Transmutation News – January 2003

I want to wish you a New Year filled with an abundance of light!

As we are all interconnected with nature we have an unconscious drive to experience life in cycles. We are always reminded by nature of the cycles of life.

Some cultures and traditions live by a lunar cycle. As living beings so affected by the moon we do follow a lunar cycle whether we are aware of it or not. Many of us come from cultures that follow a calendar based on the cycle of the sun.

There seems to be an innate desire in all of us to know that in following cycles there is a time when we can leave our past behind and look forward to a new beginning. For most of us around the world this time of new beginnings comes with the celebration of the New Year.

There tends to be a feeling of excitement as we perceive ourselves beginning a new cycle. We can see how our past shaped and sculpted us into the beings we are today. Those of you have been reading the Transmutation News are all people who have made a shift in consciousness and we can be in gratitude for all that has happened that has brought us to this place.

I was recently talking to a friend who reads a lot of the news coming from Starhawk who is also an author and teacher. Starhawk has been seeding the idea that most of us have been under a spell. This really makes sense. I too believe many people are under a spell that collecting material objects will bring us happiness, that we have no personal power to create change, and that there are authority figures who will keep us safe and healthy. This spell also includes the illusion that we are separate from nature, each other, and the rest of life.

Those of you reading this have been in a process of waking up from the spell that has been cast on the masses. But there are still many who continue to sleep. I do believe that part of our spiritual work is to try to wake the sleeping masses up. There is a lot of unconsciousness to truth these days.

The key and also a challenge is how to keep others and ourselves from taking an “us vs. them” position and see that it is “we”. How do we communicate to others that we must wake up without generating anger and division?

There are many causes one can get impassioned about right now. For me I tend to focus a lot of my energy on the environment. It is quite extraordinary to watch how humankind continues to poison the elements which bring us life.

It is amazing to me how many people do not know that we even have an environmental crisis in the U.S. This is not the case in many other countries, as those of you reading this from outside the U.S. know.

As we look towards a new year and a new beginning I invite you to look inside yourself and see if there are some different ways that you can begin to educate those in your communities to the issues we are facing. I do believe that writing letters to the editor of a local newspaper is a place to start. Keep your intention clear. Bring through the consciousness of being in a divine state as we have been working with in the practice of transfiguration. Communicate from a place of love not trying to create fear or anger. Have your intention be one of education and inspire people to look for new solutions on a community level. Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Educating people to the principle of interconnectedness is also important. Danah Zohar in her book The Quantum Self: Human Nature and Consciousness Defined by the New Physics says:
“Everything that each of us does affect all the rest of us, directly and physically. I am my brother’s keeper because my brother is a part of me, just as my hand is a part of my body.

If I injure my hand, my whole body hurts. If I injure my consciousness- fill it with malicious or selfish or evil thoughts — I injure the whole nonlocally connected field of consciousness.”

Although I read a lot of non-fiction so I can keep up on what other people have to share I really love to read fiction. I like to learn through stories rather than by lectures. I recently bought the book Prey by Michael Crichton. I have only had the opportunity to read the Introduction. In the intro which is not fiction, he talks about what we have done to the environment and our current ignorance to the nanotechnology that is being developed.

Here is a very popular writer. He has written many books and many of you might know him from his books Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park. In educating people in his intro he is waking people up to a situation that most of us are not aware of. And with his popularity he can reach masses. There are many people popular to the masses such as Robert Redford, Paul Newman, Oprah Winfrey, and a host of others who in their own way try to wake the masses up. We can if we choose to do this on a smaller level.

There is an incredible wealth of information that is being shared today on the environment, quantum physics, and other related topics. The information is very enlightening, but having information does not create change. The only way change will occur is if we change our consciousness and our way of living. We must be able to live the information not just store it. We need to work with spiritual practices that can help us embody the wealth of information being shared today.

I believe this is a strong point of Medicine for the Earth. It is filled with daily exercises and community ceremonies that can facilitate a change in consciousness and help you create a new way of life. You might consider inviting a local Medicine for the Earth teacher to come to work with members of your community. You can find the nearest teacher to you by visiting:
www.medicinefortheearth.com.
Some of you reading the Transmutation News might want to stay out of any sort of activism role and continue to keep up your spiritual work. This is also extremely important. We all have to find what feeds us and keeps us feeling strong and empowered.

Danah Zohar quotes Jung, who said,
“If things go wrong in the world, this is because something is wrong with the individual, because something is wrong with me. Therefore, if I am sensible, I shall put myself right first.”

This of course goes along with what I wrote in Medicine for the Earth and in all the Transmutation News. As we remember that we are divine and connected to all and find harmony inside of ourselves our outer world will reflect that back to us.

This brings us back to the key of our work which is spiritual practice. As we begin the new cycle of the New Year we have the opportunity to keep building on what we have been doing spiritually. As we do this we change on a cellular level. This will affect our own health and sense of well being and the world around us. Keep up your transfiguration practice.

From a quantum physics understanding how you focus every thought and emotion does effect the non-local field. If we can keep our focus on a positive vision this is the fabric that is woven non-locally which will effect what ends up being manifested.
This month I do encourage you to repeat the practices I have been teaching about the power of words. Words are alive; they vibrate and create form out of the void. They are a potent tool to how we create in the world. Words are how we call things into being. This month let’s all stay conscious to what we calling into being with our words.
One of the principles of shamanic journeying is that we have the ability to journey outside of time. Occasionally, in certain workshops, since the mid 1980’s I have asked participants to journey shamanically to meet with descendants. The type of advice I asked people to get from descendants depended on the workshop I was teaching. In the last few years I have on and off brought in a journey to descendants in my Medicine for the Earth Gatherings. I have asked participants to journey hundreds of years into the future and speak to descendants who heal with light, sound, and vibration. The information we have received has been quite powerful and valuable.

What 1 have realized is that we have taught our descendants this information to pass on. As we have forgotten how to work in this way our descendants are teaching it to us. By doing so many journeys I realized that a solid bridge has been created from our time into the future. When I do the drumming for these journeys I can hear the descendants chanting for us.

As I have been so moved by this connection I journeyed to the descendants to ask if there is anything I could do for them. The information they gave me was, “You are sacrificing an entire generation of children.” I knew exactly what they meant. We are passing on our same empty values to our children. Children are losing the sparkle in their eyes at an earlier age. The abuse and neglect of so many children is far beyond any of the horrors we have become so focused on with terrorism. The terrorism of our children in all cultures is what needs to be focused on.

The suicide rate and violent behavior of teenagers is sky rocketing.

We are all aware of the problem. Again, as with the environment, the situation will not change on its own without some action on our part. We do have power to start to work with our own children and the children we are close too.

All the practices we are doing we can bring our children into. I will begin seeding some ideas in all of the following Transmutation News.

For this month we can share the practice I have asked you to do this month about the power words with children you have a close relationship with. Practice saying different words and have the child blow the energy of the word up into the air. Or find a photo of someone or something precious to the child. Have the child blow the energy of the word at the photo. This starts to entrain children to see that as they say words they are blowing the energy of the word to another life form that is also precious.

This is one place to start.
We have been working with the principle of as above so, so below; as within, so without. We have been working on transmuting the energy that is sent out with our problematic thoughts and emotions.

This month let’s turn our attention to transmuting the toxic energies in our environment. We take these toxins in through the pollution and chemicals in earth, air, and water as well as with the problematic thoughts and beliefs around us in the world today.

From a very esoteric viewpoint of energy we can work with the concept of all energy is neutral. First I believe that we must bring consciousness to what we put out into the world. Otherwise, this concept becomes a rationalization for not wanting to work on ourselves and how we express ourselves in the world. But once we have been working on ourselves and how we communicate we can evolve our practice to look at how all energy is neutral.

This month meditate or journey on ways that you can take in all that life gives you while neutralizing and transmuting any toxicity. You might take a look at pages 247-248 of Medicine for the Earth where I share more on this.

Remember to use the formula for transmutation as you work.
Intention + love + union + harmony + concentration + focus + imagination = transmutation.

Until we do change how we live, what we put into the earth, air, water physically and mentally we need to find practices that allow us to transmute what we take in on all levels to maintain our own health.
For our worldwide community ceremony this month let’s repeat a bit of what we did for the fall equinox in September. The full moon is on Saturday January 18. This could be a good time for us to work together.

If you have not read this web page before look at the Transmutation News for July and August 2002. This will give you the instructions for both the practices of transfiguration and creation.
Let’s together transfigure and experience peace fully as if it has already occurred. Remember in the creation process it is important to see, hear, feel, smell, and taste what you are creating. And it is important to experience it as if it is here now. If you experience it as happening in the future you are not calling it in to present time.

Breathe in peace, breathe out peace.
Breathe in honor, breathe out honor.
Breathe in gratitude, breathe out gratitude.
Breathe in love, breathe out love.
Breathe in appreciation, breathe out appreciation.
Breathe in unity, breathe out unity.
Breathe in harmony, breathe out harmony.
Again, breathe in peace and breathe out peace.
Use the elements of transmutation and transfigure into your divinity as you have been practicing it. As you experience yourself in a divine state of being allow peace to permeate all your cells and senses. Breathe through your heart. Concentrate and focus breathing your experience of peace through you and out into the field. Repeat any words you feel appropriate to go along with the vibration and energy you are sending out.

When you feel you are disconnecting from the process start to bring yourself back. Ground yourself feeling yourself being here now.
This is the full moon and our time to keep weaving a human web of light. Allow yourself to feed the web either while you are transfigured or when you are done and still experiencing the afterglow.
If we keep concentrating and focusing our energies together from a place of love, unity, peace, harmony, and beauty we change the fabric of the web of life changing what manifests on the planet.
Winter is an important time to gestate the seeds you want to grow in the new year.
Please remember to look at my calendar for 2003 if you are interested in attending a training.
“I don’t know what your destiny will be, but the one thing I know: the one’s among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.” Albert Schweitzer

“To be human is to be challenged to be more divine.
Not even to try to meet such a challenge is the biggest defeat imaginable.” Maya Angelou

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Transmutation News – December 2002

I would like to begin this month’s Transmutation News asking everyone to offer a prayer for all of life that has been impacted by the devastating environmental disaster in Spain. This has a ripple effect throughout the web of life. May we send our prayers that help be given to the elements, the animals in the sea, earth, and in the air, the plants, and all those affected by this tragic oil spill. It seems like so many of the issues of our time are around oil. May we find our right relationship with this earth resource.

