but I knew I could never find her amidst the crowd of people. So I thought to myself that if we are all one I can tell the person standing next to me the message and it would be the same as telling Robin.

And then I had the realization that if we were all one I only had to tell myself the message.

…

The shaman’s death in the true sense of the term is letting go of the ego that provides any containment of the spiritual energies coming through to heal and to transform.

The shaman’s death is dying to anything that keeps you from being in the present moment. And that means letting go of outcomes, desires, needs, wants.”

You can read the full newsletter, and subscribe, at Shamanic Visions.

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Be well,

Scott K Smith
http://lifencompass.com

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Awakening to the Spirit World, Chapter 10 / 11 ~ Death: Experiential and Initiatory

If you are just joining me in these posts you can catch up on the chapter-by-chapter book review of Awakening to the spirit world through these posts:

• Chapter 1: What is Shamanism?
• Chapter 2: The Shamanic Journey
• Chapter 3: Reconnecting with Nature
• Chapter 4: Visionary Work with the Weather and Environmental Changes
• Chapter 5: The Power of Ceremony and Ritual
• Chapter 6: Dreaming (personal stories)
• Chapter 7: Creative Arts as a Bridge
• Chapter 8: Working with Light and Sound
• Chapter 9: Death as a Rite of Passage

Experiential Work With Death & Dying | All Change Involves a Death

First the technical and then the personal. I put these two chapters together. As an after thought, I feel that I should have put all three chapters on Death together, but maybe the acceptance and understanding I have of the passage is a bit more “accepting” than others. I’m doing my best not to condense down the subject and breeze through it.

These two chapters contain a lot of personal experience, and sections about:

• There are No Unfinished Conversations
• Soul Stealing (about forgiveness)
  • Exercise: Creating Closure
• Saying Goodbye
• Recapitulation
• Granting Permission to Die
• All God’s Creatures Grieve
• All Change involves Death
• Dismemberment as an Initiatory Journey
  • A Journey for Dismemberment
  • Erasing Personal History

In and throughout the stories and exercises in these two chapters are guidelines for helping others to cope with Death. For the self, the parent, and those in need. The second chapter covers more initiatory processes and how we, encountering life or visionary happenings can potentially be transformative from a shamanic or mythological sense.

I think that the authors have done well in this.

As I said I have tried not to gloss over the subject, and not for any reason other than my personal experience in the last 4 or so years has been heavily washed with the passage of family, and a psychological erosion of a youth’s belief in physical immortality by the nature of life’s entropic (physical) journey.

We die. All of us. You will die. I have to say it because I need to remind myself that in time I will. It’s not a constant awareness, but it is there, hovering near, when I heal, hurt, wake, eat, and go about doing. It is something we can or cannot accept, true ,but eventually we end up there whether we accept it or not.

That’s why it is important to know it, say it, accept it. I’m not advocating running around depressed, or in fear, actually I find that by living in a process of accepting Death, there is liberation from a lot of psychological snags. Tho I do believe that my essential self (soul, what have you) may continue on is some form, and I believe that meditation and self-discovery help you to connect with that true being, it doesn’t mean I don’t feel some natural instinct to keep, continue, and create. I am not sitting around planning my funeral, bemoaning my fate, but I am also blessed with health, job, home, and love. I could be much “worse off” compared to many millions of people, and I count that as a blessing.

What does strike me is that many people do not accept this fate. It is a destination yet not a goal, it’s as if Death is a demise, or punishment. Tormented with sorrow, anguish, fear, anger, and so many other mind-traps that throughout history we have needed those who know Death near us when it too becomes our time for passage into that otherness, whatever it ultimately my be. And because it Death perceived is a punishment, we have states in our own country where you forced into dying, in accordance to the law.

Death has become reviled. It’s so terrible, it is the greatest punishment… Where did we go wrong in our understanding?

It’s thoughts like these that drive me to the point that (I think) Sandra & Hank are making: There needs to be a personal re-address of the dying process and Death. A look at first realistic and then metaphysical in the sense of our relationship to ourself and those that have/are passing, and then the greater relationship to the bigger circle of living that we are part of.

Spiritual systems abound, throughout our history from small tribes to the great ethnic groups of human kind, that express an after to what we are living now. There are many similarities in myth, legend, story, and personal experience that tell us we are part of something greater and into the greatness we go when we expire. It is fundamental to most of us (some people believe we live and die, and once dead nothing more) to prove a link at some point in our life with that other world in whatever shape that takes hold of us.

When my grandfather passed away I knew, almost to the minute, even though I was hundreds of miles away. I felt a presence. There was a whiff of Old Spice and a splash of motor oil. I was sitting at my office desk, the door was closed. His memory, smell, and spirit was there in the light before me. Saying goodbye.

