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Coming Into Alignment
When I look up, a hummingbird feeds at my pink begonia. Thought dissipates; my attention is riveted. The magic of this small, delicate creature shifts me into wide-open heart-seeing.
I slip into a Celtic practice of aligning my three "cauldrons"--belly, heart, and mind/third eye--with the hummingbird. In my belly I feel vibrancy. In my heart I feel the power of flight. In my third eye I feel the great field this bird lives in, the ecosystem that feeds him.
Until hummingbird appeared, I was stuck in habit and resistance: the electricity was out, I was cold, and the news was dismal. Despite greeting the sun, drumming, and dancing with my helpers, my attention was distracted. Aligning my three cauldrons helped me focus, and words began to flow.
Practicing Alignment
Alignment is a vehicle for shifting our consciousness and experiencing other vibrational and energetic states. It's a tool for calling ourselves back from scatteredness so we can be fully present in the moment. Coming into alignment with the living energy of a being feels like sinking into resonance. It teaches us how to step out of the dream we're in (the news is bad/we have too much to do) and into a new one (everything is vivid, alive, pulsing). So what we align ourselves with--moment to moment, day by day, year by year--is essential to our consciousness.
Belly, Heart, Mind: Three Cauldrons
Many old Celtic texts speak of the three cauldrons of belly, heart, and mind. Focusing on the energetic component of belly, heart, and mind in turn, and aligning each with the parallel parts in another living being, is a way to expand our heart-seeing.
If you and I and everyone reading this chose the same tree to align with, we would have different experiences and words to describe them, so my examples are just that: examples. What we have in common is the ability to focus, listen, and shift our intention to align.
Whatever words and images arise for each of us are wonderful, just what we each need. Judgment, and trying to "understand" messages with our minds, are not part of alignment!
To explore your alignment with another being through the three cauldrons, put your attention on your energy belly (hara/q'osqo/dan tien), really being there. Then listen/reach out for the sensation of belly in alignment. For example, aligning my belly cauldron with pink begonia, I feel rays of beauty vibrant in every direction. In my heart, I experience intactness of form. In my mind/third eye, I sense filaments connected to everything.
Using the tool of alignment is an easy way to amplify our capacity to perceive. The sensations are different than what we "see" with our eyes; with heart-listening, it's vibrations and energy that come forth.
The Interdependent World: Kawsay
You can have fun playing with alignment! When you are taking a walk, choose a tree. Say hello, try aligning your three cauldrons, and notice any feelings, words, and images. Then walk on: try aligning with a different tree to explore how each being's energy is different. Notice how your perceptions change as you walk along.
When you have more time, find a place outside to sit quietly and comfortably. Settle into your internal silence, listening and watching with awareness. As you come into alignment with the trees, plants, birds, and whatever else surrounds, you will find yourself coming into alignment with the whole ecosystem. This is what the Q'ero call "kawsay," the living energy of the universe. It is what westerners might call "Gaia consciousness," what systems theorists and Buddhists call "dependent co-arising." It is an experience and way of perceiving known the world over.
When you play with alignment, see how it shifts your energy and perception for the rest of the day. Do you respond to coworkers or emails differently? Does it affect what you choose to do in the evening? Do your dreams shift? Simply watch, and see...
Experiencing Alignment in Your Normal Activities
Another simple, wonderful way of alignment involves breathing together. It's especially useful when we feel out of sorts with a loved one; and it's a quick and easy way to shift together so that whatever project we're doing-conversation, lovemaking, problem solving-flows seamlessly. The technique is simple: when the other breathes out, you breathe in; when the other breathes in, you breathe out, matching your rhythms. The focus of truly paying attention to the other's breathing takes us out of mind and into the arising and passing of breath, like waves.
In the natural world, we can align ourselves with the elements inside and out; with heaven and earth; with our allies, power objects, and groups when we create sacred space. With all our outside gardening and walking activities, we can align by putting our attention on what surrounds us (rather than running our internal dialogue). There are small gifts in doing this: sitting quietly in a chair above my garden last spring, midday, I watched a raccoon emerge from the ravine, walk, stand on hind legs looking around, walk again, stand again, and go all the way up the hill without ever being aware of my presence.
In our bodies, all the ancient movement practices--yoga, tai chi, chi gong, martial arts, and so on--contain elements of alignment. The deeper you go into these spiritual practices, the more alignment possibilities you can discover.
In shamanic work, there's a practice of merging with a power animal or teacher to learn perspective, perception, power, and the helper's way of being and moving in the world. Once you have merged, the experience makes alignment with that helper easier.
As with all tools, practice, integration, and using alignment are what are important. All these practices take us towards a felt sense of "In La'kesh," I am another yourself.
The 99% Challenge
It is clear that within the collective field we humans are raising and exploring many questions of money, power, and fairness around the world. We are also exploring alternative ways of being and relating--some of us on the streets, some in our spiritual practices, some in our living rooms--as we struggle to find ways out of the constipation of the political realms in addressing issues of equity, sustainability, democracy, and survival.
When I asked my own helpers about this, one replied,
"When you feel your way into the living energy that is 'Occupy,' you sense the power, excitement, passion, and surging energy that exists beyond the one, beyond each encampment, beyond all those on the streets. There's a feeling of this field, elusive and palpable at once. Returning to the question of 'where are you going?' within the field gives a different sense and answers than outside of the field."
This suggested to me that we might each explore our alignment with the field of the 99%.
In our cultural trance we (yes, all of us!) are so influenced by media, mind, and unconscious assumptions that our reactions may be clouding our heart intentions. So think of the 99% as a field--a complex of individual hopes, despairs, needs, and experiences merged into a collective outpouring. Try aligning your cauldrons with that field, to discover the energies and vibrations your belly-heart-mind are aligning with. This may surprise you, teach you, help you see into a different personal or collective focus and vision. Who knows?
When I try aligning with the field of 99% myself, I sense surging ocean waves in my belly, excited electrons in my heart, hope & prayer in my mind/third eye. When I breathe with these sensations, the divisions drop away. The fear drops away. I feel something larger than specifics, beyond ego. There's a calm, a non-attachment to outcome: what seems important is the power, connection, passion, and hope in the field of 99%.
Conclusion
When one can feel and experience the living energy in other beings, it is a step on the path of dropping the veils of separation and ego. It is a way of opening to the wider universe and to other hearts. As we learn in meditation, there is no "I," no solid persona. Each time we align with tree or lover or stone or star, we open and expand our heart-seeing.
If our intent is to feed certain energies and possibilities in the world, what we align with is a huge vehicle for directing our own energy, intention, and action.
In these holy-days/holidays, whether you are hibernating, partying, or doing some of both, may your alignment with the living energies of our beautiful earth carry you through in wonderful ways!
Meg Beeler/Earth Caretakers
Copyright � 2011
| Star Despacho Mt. Shasta
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"All I'm saying is simply this, that all life is interrelated, that somehow we're caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality." -- Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963
"Sometimes change can be perceived as painful, but how we experience change depends on whether we are coming from the ego or from the Inner Sun. The awakening of our consciousness never stops, but as it grows and becomes stronger, we become more integrated within our bodies, as well as with all the elements and with all the kingdoms of the natural world. And as we do this, we become more grounded in the Inner Sun." -Adam de Armons "Example is a language anyone can understand." -- church billboard
"Love is the felt experience of connection to another being. An economist says 'more for you is less for me.' But the lover knows that more of you is more for me too. If you love somebody their happiness is your happiness. Their pain is your pain. Your sense of self expands to include other beings. This shift of consciousness is universal in everybody, 99% and 1%." -- Charles Eisenstein |