You will notice this month’s Transmutation News is longer than usual. As we move into winter there is a lot to use to fuel your internal fire to prepare the seeds for the next cycle. The end of the Transmutation News for this month does offer a ceremony for us to participate in together to honor the winter solstice.

I know many of us hold a great fascination with ancient Egypt and other civilizations where it is clear mysterious powers were used for creating sacred sites. There is a lot of speculation to the knowledge the ancients held. One ability they obviously had was the ability to hold one’s concentration. We are so bombarded by external stimulation that we don’t concentrate. In teaching people shamanic journeying it’s amazing to me how many people can’t even hold their concentration for ten minutes. Without this skill we cannot accomplish the spiritual healing which is possible.

Are you happy and content with the energy in our environment and the world situation? If not then you must deepen your spiritual practice of transmuting negative and dense energies. I know we have been working on this together for the past few years. But we must not become complacent with our work or give up because we are not seeing results fast enough.

Deepen your intention, deepen your love for all of life, the web of life, deepen your practice of becoming in union with the divine. In Aramaic the word for divine means unity. So when we are experiencing our divinity, transfiguring into the divine or source we are in union without opposites, separation or duality. Deepen your ability to concentrate and focus your energies.

Does participating in complaining, judgement, fear, and anger distract you? Do you distract yourself by the continual process of collecting more information which only feeds your mental processes? Learn to unburden yourself of these distractions. I have shared enough tools for you in Medicine for the Earth and this web site. Deepen your ability to access a state of harmony. Deepen your ability to hold the dream of a world in peace, harmony, honor for life, and all living beings, appreciation, and beauty.

We must organize ourselves as spiritual vehicles for peace. We can’t spend our energy feeding our minds, dividing on how the work should happen, and complaining about what isn’t working. We must learn how to concentrate our energies together. Concentration of energies is not concentrating with our minds. It is merging and focusing our energies together and not a mental process. The energies around us are unlimited. Use them as fuel for yourself and bring them through to transmute the current density.

After the tragedy of September 11 I brought up looking at what we could learn from Osama bin Laden. He has had great power in teaching his followers how to stay focused. It is quite incredible and tragic what that kind of focus could produce. If you look at the power of George Bush he also has the power of focus, but he also uses the power of dividing energies. The ability to divide energies is what has allowed our current political administration to come into power and stay in power.

I have always said that one reason we don’t have our full spiritual power to create change is that people involved in spiritual practices keep fighting among themselves about how to create change. This has created divided energies. We do not need to agree with each other on methods, but we can still focus our energies together to create healing for the planet and peace. We need some generosity of spirit and a heartfelt understanding that everyone is getting a piece of the puzzle which all interconnect together.

In looking at what is going on in the world situation today with the threat of war, terrorist threats, environmental disasters such as the devastating oil spill in Spain, and on and on we must remove ourselves from the petty dramas that can distract our focus.

The truth is not divisive. It is our reaction to the truth that creates division. I have learned that by bringing light to a situation allows the energy to be transmuted. To keep things in the dark is like allowing a wound to fester.

Using the metaphor from the story of “The Two Wolves”, we are seeing a planetary illness caused by a divisive heart. One heart embraces unity, divinity, interconnectedness, peace, harmony, love, abundance, and beauty. One heart embraces separation, fear, anger, control, scarcity, and greed. In keeping with the teachings in Medicine for the Earth we need to choose to feed the heart that embraces unity and the qualities that go along with this. We have to stay focused here to plump up the energies around this heart as so much energy goes into feeding the heart of separation. This creates a ripple effect that heals the web.

We must learn how to get in the “eye of the storm”. My spiritual teacher Isis taught how to do this when I wrote Welcome Home. She said in times of great challenge stay focused, stay positive, stay centered. To add to this we must stay focused on what heart we want to feed and strengthen. When you put it this way your choices become clear.

I also find what helps me is to read books that inspire me and to surround myself with symbols that remind me of the preciousness of the web of life. In this way I can keep transmuting the energies that arise which need healing. As we continue to do this the web heals too. Illness in all forms is stuck and dense energy. Where there is life and health there is movement.

I started this year’s Transmutation News stating that all ancient spiritual traditions teach that everything that happens on the physical level manifests first on the spiritual level. Our current issues of terrorism, war, division, separation, in all its manifest forms has formed on the spiritual. The spiritual level is where need to concentrate and focus our transmutation work. Let’s learn to focus our energies together and not divide them.

Learn to flow with the changes instead of suffer the changes. Keep your energy moving and flowing and keep a loving heart.

The classic methods of shamanism are wonderful and do support the healing process. As the cause of many illnesses today are changing we must keep changing our ways of working. Many of the illnesses we now see are the result of breathing in air filled with pollution and toxins, eating foods contaminated with chemicals and pollution, and drinking water that is also contaminated.

We are being asked to step “out of the box” in dealing with this situation. There are many teachers around the world now who are choosing to step out of the box and bring back some of the more obscure ancient methods of healing while at the same time working with ways to evolve spiritual healing to meet the needs of this time. The spirit around the Medicine for the Earth and other work that different teachers are bringing through is enormous. The challenge of course is not to try to control the work.

In the alliance I formed with other Medicine for the Earth teachers we agreed to let the spirit of the work evolve with no controls. There are lots of lessons around creating new models for teaching and organizing and not creating a hierarchy. One of the shadow sides of hierarchical structures is having the power to herd and control creative potential. We have all seen examples of this. The unlimited possibilities of potential create great excitement inside of me and I look forward to sharing where the work has been gracefully invited.

A caution with our work today with shamanic healing is not to get trapped into a Newtonian model of working. The depth of the initiations of indigenous shamans brought them into such deep contact with the awareness of unity and interconnection and breaking through the illusion that we are separate from the web. The depth of these initiations recreated the cellular structure of the shaman to hold this awareness and be a vehicle for this energy. Have you ever looked into the eyes of a great indigenous shaman or healer? No matter how much pain and suffering they have experienced in their life their eyes hold the sparkle of life and joy of this awareness as they carry it in their bodies into the world. This sparkle and light is beyond what they show publicly. This light shines through these shamans and healers through every moment of their life.

This takes working on a quantum level. We just don’t see this enduring bright light in most shamanic practitioners’ eyes today. We have to learn that by carrying this awareness in our cells and living it brings the light back to our eyes and to the earth. And without the depth of the initiations indigenous shamans experienced over years, not hours, we can experience this awareness only by devotion to our spiritual practice and shifting our consciousness to a place which both quantum physicists and shamans have been sharing. To truly understand and live the healing path of the shaman is to live the principle of interconnection.

The dance of course becomes being able to disengage from our spiritual experiences enough to be able to live life fully in form which is why we took bodies in the first place. How to disengage while staying connected. We need to get the light and sparkle in our eyes and carry it through our bodies into life.

When I can get into a clear and unburdened state I can truly see what we all search for is the experience of eternal light and love. All life is made of light. Even the darkness is made of light. Light permeates everything including the void. Humankind also searches for love. We were created from light and love so this means we are light and love. I have written all this before and humankind has been living out the consequences of this search throughout history. It is the egoic part of us that creates this separation and the continual search.

But most of us search for remembering the truth of who we are in very unconscious ways. People search for love and light through relationships, money, material objects, and power. When you look at the absolute core of what they are searching for it is love and light and to be recognized.

Have you ever looked into the eyes of a person who is searching for financial gain or gain through power? When I do I see fear and abandonment.

Jesus taught that we must not hide our light. We hear today words in songs devoted to encouraging us to let our light shine. There are a lot of teachings around this. All spiritual traditions also teach that love is the most powerful healing force. These are all wonderful words with great power. What we are all searching for is the full experience of these words not as a mental concept.

Therefore, another purpose of initiations in spiritual traditions like shamanism is to break down the egoic barriers that separate us from remembering the truth of who we are. These repeated experiences resculpt us on a cellular level to carry this knowledge fully in us.

I believe that this is one reason that people find being in nature so healing emotionally, physically, and spiritually. Nature gives off and reflects back to us eternal light. The sun is a great example of this. It just shines and continually gives us energy and needs nothing in return. It is a great example of carrying and giving a source of light that is eternal. When people are in nature on some level they receive the light that is given. And on some level we are reminded of our own light. This connection with nature therefore has the power to heal us.

As you can imagine not everyone wants to walk down the path of giving up the search for financial gain, material objects, relationships, and power. ‘Many are lost in the illusion that these external sources carry the light and love we need. As so many people are lost in this illusion the result is the violence, war, and misuse of power we are experiencing on the planet today and have seen throughout history. Once again if everything manifests on the spiritual level before manifesting on the physical the lack of knowledge of our spiritual connections to our internal and eternal love and light are causing the outer manifestations in the world we are seeing.

For me the practice of transfiguration as I have been writing about it and teaching it has been the practice that has been creating a huge remodeling going on inside me on a cellular level. Every time I transfigure into my own divinity I feel a change throughout my body that keeps working on me throughout my life. As my whole being starts to change I can remember what my spiritual search has been about and gives me the impetus to stay focused on the transfiguration process with the knowledge of where this is leading me.

If you spent time out in nature reflecting on your interrelation with the elements, as I suggested last month, you must have noticed how much you are nurtured by sun, earth, water, and air.

The sun provides ongoing energy that nurtures our bodies, minds, and soul. The sun reminds us of our own passionate fire and energy of our souls which fuel our lives. People deprived of sun for long periods of time typically fall into a depression.

Air provides the oxygen that feeds our cells, our bodies, as well as fuels our fire; our own energetic system. Air cleanses and feeds our body, mind, and soul.

Earth provides nurturance for our body as she continually births the life that creates food for all living beings. She provides continual beauty for us to feast on as we look around us with wonder at the colors and beauty of the life forms she creates reminding us of our own creative potential as we are earth too. Once again we are fed body, mind, and soul, as we are captivated by all the earth gives to us.