At a much younger age when one of my dogs died, we lived apart at that point, I had a dream she was across a vast chasm from me. Kahlua, my dog, was on one peak and I on another. She was barking and wagging her tail at me. I called her name over and over.

The next day, my mother called to let me know she passed away.

When my boyfriend Sean took is own life, I woke to see a light in my room and someone standing in it, waving. I woke. Smiled and waved. I honestly thought it was a Guide. The next day I began to receive calls…

My great-aunt and her funeral. The spirits in our various houses. “Ghost stories”, near death experiences, encounters. We go somewhere. We become something else. We meet that greatness.

“There is nothing to fear”, as they say, “but fear itself” and when we release that fear we enter a new life. It is part of living to know this. A shamanic perspective is but one way in which we can find the Sacredness and Grace that is helpful to meet it, to complete the circle. We can aid that sacred moment through paths as described in these chapters: Conversation. Forgiveness. Acceptance. Understanding. Connecting. It is one of our task while living.

We can find it in our spirituality, yes, but ultimately we make these graces within ourself.

I hope that this finds you well.

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Be well,

Scott K Smith
http://lifencompass.com

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Awakening to The Spirit World: Chapter 9 ~ Death as a Rite of Passage

If you are just joining me in these posts you can catch up on the chapter-by-chapter book review of Awakening to the spirit world through these posts:

• Chapter 1: What is Shamanism?
• Chapter 2: The Shamanic Journey
• Chapter 3: Reconnecting with Nature
• Chapter 4: Visionary Work with the Weather and Environmental Changes
• Chapter 5: The Power of Ceremony and Ritual
• Chapter 6: Dreaming (personal stories)
• Chapter 7: Creative Arts as a Bridge
• Chapter 8: Working with Light and Sound

Chapter 9: Death as a Rite of Passage

Be welcome to what most feel is an unwelcome topic of conversation: Death. There are obvious reasons for the discomfort, namely that the majority of people fear death!

Awakening to Shamanism, the Path of Direct Revelation continues to surprise me with each chapter. There is an intent to shift the vibration upward but the author and joined voices of Modern Shamanism do not spare us the darkness in the retelling of their practice. I think that needs some explanation but Alberto Villoldo illustrates this “darkness” it well in the first few pages,

“In the West, we no longer remember how to die with grace and dignity. We shuttle the dying off to hospitals where death is considered a disease and extraordinary measures are taken to prolong life at all costs. Families do not know how to come to closure with the passing of a loved one. Many people die in fear, with unresolved issues, not having said the “I love you’s and “I forgive you”s that would be so healing for them and their families. We have tried to make death invisible; we think that if we ignore it long enough, it will go away.”

Sandra Ingerman writes,

“When someone starts to speak about impending death, the usual social response is, “Don’t talk like that, you are going to get well and you will be back on our feet before you know it.” Yet we are all going to go through the death experience sooner or later.

Denial that a big change is coming, and that this change is inevitable, blocks understanding. It also blocks true loving and supportive communication on all sides. As a result, many people die in a state of acute fear and anxiety, while their families and doctors try to hold them here for as long as possible.”

~Pgs. 180-181, Awakening to Shamansim

We have a wealth of spiritual and cultural traditions all over the world who speak of an afterlife among spirits of friends, family, and even deities. There are stories throughout time of near death experiences, visitations by those who have passed and encounters with other  entities from places beyond our sight. It’s strange to me that we have built a culture of horror around the passage from this life into the other world(s).

Personally I have had more encounters than I can count in a moment. I would have to take my time perusing journals and memories to pull every thread together, weaving for you the blanket of my, and my families, experiences with “the dead”.  A few come to mind…

I have written about my great Aunt Joyce a few times, she had a great and lasting impression on my life, shaping much of my childhood as the one constant figure who was there for me. I love my mother, she was there, sometimes she wasn’t, but our Aunt Joyce would always step in and take care of us.

When Aunt Joyce passed the family collapsed.

Days leading up to her funeral turned to the moment when friends and family gathered at the Chapel near the foot of the Mission Hills. We came together in solemn and then teary remembrance, and with the Priest in charge of ceremonies we laughed, we cried, and then as entertaining priest began the Rosary a funny thing happened.

A light appeared behind the priest in the shape of a robed woman, crown ablaze with rings of light, hands folded in another nimbus of prayer. As I stared at her, this luminous being behind the prayers, feeling like a grain of sand to the sea, I heard my sister ask, “Who is that lady?”

When my sister spoke between my mother and me, we both turned from looking at the vision to stare at my sister, we had all seen her!

Our family has many such stories, I think coming from the South, my mother’s family had a way with connections, ours I think is spirits in one degree or another. I don’t claim to be a “Ghost Whisperer” but I have had my moments and time to think about a lot of these things, namely my own fear of death.

