We join together in love for our global community and on behalf of all of life while we cycle into a New Year. It is really amazing to watch how many communities create ceremonies, rituals, and celebrations to welcome in the New Year. Talk about a virtual collective field of energy weaving excitement and a wish for new hope as we enter into another part of the spiral of life.
This month I would like to encourage all of us to reflect on the following themes:
Inspiration, Excitement, Preciousness of Life, Tapping into Our Creative Genius, and the need to Wake Up!!
I had a few very inspirational teachers while I was in school. They really impacted me and helped to shape my life and my work.
When I was in ninth grade, I had a chemistry teacher Mrs. Goldstein. She graded on HOW we solved chemistry and math problems not on the answers we came to.
I rarely answered test questions correctly. Or when Mrs. Goldstein asked a question in class, I rarely got the correct answer. But I was inspired to think, and I always could share my process of how I came to an answer. It was such a great inspiration to see my teacher’s eyes light up as she would listen to my willingness to think a problem through while not focusing on the outcome. I received a great grade in all my tests due to my willingness to 1. try and 2. be creative in my thinking process. What a gift this was in my growth as I was inspired to be creative.
Then I had an amazing teacher in college while I was studying Marine Biology at San Francisco State University. I was taking a course on the study of algae. My instructor at the time of the class had reached the age of 65, and this was the last course he was teaching before retiring. He was one of the top world experts on the study of sea algae.
I do not remember his name. I remember his face, his stature, his voice, and how he dressed as we wandered the tide pools. I mostly remember the bliss and radiance shining through his eyes as he welcomed students into the magical, mysterious world of sea algae – this is a path not many follow. The mystery and magic of the red, green, and brown algae is a deep rich world that most do not explore. Some of the most beautiful and intricate plants that exist are some of the red algae.
My instructor would jump up and down in such excitement, and we thought he would pass from his excitement as my classmates would wander, and we each found rare and wonderful algae in the tide pools.
For our final test of the semester we had to collect as many species of sea algae we could individually find and collect. We had to keep them alive. And then we had to lay them out on a sheet on the floor and say their names.
My teacher would use a stopwatch (as we only had a certain amount of time to go share our collection), and he would jump and cheer loudly as each student went through their collection naming the algae correctly.
I would practice the names of all the algae I had collected for hours each night. I had friends who would come to my apartment in San Francisco and support me during my memorization process.
Did this add to a life mission – no! But this taught me about the power of excitement as I joined in with the amazing energy my teacher radiated. I was not trying to prove anything to my instructor. I did this for pure excitement and joy! Why, because through his love of the subject he inspired me and others to learn.
And lastly, I am deeply grateful for Vern Haddick who was one of my instructors while I was getting my MA in Counseling Psychology at CIIS in San Francisco. Vern taught me about the power of unconditional love and how we can hold people in love and accept them unconditionally. I will always be grateful for how Vern simply accepted me unconditionally during a time in my life when I felt so insecure about my own gifts and talents that I had to share.
In this time of continued challenge, despair, and unrest on the planet we can inspire and create excitement about the preciousness of life. We can teach people to tap into their own thinking process and creative and spiritual inspiration.
We can inspire people to wake up!!
What are you excited about? And how can you share this excitement with friends, loved ones, children, co-workers, and others in your local community?
My teachers led me to be available to my students of shamanism and help them feel welcomed into the practice and into the circle of our community, to shine, to laugh, to feel excitement about unlimited possibilities. I love to watch and match the energy of excitement as my students step onto the path of shamanism.
Be a force of excitement and inspiration with your friends and community!
Help people to Wake Up!
It is important to remember that the helping and compassionate spirits only see us in our beauty and light.
It is up to us to live a more conscious life and shine our beauty and light in the world.
At this time of the New Year where hope for a new chance and positive change abounds rededicate yourself to your spiritual work.
Continue to work with the practices we have been performing together that I have shared over the last 15 years of writing the Transmutation News.
Transmute and transform the energy behind your thoughts and words.
Align your thoughts and words to create a positive outcome.
Cultivate your inner landscape and inner garden.
Be conscious of the power of your words and your thoughts to create in the world.
Release core limiting and blocking beliefs that prevent you from tapping into your creative energy.
Wake up each day and give thanks and gratitude for your life, earth, air, water, and fire (as in the sun), and for the exquisite life forms that live in all the elements, for the moon, stars, planets, your helping spirits, the spirit of the land, your helping ancestors, the Hidden Folk and so on. Reach into your heart and give daily gratitude to those who you wish to thank. By giving thanks for your life every day you create so much positive change for all of life.
