Hope Renewed by Christy Lowry Christy Lowry is a mom who lost her eighth grade daughter in 1983. She wrote her first book titled PAM after her daughter. She has a BA in History from Cal State at Long Beach … Continue reading
I’ve been very close to losing my faith in humanity. Not all of humanity, just most… In general, I’m not really that kind of person, I’m usually positive, loving and see the good in everyone or almost everyone. And it’s … Continue reading
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I’ve been reading Malidoma Patrice Some’s Of Water and the Spirit. In it is the story of Some’s upbringing in an indigenous African culture where the supernatural and the consensual world have no separation.
In my own study, practice and leanings in spirituality I have felt a deep connection to ritual, ceremonies, rites of passage and initiations. This book is full of that longing I have felt and in particular, the part I’m reading now about a funeral is envoking a lot of intense emotions in me.
In Some’s tribe the Dagara, the rites are 3 days long, everyone is there and there is an outpouring of emotion. If you don’t cry it is seen as disrespectful to the community. Everyone is given ample opportunity and many different avenues of getting their grief out and showing their concern for the dead and the remaining family members. This quote from the book explains:
“Unlike people in the West, the Dagara believe it is terrible to suppress one’s grief. Only by passionate expression can loss be tamed and assimilated into a form one can live with. The Dagara also believe that the dead have a right to collect their share of tears. A spirit who is not passionately grieved feels anger and disappointment, as if their right to be completely dead has been stolen from them. So it would be improper for a villager to display the kind of restraint and solemnity seen at Western funerals.
Although there are certain ritual forms of mourning, it is not less sincere for all that. Public grief is cleansing–of vital importance to the whole community–and people look forward to shedding tears the same way they look forward to their next meal”
Reading this released an ability for me to shed some tears. I have definitely felt the healing power of tears and it is not like I have rabidly avoiding crying, but I have found it a little difficult to grieve when I have wanted to in the last few months. Maybe it is has been being too busy to really prioritize it, or being complacent or just not feeling a justification for it…but I have at times wanted to cry and not really been capable of getting there. Yesterday was different.
I remembered my first serious bout of depression in my teenage years. It was after the death of a family member who’s funeral happened to be 12 years ago today. It was my first funeral of someone I really knew well, and only my second funeral at all. I was confused and surprised at how quickly we were expected to grieve and then get over it. People in my family told me to cheer up, eat, get over it, after the funeral was over. I definitely didn’t feel like I had gotten my grief out, I wanted to talk more about her death, express more about her life, I felt consumed with it on the inside and I wanted to express it more outwardly, but this was looked down upon. In the months after her funeral I disconnected from my family, from my school, from my life, from society. At this point, I first looked into my ideas on spirituality and saw the conflicts. I opened up to my intuition and trusted in my own connections to the mystery and mystical energies of life. I spent several months in my own world, dreaming, creating music, writing, expressing myself to myself to the invisible world, dancing, channeling, attempting to find my own way. I didn’t go to school for months and eventually when my family could no longer handle what I was doing I was sent to a psychiatrist and diagnosed with depression.
What I really needed was not psychiatric drugs or a diagnosis, what I needed was to express my grief, what I needed was a ceremony. I believe so much in ceremony that I’ve written a book about living a ceremonious life and developed a program to compliment it. I really believe that because we are constantly so busy in our lives, so neglectful of the stresses and dangers we live with, so committed to normalcy, that we really prevent ourselves and our communities from harmony and well-being. We lack the priority to integrate our experiences and constantly carry on from one thing to another without paying our respects to our own processes. A lot of us are walking around with childhood trauma we’ve been avoiding and shoving under our feet for years, unaware of how our current struggles relate to the very things we’ve been carrying around with us, not dealing with and trying to avoid.
Although I’ve focused and worked a lot with trauma release, even I have fell back on this important practice. The last year I’ve been too busy, too committed to normalcy and concerned with my environment to express my own traumas. I realized though, with the birthday of my oldest child, that I need to embrace this calling of mine again. My children will need ceremonies, trauma release and they will need to see that I do too. When my oldest daughter was born until she was almost 2 she experienced yogic techniques, meditations, healings and trauma release exercises on a constant basis. Even after she was two and while I was pregnant with daughter numero dos, she was still exposed to these practices, but numero dos, has not really experienced much of these practices and I am committed to correcting that pronto.
I have some trauma to release and I’d venture to say the rest of my family and of our community does as well. While I have my own experiences with trauma release and grieving ceremonies, I’d love to hear any other traditions, experienced, read about or tucked away from others out there.
If you have any experiences or ideas on the things I’ve shared here, I’d love to hear about it! Comment below if you have any thoughts or information to share.
And for crying out loud, if you need to, CRY IT OUT!
Image via Wikipedia
This is a very interesting video. About 2 years ago I read the Drunvalo Melchizedek “Flower of Life” Sacred Geometry series of books and went through a lot of meditations similar to some things mentioned in this video.
This is long but really worth listening to, if you don’t want to watch it, just listen, while you do other things on the internet, and please let me know how you feel about all this information!
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The last week or so…(I honestly don’t know how long due to lack of proper sleep), I’ve been in a bit of a daze. I’ve been worrying a little, procrastinating a little, undecided about major decisions and trying to stay committed to my goals, in other words staying up too late to work on stuff or distract myself.
From a spiritual standpoint, I view dreams as one of the major sources of everyday divinity that can be gleaned from life. I have gotten some powerful dreams during this vague time period, but I’ve lost a lot of them too, haven’t remembered them as vividly as possible, woke-up startled by the world going on around me, and ventured into some unsavory images between closing and opening my eyes and actual sleeping.
Ten hours will be my go to goal… for daily sleep. I remember the guilt as a child about how much I slept, and how adults feared it would make me lazy. But I also remember what empowerment I got from spending a lot of time in dreaming. I think it is definitely very important and with a lot of sleep, waking time can be more energetic and productive and used more efficiently. Not to mention the groundedness and calm vs. easily stressed when low on sleep.
I’m making more new goals, to coincide with working in the spiritual/healing field and making sure I feel grounded and connected in the next month to the cosmic and earthly changes that are rapidly approaching. I remember about 3 years ago first connecting to all of this phenomena and had some very distinct experiences, synchronicities and values unfold. It was connecting to these stories through Drunvalo Melchizedek‘s books that became the catalyst for leaving everything behind and changing the way we wanted to live our lives. This is what drove us to stop putting value in the American Dream and finding the Aniweda Dream.
A series of books, fasting, traveling, spiritual study, growth and practice, and a ton of magical experiences in the natural world, changed everything for us. Sleeping on the ground was something we adopted as a couple during our yoga teacher training. I had my first few experiences camping in our first year together and we spent a lot of time on the ground, sleeping, meditating, doing yoga… so much so that my hair knotted up, but that’s another story.
Being in a meditative state definitely improves sleeping. I think this is why I still received and remembered some very powerful dreams lately. One of my dreams was very much like the Hopi creation stories, and I haven’t read that story in years, but it definitely resonated with me. It is amazing how simple meditative processes can infuse your body, environment, sleep, life with the most appropriate healings, teachings and circumstances. With October 28th being just a month away, I really want to be spiritually prepared for what comes, the way I felt I was 3 years ago, when I first decided to prepare and commit myself to my own intuitive development.
The next step for me will be to start going to bed again at least by 11pm, 5 days of the week. Waking up early(at least by 6am) and meditating, doing yoga, and eating fruit. Eating a nourishing diet is very important for spiritual growth. My own mental health issues have been greatly relieved by focusing on spiritual, body, mind integration. This was my initial motivation for becoming vegetarian and then vegan.
Another thing that is going to be a little more difficult is getting out into nature. I’m a weather and environment sensitive person. My environment is not in the least pretty, but next door there is a space full of grass, trees, flowers. I want more of course, there is a wooded trail running along the river I intend to visit when I get my bike in working order. There are few things more balancing and energizing than the serenity of the natural world. Especially natural waterways.
I want to commit myself to a lot more creative exploration. I use dance in a shamanic, ceremonial sense. I long to do this everyday, like I did in the past. I know it is a great way to spend time with my kids. I plan to play the guitar everyday, do mantras, chanting in Sanskrit and the Creek language, and regularly tune into my yogic bodies and chakras with sound healing. The other thing I’ve finally decided to do is to regularly engage in spiritual and intuitive healing for others.
I know this all starts with prioritizing my sleep. Preparing for and respecting the dream time, and engaging in dream work, in the waking life. I’ve found my version of Dreams Are Letters From The Soul and I’m planning to get more books by Connie Kaplan in October. I’m also checking in with my totem animal, spirit guides and keeping my intuitive work journal at hand, at all times…recording the synchronicities, symbolisms, omens, channelings, dreams, everything I perceive in the web of co-creating. I have truly felt a strong connection for 3+ years that the Mayan 2012 prophecies, are definitely an awakening and many of us are called to duty, to share and sponsor the weaving of a new dream… I’d call it the Aniweda Dream… claro, que si!
P.S. Check out the movie The Quickening if you can!