For a few years my thought was, if I am having this experience that tells me that we continue on after this life as we know it, why do I fear it? Really, it’s kind of silly.

I find that in the last year my perspective is changing. I’m in no hurry to leave / die, in fact I’d like to live a long and healthy life and end up on the Today’s Show, Smucker Jar as a Centennial. Here’s hopes for being upwardly mobile until my twilight years!

The rest of this chapter focuses on the aspects of transition, Death as a Rite of Passage:

• The Life and Death Cycle
• Stages of the Death Experience
• The Bardos: The After-Death Realms in The Middle Worlds of Spirit
• Maps to the Landscape Beyond Death
• Psychopomp Work (this is an illustration, there is no way (stated) that the reader should attempt this work without advanced work).

The next chapter focuses more on this subject and I look forward to reading it. This is a singular issue that we will all face in various forms, from the passing of loved ones and eventually our own journey into otherness. It is vital that we learn to understand our relationships in life, and just as vital that we learn to accept with grace our eventual portal into the afterlife.

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Be well,

Scott K Smith
http://lifencompass.com

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Subscribe via RSS. Leave a comment, those are always appreciated. Submit something for posting, topics and ideas are welcome.

Dream Circles (Awakening to Shamanism ~ Dreams).

As promised (if a little late), the Dream Gatherer, which I call Dream Circles. This exercise came out of Awakening to Shamanism, chapter 6 ~ Dreams.

In Awakening to Shamanism, the Path of Direct Revelation, Carol Proudfoot-Edgar:

“…We also construct “dream gatherers,” usually using natural materials in the landscape where we are meeting. Dreams are a doorway into another world, and the dream gatherer is the door. Think of the wreaths that people make Christmas (Yule, Winter Solstice ~Scott) and hang on their doors. There is a circle within the wreath. The dream gatherer is made from things from Nature and has a circle that represents the doorway into the dream world. These are then placed somewhere close to each dreamer and used to entice the dreamer and the dream spirits to join one another in mutual collaboration.”

I personally wanted to create a safe circle of communication for the dream work. This particular piece would be for two dreamers.

Dream Circles, by Scott K Smith. 12'' x 36'', Acrylic on Canvass, Paper Machete, organic materials (stones, vines picked respectfully).

"The Guardians" Spirit detail in "Dream Circles.

Aside from the obvious circles with the connecting pathway, there are three spirit guardians between the portals. The feathers are made from the under feathers of a Redtail Hawk, in blue, white, gold, and purple representing their protective and insightful energies while one journey’s in the dream. These guardians mind the pathway to and from the world of dreams, casting illuminating light on the message for the dreamer.

Dream Circles is one of the paintings that will be appearing in the August, 2010 show, downtown Los Angeles.

I hope to see you then.

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– – –
Be well,

Scott K Smith
http://lifencompass.com

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Subscribe via RSS. Leave a comment, those are always appreciated. Submit something for posting, topics and ideas are welcome.

Awakening to Shamansim: Chapter 8 ~ Working with Sound and Light

If you are just joining me in these posts you can catch up on the chapter-by-chapter book review of Awakening to the spirit world through these posts:

• Chapter 1: What is Shamanism?
• Chapter 2: The Shamanic Journey
• Chapter 3: Reconnecting with Nature
• Chapter 4: Visionary Work with the Weather and Environmental Changes
• Chapter 5: The Power of Ceremony and Ritual
• Chapter 6: Dreaming (personal stories)
• Chapter 7: Creative Arts as a Bridge

Chapter 8: Working with Sound and Light

Welcome back. First I want to say that I did finish the project from Chapter 6, Dreaming: The Dream Circle. It is a painting, created to safely access the World of Dream. It was a work in progress and I will post a few photos this weekend so that you can get a better look at it. The Dream Circle will be part of the evolving body of work that I had planned for the collaborative show in August… which is “evolving” on its own and becoming a bit more than I had anticipated. Anyway, as I said, details are to come.

This chapter is about Sound and Light. I assumed that sound would come along eventually as sound, ceremony, and ritual are generally brought together for altering our state of consciousness, bringing people together into a group mind or energy field, and to call in the helping forces and spirits that one wold need. These are a few of the ways in which sound compliments healing or magickal work.

The chapter begins with historical and cultural stories of first sounds and sound healing deities and then moves into topics like:

• Drumming and Healing
• Gods of the Harp
• Power Songs, and finding your power song
• Singing and Healing Patterns

Tom Cowan, in the Gods of the Harp part, writes:

“This is keeping with other cultures that we see the universe as something vibrational or something created by a voice, song or sacred word.

