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Do-It-Yourself Earth Healing Ceremony
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Do It Yourself Earth Healing Ceremony November 2002 INTRODUCTION - EARTH HEALING CEREMONYOne workshop I have led many times - the first time September 10, 2001- was an Earth Healing Ceremony. It was so powerful and moving, I offer it to you as a gift to use for yourself and to share with others. Especially at this critical time for waging peace and envisioning peace in order to prevent war, I offer this as a loving, beautiful way to do so. What you think, feel, do does affect the whole so I encourage you to do your part, now especially, for the future of the planet. For those who like to jump in, I've written the ceremony first below, and the theory and background after it for those who want to know where this came from. It was partly from the vision I first had to do shamanic work 11 years ago, in which I saw myself leading this ceremony. The purpose of this ceremony is to generate and invoke love and healing energy and send it to the entire earth. Basically, the ceremony or prayer is to start from a place of unconditional love and move to visualizing the earth (including the people and other beings who live here) as you love it now. It is important to really emotionally and physically feel the love you have as this is a key to prayer. The more richly and specifically you can evoke the vision - touch, smell, sense- for yourself the stronger your prayer. Then move to envisioning the earth as it would be if it were what it is meant to be - this may be different for you than for me - for me I see a pristine environment and people who relate to each other with compassion. See it, feel it, taste it as if it were this way. As I'll explain in the Theory and Background below this is what makes for effective prayer (i.e. prayer that manifests). When I lead this workshop I drum steadily after giving the instructions. You could use a steady drum CD, drum or rattle for yourself. If you use music be very mindful to choose music that supports the ceremony rather than limiting it. When I lead this it takes about 40 minutes - do it for as long as it feels right for you. EARTH HEALING CEREMONYCall in the divine of your understanding to create sacred space for the ceremony. I formally call in the cardinal directions. Do what feels right for you. Sit or lie quietly and focus on your breathing as you relax. In order to start from a place of love, start with loving yourself. "From your heart or from your belly, invite feelings or images of kindness and love to radiate until they fill your whole being. Allow yourself to be cradled by your own awareness as if you were as deserving of loving kindness as any child. Let your awareness embody both benevolent mother and benevolent father energy, making available for you in this moment a recognition and an honouring of your being, and a kindness you perhaps did not receive enough of as a child. Let yourself bask in this energy of loving kindness, breathing it in and breathing it out, as if it were a lifeline, long in disrepair but finally passing along a nourishment you were starving for." (p. 164, "Wherever You Go, There You Are "by Jon Kabat-Zinn) You may say things to yourself but simply use the words to evoke the feelings of loving kindness. Once you have basked in that loving kindness for a few moments and fully experience it, pay attention to your breathing. Feel yourself breathing in unison with all those in your family. After a few breaths of truly feeling that unison, switch to feeling yourself breathing in unison with all your friends. After you feel that, extend to breathe in unison with all your acquaintances, friends and family. Continue this process, feeling yourself breathing in unison in turn with: From the entire universe bring yourself back in to breathing in unison with the entire planet. Now allow yourself to visualize fully (touch, taste, smell, see, hear) the elements of this planet that you love, loving it as it is AND as it would be if it were healed and at its full potential. Take as long as you wish. You will probably jump from image to image and this is fine; do it in a way that feels comfortable for you. The main thing is really feeling the love you have for the element you are visualizing and holding that for at least 20 seconds for each element. Move to your own life and visualize what you love in your own life as it is now and then visualize it as it would be if your life were at its full potential. Again, take as long as you like. As you are feeling ready to come out of the visualization, ask your authentic self or the divine of your understanding what action you can do in the next two weeks to support the healing of the earth OR simply what is most important for you to know now. Please note that taking action will help ground your vision and it is best if it is something that you will