If you have been reading the Transmutation News over the years you have probably figured out that I am a true eccentric. I have been writing the Transmutation News for 15 years now!!
I wanted to share with you some of my process in writing Walking in Light: The Everyday Empowerment of Shamanic Life.
I have been writing my books and my Transmutation News on one of the first iMac computers. I have had my computer since 2001, and her name is Blueberry. Blueberry and I have formed quite the partnership. Sometimes we get so merged I think Blueberry starts doing some of my writing as words form on the screen, I don’t remember writing.
I looked on the web to see how long a computer as old as Blueberry will continue to live. I have read posts that allude to a life span of about 13 years. Well Blueberry has surpassed predictions. We wrote two books together in 2014. I am sad to say I do believe my time with Blueberry is coming to an end. And I want to honor all she helped me bring into the world through my books and my monthly columns. Well, we will see. We are not done yet!
The house I live in has a very strange electrical system. And my office is adobe and that means the walls are very thick and hold in the cold. The way my office is wired is if I turn on Blueberry and a portable heater at the same time the fuse blows, and I lose electricity.
I have not had heat in my office for the 20 years I have lived in my house. Can I get this fixed? Sure! Do I want to “No!”. I get some kind of enjoyment in staying connected to nature as I write. I personally love the cold and winter! Fall and winter are my favorite seasons.
The photo I have attached is of me writing Walking in Light on Blueberry on a very cold winter day in February 2014 – one year ago. I have on two sets of glasses, my father’s hat, my mother’s heart necklace (which you can’t see in the photo) and gloves. Thought you might enjoy seeing this. I definitely look different than in the photos I use in advertising!
I believe Walking in Light is an important book. I summarized the teachings I have been sharing for years. I truly believe if we put into daily practice shamanic principles as I outlined in Walking in Light we would feel empowered and the world would become a better place for all in the web of life.
I hope you will read a copy!
To start the New Year, I journeyed to the track “Rattlesnake” on “Shamanic Visioning Music: Taiko Drum Journeys”. The Odaiko drum really took me deep into a journey. By “synchronicity” my journey was about why a snake sheds it skin. As we know a snake sheds its skin so it can continue to grow.
In my journey, it was suggested to me by Snake, and my helping spirits, to look at how I have started to outgrow my old beliefs and old stories. I was told that it was time for me to be reborn into a more expansive being that continues to embrace life, sharing from the depth of my spirit, and moving past my perceived limitations.
I think this is a great message for all of us to journey on as we move forward together.
To order Walking in Light and/or the taiko drum journey CD please visit:
https://www.sandraingerman.com/booksaudiovideo.html
Unlike a snake, as humans our skin continues to grow. Although our skin does shed, we more go through a major shedding on a spiritual and emotional level as we continue to experience the initiations that life brings for us. We don’t always get to see how much change we have been through and how our presence has changed as our skin does grow with us. We continue to grow into new skin.
There is a balance between being too passive in life and trying too hard. Balance is created by achieving a state of harmony between being active and passive. This is really the key to much of what we need in the mastery of life.
On the note of being passive, I find that often times we get so caught up in predictions. I have written about falling prey to predictions in many columns of the Transmutation News that begin the New Year. People often get caught up on wanting someone to tell us the forces that will change our life and the world we live in. But this is akin to weather predictions. At this point in time the weather moves in patterns that no one could have predicted. And I do believe that the same will be true in all areas of life. We live in a time of unknowing, anything can happen, and our creative potential is great if we tap into it.
My advice is to pick one spiritual practice that I have been writing about in the past issues of the Transmutation News. Work with it on a daily basis and allow it to become part of your life. As you work daily to integrate a spiritual practice that calls to you, you will find yourself growing into the work naturally and it will become who you are. In this way you live and work spiritually from a place of balance instead of waiting for some outside force to change your life and the world or trying too hard to work spiritually to force change. We need to focus on our spiritual work and let it change us at the same time.
I have been so inspired and changed myself from teaching my teleconferencing course. The virtual ceremonies I have been leading is giving direct experience of the true power of joining together as a community to create a collective field of energy that is so alive and vibrating with change.
In the course participants have been stepping in fully into the virtual ceremonies I lead. I can feel and see how when we enter into a collective field engaging all of our senses, we have the opportunity to open the veils between the worlds and bring through the power and healing of the invisible realms into the tangible realm. This has been so exciting to be part of and witness.
We do this in our monthly full moon ceremony “Creating A Human Web of Light”. The key is that when you perform your transfiguration practice and experience your inner light you must step fully into this state. And you need to step fully in the collective field that our global community has been and continues to create together. This is where the change happens. The healing happens as we learn how to bring the invisible into the visible. This is required to experience a positive tangible change.
Our collective paradigm and model is broken and cannot be fixed. So, we need to continue to support each other as we engage in spiritual practices to envision a new model and weave a new fabric of reality into being. Performing ceremonies together is such a powerful way to create positive change and join together in the feminine model of collaboration and cooperation.
A few months ago, I recorded an audio program with Dr. Lewis Mehl- Madrona. I asked him to speak with me about the power of telling healing stories. He is the author of Coyote Medicine and is a Native American healer. In his practice he weaves indigenous culture into his practice as an MD and clinical psychologist.
In this talk with me he shared that we are sum total of all the stories that have ever been told about us, and that we have told about ourselves. He said, “Let’s only tell good stories so we can have more good people!”
