Overcoming The Fear Of Death - or - “Yes, I signed up for this.”

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs. ~ Emerson

I was saddened to hear of the recent illness and deaths that occurred at a spiritual retreat center in Arizona. I'll spare the details (a web search will provide more accounts and opinions than you'll care to read), but the basic recap is this: A group of people were attending a personal development workshop in Arizona. At one point during the workshop, they were all engaged in a sweat lodge ceremony (I'm uncertain of the particular methodology, or if it was modeled after any particular Native tradition). During the ceremony, many participants fell ill, and two died. On the rational level, clearly something went very, very wrong in that ceremony.

Having participated in numerous sweat lodge ceremonies, numerous personal development workshops, and, on more than one occasion, events which posed a direct threat to my physical and emotional well being, I expect a much higher level of integrity from the organizers. Warrior Sage practices a level of 'impeccability' that comprehensively covers the way staff and volunteers act with one another, the way they interact with participants, the way participants act with participants - every single detail is covered and addressed. Satyen spent many, many years training with Shaolin masters, so as you might expect, his attention to detail is very high. Most importantly, however is this simple covenant by which we agree to work together: that each of us is 100% responsible for ourselves AND 100% responsible for the safety and growth for everyone around us. This philosophy is at odds with the 'rugged individualist' approach to life that we so love here in the West. This communal responsibility approach sings the counterpoint to "pull yourself up by the bootstraps!" No - pull each other up, and thereby you'll find you're all standing on ground more firm and resilient than any you could till of your own accord.

Even so - the participants for such events, while often zealous and occasionally naieve, are rarely (if ever) unaware of the potential dangers. And in every case I've ever seen, the answer to one question provides all the detail you need to make a fair assessment of the outcome: "Yes, I signed up for this."

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In the service of the Queen

One doesn’t suddenly wake up one day and ‘decide’ to become a Shaman. The journey of the poet-seer, the wandering mystic, or the healer is a continuum which ultimately has no beginning or end, but is wholly sourced from the inner and outer world, the sacred and the profane, the spiritual and the sensual.

Even so, the ‘awakening’ of the Shaman, the Awakening of the Warrior Sage is a singular experience. As my spiritual journey has deepened, dramatically, over the past three years, I have had several such awakenings - moments of pristine clarity of the Truth of my existence, my purpose, and the omnipresence of Love in its many forms and expressions on this plane and others.

However, none of these awakenings have been so profoundly humbling as the journey I took recently with the Mother of all plant teachers: Ayahuasca. What follows, below, is an account of my initiation, my journey with the Great Mother.

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Beltane 2009

Flickr image by mikescottnz
This year’s Beltane celebration was an important one for me, as it marked the official, outward, community acknowledgement of the invitation of the Mabon, the divine child, into our lives. My wife and I have invited a new One into our family, and though we haven’t yet received an RSVP, we are both feeling deeply connected and ready to welcome this new incarnation into the world.

As my journey into Fatherhood begins, Beltane offers me a time to reflect and meditation especially on the Masculine aspects of this Rite. One of my first and most profound connections with Celtic tradition was with an image of Cernunnos, who is often called the Lord of the Hunt and God of Fertility. This image struck me deeply, as I felt that I was one whose wild and green masculinity had been suppressed for many years. The image of Cernunnos was an invitation to move beyond my own fears and lethargy, to move beyond the comfort I had found in city life, into a more active spirituality that was deeply rooted in Nature, the Wild, and the Green aspects of life on Earth.

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Earth Day 2009: Pale Blue Dot

In honor of Earth Day 2009, an excerpt from the exceptional book “Pale Blue Dot” by the late astronomer and humanitarian, Carl Sagan. I only learned recently that Dr. Sagan passed into the Otherworld (though he certainly never would have called it that) right here in Seattle, at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Here’s to our Beloved Blue Dot!

We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity—in all this vastness—there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It’s been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

The Goose And The Druid

Crossposted from the website of Philip Carr-Gomm, Chosen Chief of the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids.

In a recent interview I was asked: Why have you chosen Druidry as your spiritual path?

I have always been interested in many different forms of spirituality, and for me the name or label I give to the path I tread is not so important, because I think we each have to create our own path in many ways. But what I like about Druidry is that it is an approach that is designed to help me feel grounded and rooted in my depths. And it is light on dogma and philosophy and heavy on soil, rain, fire and wind. It’s like a goose.

A goose?

The goose is the bird that flies the highest in the sky but in the farmyard it is strutting around in the mud. I want a spirituality that can take me very high but which also allows me time to splash about in the mud. At our summer camps we often build a mudpit and just splash about in it. I like an approach that allows me to do serious rituals and meditations and also sit naked in a mudbath.

Original post can be found here.

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Tags • druidry, spirituality, path, philip carr-gomm,
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