Water reflects back to us the nature of our own soul. It feeds every part of us transferring vitamins and minerals from the different elements into our bodies. We are soothed and calmed by hearing water and by sitting with bodies of water. We are mostly water and we are dependent on outside sources of water to replenish the water we excrete throughout the day. Water is essential for nurturance but also for cleansing our internal organs.

So for all that we receive from these great elements what do we do in return? Is it possible as I suggested in Medicine for the Earth that we came here to be caretakers of these life forms and be “gardeners”? If so are we being of service? In the world we no longer appreciate the nurturance provided by nature and just how dependent we are on nature vs. our belief we are dependent on science and technology. It is nature we should be turning to for answers not technology.

Where do we have power right now in a world that continually trashes the garden? Where we all have power is how we personally caretake through creating connections and building relationship with the energies of love, appreciation, and gratitude. This is at least a beginning.

Masuro Emoto, who I have written about in the past, shares in his books Messages of Water volumes 1 and 2 photos of how the crystalline structure of water responds to the energy of love and gratitude. It is quite striking to actually see the response.

Providing this energy feeds all of nature which in turn feeds us too. You have all been in gardens that have been cared for with love. Everything that is alive responds to love; all things in nature are alive.

Some of you might be asking at this point how is it that I wrote last month nature doesn’t have egoic emotions but responds to love.

Nature experiences the “what is” without egoic judgement. If a garden is not thriving because of lack of care it is just not thriving. If a garden thrives through being fed energetically with love it is thriving. It is experiencing the cycles of life and death without a sense of judgment or what could be or should be. It just is.

Nature thrives on energy just as we do. We can caretake all the elements who we are interrelated with through our heart connection and sharing our light and love back.

This is how you can also work with transmuting the energy of the pollution that we take in from the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink. With everything that you take in concentrate and focus on the nurturance and light you are receiving and be in a state of love and appreciation for what you have been given. Recognize the light, divinity, and perfection of what you are taking in. Remember it truly is our perception which creates our reality.

Before we shift into our ceremony to honor the winter solstice let’s pause in our work and acknowledge the immensity of the forces we are working with.

Close your eyes for a few minutes and take a few deep breaths through your heart. Visualize the earth and consider your body size in proportion to it. Consider how far the sun is from the earth. Consider how deep the earth’s core is. Experience how far the winds circulate. Think about all the galaxies the creative force called into being.

The feelings of immensity hopefully lead you to a place of humbleness. Yes, I have been teaching you that you are a reflection of the creative forces of the universe. Your spiritual self is immense also. But when you consider the immensity of the universe we live in it gives us a different perspective of the power of the forces that are beyond us and moving and evolving with us or without us.

Humbleness is an important quality for all of us to embrace as we step further into our own spiritual development and evolution.

The purpose of our ceremony for the winter solstice will be to honor all the elements that make up the planet, our bodies and which we are so interdependent with.

Before the winter solstice you will need to gather some earth from where you live, some water from a body of water where you live, a candle which you can empower through intention the power of the sun, and something that can represent air. You could use some incense or you can use an empty container with the knowledge that this contains the air that we breathe. These are just some suggestions. Use what has heart and meaning for you.

You need to decide if you want to work alone and connect energies with the thousands of people around the world performing this ceremony and other ceremonies to honor the winter solstice. You might be part of a group you want to work with and you will need to organize yourselves before December 21. You might want to decide also if you wish to work inside or in nature. As you collect the elements for your ceremony keep them in a place that you consider sacred and continue to hold an intention to honor them and the web of life.

If you are new to this work and have not worked with the process of transfiguration please read the July 2002 Transmutation News. Practice this process before the winter solstice.

On December 21 begin by unburdening yourself from earthly concerns and distractions. You can cleanse your body, mind, heart, and soul with the smoke of incense that you might like the fragrance of. You might perform a visualization of experiencing yourself being in a place in nature. Imagine building a small sacred fire. Tell the fire about your burdens and ask fire to take them from you. Experience yourself giving fire your burdens and the fire receiving them and transmuting them to light. Give thanks to the fire and stay there as the fire burns back down to the earth.

You can come up with your own rituals for unburdening yourself. Just make sure that when you begin your work you are clear and you feel your heart as pure.

When you are ready to begin start by connecting with the energy deep inside of the earth. Breathe the energy up and through the top of your head out to the sky. Now do the same thing bringing the energies from above and the sky down through your body into the earth. Circulate the energies.

Use music or drumming and singing and dancing to transfigure into your divine spirit becoming pure light, beauty, and love. Remember to make sure you are working with:
intention + love + union + harmony + concentration + focus + imagination = transmutation.
Imagine connecting with thousands of people who are honoring the change of the cycle. Experience your energies focusing with the energies of others. Hold your concentration.

Make sure that your intention to honor the elements and the web of life is clear. Infuse the elements in your sacred space with love and light. Use toning to help you hold the transfigured state. These elements are pure light. Harmony within creates harmony without. Everything in your space including yourself is pure light, love and creative potential.

When you feel yourself disconnecting start to disengage from the process while at the same time staying in a heart space and honoring all of life. Give thanks for your life and anything or anyone you wish to give thanks for.

And when you are able to, return the elements back to their original place in nature. With fire blow the divinity you experienced towards the sun. With air blow your heartfelt thanks into the air.

As we focus our energies to do this earth, water, fire, air can circulate the message of thanks of honor throughout the world. The places in the earth that now hold transmuted earth holds the memory of thanks, light, and appreciation. The waters around the world as well as the winds circulate the energies of our work. The sun takes in and gives off our message of thanks as it warms us and energizes us. The same honoring takes place in the elements inside us that make up our bodies. And we honor the changing of the cycle with thanks.

We must not sacrifice a whole generation of children to be consumed by the energy of fear, hate, separation, and despair. Inspire every child you can. Do this for the children, the earth, and for our ancestors and our descendants.

More on this next month.

This winter solstice marks the second anniversary of when we began to weave a planetary human web of light. Please join and focus your energies with all of who continue this wonderful process on the full moon which is December 19.

Start meditating on what new creative ideas you would like to nurture during the winter months so they can manifest in the spring and summer.

For myself I am nurturing some new workshops I would like to create:

Working with the quantum aspect of shamanism with all the possibilities than can be manifested. This would be a new ongoing training.

Bringing appropriate spiritual methods to children so they honor themselves, all life, and our environment. We need to help our children keep their light. Our children are our future.

Training programs to teach people how to teach shamanic methods. I will introduce a completely new structure than what I am currently teaching.

Happy winter solstice! Let’s celebrate together the return of the sun and the light.

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Transmutation News – September 2002

In the Medicine for the Earth work we focus our intention on many different dimensions of spiritual practice.

We focus on healing our relationship with the elements, all living beings, and ourselves. We strive to find a harmonious state inside of ourselves which will be reflected back to us by our environment in which we live. We shine our light therefore reflecting back the beauty of the shining stars in the night sky.

We focus on honoring the ancestors who have gone before and the descendants who will follow us. We honor the elements, forces of nature, trees, plants, animals, insects, reptiles, birds, those who live in the water, rocks, and all other living beings. We honor the cycles of the sun, moon, and planets. We work in cooperation and collaboration with the spirit that lives in all things and the web of life.

We practice being in appreciation for all we have been given with the understanding that our perception creates our reality and that we can transmute and transform our lives with love, appreciation, and gratefulness.

We heal the split between the spiritual non-ordinary realms and our ordinary world in realizing they are not separate. We once again invite the spirits into our lives and dance in partnership to weave an “inspirited” world into existence once again.

Through healing ourselves and our relationship with life and all living beings we begin to heal the earth and our environment. It is who we become that changes the world, not what we do.

We cannot go back and change the past, but we can change our present and future. We do this by allowing the brilliance of our creative potential to unfold. We once again remember that we are truly a reflection of the creator and we have come here as spirits in bodies to manifest that which contains beauty, love, and harmony. We recognize our own divine nature. And we continue to do the egoic work necessary to know the difference between what our egos want and what our divine nature came here to create.

We can no longer put the health of our lives and the planet in the hands of a just a few. It is time we tap into our full creative potential and empower ourselves and each other to find our own brilliance and divinity to create the world we live in.


As most of us were told we were not creative beings we found ways to try and get what we want and need through manipulation. Manipulation is not using our divine power in harmony. Manipulation is power over. Some of us learned to use manipulation instead of standing in our full creative power to try and fulfill our desires. Things would have been very different if we were all encouraged to tap into our brilliance and creativity and the gifts we came here to share. Instead we were encouraged to follow the norm and we learned how to fit in.

If this issue of manipulation speaks to you, please take some days to meditate on how you have fallen into this behavior. Remember being on a spiritual path is like walking on the edge of a razor. If you judge yourself about what behaviors you developed for survival mechanisms you are hurting yourself and are therefore Out of harmony. As you feel ready make a commitment to move out of this form of behavior to a path where you stand in your own power and get in touch with your own creative potential and how you shine in the world.


We create what we believe. For preparation for our ceremony start to examine your beliefs around your own creative potential. We create with every breath we take. Reality as we know it is how we created it. If we want to change the world we live in we must change what we created.

As we have been brought up to give our power away to outside authority figures we are all looking at taking a huge leap in consciousness to realize that we each have the power we are giving to others. We have a lot of social conditioning to dis-create. Be gentle with yourself and know that your creative abilities will strengthen and flower with time, practice, and nurturance.

We must start somewhere and sometime. The time is now. Relax into the process. There is a tine line between pushing too hard and not at all.

Do you believe that you can gather your personal creative energies with others to create a different world? Are you willing to try? Sit with this the weeks before the ceremony. And know if you crack the door of believing in your own divinity a bit you create an opening where your path back to yourself can deepen, grow, and be shown to you.


Once you are clear that you wish to join in with thousands of others who wish to claim their creative birthright read on. We are now ready to begin to look at performing the ceremony for the fall equinox I have been preparing you for since July.

If you are new to this web site please read the July and August Transmutation News before you read on.

We will perform the ceremony Sunday September 22 on the Autumnal Equinox (depending on where you live it starts late Sunday night and runs into Monday). I know that more groups can gather on Sunday. If you prefer to work Monday that is great. We just end up extending this powerful work over time. We will perform a ceremony where we transfigure into our divinity while we concentrate on the vision for the world we have been creating over the last month. Please remember although I use the word vision, in order to reach the height of creativity you must be able to see, hear, and feel, smell, and taste what you are creating. You must also experience it as if it is here now. Don’t project your experience into the future. Experience your perfect world as if it is here now and has already been created into being. We are changing our reality now.