be able to do fairly readily so you will actually do it! As you come out of this, do whatever closure is appropriate for you. Thanking the divine of your understanding for the experience is one I love. If you are with someone else doing this ceremony, I suggest you sit in silence for a few moments and when ready share your experiences. Take turns with one person completely listening without interrupting as the other talks and then switch. I find a nice way to mark the beginning and ending of this is for each person to start by saying "this is my story..." and ending with "that is my medicine" recognizing and honouring the healing of the experience and its telling. (I learned this from my teacher Armand Huet DeGrenier) You can do a mini-version of this ceremony anytime. In fact I often go through my day, taking 30 seconds every once in a while to visualize something I love about the earth and sending that love. BACKGROUND - HOW THIS CEREMONY CAME TO MEEleven years ago I participated in a vision quest retreat. At the end of my solo time in the mountains, I had a vision of me, dressed in a white outfit leading about 150 people also dressed in white in an earth healing ceremony. We were in an aspen meadow that looked like it was in the foothills outside of Calgary, Alberta in Canada. I had an immediate knowing from seeing this that I was to develop my abilities as a shamanic teacher so that some day I could lead such a ceremony. This vision led me on to leading shamanic workshops, and doing shamanic healing and teaching. Over the years I would ask spirit once in a while if I should organize such a ceremony. I was told not to worry- it would be 5 - 10 years away from the time of my vision quest. I stopped asking and then in the summer of 2001, I was told to be ready to lead the ceremony and that I would not need to organize anything. I found that difficult to believe, surely I had to do some work to make this happen! So I did start asking if anyone had some land we could use and nothing came of it. At the same time, I was drawn to take a workshop in Bragg Creek, in the foothills outside of Calgary and one day as our group of 50 participants was outside doing an exercise in which we would close our eyes and open them quickly and repeatedly, I realized that I was standing in the meadow I had seen in my vision 10 years previously. I was very moved and told the instructor about my vision. She suggested I talk to another participant who was a First Nations pipe carrier and had brought her pipe. She felt she was to lead a Pipe Ceremony though she did not know the intention. I said I know the intention - it is earth healing - I'm just not sure what we will do. Over the next day ideas came together for me. So the pipe carrier and I were ready. The instructor said the whole class should participate and not all wanted to and I was not sure when we would fit it in the schedule. There was some talk of doing it a few days later but some participants had a strong sense of urgency that it needed to be done that weekend. The weather turned cold and we did the ceremony inside. It was not exactly as I'd seen it in my vision but that did not matter - the power in the room was overwhelming and beautiful. And I was challenged to step fully into my shamanic power in a situation I would not have chosen but that felt completely guided. We finished the ceremony at 1 PM Monday September 10, 2001. Afterwards I went out into the meadow and sobbed - it was a feeling I can't describe that had to do with the honour of honouring a vision that had come 10 years exactly before then and the feeling of connection that came from following that direction and having a whole group of people participate in it with me. Once the September 11th tragedy took place the next day, I felt the importance of loving the earth in this way and over the next year, led this ceremony at almost every gathering I held. THEORY BEHIND THE CEREMONYMuch of what I have learned over the years is synthesized in this ceremony. First - love. why love? Because it is the force, the energy that creates healing. The Utne Reader magazine had an issue on healing a few years ago and asked healers what created healing and they almost all said - unconditional love of the healer for the healee and holding the possibility for healing for the healee - this makes space for healing to occur. My didgeridoo teacher Shine Edgar plays the didgeridoo over the body of the person he is doing healing for and sees the person perfect as they are AND their authentic, healed self. He holds that vision of what is and what could be and blows love and appreciation for both into the person. Another teacher of mine - Kimberley Herkert asked us in the spring of 2001 what was true unconditional love. Her answer is that it is seeing the beauty in another. Gregg Braden (The Isaiah Effect) and others such as Lynn Grabhorn (who wrote the book with a title something like - Life is Waiting