In an old Irish myth, the goddess Boann (later her name become Boyne, on of Ireland’s sacred rivers) gives birth to three sons who become harpers. As each son is born, Boann’s husband, Uainthe, plays music on his harp to accompany her experience. The first birth is difficult, so he plays a lament or song of sorrow; the second birth is joyful because she realizes she is having another child, so he plays a happy tune; and she falls asleep during the third delivery because she is tired, so he plays a lullaby. When the boys become harpers, each specializes in the type of music he heard when he came into the world. I think of them as the gods of the harp.

(Later) …A simple way to  use this matrix for healing is to hum these three strains of music for someone as a kind of prayer. Visualize the person in distress or pain and hum a low tone, then watch the person’s face begin to smile as youmove up a couple of notes on the scale, then see the person in total peace as you move the hum up a coupel more notes (C, E, and G work well). This can be done in one slow breath as you exhale. Then keep repeating this as a kind of breathing-humming meditaiton for several minutes in which ou send out healing with your breaths and intentions. Not surprisingly, you’ll find that this brings you too into a wonderful state of peace”

~Tom Cowan, Awakening to Shamanism, Pgs 162-163

Although I personally find the harp relaxing, I find the toning to be an interesting of simple sound therapy. I don’t know much about toning or sound therapy as a medium for healing, I have benefited from experience.

My friend Jamie Bechtold is a great Sound Therapist and recently performed at the Eagle Rock Center for the Arts, during the Autumn, Spring, and Summer Equinox’s. Three powerful planetary gongs accompanied by four crystal singing bowls, and two sound healers. Phenomenal!

I attended the Spring Equinox Sound Bath among revelers, and friends old and new. Initially the sound was overwhelming. I don’t to say it was scary or distracting but the power of the gongs and bowls are overwhelming. It is a “bath” of sound. The beat, pulse, and vibration took me deep, and then into a state of release, before brining me back to (that moments’) present. The only other time I can think that I have experienced something like this was with drumming.

Back in 199*mumble* I attended a small circle in San Francisco. We all had various instruments and I, a small hand held drum. I was nervous about the chanting and drumming because I am a perfectionist about certain things and I didn’t feel that my voice was very harmonious… and I think the last time I had played on a drum, I was five. Irregardless I joined along with the drumming, and kept my chanting to myself. Somewhere in the rhythm we were generating, us four, I got lost. I’m not sure where but I had one of these fall into the ecstatic states. I can recall plains tribes, being an old woman with a long life and a deep sorrow, singing a song for those who had passed.

No wait, I did sing it. I not only sang it but I took the lead in the circle and sort of dominated it with this painful song. I was a little embarrassed but the people I was drumming with, after a moment of shock (which makes me laugh at this point) were pretty supportive.

Sound has a profound and amazing effect on many things, not just me. 🙂

This section continues into something entirely interesting, which I want to call weaving tapestries of sound and light, but it isn’t really an exercise. There are exercises in the chapter to explore the world of sound in making song and working with the “song” of things. One exercise helps us to find the song of a plant. Jose Stevens worked with the Shipibo and their use of healing through song. This is where I draw the feeling of tapestries of sound and light.

“According to the Shipibo, everyone has a song, everyone can sing, and Spirit gives  everyone song upon request. All that matters is that you are willing to sing.”

~Page 166

You’ll need to pick up a copy for his full telling of the Shipibo’s use of song in mystical work, it’s fascinating stuff!

Though you may  not sing or use song in your work, you can use music to find altered states, to accompany your journey. There are albums created for healing, dream, and shamanic work (and more) that you can find to work with. These may or may not be healing songs, but they can provide stepping stones into the world of sound and singing.

(Dead Can Dance is one group of artists that can quickly take me into altered states and I often use them for meditation, sessions, and magickal work).

Personally I recommend finding a rattle, drum, or other hand held instrument that you can use at home. Try some rhythms, find what feels right. It shouldn’t be complex. State your intent and begin to make music with the intent as the meaning of the sound. When you are comfortable with that level of work, trying sining along. It may or may not have words that make sense, it doesn’t need to vocally make “sense”. In moments I’ve found that just singing the language that comes to me can be a powerful thing in cleansing the house, calling in helpful spirits, or vibrating the energy that we wish to bring into the space we are working in.

The later part of the chapter begins to focus on light. Not the light of the Sun, or color therapy, but the light of spirit, the white light, and the light of our spirits.

• Working With Stones of Light
• Working With Light
• Exercise: Transfiguration
• The Human Spirit
• Maintaining A Spiritual State
• A Journey To A Descendant

If you are reading along and you have or are working with the “Transfiguration” exercise I would love to hear about your experience(s). This process involves using the Light to shift, or transform parts of self, illness, or thoughts (for example) into lighter forms of being. Imagine shifting a stagnant form that you find within your journey work that is stuck in pain, in the past, or in the type of darkness that does not serve us.