You can either work alone or find some people you can join with to work together as community. Pick a time of day where you will not be distracted or disturbed by others.

You might wish to put on some heart expanding music. Don’t put on music with words, as this will distract you from your work. Choose some music that expands your entire being.

Begin by experiencing yourself moving your energy from your head into your heart. Take at least five minutes as a minimum. longer is preferable. Set an intention to align your heart, soul and spirit. This is the place you want to begin your work from.

As you breathe through your heart find a still and quiet place inside of yourself. Bring to your awareness something in life that is really precious to your. Keep it simple. This will facilitate an experience of opening your heart.

With your heart expanded in love keep breathing from this place. From this place of love and appreciation bring forth your vision for the planet you are creating now. You can pick a small location to focus on or the world at large. It might just be the land you live on, or the city you live in, or the country you live in, or the whole planet. As you need to be able to see, feel, hear, smell, and taste your creation as if it is here now keep your vision on something manageable. You need to keep your intention to work on something you can create fully.

We can use the same formula for transmutation as for the formula for creation:
intention + love + union + harmony + concentration + focus + imagination = creation.

Now you are ready to transfigure into your divinity as you have practiced over the last few months. While you do this experience your creation as if it is happening now.

Give thanks to yourself and others who have joined together to weave such a beautiful creation into existence. Give thanks to any spirits who you called in to support your process and bear witness.

Celebrate!

Shamanic Circles is a nonprofit organization which I am part of. Shamanic Circles is leading a ceremony over the web to honor those who died in the September 11 tragedy.

Please go to www.shamaniccircles.org for further information. There is a link from this web site to the Shamanic Circles page.

I have had two requests from others for all of us to join together to do some work on behalf of two issues. One is the Federal Government approving and pushing through the movement of toxic waste to be stored at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The other is to help the whales who are suffering due to the Navy’s Low Frequency Active Sonar system.

Now that we know how to work with transfiguration and creation I would like to continue our work next month.

With using the Medicine for the Earth material to heal with we want to see those who are suffering in their perfection. By doing this we empower beings to draw on their own internal divinity.

To prepare for our work next month start to see the perfection and divinity of the whales. Envision the divinity and internal strength of Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

Just this act is healing in itself but we will do more on these two issues next month.

It is so important for us to join forces in recreating and healing our planet and all living beings. Remember everything manifests first on a spiritual level before manifesting on the physical.

Please remember to join in on creating a human web of light on the full moon which is September 21. This will be a great lead in to our ceremony to honor the autumnal equinox and for the honoring of all of life by creating the world we wish to live in.

A student of mine recently read the attached at one of my Medicine for the Earth Gatherings.
It is something I think will feed you during this time.

We’re the Ones
You have been telling the people that
this is the Eleventh Hour.
Now you must go back and tell the people
that this is The Hour.
And there are things to be considered:

Where are you living?
What are you doing?
What are your relationships?
Are you in right relation?
Where is your water?
Know your garden.
It is time to speak your Truth.
Create your community.
Be good to each other.
And do not look outside yourself for the leader.
This could be a good time!

There is a river flowing now very fast.
It is so great and swift that there are
those who will be afraid.
They will try to hold on to the shore.
They will feel they are being torn apart,
and they will suffer greatly.
Know the river has its destination.
The Elders say we must let go of the shore, push
off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes
open, and our heads above the water.

See who is in there with you and celebrate.

At this time in history, we are to take nothing
personally. Least of all, ourselves.
For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth
and journey comes to a halt. The time of the
lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves!
Banish the word “struggle” from your attitude
and your vocabulary.

All that we do now must be done in a sacred
manner and in celebration.

We are the Ones we’ve been waiting for.

–The Elders
Oraibi, Arizona
The Hopi Nation

 

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Transmutation News – August 2002

Most of us need to be pushed to our edge before we are moved to make changes.

Last month I asked people to buy Medicine for the Earth. What pushed me to do so was discovering that my book Welcome Home: Following Your Soul’s Journey Home was accidentally put out of print. The book is available again now. My agent, who was my ex-editor at Harper San Francisco, said she never heard of a book being accidentally put out of print.

So I decided that I needed to take this as a wake up call from the universe. I find that I am in reaction to how much marketing goes on with spiritual work and I have been nervous about taking steps to push any of my books. Obviously I write about them and talk about them at my workshops. But I have taken on a laissez-faire attitude of what will be will be.

What I realized is that by being in a passive role I am not doing my books or the work I am teaching a service.

Over the years I have observed the growth of many spiritual organizations. I have watched how spiritual work becomes limited when it becomes trapped in a hierarchical structure. The focus of the vision often gets lost in trying to control the organization.

In the Medicine for the Earth work we work on evolving ourselves as well as look at creating miracles. When one puts spiritual work in a “cage” by creating too much structure we limit possibilities.

Therefore, I have decided to put into action a vision of a new model to share this spiritual work. This August I am teaching my first Medicine for the Earth Teacher Training.

I am creating a new model of how to support people in spreading vital information while at the same time moving away from the old institutional structure.

Instead of creating a hierarchical structure I will be creating collaborative networks for people wishing to teach. Serving the community needs to take precedence over serving any organization. I also think that it is time to share this work with all. This means being flexible on tuition. When we start to only teach people in a certain economic bracket the work becomes elitist.

Training teachers is a way for me to help participants learn the material so it is being taught accurately and with integrity and grace. It is a way for me to help people look at how to move through issues that come up on an egoic level in teaching, how to create sacred space and hold the space in a training, how to deal with group dynamics, and other issues that can facilitate the experience and adventure of teaching. I’ve learned a lot since beginning my journey as a teacher of shamanism in 1983 and I look forward to sharing what I have learned.

My vision is to make spiritual work accessible to all who want to learn from a teacher and also have the work carried on in a good way.

I don’t believe from a spiritually ethical view that I can certify teachers. But I can provide a list of people who have done a lot of training with me and who want to teach the Medicine for the Earth work. I will have such a list available by September.

With all that is going on environmentally I feel it is so important to get all kinds of spiritual work out as quickly as possible. We cannot afford to have spiritual teachers move into a place of competitiveness, but we must support the wonderful work taught by so many so that consciousness can shift on a mass scale. Different teachers and different spiritual systems speak to different people in the population. There needs to be a diverse team who has the vocabulary and a style of teaching that will speak to different populations.

How I feel I can support the process right now is by helping guide new teachers and support those who are already sharing their brilliance.

The focus of my vision is how to empower all of us to create the changes needed to move our lives back into harmony. Instead of wasting my energy being angry at the abuses I observe, I want to feed the power of new visions. We need to focus and concentrate our energy in solutions not on the problems.

Months ago a student and friend of mine sent me this story that comes from Nancy Sherwood of Earth Sea in Nova Scotia.

The story is called “Two Wolves”.
A Native American grandfather was talking to his grandson about many things.

He said, “I feel as if two wolves are fighting in my heart. One wolf is vengeful, angry, violent.. .and the other is loving, compassionate, and strong.”

The grandson asked the grandfather “Which wolf will win the fight in your heart?”

The grandfather replied, “The one I feed.”

We must feed our visions of what we believe would create a world of harmony, balance, and love.

So this month we will focus on creating a vision for our lives and the planet. I gave some examples of how being pushed to my edge has stimulated me to create change and create a new vision I can feed. Of course, I have also been pushed to my edge about environmental issues stimulating me to write Medicine for the Earth and the monthly transmutation news, focusing on creating a human of light, and teach trainings. This has been a very wonderful way to work with the energy that gets stimulated by watching our planetary situation.

I know all of you are pushed to an edge in your own life about the environment, the world situation, and the powers and structures which manage your life.

As you are pushed to your edge change is being called for; a new vision is being called for. Change creates little deaths in our lives. Something old must die for new life to burst forth. Some of us welcome change and some of us fear it and grieve for the old life and ways that need to be left behind. All the emotions that come up are natural and must be acknowledged for change to occur in a graceful fashion.

A few months ago in a journey the spirits told me I needed to work with transfiguration + concentration. Last month I asked you to practice transfiguration. On the fall equinox we will gather our energies together to transfigure into a divine state adding to this by concentrating on a vision we would like to see manifest in the world. We must remember that with invoking the power of transfiguration + concentration the rest of the elements to the formula of transmutation must be included.

love + harmony + intention + concentration + focus + union + imagination = transmutation.

I would suggest that you begin by reading over the chapter on Imagination in Medicine for the Earth. This will inspire you in your visioning process.

Once you are ready to work on creating a vision please pick a time of the day where you can feel relaxed and not rushed. Pick a day where you can really sink into the process. I will describe a couple of ways you might consider working. And of course if you come up with something different, work in a way in which you feel inspired.

If you decide to work indoors pick out some music you can play which inspires and relaxes you. You can either sit up with your spine straight so that you are oxygenating your body and brain or you can lie down. Begin by taking some deep breaths. Throughout your meditation please remember to breathe. Imagine yourself breathing from your head into your heart. You want to go to a deep place and not create a vision from an egoic place. By focusing on your breathing through your heart you will move from your mind into a heartfelt and intuitive place. This is the place to create from.

You want to set an intention to look at a world that embraces the elements of love and harmony and a world where people remember their connection with all living beings and the cycles of life and nature. There is no separation between you and the rest of life. You want to vision a world that honors all of life and is in deep appreciation for all we receive; a world where we give back and receive in balance.

Set your intention and begin by simply breathing into your heart for a few minutes. Let yourself relax and imagine yourself in a place in nature where you can appreciate the beauty and the power of creation and life. Look around you and notice what life forms are with you. Notice the colors and your environment. Take in the fragrances and all the sounds of nature. Notice if the air is still or if there is a breeze or wind. Feel the temperature and the earth beneath you. Notice the elements that are in this place. Allow yourself to feel fully present here.

Imagine an earth goddess or god coming to greet you and embrace you. Feel the wind starting to come up swirling around you and embracing you. Allow the spirit of water and the fire from the sun to embrace you with respect and love. Feel yourself loved by the elements that are all around you as well as inside of you. The spirit of all life around you supports your purity of heart and intention to create harmony. You are in union with all of life.

