Feeding Our Dreams for the Earth

"Speaking of December 21, 2012, in working with the Maya, dealing with this question they say something very simple: when it ends, all that's happening is the start of a new beginning. Nothing is going to change. We are the ones that create change on this planet, the human beings. So, we are the ones who are going to create the new beginning." --Woody Vaspra

"When you enter into profound stillness, time ceases to exist." -Lama Govinda

This season of shifting light is a fruitful time of harvesting: fat tomatoes, juicy pears, and luscious summer vegetables. It is a transition time of beginnings and endings. It is a time when we once again move towards the equinox balance of light and dark. Pleasure in the harvest is tinged with sadness as summer ends; excitement about change is tempered by anxiety about what the change will bring. Underneath it all, we feed our hope in possibilities, even while we know that storms -- hurricanes, cancer, foreclosures, war -- rage everywhere, moving deeper and deeper into the systemic membrane of our world.

Probability Threads: Which Visions Do We Nurture?

The great upheavals we are witnessing around the globe have been foretold by the Inca, Maya, and Hopi. Their prophesies detail events (most of which have already come to pass) that mark the beginnings of the Pachacuti, the great turning-upside-down of the world (2012). Like all traditional oracles, these prophesies offer threads of guidance as a stimulus for action. We are the great turning; we create the change. (see links)

The Inca/Q'ero elders speak of "probability threads -- the many alternative outcomes to our destiny -- that we can choose to nudge and change (or not). From this perspective, the large and small actions we take in our daily lives define our focus and feed our intent.

We can ask ourselves: how do I perceive this turning over of things? How can I feed the best possible outcome for peace, for sustainability, for global equity? How can I be fully present for whatever changes occur, no matter how challenging? How can I dismiss the sense of scarcity that feeds my fear? How can I cultivate balance? How can I forgive, make amends, and move on from my personal resentments so I have energy to attend to the great collective needs of our times?

Dreaming the World

As always I asked for guidance while writing this newsletter. Here is what I was shown:

I am taken through an underground basaltic tunnel to a place of zero point energy, a place of possibility. I follow a gold thread emerging from my hara (centerpoint of energy) along the tunnel to a big opening, where I see threads of connection between me and all of you dear readers. It is a sweet web, the more so because we mostly do not know each other. In other caves I see other groups, also woven together with gold threads. Then I enter a cave with many old Condors, many "Apuchin" as they are called in the Andes. Immediately I "see" and feel the dream of the world they are keeping alive with their collective intent, their collective vision. Their concentration is so strong that the dream fills the cave. I hear, "What you see is one of the probability threads of destiny. The Apuchin feed the dream with meditation, vision, and ceremony. You [humans] feed the dream when you do ceremony together, creating acts of beauty that nourish a peaceful, abundant destiny for the earth and her diverse inhabitants." The strength, power, and vividness of their collective vision tells me how important it is for us to learn to do this, together and alone. (see links)

Ceremony, Balance, and Becoming the Other

Creating ceremony together is an act of love and gratitude. Ceremonies give us simple, profound times we can use to enlarge and empower our visions.

In the Andes, despacho ceremonies are a much-used, alive tradition for creating offerings in community. Despachos focus personal and collective intent, feed vision, and shift energy; I'll be teaching how to create despachos this fall (see link).

In other ceremonial traditions, like the Tibetan Buddhist, shifts of consciousness are empowered by chanting and visualization. For example, I was recently guided in a deity empowerment where we visualized Chenrezig (Avalokiteshvara) holding symbols of love, joy, compassion, and equanimity in his four arms. Then we visualized ourselves, and each other, with those same qualities. Days later, the images keep returning to me, reminding me that I can embody those qualities. What we vision -- in meditation, art, shamanic journey, dance, and our daily lives -- becomes more familiar, more specific, more concrete, and more possible as we continue to feed our dreams for the world. (see link)

Outside specific traditions, we can look to the seasons and rhythms of nature, as our ancestors did not so long ago, for all kinds of inspiration. Observing the delicate shifts -- whether it is leaves just beginning to fall, fruit ripening, or sunlight shifting its angle at dawn -- reminds of cycles and rhythms beyond/outside our small egos. Shifting our awareness from worry to observation calms our nerves. Being connected (my body, earth's body) lets us enter the unity consciousness, Gaia consciousness. And every moment we can do this shifts our brains, fires our neurons, gives us massively enhanced mental clarity, and strengthens our ability to balance, flow, and move as nature does.

Cultivating internal balance and "right relationships" (reciprocity, aine) with each other and the earth...learning to "step outside time" and "witness our becoming"...discovering our internal luminosity...gathering together in the beauty of ceremony...all of these acts lead us into dreaming our world in a deeper, more vibrant way.

As earth citizens, we are being called, will be called, to give our all. So let's act in beauty, not fear. Let's feed collective hope, not anxiety. Let's learn how to be luminous beings, breathing with one heart, breathing from the heart of the earth.

Invitation: Send your paradigm-shifting, inspiring stories to us. We'd like to include your experiences in the newsletter!

Blessings of balance,

Earth Caretakers is offering a day-long workshop to explore the profound and fluid ceremony of despacho, the Andean practice of making offerings to the mountains, Mother Earth, and other spirits of nature in reciprocity, reverence, and thanksgiving.

Useful short summary of 2012 indigenous prophesies.

Joyous dancing throughout the world makes your heart sing.

We are challenged to heal the "split between what we think and what we do." As Michael Pollan says in a New York Times article on climate change, "Measured against the problem we face, planting a garden sounds pretty benign, I know, but in fact it's one of the most powerful things an individual can do to reduce your carbon footprint, sure, but more important, to reduce your sense of dependence and dividedness: to change the cheap-energy mind."

Resources in service to the revolution of our time: the "Great Turning" from the industrial growth society to a life-sustaining civilization. "The most remarkable feature of this historical moment on Earth is not that we are on the way to destroying the world-we've actually been on the way for quite a while. It is that we are beginning to wake up, as from a millennia-long sleep, to a whole new relationship to our world, to ourselves and each other."

What is "dreaming the world into being?" How can we imagine and vision our most desirable futures? We will take some "time out of time" to develop our visions, both personal and planetary, in the woodlands of Sonoma, in November, January, and March.

You can find last month's newsletter on "Storms, Spirit, and Transformation" and read other, previous versions of Shifting Consciousness News here.

Shamanic Counseling, Energy Healing, Ceremony, and Soul Retrieval:

Explore what this season of transformation may bring to you, and step into your radiance, wisdom, and wholeness with an Earth Caretakers session. Send an email or call our office at 1-707-939-7961 to make your appointment. A recent client wrote, "I really, really, appreciate your gentle, thoughtful, loving, knowledgeable kindness and guidance during this entire process. It has been life-changing for me."

About Earth Caretakers

Earth Caretakers is an organization dedicated to renewing and reweaving our interconnections with stars, trees, and stones; with cross-cultural wisdom and prophesy; and with our own bodies, souls, and spirits. Founded by Meg Beeler, MAT, Earth Caretakers sponsors participatory, experiential, earth-honoring and rites-of-passage ceremonies. We draw on ancestral wisdom to empower visioning and dreaming a future of balance, reciprocity, and harmony.

Visit our website for information on upcoming events, workshops, and shamanic healing. Find inspiration, articles, and previous issues of the Shifting Consciousness News.