We’re coming into the three final chapters of Awakening to the Spirit World, The Shamanic Path of Direct Revelation. As I wind down I’m going to begin to incorporate more of the experiences and lessons from The Temple of Shamanic Witchcraft, Christopher Penczak, to continue the work.  I hope that you will join me.

Until then, enjoy the Journey.

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– – –
Be well,

Scott K Smith
http://lifencompass.com

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Subscribe via RSS. Leave a comment, those are always appreciated. Submit something for posting, topics and ideas are welcome.

Awakening to Shamanism: Chapter 7 ~ Creative Arts as a Bridge.

If you are just joining me in these posts you can catch up on the chapter-by-chapter book review of Awakening to the spirit world through these posts:

• Chapter 1: What is Shamanism?
• Chapter 2: The Shamanic Journey
• Chapter 3: Reconnecting with Nature
• Chapter 4: Visionary Work with the Weather and Environmental Changes
• Chapter 5: The Power of Ceremony and Ritual
• Chapter 6: Dreaming (personal stories)

Chapter 6: Creative  Art as a Bridge

I blazed through this chapter! As an artist it had some creative ideas, and affirmations for my own practice; And as it is I’m now in a creative frenzy because of the upcoming show; and the dream circle (still forthcoming) it paired up nicely with everything that is happening in this moment.

I spent the better part of today painting and trying out the casting materials for the August Show. I’m in the creative space.

Chapter 6, Creative Art as a Bridge, illustrated by example how various tribal peoples use art and the shamanic practices of healing throughout time beginning with the caves of the Late Stone, which houses ancient works somewhere between 32,000 – 36,000  years old. Theory, reasoning, provoking depth, Sandra notes the history of art and shamanic practice.

It’s interesting.

We come to Art in SHamanic Healing (page 142), where the connection between art as a practical application of the path cast for us,

“There are many different ceremonies that can be done to restore power and, by  association, harmony within the client. The Ulcchi shamans in Siberia, for example, might work for a person who is ill or suffering from a loss of power in a way that incorporates shamanic art.

The Ulcchi shaman will journey into the spirit worlds on behalf of the client to find a power animal or helping spirit who is willing to come into relationship with the client to help restore the client’s personal power and proveide him or her with support and protection. Then the shaman will commission a carver in the village to make an image of the power animal – a bear for example. From the traditional perspective, shamanic art does not represent power. Rather, it is power. The carving of the bear becomes the vehicle, the embodiment, of the spiritual power of bear, so the next step is for the shaman to imbue the carving with that power. Then the carving will be placed by the shaman in the client’s home in order to serve as a literal and symbolic bridge between the person and the bear spirit. “

Personally I think that I find this true in most, if not all, of the work I do. I may be painting or crafting for someone in particular, or just for my own creative calling but the Spirit(s) connect, and imbue the work with the flavor and vibration of the creative evocation. I used to call this “Spirit Portraits” (thanks to Astrid!) and I honestly didn’t make the real connection to now. I’m not the only modern “city person” who crafts in this way! I keep thinking I need to dip into Urban Magick, but I have enough books on the shelf that are begging for attention…. Anyway.

You can see this channeling of spirit in dance, photography, sculpture and other mediums. Myself, I don’t think this connection and empowerment of spirit to the physical is limited to spiritual practices… but then again I don’t think “spiritual” is just spiritual practice as recognized by most. Spirit can come through in dance and it can be of any sort, expressing needed energies for those that are viewing. I think that you can see this with creatives like Johnny Raymond (Johnny 2.0) in his exploration of the boundaries of flesh, pain, emotion.

Artists are edge-walkers, skirting the world of the invisible, in touch with beings others experience in the craft of the creative.

Yeah… Ha. Well I did say I take a mystical approach to things. For myself I make sure what’s coming through is for healing or benefit and the rest is a matter of channeling or transcription.

Other topics in the is chapter were useful as well.

• Working with craft in your practice.
• Exercise for Crafting shamanic art.
• Healing words in song and affirmation.
• Blessing with words and walking in Truth.

This chapter by far has been my favorite. The practical application of the tools they offer rang and gonged my inner bells, most probably because I could use them right now.

Sandra Ingerman writes (page 149),

“The Navajo people have a saying, “May you walk in beauty.” Whenever there is someone from the Navajo nation at one of my lectures, he or she comes up to me and tells me about this term. It means that one can choose to speak words that are loving and that will be healing to others – words that create beauty.”

The chapter goes on. It’s a gem.

I’ve taken a small break from the work here at home and popped out to do some errands. As I write, I tingle. I’m thinking about the new work that’s pouring out and thinking, I will sing this beauty, this beauty will sing. I will sing this power, this power will sing. I will caress this work, this work will caress. Incanting the vibration of the creative, sensual, empowering words into the work.

It’s all in the book, Awakening to Shamanism, The Shamanic Path of Direct Revelation.

See you next week.