From a place of love and appreciation let your imagination flow and vision the world you would like to live in. Remember to keep breathing and create from your heart.

Take your time and don’t rush. You don’t want to rush creation. Really anchor the experience with all your senses. Visualize, hear, smell, feel, and taste your creation.

When you feel that you are ready to come back give thanks to the elements and all the beings you have met in this place. Feel yourself disconnecting from this place and gently let your consciousness drift back into the room. Take some time to feel yourself fully back in the present and in the room you are in.

You might wish to write a story or draw a picture of your creation.

If you choose to do this work by walking in nature take some time to breathe into your heart and set your intention before you leave. As you experience the beauty and wonder of the nature you are let your imagination create the world you want to experience remembering to experience your creation with all your senses. Let the elements inspire and embrace you.

As you walk you might ask nature to show you an omen or a sign when your work is done.

When you return you might wish to write a story or draw a picture of your creation.

Next month I will give you the ritual of putting together the process of transfiguration and creation. So keep working on your vision.

Fear consumes us in the same way fire consumes the earth and it’s living beings. As fire transforms us so does fear. At some point we must face and move through our fear creating a rebirth in our lives.

Anger acts as a poison to our body, mind, soul, and spirit if we learn how to experience it and then let it go. Anger must be and transformed.

Use the transfiguration process this month to purify. transform, and transmute your fear and anger.

There are many ways that we can plant seeds in the world to start to shift consciousness. For the summer solstice I decided to write a letter to the editor of the local newspaper. We have been dealing with a terrible drought in New Mexico. The letters to the editor have been a way for people to express their thoughts. The letter I wrote was published in July. It has stimulated a lot of conversation in different spiritual groups here in Santa Fe. These are groups I normally would not access to. You never know what you might stimulate in your community if you want to do something similar. We need to plant seeds wherever we can.

Here is the letter I wrote:
“All ancient traditions teach that our inner state of consciousness is reflected back to us by our outer world.

The drought as well as the flooding occurring throughout the world is a message that we are out of balance. An old Taoist story teaches us that when we are in balance and harmony within ourselves rain comes when it is needed. Harmony within creates harmony without.

If we tend ‘our garden’ with honor, love and appreciation for all we have been given balance will be restored. We need to give back to the land as well as give thanks for our lives and the lives of all living beings and honor the natural cycles.

We need to do more than pray for rain. We must honor the earth and our environment through our thoughts and actions. Then we will have rain.”

People love to read the letters to the editor. I hope you write something inspirational to your community and plant some seeds to change consciousness where you live. This is an action we can all put into practice.

I just finished reading a marvelous book titled Green Psychology: Transforming Our Relationship to the Earth. The book is written by Ralph Metzner, Ph.D. Theodore Roszak writes the foreword. Park Street Press publishes the book.

Ralph Metzner explores the history of what has created our global pathology and examines the ways we can heal this rift and restore a healing relationship with nature. His search for role models takes him from shamanic ceremonies with the Lacandon Maya of Mexico to vision quests in the California desert, from the nature mysticism of the 11th century abbess Hildegard von Bingen to the black goddesses and green gods of our pagan ancestors.

Ralph Metzner started the Green Earth Foundation which is an education and research organization dedicated to the healing and harmonizing of the relationships between humanity and the Earth. The objectives are to bring about changes in attitudes, values, perceptions, and world views that are based on ecological balance and respect for the integrity of all life forms on earth. 

Please remember to link with the thousands of people meditating on creating a human web of light on August 22.

You have read many times my statement that it is who we become that changes the world not what we do. I would like to leave you with a wonderful quote by Jack Schwartz from his book The Path of Action:

“You think of yourself as being a drop of water, but recognize that you are also the whole ocean. Change the drop of water, and you thereby change not only that drop of water, but the whole ocean. By changing yourself, you are changing the level of consciousness in the complete universe.”

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Transmutation News – June 2002

In a great time of change, as we are in now, there are different ways to react. Many people react with fear that often leads to anger. Many people look to outside authority for direction on how to feel safe. Many people flow with the changes well and see change as an opportunity for growth.

Some people appreciate what they have while others complain about what they don’t have. Some people experience their glass as half full while others as half empty.

This all boils down to an issue of perception, as it is our perception which creates our reality.

As many people fear for their future we see a movement around the world of people choosing right wing forces to create more control and a perceived feeling of safety. Many people are returning to organized religion for the same reason. Many of us have been conditioned not to believe that each of us has the ability to create our present our future. This leads to people wanting to put their lives in the hands of others who say, “Don’t worry, follow me, listen to what I tell you to do and you will be safe”.

Throughout history we have learned this does not work. But people don’t always learn from history.

Those of you reading this know you have personal power to create change. There are no political, religious, or spiritual leaders to do it for us. The power lies in each and every one of us.

It is important as we watch people around us react with fear and anger not to get pulled out of ourselves. Once again, as I have mentioned many times, it is important to stay focused. When we get pulled out of ourselves and lose focus it is hard for us to receive our own spiritual guidance. What we do on the spiritual level does make a difference. But we must accept that the changes our work makes might not always be obvious to us on the physical.

I heard recently that a rabbi, who was obviously in a state of great grief after a suicide bombing said, “What is the use of praying anymore?” It is easy to see how one can lose faith in the invisible forces when so much violence is being acted out on the physical. But we cannot say how situations might evolve without our prayers and spiritual work. There are forces working that we don’t understand. There are foundations and structures that need to end so that evolution and growth can take place. There is more than what the eye can see to what is happening right now.

I had an interesting journey around the issue of judgment and judging. The helping spirit who was speaking with me shared that to judge appropriately we must understand everything about the person or situation we are judging. This is virtually impossible as there is so much about people and life circumstances that we will never understand.

So we tend to judge without a true understanding of what we are judging. The bottom line is don’t judge when you don’t understand.

We must stay true to the truth that lives in our hearts which is in order to create a more harmonious way of living change must occur. As human beings so many of us have to be pushed to our limits before we will change. What we are seeing on our planet is a result of people not willing to let go the behavior that no longer serves all of life. We are being shaken up in the core of our beings. As I have said before move with the changes or suffer the changes. The spiritual work that we do helps us to learn how to move with grace instead of react and resist.


Earth, air, water, and fire are living beings and we need to work in partnership with them. and not try to impose change on them. Partnership, cooperation, collaboration is all strengthened with relationship.

Over the last four months we have together as a great worldwide circle honoring all the elements. This work must be kept up. The rituals we performed should not be only done one time. Ritual and ceremony establishes relationship. We can keep up the potent work of honoring the elements around us and which comprise our physical bodies. As we continue to do this work you will see changes in the physical world. All relationships improve in all worlds with honor, respect, love, and appreciation.

Love creates a feeling that life is magical. When we are in love we experience everything around us in a different light. The magic of life is fed by love. Think about some aspect of your life, nature, or an element that you are in love with. Feed the magic of this life force with your love. Watch your relationship deepen and grow with love.


This month let’s honor all the elements together. Do this by choosing elements at the place where you live – the earth you live on, the sources of water near you, the air you breath, the sun above you. Let’s honor all the elements and state our willingness to work in partnership. During this time as we are experiencing strife on the planet, let’s bring celebration for our lives into our ritual work this month. Celebration is an energy that tends “the garden”.

Let’s do this joyful celebratory work together on June 21 as we honor the summer solstice. Life is bursting forth and blooming all around us. Allow yourself to burst forth in dance and song today. A healing energy for the earth is joy. Even if your heart feels heavy about something in life allow yourself to feel joy by finding something to be in gratitude and appreciation for.


Your assignment for today is to speak to someone who you believe is closed down to his or her connection with nature. Mention something to them that you think is beautiful. You might say something like: “Isn’t the sky glorious today?” “Aren’t these flowers on the desk beautiful?” “That picture on the wall reminds me of the beauty of nature.”

Create a spark of appreciation for the beauty of life. Plant a seed of appreciation and joy in someone who is not in your inner circle that you work with spiritually. With thousands of us doing this together today we plant seeds with the knowledge that they will sprout in a way which nurtures all of life.

Please let’s join in together to continue to create a human web of light on the full moon which is June 24.

A friend of mine recently gifted me with a wonderful book I wanted to let you know about. The book is titled Kiss of God is written by Marshall Stewart Ball. Marshall is a brilliant child can neither speak or walk and depends on others for physical help.

I was touched and inspired by a child who seemingly has so many challenges to leading a joyful life, but experiences joy in his connection with God and the people he meets. He shares his love and inspiring words, which has an impact on everyone he meets.

And he inspires us through his absolute brilliance and love in his writings.

During a time when people look at what they don’t have, I found Marshall’s writing to bring me to absolute tears of how one can be in such appreciation and joy with what I perceive of a challenged life.

The book is published by Health Communications. I know you will be in awe of this being Marshall Stewart Ball when you read his story and his words. And I hope you be as inspired by his story as I was.


I have added some new trainings to the Training and Announcement Section of this web page. I hope you will go to it and look at the additions.

I will be teaching a weekend Medicine for the Earth gathering in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania Oct 4,5,6 of this year.

In January 2003 I am teaching a new training I have not taught before. I feel that as the causes of illness today are different than in ancient times, our healing methods must be updated to deal with modern day illness. So much of the illnesses we are seeing today such as the epidemic rate of cancer and the increase in immune deficiency problems are a direct result of the chemical pollution in our environment.

Using the work of transfiguring into our divinity as well as learning how to merge with compassionate helping spirits, this training will focus on how to heal others by bringing through the power of the universe that knows how to heal and transmute illness. We will also look at how to transmute and transform illness and toxins in ourselves.

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Transmutation News – February 2002

Every few months I contact the participants from my Medicine for the Earth trainings and we set up a time to do some long distance work together. At all the trainings where we are present together we have found that the work of transmuting water infused with the pollutant ammonium hydroxide has created a good change in pH. As we have been getting good results in working together I have felt it is important to work on issues long distance together.

The intention I set for the last long distance work we did together on December 16 was to transmute the quality of air at the World Trade Center in New York. I had also received a request from a resident in Nevada to ask for help with moisture for at the time Reno was experiencing a drought that was endangering water supplies which would endanger the migrating birds.