Look at changes you need to make in your life to find peace, balance, and harmony.
Spend time in nature!!
Continue to perform your dreaming practices to dream into being a world filled with love, light, peace, abundance, harmony, honor, respect, and equality for all.
Be open and find balance in how you give and receive.
Surrender the outcomes. Perform your spiritual work no matter what you witness in the outer world. The spiritual work we do does make a difference. But yes also take actions in the physical world to be a positive changemaker.
Continue to feel the love of our global community who joins together as we continue to work together in behalf of all of life.
Be a light in the world!
In my new book Walking in Light: The Everyday Empowerment of Shamanic Life (Sounds True) I take you by the hand and lead you through all the practices I have shared with you over the last 15 years. The book will be released February 1.
The full moon is January 5. Let us continue to weave a golden web of light into the fabric of reality. Do your preparation work so you are fully engaged with the practice. Move out of your ordinary state of consciousness and enter into a state of oneness. Connect with our global community as we weave a radiant web of light within and throughout this great Earth!
If you are a new reader to the Transmutation News please read “Creating a Human Web of Light” on the homepage.
Early one morning in December I had the most extraordinary dream. I shared the dream on Facebook but not all of you follow me on Facebook, so I want to share it here.
The first part of the dream was very complex and deep, and I do not remember it. I know I was in an apartment in a city having a very deep discussion with others, and I think the topic might have been on death.
Anyway the discussion had moved to a place where I knew it was time for me to leave. And I had come to the city as I wanted to buy light blue mascara. So, I decided to move on with my mission.
I was walking through the streets of the city, and I came to a construction zone. There was a new development being built for commercial properties and stores.
A river had to be drained for the building projects to proceed. I know this sounds strange, but this was a dream.
The next part of the dream will be with me forever. I walked along the drained riverbed. The sand was still wet. It was not like where I live where I walk along arroyos which are dry riverbeds. The sand in this river was still very moist and wet.
As I walked the river started singing to me. The song was exquisite. And every new curve I came to in the river the song changed. I came to one part of the river where through the song symbols started appearing in the sand. I went back and forth the entire length of the river and kept listening to this beautiful song. The song remained constant depending on where I was on the river.
I was so touched and moved by the beauty of this song and that the river was still singing although the water had been drained.
I walked back to a group of construction workers. And there was one large Native American man with two very long braids. I thought to myself maybe he will listen to me. I told him my story that the river is singing. He looked at me, and when I started crying, he said he would walk with me and try to listen.
We walked to the riverbank and started walking the length of the river. At first there was only silence. And then a song emerged. It was different than the one I heard when I was walking alone, but it was a song. I asked him if he could hear it. At first, he could not. And then the song got stronger and louder. He looked at me in amazement as he heard the song. And together we walked the length of the river listening to the river sing.
He went back to the group of other construction workers and said they had to stop the project for the river was alive and still singing. I left the group knowing they would stop the work.
And then I went on to buy my light blue mascara.
I woke up so touched by the dream and the song of the river! In the early 1970s I drowned in the ocean in Mazatlan and I experienced myself traveling through a tunnel into a light. I found myself in an extraordinary garden and sat on a stone bench while I listened to the most beautiful music that I will never be able to describe or have never heard in this earthly realm.
Everything in life sings and the song is eternal.
Go out and sing to the land, the waters, the air, the sun, the moon, the stars, and to all the exquisite and amazing beings who live in the elements. Open your heart and listen as they sing with you!
Happy New Year!
Stories Shared by Our Community
I was truly overwhelmed with all the stories people sent me about the power of engaging in shamanic work. I guess I should not have been surprised by this as we all know the power of shamanic work which includes the Medicine for the Earth work. Right now, I have about 30 pages of stories combined into one document.
I will include some stories sent to me by our community in future columns of the Transmutation News.
Due to the length of this month’s column I will only share some links to blogs that a couple of our people in our community wrote:
- Simin Uysal in Turkey decided to write up her story in a blog. It is quite beautiful and touching. Here is the link:
http://anatolianstories.blogspot.com.tr/2014/11/dreaming-with-ancestors-in-land-of.html
- Jeff Nixa had shared some articles he wrote that I found quite powerful. You can read them at:
The first story posted in Nov. 2013, We’re All Living on a Rez: My Week on Pine Ridge Reservation
The second story posted this Nov. 2014, Where The Heart Is Hidden In Plain View. http://urban-shamanism.org