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A couple of notes here. You may have noticed that I’ve bumped the day that I post the chapter review. This was necessary as my schedule is changing throughout the month. Trying to make the Tuesday evening (personal) commitment was difficult when I began to journal the Tarot Journey in addition to the review.

I also have a show coming up in August. Details to come. At this point the entire operation is under wraps to build a sense of excitement. Tee hee. I’m glad the work I am doing pairs with that. 🙂 Think Priapus, healing, fertility, recovery

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– – –
Be well,

Scott K Smith
http://lifencompass.com

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Awakening to Shamanism: Chapter 6 ~ Dreaming

Alright. I promised to post something that I was making for the book review but to be honest, I am waiting for the layers of the painting to dry and there are some other details that cannot be rushed. I will post the final dream circle painting as soon as she is ready, until then you will have to wait.

If you are just joining me in these posts you can catch up on the chapter-by-chapter book review of Awakening to the spirit world through these posts:

• Chapter 1: What is Shamanism?
• Chapter 2: The Shamanic Journey
• Chapter 3: Reconnecting with Nature
• Chapter 4: Visionary Work with the Weather and Environmental Changes
• Chapter 5: The Power of Ceremony and Ritual

Chapter 6: Dreams

I can remember when the world of dreams and the waking world was a liminal space, blurred and connected between waking and rest. I can still remember many vivid dreams where I remained lucid in the dream world, then waking I would be looking for clues and items from the dream.

A common dream was about lizards and/or snakes. Keep in mind that I was a big animal buff when I was little and my great-grandfather had a wealth of literature at his house that kept me enthralled for hours. National Geographic, encyclopedic volumes about particular species, his library was extensive. It wouldn’t be uncommon for me to dream of them when I had been so influenced by the natural world early on.

In the dream of reptiles I was seeking and finding them. Could have been Blue Belly’s, or Garter Snakes, but I would be hunting and catching them, awake while I dreamed. I was certain that if I caught them while I was in the dreaming place I could wake up and have them. As soon as I put my hands on the little critters I would wake myself up and hope that I still had them. Of course I didn’t catch them but I didn’t know it at the time. If my mother had peeked into my room on those nights when I dreamed of reptiles she might have found me tearing apart my bedroom looking for the little scaly creatures, certain they had been transported between the realms in my hands, coat, and pockets.

The dreaming took me in many ways.

I can recall playing with friends, I must have been about seven, and suddenly realizing that we were in fact dreaming, “RIGHT NOW!” I would say. “Feel it! We’re dreaming!”

The sensation would come and go, but suddenly I could become eclipsed by the dream, while I was waking, I wanted desperately for everyone to wake up in it. Like I felt I was.

As time went on I became a very vivid dreamer. Naturally I was told that dreams were not real, that they were products of my mind, and that I shouldn’t take them so seriously. After a time, with the exception of night visions of flying, traveling to hidden worlds and other dimensions, and the horrific nightmare, I slowly began to wean away from the dream world… until my early teenage years, about the time I met my friend Kat, and that wasn’t without an event. 🙂

Kat and I spoke of dreams often. Where my dreams felt vivid, her’s were Technicolor fantasy’s and flights into the incredible butt (Kat correct me if I’m wrong) the real leaping off point for us was a shared dream.

During my teenage years I would dream of a little house. The house was usually in some far away place out in the country, stark on a plain. Sometimes I would find it in a neighborhood. The house at the end of a street. Other times the house appeared in the most random place and I would be drawn in through the door, unable to stop myself from entering.

An old woman lived in the house. Gray hair tucked up in a bun, draped in a slim, conservative, and usually dark button dress. It reminds me now of something worn around the turn of the century. The woman appeared kindly but once the door closed the dream became nightmare. The little two-story house would become an infinite mansion of rooms, many of them requiring puzzles solved or monsters fought or fled from.

One night within the first year of knowing Kat, I again met the house. This dream was particularly vivid and violent. The old woman went from a looming figure to a physically abusive tyrant. The dream was significant because Kat was with me in the house.

When I woke, showered and got out the door into the summer, I went to Kat’s house. She lived close and we spent almost every waking hour together, I had to tell her the dream because it seemed somehow significant. When I got to Kat’s house she was just waking. Bruised, beaten, sore, as I had dreamed.

Apparently, as WE had dreamed.

Yes it is true, we had shared the dream of the house and the old woman who lived there amid the doors, the rooms, the nightmare. .

Our friendship threaded with many shared dreams. As our amazement tempered as our experiences grew in many ways but these types of shared encounters, and dreams of things to come, would wind in and around our lives. The significance of the dream world, already heady with the fantasy became a new dimension of exploration. A dimension that in turn wove back paths of insight into our waking life.

Interesting how that happens.