for You) have written that in visioning the future to manifest what we desire, the key to manifestation is the feeling of love for the vision and Grabhorn says we need to hold that for at least 18 seconds. Other keys are to envision and feel the vision as if it is already there - in present time. Braden talks about a rainmaker who does not pray for rain - he prays rain - he becomes rain - feeling it, sensing it as if it is pouring down. And Braden stresses that it is important to continue holding this vision with heart and mind to truly manifest it. In the Isaiah Effect, he writes of how a prayer circle of thousands activated over the internet seemed to have caused President Clinton to turn bombers around that were on their way to Iraq. Yet hostilities happened later. He suggests that this was because people stopped praying and holding the vision of peace. The more we can sustain holding that vision the stronger the effect. Many prophets have said, and are saying, that this time in history is an opportunity to energetically shift the planet to a place of more love and harmony. Many have interpreted the ancient texts as indicating that this could be the end of history, but other interpretations are that things could go either way and that it is up to the people living on the planet now to influence what happens through our own internal feelings of love and harmony and our feelings and actions in the world as well as our prayers and visions. Again, love is key here -fearing for the end of the world is an energy that is unhelpful - coming from the love we have for this beautiful planet is what will work to shift things. I have been reflecting lately on how blessed I am to live now and participate in this time and what a privilege and honour it is to be someone who can be part of this and has all the abilities and knowledge to be part of it. The Hopi prophecies say that we who live now are the ones we have been waiting for. In other words - the saviours are us - and it's up to us. Sometimes I fight within to not feel guilty for doing more and then when I remember that every thought and feeling affects the whole I realize that my whole life is contributing and being kind to myself would be a good start! (while not excusing inaction). Shamans say we are dreaming our reality into being and we've been dreaming an unhealthy dream for the last 1000 years - it has been unbalanced to the mental, rational, masculine. As Sandra Ingerman says in her wonderful book Medicine for the Earth, "it is time to dream together a pure, clean planet of beauty where we can live in harmony with our selves, the rest of life, and nature. Let's all dream about perceiving heaven on earth now." Sandra Ingerman, the great teacher of soul retrieval also had a vision that the purpose of humans is to nurture and when we nurture through love and not need we open the veils between the worlds to work in partnership with spirits. It is time for us to be adults and nurture through love - this keeps us healthy too! So what about this nurturing love? Nurture and love make for compassion which is different than empathy, which is feeling the pain of others. This can overwhelm us and we give up or enable others; it weakens us. Compassion, on the other hand has the qualities of detachment and non-judgement, of simply radiating love. This is the kind of love that is most effective in healing ourselves and others. A few years ago, I led a sweat lodge and one of the women told us a vision that she had had in a sweat lodge a few years before. She had been moaning and wailing and crying and asking Mother Earth forgiveness for all the horrible things people had done to the earth. She heard a deep commanding female voice say "Stop your whining - it's not helping!" My friend was taken aback - she felt it was Mother Earth. She asked what she could do then and Mother Earth said "Hold the vision for my healing." Sandra Ingerman said a few years ago, and I agree with her, that the earth will survive most likely no matter what fool things humans do. We're more likely to wipe ourselves out and take a lot of other species with us than anything else. So why do this Earth Healing Ceremony? For the feeling of connection with the earth which will change our actions and behaviour to be more earth-friendly. And because I do believe it can make a difference at least to us and the other species we might wipe out! And because Mother Earth has come to many to ask us to help now with our visions, prayers, and actions. Andrew Harvey, in his book The Way of Passion on the great Persion mystic Rumi, speaks of how an Iranian student told him that Americans worship the Rebel archetype which leads to disconnection and domination. Rumi calls us to the archetype of the Servant/Lover who loves life and the world passionately and serves life in his/her own way. This passionate service can only come through the feeling of connection and love that one has for all