And then I heard the shamanic teacher John Perkins share a powerful story and teaching. When John Perkins visited the Amazon rainforest, he had the opportunity to listen to the stories of the Shuar people. When John asked an elder how we could help them the response he received was: “If you really want to help, change the dream of your people.”
The time is now to reach deep within, beyond personality and the distractions you create. It is time to tap into and discover what your soul came here to express. Move past all you tell yourself about why you can’t reach your potential and manifest a new dream for yourself and the Earth. It is time to let go of your distractions and manifest your soul’s destiny. Time is moving so quickly and change on the planet is intensifying. It is no longer appropriate to say “I hope someday…..” or wait to for someone else to change our lives. You are being called to participate fully in life now.
We can grow into deeper and more creative people as we sink into the true power that each of us holds within us to be positive changemakers.
We must let go of the old stories that no longer serve us personally and on a collective level, and we also need to change how we are daydreaming the world we live in into being. We have the opportunity to grow into an unlimited being in this lifetime.
Albert Einstein said, “Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.”
Here is a story shared by a reader of the Transmutation News that I think goes with bringing the invisible power of word into the visible to inspire tangible change.
Please note in future columns I will only share a paragraph of people’s stories. But I felt that this story flows with what I wrote.
Jenny worked with the practice I shared in the October 2014 Transmutation News. The practice was to work with one word for a month and really feel the vibration of the word working in and transforming all your cells. This is a powerful practice and worth repeating. You can re-read the October 2014 Transmutation News by clicking on www.sandraingerman.com/tnoctober2014.html
Jenny wrote:
“I was Given the word ‘HARMONY’ in my Meditation. At first it did not seem that inspiring. . . . Then I did my Medicine Wheel ritual later that morning, and suddenly it sort of, “took off”. . . . . .
I wrote to a friend: Sandra has some lovely simple advice. Like just focusing on one word, for a month. I was ‘given’ the word ‘Harmony’ , and I have had such joy, in looking at all its meanings and applications. For harmony within myself, all my parts, my cells, my child, my soul, etc. As well as music, colour, scent, and between people, both those close, and all humanity, and Mother Earth.
Harmony is in music, and in dance. It is in the Air, the birds singing. It is in Water, the waves in the sea. It is in the Sun and the Moon and Colours, like a rainbow. Each colour different, but all creating a harmonious whole. It is in the Wind, and the leaves and branches moving in it. In the Stars, and the Universe, the Planets circling the Sun.
Harmony can be within ourselves as individuals, and between us all as humankind, and in the whole of Mother Earth, and all sentient beings, and all creation.
The Divine as the conductor of a huge orchestra, that is all of us. Each of us is a different sound, in the orchestra, but together, under the direction of the Divine, we can make wonderful Music, wonderful songs, all in Harmony. Each instrument different but contributing to the whole. In fact, if all instruments were the same, and we all played the same note, there would be no real harmony, and it would all sound quite boring, lacking depth and interest. Harmony requires different sounds, different colours, different scents. There is much in Aromatherapy about harmonizing scents too.
On a more personal level, I have been Healing over the past 6 years, from recovered memories of terrible sexual violations as a child, leaving my body, soul, emotions and my myriad child selves, very tattered, fractured and separated. I understood from the word Harmony, that my Healing is bringing all of myself, me, back into harmony. All parts of me, resonating and integrating into a harmonious whole. This is what Healing is – restoring harmony to our Being. There is harmony between the chakras. Colour harmony and sound harmony. Harmony between the Heart and Mind and Soul and Voice, and Body and all levels of our Aura. Our past and present lives. All can be brought into Harmony, and really that is what we are about, that is our aim. To be wholly and fully ourselves in complete inner harmony, and to express ourselves within this authentic harmony.
Love is Harmony. The Ultimate Harmony. Peace is Harmony within ourselves, and between people. When there is Harmony, there cannot be War and Violence. Harmony has a flexibility, an ability to move and adjust – a rhythm, and a dance to it. It is never rigid, hard or unbending.
Contemplating the word Harmony, made me want to make my family relationships more harmonious, and gave me a vision I can hold for all of us.
Harmony is a Flow, and is Beauty, and Joy and Laughter. Harmony is what we want for the Earth, and what the Earth, Mother Earth offers us, if we will but bend to her Music, and listen to what she has to say to us, and take time to allow her to embrace us.
Harmony is now part of my life. I often think of it at different moments in the day. So, thank you Sandra, for that lovely simple idea, and thank you Spirit, for the beautiful word you gave me, and all, the Joy and inspiration it has brought me. It has been like opening a window in my Soul.”
Take a few minutes and close your eyes, Feel the vibration, light, and power of “harmony” feeding your cells and your soul.
We are entering our fifteenth year of performing together the full ceremony “Creating A Human Web of Life”. How amazing! Time really is moving quickly.
The full moon is February 3. I invite all of us to step fully into the collective field of energy we have woven together over the years. In shamanism we spin threads from the invisible world into the world of form with the work we do. Journey within and experience your divine spiritual light and allow that to radiate into the world joining with the love and light of others to weave a vibrant harmonious fabric into physical form. This fabric creates a web of light that flows within and throughout the Earth.
If you are new to reading The Transmutation News please read “Creating A Human of Web of Light” on the homepage for instructions for our full moon ceremony.
Copyright 2015 Sandra Ingerman All rights reserved.