So I’m reading the chapter on dreams in Awakening to Shamanism, and of course there is a gushing well of memory pulling up all sorts of things, like I’ve mentioned above, but a few things strike me from the chapter. I’m not here to spoil the fun of the book and so I don’t  want to give away too much. Anyway I read up to a statement about an ancient worldview: Waking or sleeping, we are dreaming in the same dream.

Basically what I found there in the book is repeating what I suspected when I was young. Yes, much like the child “me”, I wanted to say, “We’re dreaming RIGHT NOW!” to people around me. I want to vocalize the feeling because I’ve got that long forgotten awareness of being awake at a dreaming level. Dreaming at a wakened level.

There are also suggestions for the Shamanic path, ways to enter the dream, to dream lucid, to understand the meaning and messages of the dream we dream.

I took one of the suggestions and for two nights I dreamt the “healing dream”, which meant that I actually fell into a deep, deep sleep. I slept so soundly that I cannot remember the real healing dream!

The last exercise I wanted to try with the chapter review was the dream circle. A portal we make to enter the dream world, safely. I am still working on the portal, as I write this to you now the painting is soaking up some essential oil blends for safety, expanded awareness, sacredness, and restful sleep. There is even a bit of Selenite part of one of the two circles in the canvas!

I am going to have to ask you to wait for that piece. It’s going to take a bit more time to complete.

Until then…

I hope you will join me for the journey.

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– – –
Be well,

Scott K Smith
http://lifencompass.com

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Thoughts on Shamanism // Re-Dedication

So I’m in the midst of a brainstorm about a craft item that I want to construct from Awakening to Shamanism and, typical me, I’m also starting in on the third leg of my re-dedication, The Temple of Shamanic Witchcraft, (TOSW) by Christopher Penczak.

I had thought that I would begin the Living Temple Work but the inner tug and recent events have caused me to feel otherwise. Over the last two and a half years of re-view and study through the Temple of Witchcraft instruction I have found valuable facets of myself. In a sense the re-dedication has been a journey of reclamation, picking up pieces of myself and bringing them back into the organic whole. Skipping a leg of the journey, regardless if I’ve been told that I could, feels like I’d be missing a valuable piece of information.

And I have to thank the book review for that. Awakening to Shamanism has provided me with some good recall and awakening.

Last night after dinner, while I was hanging out with B and Trixie, I read through another chapter in the TOSW. I found a bit by Christopher in Chapter three that struck a button. One of those internal dings that compass-like, magnetically turns us in the right direction.

“The Tribe I most identify with is the global tribe. The term “global village” has been used a lot lately, referring to our advances in global communication and hopefully stimulate a sense of global rather than factional identity. The New Age we are slowly entering is referred to as the Age of Aquarius. Aquarian energy is marked by a sense of universal brotherhood/sisterhood, a sense of global humanity and social consciousness. Aquarius teaches us at the highest level that we are all in it together, not just all people, but all ife on this planet and beyond.

I work to serve the global tribe. Many of us do. Some find their identity in social, political, economic, or environmental causes. I have found my calling at this time in my lie on a mystical level, by helping raise the mass consciousness of all people on the planet. One of the best ways we can all do this is by raising our own consciousness. The more we heal as individuals, taking care of our own issues, angers, fears and inner conflicts, the more we heal the entire world.”

Buddha: Shaka || Meditation (Mudra).

Between the two books I’ve been merging he ideas of Witch and Modern Shaman together. As noted (I’m paraphrasing) in the beginning of TOSW, Shamanism has become a general term for many practices with common themes. There are Shamans in every culture, they are mystics, medicine people, healers, witches, tribal spiritual functionaries all throughout time and history.

The Buddha (Above) is one of my directional guardians. I didn’t choose him but met him in a journey into one of the directional portals: The Watchtower of the South, the realm of air, thought, truth, and word.

At the time I me the Buddha in my magickal journey’s I wasn’t at the level of thinking-to-connecting that the Buddha represents the enlightened Buddhic nature in each of us and that sitting in the Southern Elemental Gateway has almost cheeky. Mind | South | Air | Enlightenment. Der for me. 🙂

Today the significance is poetic.

********

So I’m working through the final chapters of Awakening to Shamanism, and preparing for the third leg of my magickal re-dedication journey through the lessons and guideposts in the Shamanic Temple of Witchcraft.

I hope you will join me for the journey.

–
– – –
Be well,

Scott K Smith
http://lifencompass.com

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Awakening to the Spirit World, Chapter 5

If you are just joining me in these posts you can catch up on the chapter-by-chapter book review of Awakening to the spirit world through these posts:

• Chapter 1: What is Shamanism?
• Chapter 2: The Shamanic Journey
• Chapter 3: Reconnecting with Nature
• Chapter 4: Visionary Work with the Weather and Environmental Changes

Chapter 5: The Power of Ceremony and Ritual

Welcome back to my chapter-by-chapter review of Awakening to the Spirit World, The Shamanic Path of Direct Revelation.