life. Harvey tells a story in his book of how one of Rumi's students followed him one day. Rumi had ordered a basket of rich food prepared and the student wanted to expose him as a charlatan preaching service, but about to go gorge himself in secret. Rumi went to a graveyard a few miles distant and laid the food out to feed a starving mother dog with a litter of puppies. Rumi called to the student to help him and he felt ashamed. He asked how Rumi knew about the dog. Rumi said he could hear her crying from miles away. He was that connected. So, what can we do? A lot. Every thought, emotion, action you do affects the whole and you. So, if nothing else, be mindful to think healing thoughts and take healthy actions. Unhealthy thoughts and feelings affect us and others. What are they? Envy and malice towards others are two of the worst. Be a force for stopping gossip wherever you experience it. My teacher Kim Herkert says that humans are meant to live past 100 years and the main reason we are not living that long now is the energetic effects of envy and malice. Anger towards ourselves is another. Nurture joy and compassion - these are healthy authentic feelings and they are a lot more fun! In the book The Message of Water by Masara Emotu, he demonstrates the research a Japanese team did on the effects of written words, energy, prayer, thoughts, and music on water molecules. The team froze water to be able to see the crytalline structure that could form. The crystalline structure varied greatly. In one example, the water from a dammed lake was dark and formless with no crystals. A Shinto Priest prayed for an hour beside the lake and the water then formed beautiful bright, white, hexagonal crystals within a crystal. Distilled water had no crystals; clear mountain springs had beautiful crystals; stagnant, polluted water had deformed and distorted crystals. The words "Thank you" and "Love and Appreciation" taped on glasses of water formed gorgeous snowflake crytals. Heavy metal music or negative words such as "You fool" formed chaotic, dark, fragmented crystals. The pictures in the book graphically show how we affect the whole with our thoughts, feelings and words. And the whole affects us. This year (2002) has been rough for many people as collectively we deal with our shadow sides - the aspects of ourselves that we have banished because we think they are not good. They are coming out to bite us this year so that we can love and accept the positive qualities in these shadow aspects and integrate them into our full selves. So I encourage you to be gentle with yourself and the others around you. I know I have sure been experiencing inner and outer conflict this year. And as we heal and work through these issues within ourselves and with our loved ones that affects the whole too. Bless you and bonne courage!! SUMMARY ON EFFECTIVE PRAYERKey: do and sense all elements of the prayer as if your prayer had already manifested Attention: focus on your prayer and intention Intention: be clear about what you are calling into being. If you state it in your mind or out loud, preface your statement with “I will . . .” This will call up your willpower and things are moving so fast that if you said it in present tense it would already be the past by the time you said it. “I will . . “ also calls on your future self to help. Engage your: Take action, no matter how small, towards manifesting your prayer. Baby steps can get us there too! Live the engaged thoughts, feelings, sensations day in and day out. RESOURCESThe Isaiah Effect by Gregg Braden Medicine for the Earth by Sandra Ingerman - great shamanic book on becoming an energetic vessel for transmuting pollution Awakening the Heroes Within by Carol Pearson on archetypes and some on the shadow. The Way of Passion - a Celebration of Rumi by Andrew Harvey - the best explanation I've read of the great 13th century mystic's work. This will inspire you to be a lover of the planet! The Messages of Water by Masaru Emotu from Source Books. You can link from www.thespiritofmaat.com Any Rumi poetry or writing. A great 13th century mystic from Turkey, his poetry is divine and meant to take us to a place of connection with spirit. Rumi embodied the lover of all life and the divine. The Essential Rumi by Coleman Barks ( a collection) and The Illuminated Rumi by Coleman Barks and Michael Green (a gorgeous picture book) are 2 of my favorites. www.soulrestore.com - To get great information on shamanic practice and healing, to purchase drum CD's and lecture CD's on healing yourself and to purchase Soul Healing Sprays and Drops. Laureen Rama is available to lead retreats and workshops for private groups. She also teaches advanced shamanic healing techniques and offers shamanic healings in person or by distance.
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Calgary Alberta Canada crediting Laureen Rama as the author. |
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