People either worked on their own or in the numerous groups that have formed to do the work. Two days after the work it was reported in the New York Times that the fires were officially out at the World Trade Center. Once I wrote up the request for people to work in behalf of the state of Nevada the storms started rolling in.

The fires going out at the World Trade Center and the storms coming into Nevada could be coincidence. As I wrote about in Medicine for the Earth the principle of ambiguity is essential for not taking egoic credit for the work. When we really don’t know what created an effect we stay in balance. I also wrote that Einstein said, “Coincidence is God’s way of staying anonymous”.

The spiritual work we do does make a difference and it is vital that we remain proactive with our spiritual work.

I would like to ask all of you to join in on some work that we can all begin to do together. I got the idea after hearing about Christian Bollman’s “Peace Pool Project”. He asked people to place prayers, sounds, and songs for peace into bodies of water which would then cycle through the waters of the world.

In working with the transmutation of pollution here is an adaptation that I would like to suggest. Researchers have found that water carries a memory. This means that water remembers the pollution that it carries. We also carry a cellular memory of trauma that has occurred to us. This is why the work of transfiguration is so important. It helps us remember our own divinity and the truth of who we are.

Depending on how much work you have done with the Medicine for the Earth material will depend on how you proceed with joining people around the world in ceremony. The purpose of the ceremony will be to imbue a container of water that you collect with the intent for the water to return to a state of purity and holiness. This water will then be placed into a large body of water where you live. As thousands of us do this we start to change the memory of water around globe to remember it’s purity and sacredness. The date that I propose we work on is February 27, which is the full moon. The energy of the full moon will magnify our work.

It’s important when we work with an element to really get to know the element. So please look up in Medicine for the Earth the section of working with the elements on page 149. Try to do some meditation this month with merging with water so you understand its nature before we work on February 27.

Sometime before February 27 collect some water from a stream, river, lake, creek, ocean that you can put in a cup or jar. If you do not live around any natural water source you can of course use water from your home. All water can be transmuted.

On February 27 pick a time where you can create a quiet space around you. You can do some drumming, rattling, dancing, and singing to get into a quiet space. As an alternative you can put on some music that is calming and slightly altering for you. Or of course you can sit in silence and bring yourself to center.

At this point if you have been working with transfiguration you would want to transfigure into a divine force. If you have not been working with this you can just tone or sing holding the intention to remember that you are divine. In this divine state you might find yourself singing into the water or holding the jar placing into it the intention that you honor the waters divinity and purity. Give prayers of love and appreciation for water as a giver of life.

Remember intention + love + union + harmony + focus + concentration + imagination = transmutation.

You will have an intuitive sense when the work is done. You now want to ground yourself and fully experience yourself present. If you transfigured into a divine force, with intention disengage from that force. Get up move around and if you can go outside and place your hands on the earth or sit with a tree for awhile. If you are in an urban area with no land around you can do a simple visualization. Visualize yourself sitting with a tree in nature. Experience the strong roots and how the roots ground the tree. Allow yourself to ground with your own luminous roots into the earth. This should help you feel centered and present again.

Whatever method you choose to do make sure you feel fully back and present. Get up and eat some food. Drink some water with deep appreciation for all it gives to you.

You can either work alone or with a group of friends. Within the next couple of days take the water you have worked on to a body of water that you can place it in. The water imbued with purity and sacredness creates divinity as it flows home to its source.

As you do this work on February 27 please remember also to focus on the human web of light circling the world.

As I finished typing the above, I looked at my clock. The clock read 11:11.
I take this as a good omen for the work.

Recently I was delighted to receive a manuscript on Jewish shamanism. The title of the book is Magic of the Ordinary: An Introduction to Jewish Shamanism and it is written by Gershon Winkler. It is such an extraordinary book that I wanted to tell you about it.

Gershon Winkler started out as an orthodox rabbi in Brooklyn. Through a series of experiences he felt called to go live out on the land for a few weeks. He ended up in a little cabin with no running water or any amenities in the mountains in California. He never returned to an urban way.

Gershon speaks Aramaic and Hebrew fluently. So he has gone back into the old texts and discovered that the Jewish tradition is rooted in a shamanic framework. The ancient texts speak to the importance of working with spirits including the spirits of the elements, animals, stones, trees, plants, insects, etc. Drumming, chanting, and dancing were used for ceremonies and to enter ecstatic states of consciousness. Basically, if you have done any reading on shamanism you will find all the principles that you have read about also existing in the Jewish religion.

So here we see that the original teachings were lost and somehow, a modern organized religion formed that does not match the teachings of the original texts.

There are many people who have rejected the religions that they were raised with as they often don’t feed our spiritual needs. After reading this book it is clear that anyone of the Jewish faith practicing and studying shamanism is really walking the path of his or her ancestors. What a revelation and healing this will be for such a large population of spiritual seekers.

David Carson, co-creator of the Medicine Cards, writes in the forward: “Like so much of Native American cosmology, ancient Jewish cosmology too, downplays the clamor for spiritual experience in the beyond, and encourages us to instead find it right here in the earth, and in what we call Nature.”

Magic of the Ordinary does not offer techniques. It is a book educating people about Jewish Shamanism and the importance of reconnecting with the natural world. Gershon Winkler encourages people to experience life and not sit back and observe it. What he says reminds me of the Haitian proverb I quote in Medicine for the Earth: “The gods won’t appear, the magic won’t happen, if we are not living our real life. Studying life is not living life, and therefore has no magic.”

Gershon is in the process of finding of a publisher for his manuscript. For the meantime copies are available in manuscript form. For information on how to order a copy go to his web site, http://www.walkingstick.org. When I spoke with him he told me it is truly amazing all the material that is available in the old Aramaic texts. This manuscript is just one of more to come.

I know many of you reading this are fans of Masuro Emoto’s extraordinary work of photographing water crystals. His first book Messages from Water has been very successful in changing people’s consciousness about water. You can check out my April 2001 web posting where I talk about his work if you are familiar with it. He now has published Messages from Water volume 2. It is a continuation of the work he has been doing and has some pretty extraordinary photographs in it.

You might have your own source for his books. It you don’t, I order my books from Source Books in Nashville, TN. You can reach them at 1-800-637-5222 or http://www.sacredspaces.org.

I give thanks to Masuro Emoto for being able to show the world that water is alive and intelligent. He is doing so much for changing people’s consciousness about the life force and intelligence of the natural world.

Every few years I receive an auditory message from what I call “The Voice” in a dream. This past month the message I received was “stretch or be stretched”. We really are living in a time where it is important to make a choice to expand to all kinds of possibilities.
Think about it.

Next month I will invite you to perform a ritual to work with the element earth.

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Transmutation News – December 2001

One of the main principles talked about at the Bioneers Conference I attended in October was that the “war on terrorism” in many ways distracts us from the chemical and environmental pollution that we are all dealing with that has huge effects on the life of all living beings.

Will science actually be able to reverse the extreme destructive pollutants now in our environment? We are getting help from some natural forces. Paul Stammet, a brilliant mycologist, has discovered mushrooms that will eat some very dangerous toxins. So nature is working in cooperation with us. I still hold that we will also have to include spiritual methods to reverse the damage.

In Medicine for the Earth the question was raised of whether the work I was sharing would change the toxins we were working on or would we change so much that the toxins would not harm us. I do believe that the answer to this question is that both are true.

I also wrote about the dream that I had when I started writing the book in 1998 where the Egyptian god Anubis told me the missing piece to my work with transmutation was transfiguration. The work with transfiguration has been so powerful in helping people access their own divinity which is so needed in many ways right now.

In June right before I taught a five-day Medicine for the Earth training I had a dream saying it was important for me to bring the eucharist into my work. As I was not raised Catholic I didn’t know what that meant. It is my nature to take things out of a religious context so I started to search for a deeper meaning. In the summer issue on Light in the magazine Parabola I read a statement by Otto Von Simson where he looks at the eucharistic sacrament as divine light transfiguring the darkness of matter. With the work I was doing this has made perfect sense to me.

On Oct. 23 I had another dream to get my attention to keep looking at this issue. In my dream I was in a bookstore and I heard someone talking about an author who had written a book about “transubstantiation”. In the dream I was desperate to find out more information, as I knew this was my work.

I had never heard of this word so when I awoke from the dream I got up and went to Webster’s where I did find it. The definition of transubstantiation is “the change in the eucharistic elements from the substance of bread and wine to the substance of the body of Christ with only the accidents (as taste and color) remaining.”

It’s interesting that my dreams keep giving me religious concepts, but I know that my dreams are giving me the vocabulary of what the work is about and I need to let go of the religious forms that the words come from.

I have been teaching the process of transfiguration as you have read about it in Medicine for the Earth. We use this process in the transmutation ceremonies with the realization that as we transfigure to divinity the substances we are working on will reflect this back to us. Using the principle of “as above, so below; as within, so without” we also need to hold our intention to transfigure the harmful substances we are working with. We want to focus on the holiness of air, water, earth, and the fire burning in the sun and in the earth. As we focus on the divinity in all the elements and all of life we will transmute the harmful substances they now contain.

I have had the inclination in the last few months to call ourselves spiritual warriors. I find myself resisting the word “warrior”, because of the energy behind the word. Now I see us as being called upon to be the spiritual dreamers of a new time on our planet.

It is so important for us to use spiritual practices to stay centered and not be pulled out of ourselves. In Welcome Home: Following Our Soul’s Journey Home, published in 1993. I wrote: In times of change it is important to stay focused, stay positive, stay centered. We must hold the line of light as the collective does what it does. We must stay focused and continue to hold the vision.

In the five-day Medicine for the Earth gathering we work on visioning a new dream for the planet and we then perform a fire ceremony to ask the fire to take our prayers to the power of the universe! the creator. We draw pictures or create talismans we can empower with our dreams. It’s like a giant prayer smoke where our dreams and visions are sent up into the universe with the prayer that our dreams and visions will be manifested on earth.
The firekeepers are instructed to build the fire with the intention that this be a blessing fire. Often fire ceremonies are done to transmute negativity. With this ceremony our intention is different.

