A Kind of Spring

Greetings all,

I hope you've had a lovely first week of spring.  A week ago I led a community drumming on the spring equinox.  I was not feeling like doing it, but so glad I did.  The rhythm of the drum and making prayers into a physical act is very simple, but also very powerful.

As I move forward into this new season I'm feeling layers of myself peel away.  Just as the land is thawing so too are the emotions that were frozen in stasis within my body.  I am finally getting in touch with the deep sadness and loss that has been there beneath the surface.  I've started to let it out, and while it hurts it is also a relief to my body.  It's a lot of work for the muscles and fascia to hold those feelings inside.  I'm also coming face to face with many old outmoded conflict patterns.

This summer when I journeyed to Eagle, Guardian of the East, they told me to become a man without enemies.  I thought that sounded great but I had no idea how I was going to do that.  People like to pick on me, they always have.  They like to cast me in roles as adversary when I exercise my authority and tell them no, or won't submit to them.  They do this because they perceive me as passive and easy going.  So I have continually found myself in adversarial roles with one person or another over the years.  I have cast them as 'the enemy'.  The problem with having an enemy (besides that you have an enemy) is it is too easy to give your power away to them, or project what you don't like about yourself onto them.  As you know they're the one with the problem, right?

I finally get why so many teachers have said to not hate your enemy.  When you hate someone you have given them the power to choose who you are.  I want to be kind, but if I claim someone as an enemy or hate them, whether their behavior warrants scorn or not, I've let them determine who I am. So right now I have choices to make.  I do need to respond to bad behavior in an appropriate manner when it occurs, but I don't need to mirror another person's malice and let it direct my actions and motives.  I have to choose to be kind and loving regardless of what others are doing.  I think once I consistently do that I will have become what Eagle foresaw.

Why am I telling you this?  Well we all run up against people that try to hurt us or take a dislike to us.  They can make life pretty miserable.  It is easy to be angry with them.  It's fine to be angry with someone's actions, and to take appropriate steps to address the situation.  To stay in that anger though and sit in the same soup of malice ultimately harms us more than what anyone else could do to us.  This is why so many traditions talk about forgiveness and compassion.

How about you?  Are you casting someone as the villain?  Are you allowing someone else's malicious intent to affect your own principles?  Are you deciding your actions and motives, or are you allowing the behavior of others to do that for you?  It is not easy to stay centered in an unkind world, but ultimately it is the only way to change it.

Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle

Root Work

Greetings all,

I have become erratic on posting, but I hope to get back into rhythm soon.  I have been busy doing deep work for myself which  eventually I'll bring to others.

Work on my second book is underway, and  I can hardly believe it.  Right now I am doing the research and background work, so don't expect a publication date anytime soon.  This book's focus is primarily on healing the inner self and to do so I've been testing the methods out on myself.  I am my front line beta-tester.

 Currently I am working in the chakra system, specifically the root chakra.  This one is often ignored by people who seek to raise their consciousness and transcend.  That generally leads to very shaky results in my experience.  You can experience peak moments of clarity and love, but without a stable foundation it has nowhere to ground into your body or your life, so it tends to dissipate quickly like a dream in the morning sun.  The seed of the divine spark sleeps in the root, if we work on healing and balancing the root chakra we pave the road for it to awaken the chakras above it.  The root for me represents the seat of personal identity, self worth, and being embodied.

The root if nurtured early tends to develop fairly strong, but it needs attention and more importantly acceptance.  Neglect, abuse, or constant criticism of someone's worth will damage it.  Severe trauma can also crack the root.   Sometimes this is unintentional, and other times it is a strategy used by manipulative types to project and shape a person's identity into what they desire for it.  This can lead to many long term crippling mental and emotional issues.  I've often quoted the Wandering Oracle who said, "A curse is a lie we believe about ourselves."  That lie lodges itself into the root poisoning our sense of self and worth.

So in my book in process, I am working through the chakras methodically to bring in many types of healing ceremonies and practices.  I got to act on the guidance from the first journeys I took at the beginning of the month.  The picture above is of the despacho ceremony I did dedicated to Sashamama (Serpent Mother), who rules over the root chakra in the Andean Shamanic tradition.  (The paper is red not pink, the lighting affected the photo).  This was assembled after doing a Kutti despacho which functioned as a way to get rid of all the curses, heavy energy, or any projections I was carrying.  In this case I aimed it solely at the root chakra.  I was lucky to have one of my teachers help me with this work, and I could feel the power of it building as we put the despacho bundles together.  Before starting the work I had anxiety about what was about to happen.  This is not surprising, changes in the root would change my sense of self.  I also knew that this was necessary for me to walk further down my personal path of power.

So why am I telling you this?  Well in these uncertain times, having a stable foundation is crucial.  We often just stumble on, trying to get by, afraid to dig deep into the dirt of our lives.  Many of us have weeds growing in our lives from seeds that others planted within us.  We pull at the shoots, but they keep coming back, because we haven't gotten to the root of the energies. We think we have gotten rid of one problem when up it pops again in a new place in our life.  If that keeps happening we either resign to the way things are or we go deeper.

How about you?  Is your root stable?  How much of your identity and self worth is dictated by the false projections of others?  Do you have the same problems in your life pop up again and again?  Well maybe it is time go deep and pull out of your root what doesn't belong there.  Maybe it is time that you watered your seed of divine light that sleeps there.  Your basic needs are not base, they are important, and so are you.

Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle