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Archive for Cosmic Pattern – Page 3

Synchronicity

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Another powerful Thought Leader Gathering session from Heartland Circle

This July’s conversation starter (and regular TLG member) Betsy Saunders led us in an exercise using the symbolism of a monk’s begging bowl as a channel that receives contributions from the world and demands only that the gift be accepted as precisely "enough" for each day’s needs.

In the first part of the exercise we were to gather in small groups and
answer the question "What is my gift to the world?", write down our
answers, and put them in one of the beautiful brass begging bowls Betsy
had brought for this purpose.

I thought about my work and my joy, and an answer came to me: "My gift is in making your voice visible and audible in the world". I wrote it down and put it in the bowl along with the others.

In the second part of the exercise we were asked to join a new small group, and this time see what the bowl of life would offer for us. When my turn came, the slip of paper I pulled said "My gift is to share my voice with the world." Wow. What synchronicity.

This coincidence would seem unusual enough by itself, but everyone in my small group had something similar going on with their own picks, a phenomenon that was mirrored in the large group when we gathered later that morning to share what had happened.

It seemed that we each picked what we most needed, and in my case the gift was to receive for myself what I so enjoy giving to others. 🙂

Listening

As you know, I’ve been having a dialogue here and with several friends and colleagues about the need for a new language in which to speak our experience of nature-connection and sensory awareness of the deeper currents in life. As part of this conversation, the following words came through Bob Stilger from the Berkana Institute. They have been ringing in me ever since, so I thought I’d share them with you:

"I (suddenly) realized what was needed wasn’t so much a new language as a new listening… We must listen deeply into these resonant fields…

Words, new and old, will eventually emerge which we use to communicate with others.  Our invitation, I think, is to learn to hear these words as invitation, not as dogma.  To hear them as incomplete and yearning rather than as Truth."

And so I find myself listening for invitations …

Solstice 07

Center

I just returned from a Solstice celebration held in a redwood forest in the Santa Cruz mountains. This ceremony and its ‘Dreaming’ counterpart held in the middle of winter have become necessary bookmarks in my year, rituals of integration and relationship that bring wholeness and balance to the busi-ness of my life.

One of my favorites moments in this pattern cycle is the night we dance a prayer dance in a medicine wheel built into a meadow, surrounded by redwoods and anchored by a mother tree that must be at least 600 years old. People have been dancing to the Tree of Life for millenia and you can feel a sense of eternity and timelessness that comes like grace as we dance around the delicate Oklahoma Redbud, our ‘tree of life’,  hour after hour.

Leg muscles powered by the relentless beat of a large hand made buffalo skin drum (and the energy of the rotating team of drummers that keep this beat alive), the dancers alternately rush to the center and ebb back to the perimeter, again and again. Running forward with outstretched hands, raising our eagle feathers to bless the tree that stands in the center representing Life, we offer our gratitude for the gifts she’s given us all year. Then we dance back in equal rhythm, gratefully receiving life’s bounty and drawing it deep into our own centers, again and again.

When the drums have stopped and we’ve finished dancing, those who want to stay pull a circle of chairs close around the tree … She’s lit from below by a thousand candles encircling her base, long white ribbons that decorate her branches dancing in the night wind. We sit in long silence as the stars and moon move above us and the night whispers its secrets to the trees. I drink this endless moment like water in the desert, stillness pouring into my body like holy communion wine.

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My deep gratitude to my companions on this prayer dance journey, and to the hosts and conveners of this beauty: FireHawk and Pele at Resonance and their partners Bill & Marilyn Veltrop at Infinite Games and Craig and Patricia Neal of Heartland Circle.

To Whom are we Beautiful?

I wish I understood the beauty
in leaves falling. 
To whom
are we beautiful
as we go?

~David Ignatow

(cool signature on someone’s email)