Recently as I was journeying I was reminded that although visioning is very important there are many ways to create a new vision besides just making a visual affirmation. Remembering that most cross-cultural creation myths say that the world was created into being by a sound or through words. Some people create through movement. The helping spirits I work with asked me to instruct people to not limit their ways of expressing their visions to the universe. If you are working with ceremonies of visioning please remember to expand on your ways of expressing the new dreams and visions you wish to create.

Last month I wrote that I felt one of the keys to successful transmutation work is to make sure you are inviting in and working in cooperation with the ancestors and the spirits of the land. I wanted to say something more about this. Many of you who have been trained in shamanic journeying have been taught to work with the helping spirits of the upper and lower worlds. There are also helping spirits in the middle world. For good reason students are steered away from working in the middle world, as this is also where deceased spirits can get stuck. When someone suffers a traumatic death his spirit might not transcend out of the middle world. This is the cause of ghosts, poltergeists, and possessing spirits.

There are also invisible beings that live in the middle world that have transcended the human condition and are here to help. There are helping and compassionate ancestor spirits who love the earth and all of life of much as we do. With intention, when we perform our transmutation ceremonies, we want to also ask for the compassionate, helping spirits of the land who hold the ancient wisdom of transmutation to help us with our work. In this way we are working in cooperation with all the helping spirits who can offer us assistance. As I wrote about last month the cooperation of the helping spirits of the land you are working on is vital to the success of the work.

Everything manifests first in the spiritual level before manifesting on the physical. As we have forgotten the importance of being proactive on the spiritual level we have been manifesting chaos and toxicity on the physical level. The spiritual work we do does make a difference.

We celebrate a great cycle of change as we honor the winter solstice on December 21. May your winter be full of warmth and peace as we continue our visioning work.

During the winter months use the time to do some work with visioning your life and the world you live in. Humankind has become so focused on consuming resources. In your visioning work focus on ways to transmute and transform consumerism energy. Let’s look at ways we can give back, honor, and be in service to the earth, air, fire, water and all the visible and invisible beings who give us so much.

Please join in on the full moon meditation for creating a human web of light on December 30. Last month I only mentioned the full moon on Nov. 1 and did not mention there was another full moon on Nov. 30. I do hope you caught my oversight and continued you meditations. Again I want to remind you that you can meditate on the human web of light everyday if you wish to strengthen the force of light that surrounds our world.

In Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge’s book poemcrazy Susan shares a wonderful insight about the word “abracadabra”. “Abracadabra, the seemingly nonsense word we invoke in magic tricks, comes from the Aramaic, the language of the Bible: ‘abraq ad habra’. These ancient words mean ‘I will create as I speak’.”

Never doubt that a group of concerned citizens can change the world. Indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead (taken from the Autumn 2001 issue of the newsletter of the Findhorn Foundation.).


Happy winter!

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Transmutation News – October 2001

As a few weeks have passed our shock has worn off of the great loss of life in New York and Washington. We are left with heavy hearts and many of us are left with questions. Why did such a tragedy occur? Why can’t we live together in peace and harmony? Why were so many people saved miraculously from death at the World Trade Center while so many others died?

The answers to these questions will probably remain a mystery. So the true question becomes can we find peace within ourselves while we live lives so full of mystery?

As we react to the catastrophe that has occurred with a variety of feelings that might include fear and anger we look for where we can feel in control and find safety. The bottom line is that our bodies are always in danger of loss of life. That is the nature of having a body. If we perceive ourselves as just a physical body we will never feel safe no matter how many restrictions are put on our environment. As most of you know we are not just bodies. Our bodies are simply a vehicle for our spirits to move through and to experience life on earth. Our spirit can never be destroyed so on the spiritual level there is no death. As we continue the spiritual practices to have a strong connection with our spirit that is where safety lies. In Medicine for the Earth l wrote about how the only safe place is in us. There is no safety in the material, physical world.

Right now as people are looking for safety and for answers many of us look to others as authorities to what is going on in the world both physically and spiritually. Once again l encourage you to go inside yourself to find the peace and the answers you are seeking.

In my own spiritual practice l have looked at what l can learn from the terrorist attack. Some of what l have learned is new to me while some builds on understandings l have already been working with and writing about.

As our bodies are the vehicle for our spirit, we are also the vehicle for the helping spirits, source, god, the divine, whatever words fit your religious and philosophical beliefs. There is the side of being a vehicle of love and light for the divine. There is also the shadow side of being a vehicle. In the case of the terrorists they acted in one collective conscious in the belief that they were bringing through god’s wishes and that they are waging a holy war.

In this action we see the shadow side of spiritual work. In being a vehicle of spirit and the divine we must also work on our egos. For we often interfere with being a true vehicle when we get caught in the illusion of separation. When we get caught in the illusion that we are separate from each other and the divine we typically end up reacting to life from a place of fear, anger, and self-righteousness.

As we continue our spiritual practices we must continue the work of learning how to identify when our ego and sense of being separate is speaking. We must learn how to identify when our minds are speaking instead of our hearts and when we are coming from a place of desire instead of surrender. We cannot forget this piece. As we have seen throughout the ages people who only focus on what they term is spiritually right and correct usually move into fanaticism.

As a culture in modern history we have been in a process of individuation. This has only strengthened our own egos. The process of individuation has been an important part of our evolution of consciousness and yet at the same time has created quite a shadow. A balance must be achieved. How do we now combine the brilliance and strengths we have developed as individuals to work together in a strong collective consciousness to create peace and harmony? How do we accomplish this while still honoring our own personal destinies? This will be a great challenge of our time.

During the week of the tragedy in New York and Washington many people were wondering how they could help. l was teaching a five-day soul retrieval training during this time. There were 43 of us at the training who wanted to blend our energies and abilities together to help. During our free time we worked together to look at how we could help.

After l journeyed on how l could lead the group to be of help l was asked to spiritually travel with the group to New York to offer assistance to the spirits. We were being asked to be vehicles of the spirits to help those who needed to move on and those who were returning to life. We were asked not to have any desires or attachments to what work we were being asked to do. We were asked to surrender to how the spirits needed help.

This was a great relief for all of us and added to our understanding of spiritual healing. We were to put aside what we felt needed to happen to act as a vehicle for the spirits to work through. We were also asked in the midst of chaos to hold a clear space for the spirits to work. This encompasses the principles of surrender and humility. We had to surrender our desires to a higher power and to realize that it was not our egos involved in the process. We had to move any sense of our egos out of the way to be in service.

This is a wonderful intention to hold during these changing times. How can l be in service to the spirits, the divine, the power of the universe? We need to be flexible to new ways of working that the spirits will show us as we evolve. As we learn to be in true service and work in cooperation with the spirits, the veils between the worlds will continue to open and we will experience a weaving together of the spiritual and material worlds.

In many traditions fire is used as the element to describe spirit. If we feed the fire that burns inside of us with fear, anger, and hate that fire will be a destructive force and will destroy life. If we feed the fire with love, hope, and inspiration then the lire acts as is does in nature of cracking open the seeds of new beautiful life.

A fire burns through many of us now during this time of great change. We must honor our grief and our emotional feelings. And at the same time if we fuel the spiritual fires that live inside of us with love and hope we will see a beautiful rebirth in “the forests and the meadows” of our lives.

Because of my teaching schedule in September l had actually begun writing the October transmutation news in early September. As many of you have shared with me l also had a premonition that something terrible was going to happen. l didn’t get information about this in a journey or a dream. But it was tangible in the air for me. l couldn’t identify what l was experiencing but l kept telling those close to me something terrible was going to happen.

As l began to write my web page for Oct. in early Sept. some of what l wrote was what l needed to remember as l felt such a strong foreboding energy in the air.

In Welcome Home l wrote about a journey l had at the time of the Gulf War. l had asked my helping spirits what l needed to do in my own spiritual practice as it looked like the U.S. was engaging in war. l was told that l needed to keep tending the garden.

This journey really stayed with me. And l realize now that it is time to bring that journey into reality. We need people who are willing to keep tending the garden. We need new dreamers, as the ancient ancestors were dreamers. We need to hold the vision of a healthy earth with beings living in peace and harmony. For any healing work we do to be successful we need to be able to hold a good vision.

l had an interesting revelation in August. l realized that with the Medicine for the Earth work l am not teaching how to heal the earth, l am teaching people how to manifest a new dream for the earth. This realization created a real shift in perception for me.

As the nature of human beings is to project onto other people and onto life circumstances we create our reality through our projections. If we were created in the image of our creator we have the same power as our creator. l wrote about this in chapter one of Medicine for the Earth. l have also written that our perception shapes our reality.

This all means that we have the ability to manifest a new dream and new reality for the planet. As l have written, shamans from other cultures say, “We are dreaming the wrong dream.”

A few months ago l asked you to hold a “visioning party” to start to use your imagination (one of the key elements for the formula for transmutation). One day of visioning is not enough. What is needed right now is for a significant number of people to hold a new dream and vision for our lives and the earth. This vision must encompass a choice to live and create out of love and harmony and a desire to be in partnership, collaboration, and cooperation with all living things. Once again remembering the connection with the great web of life and light.

As a visioner you must be able to use the principles written in the chapter on imagination in Medicine for the Earth. You must be able to incorporate all your senses and be able to feel, taste, smell, bear conversations, and see your vision as if it is happening now. And you must be able to combine putting out a positive vision with surrender and asking for “thy will be done”.

It really will not take that many people to help change the consciousness on the planet. Please join others and myself in holding the vision of harmony, beauty, light, and love. Now more than ever we need everyone who is willing to keep feeding and holding the vision of the human web of light. If you are new to this web page go the section titled “Creating A Human Web of Light”. We will continue the full moon meditations (this month’s full moon is on Oct. 2), but please try to visualize and nurture the web everyday.

We can no longer say that we don’t have time for our spiritual practices and to live our lives in a joyous way. This must become a priority in all of our lives now.

During this month and hopefully forever, imagine and experience your energy shifting from your head to your heart. As much as you can throughout the day experience yourself breathing through your heart and send love and appreciation for your life and life of all beings out into the universe. Breathe in love and light and breathe out love and light. This will make a difference and you can make a difference.

l have posted a full new calendar for 2002 in the Training and Announcement Section of this web site. Please take a look at it for full descriptions of trainings as well as new workshops l am offering. Check it out occasionally as l make additions.