The fifth chapter in the book came on the heels of a handful of requests by friends, family, and some magickal connections to assist in some form or another. As I approach the full moon with a list of healing requests, and a prosperity push for a sister-friend I find that The Power of Ceremony and Ritual a fitting read.

It’s not that I don’t know some form of Ritual or Ceremony but I am inspired by the difference in approach to these fundamental magickal acts. They are magickal acts for me, we can call them Shamanism in the modern sense of the word, but the ideas about the ritual and ceremony we conduct, introduced by the authors (Sandra Ingerman, Hank Wesselman, and others) give me great food for thought.

One of the first things in the chapter that read bold in my mind was a note about the difference between ceremony and ritual. Sandra writes,

“Strictly defined, ceremonies have a predetermined structure and goal. In this sense, everyone participating in the ceremony has a predetermined role, and the ability of highly structured ceremony to create change cannot be underestimated, especially in helping maintain the physical and metaphysical equilibrium of any given community.”

In certain senses this reminds me of mythic reenactments, festivals that have been celebrated throughout the ages (with direct spiritual connotation that links us to the natural world), solem or celebratory. Ceremony, for me, is an act of honoring, affirming, dedication, and gratitude personally, and socially. This is the birthday, the wedding, and the funeral. The rite of passage from boy to man.

“Ritual, on the other hand, is much more open-ended. When we are engaged in ritual, we always have intentions for doing so, yet the end result may be quite different from those expectations. This is because there comes a point in every authentic ritual in which the spirits arrive, and then any predetermined structure or form may go right out the door.”

These two statements ticked at something in the mystical mind. This then is the formula followed, right and rote, to create a state of being. The Great Rite, the maypole, and Drawing Down the Moon… This is where I enter my altered state, the ritual brings me to the jumping off point and unlock the greater spirit. I am diving into the magickal.

Excuse me, I think I had some confusion over the year about the meaning of the words. In fact I think I’ve used them interchangeably. I digress. This was only an ah ha moment for me. 🙂

I need to say that I’m also impressed with the structure of the writing and the delivery of the message. I can’t say that I love certain terms used to describe things but I waddle through that in an attempt to keep my persnickety side on a leash, and my mind open. Expanding.

We continue on into structuring a ceremony or ritual, when and how, with some good starting steps in how we put this shamanic act together. What’s the purpose? What steps do we follow? How do we begin and end. I like. In fact I approve! I take away some tips and tricks that I’d like to implement in  my own personal work. That’s a plus.

Jose Stevens gives us a basic guideline of ceremonial and ritual structure: Opening, welcome, intention. Offering of gratitude for the work. Calling in the spirits, addressing the elements, cleansing of participants, the blessing, and the prayers or work. Raising power. Closing. Giving thanks and saying farewell to the elements.

There’s even a bit about intentions. These are very important things. Trust!

Anyway, we conclude with some interesting bits about what to do and examples of ceremony and ritual structure. Good chapter.

********

OK so if we’re doing this shamanic / magickal work, what are we doing it for? I can’t help myself here. I want to stand up on my little blog pedestal and ask What is important in the magickal work that we do?

Yes there are personal things that we as individuals need to accomplish. That includes necessity as well as acts of pleasure. An austere life doesn’t serve us unless there are acts of joy that better our lives. We need the sweetness because life can sting. Life is not just the serious and full of diversity to be enjoyed, reveled, loved, caressed and cared for, including our desires.

There are pressing issues like  health, money, survival needs that must be met and all of these things can be assisted with some magickal work. It’s a muscle and the more you use it the stronger our ability to work with the unseen, yet felt, world grows. Magickal work is part of my every day life, it’s at the point where I feel that each moment is a path inward and outward, living in many worlds.

Early on in life I wasn’t so integrated. I received a text message last night about a friend and instantly I snapped into a place where I was reaching out to someone in need. No candles, rattles, music, or incense, because after years of work that place is instantly attainable. In the past I would have had to count down into meditation, take a break, step away, but as B was talking to me I could simultaneously reach out to someone in the hospital bed and seek out her spirit, calling her home.

Toot-toot? no. It’s a demonstration of what each of us can do at the drop of the dime with proper training, dedication and experience. We can use our gift, our natural self to help us achieve what we desire, to find our answers, to seek, to know, to learn.

Awakening to the Spirit World seems to offer us a solid approach, from a green perspective, in easy to swallow explanations towards those goals.

Moving along into my week, I hope that this posting finds you well.

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– – –
Be well,

Scott K Smith
http://lifencompass.com

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Subscribe via RSS. Leave a comment, those are always appreciated. Submit something for posting, topics and ideas are welcome.