“Alchemy is the art of transmuting bodily consciousness into spirit: body must be made spirit say the alchemists, for spirit to become body” Titus Burckhardt from an article written in the summer 2001 issue of Parabola.

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Transmutation News – August 2001

I have just returned from Abadiania in Brazil where I went to see Joao De Deus (John of God). Joao De Deus is a full medium where he gives his body as a vehicle for beings who were once alive and gifted at the art of healing to work through him. He brings one entity through at a time, but he has many different entities who use his body as a vehicle to heal through.

I went to Brazil to see Joao De Deus after I heard about his work. He does visible psychic surgeries as well as invisible psychic surgeries. Both seem to have the same effect on people. People who have had invisible surgery performed on them have been x-rayed and stitches have been found in their bodies.

According to Robert Pelligrino-Estrich, author of The Miracle Man, Joao De Deus is probably the most observed, recorded, and tested medium ever to enter the physical world. I was intrigued to go see him as I was wondering if there would be anything I would learn that would add to the transmutation work I am involved with.

Heather Cumming, a student of mine, leads trips to see John of God and I decided to go on one of them. I was deeply touched by John of God’s story and humbleness. The entities started coming through Joao De Deus at the age of 16. He was the son of a tailor and was raised in complete poverty. He thought he had passed out from hunger and when he came to learned that he had healed a room full of people. He had been picked by the spirits as a vehicle for them to work through. He suffered terrible persecution, yet persevered. He went from town to town curing the incurable. The doctors and religious figures in these places were jealous of his work and called the police to stop him. In each town he went to he was beaten by police and jailed. He accepted no money for his work. Between starvation and being beaten he suffered terribly but never gave up his mission which is to heal the sick and to make people aware that we are here on Earth to improve our level on the “other side”.

Years ago he started a center at Abadiania called the Casa de Dom Inacio. Dom Inacio de Loyola is the principle entity that oversees the work. The other entities are part of his community of healers sent to work through Joao. Joao accepts no money for his work. Donations are accepted for expenses for the running of the Casa only. He gets none of the money given. The Casa is run by a large staff of volunteers of people who were cured of incurable illnesses and people who were once cripple and can now walk again. They are so grateful for the healing they received they devote their time to help Joao continue his work. Joao also recognizes that he does not create the miracles, but is just a vehicle for the entities to incorporate through. He maintains his humbleness after all these years of the entities curing thousands of people.

There is a lot more to say about this and you can check Heather Cumming’s web page for more information:
www.healingquests.com

Although I did not go with a specific illness I needed cured I went asking for whatever help I needed to have a strong body to continue to do my work in service to the planet. So much happened for me on physical, emotional, and spiritual levels that I definitely label my experience a true miracle. As I have just returned home I need some time to integrate all that happened.

There were a couple of obvious things I was struck with while I was in Brazil that relates to the transmutation work and the material in Medicine for the Earth.

For one, as I experienced two personal miracles beyond my imagination I now know in every cell of my body that there are no limitations on possibilities for healing the planet and ourselves.

There is an amazing amount of energy put into the creating of sacred space at the Casa. From the moment you enter the main hall of the Casa you are asked not to cross your arms or legs so that the healing energy of the entities that are passing through each person be available for everyone there. There are two meditation rooms that are completely full with people meditating for hours without moving or leaving to ground the energy for the entities to work on each individual and the community present. There are constant prayers and lectures about the power of God, the divine, the spirits and the need to have faith for miracles to happen. Miracles happen at the Casa everyday and the community participates with Joao to make them happen.

I did have invisible surgery performed by the entities. I left the surgery room with the knowing of where the surgery was done, as I couldn’t move certain parts of my body as I felt as if I was pulling the stitches and was very sore. Once the entities begin working on you they keep the work up even in your hotel room. That night I had some pretty wild spiritual experiences. The next day I woke up in an extremely open spiritual state. I was so connected with the land and nature. I heard the big rocks on my land in Santa Fe calling to me asking me why I have not established a relationship with them as vital living beings. I was shown that if we treated the land where we lived as a living breathing being and asked for guidance of what was needed the energy of cooperation created would create unimaginable abundance.

In the last few web pages I have been using the word “collaboration”. In Brazil I was getting the word “cooperation”. I was shown, as our consciousness about how all of nature is alive is still asleep this creates a sleep state for the earth also. The earth is not producing the abundance it is capable of, as it is not being recognized for the living being that it is.
This took me to a much deeper level than I have been to with the material in the chapter I wrote on connecting with nature. I was shown such a beautiful vision of what is possible if we asked the land where we lived for what is needed for the land to produce the abundance it is capable of. So I have come home to my garden asking the land here what it wants me to plant versus what I want to plant.

I have recognized on a deeper level that every rock, crystal and other power objects that line my desk and bookshelves are living beings that crave communication and relationship. They are living and breathing and share my house with me. So I am now seeing how I can establish a deeper relationship with who I have brought into my home to live with me.
With cooperation all things are possible.

During this month try to connect with the land where you live. Even if you live in a city the buildings are built on living breathing earth. Through journeying or meditation ask how you can establish a relationship of cooperation with the earth on which you live.

Go around your house and take notice of the living beings in the objects that you have brought into your house to live with you. Once again establish a relationship which honors the life force of all things that alive.

Make sure you stay grounded while you do all this. This practice can put you in a very open place.

The most important teaching I left with from Brazil is the understanding that I am in service to the divine and the spirits. I am not in service to my own egocentric desires, attachments, and needs. I often find that we give conditions to the spirits of what we will do and what we want to do. I learned about the process of unconditional service. And I also learned about humility. In a ceremony we might participate in the creation of miracles. We do so by tapping into our own divinity and divine spiritual powers. But we are not personally responsible for the making of miracles to happen. Sometimes we forget this.

For those of you who think you might want to see Joao De Deus for healing and would like to make a spiritual pilgrimage down to see him in Brazil I highly recommend Heather Cumming as a guide. She is a completely loving and ever patient guide. She lived in Brazil for 30 years and considers Brazil her home. She knows the culture and the history, which helped me, feel connected to the land. She is also fluent in Portuguese, which is helpful, as the people in Abadiania do not speak English. There are a few English-speaking people who volunteer at the Casa so one could make do without a guide. There are also many rules at the Casa to keep things working in an organized fashion. By having Heather as a guide we never had to think about anything or try to figure out what was going on. This allowed me to sink as deep into my spiritual experience with the knowledge that all the ordinary reality details were being taken care of. She is also loved at the Casa so we really felt welcomed there as a group.

If you would like to contact Heather you can e-mail her at hcummings@aol.com. And of course please check out her website, www.healingquests.com

 

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Transmutation News – January 2001

I hope you had a happy New Year and joyous solstice celebration. I know it felt great for me to feel so many people around the world begin to create a human web of light on the solstice. May we keep feeding this web with our light whenever we think of it. Please remember that I invite you to formally connect with others with this same intention on each full moon.

What I am writing this month is similar to what I wrote on last month’s page with some subtle changes. Working with the subtle changes I outline below will allow you to go to a much deeper level with your experience.

As you begin to see the beauty in all things you might notice the indiscrepancies that come from being a spiritual being in a physical body. If we just perceive ourselves as physical bodies we are ruled by the biological need for survival. We find ourselves trying to keep ourselves safe, fed; we compete for money, space, territory, power, love, etc. When we focus our energy only in this direction most of us feel generally unfulfilled.

As we allow our awareness to incorporate that we are not just a body but also a spiritual being we see that throughout our day we constantly are being presented with choices of how to perceive our reality and what actions to take. Do we feed the spiritual side of life and ourselves or do we only feed the physical? To truly be on a spiritual path means we must also feed the spiritual aspect of ourselves.

The spiritual being (which we all are) is always perfect, always present, Is a true reflection of the divine, and is pure divinity. So theoretically it does not need to be fed as it is always in a divine state. But our connection to our divinity needs to be fed. This has always been the true purpose of prayer, which has been to establish and maintain a connection with the divine.

As I wrote in last month’s Transmutation News our illusion that we are separate from the source of all creation created our fall from grace. This same principle holds true for our disconnection from the divine part of us. We crave to feel and experience this connection again.

So as you go about your day bring your awareness to what part of yourself you are feeding. Are you only feeding the biological being that wants to be safe or are you also feeding your connection with your own divinity, which ultimately will lead you to feeling fulfilled? We are spirits in bodies and we must create balance with feeding all aspects of ourselves.

When you perceive that you are a spiritual being that sees the beauty in all things you feed the connection to your own divine spirit. The same is true when you tap into your own light and let it shine through you as have been practicing the last couple of months. Watch how at every minute of your day you are presented with a choice of how you perceive yourself, others around you, and life. Notice and observe what parts of yourself you choose to feed. Do you choose the part that fights for survival or the spiritual part that knows that all life is of the light? There needs to be balance. Are you feeding one more than the other? Keep a journal for this month so you can keep track of the feelings and experiences that you have as you shift your perception. Once again as you shift your perception your reality will change.

Visualize your body and spiritual being merging together as one. Recognize that the body with it all it’s programs to survive is really a vehicle for your spiritual being. The body allows your spirit to manifest itself and have experiences in the physical world. The ego gives your spirit the experience of space and time.

We chose this great adventure of life on earth to give our true spiritual essence the opportunity to see, hear, feel, smell, taste, and move through the earth.

Let’s remember we are not our bodies or emotions but rather that which has a sense of being, permanence and inner balance. We are pure consciousness in a body with an opportunity to experience this connection.

Using your intention, concentration, focus, and imagination visualize yourself merging your spiritual essence into your body experiencing the union, harmony, and love of this connection.

The above practice works to expand your perception and way of being in the world. We don’t want to expand too much forgetting we are spiritual beings in bodies living on the earth. So to add to the expansive work let’s also add to the work of healing the environment by establishing a strong relationship with the elements.

Everyday for the next month and hopefully longer take a few minutes to connect physically with the elements. When you wash your face connect with the water you are using. Take a breath and connect with air. As you go outside take some earth between your hands and rub it into your skin connecting with earth. Go inside yourself and feel your fire of life or connect with the sun’s rays above you in the sky.

A thought to think about as we start a new year:

Your projections mold your reality.

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