Earth Spirit Dreaming: Shamanic Ecotherapy Practices - Elizabeth E. Meacham 2020
Opening to Vibrational Reality
Spirit-Connecting Practices
Our personal vibrations emanate from our conscious and unconscious beliefs about ourselves, others and the world. Very often, we are sending and receiving energy to areas of our lives and the world without awareness. Nonetheless, these choices, even when unconscious, constitute our participation in creating our lives and the world as we know them. We also often give away our spiritual power, the life force of our energy bodies, by extending our energy and life force to thoughts, feelings and situations that drain us. By learning to work consciously with our vibrations, we can restore our own health and spiritual power, and actively participate in healing the world.
Just as we need to develop fluid boundaries for our physical and emotional selves, it is equally important to learn to manage the boundaries of our energetic bodies as we intentionally engage in the vibrational world. In vibrational and energetic reality, boundaries are not like walls. Rather, energetic boundaries derive from making clear choices about how, when and where we are extending and retracting our vibrations outward and back into our energy body. Nothing is ever static at the level of vibration and energy. There is always some kind of movement and flow. Learning to consciously engage our power in the matrix of vibrations is an essential task in consciously creating the dream of our lives and the Earth.
After creating sacred space, vibrational work begins with feeling into your spiritual body and learning to clear energetic blocks, as well as restoring your energetic spirit body. We must be healthy before we can heal the world; and healing ourselves is healing the world. We are part of the body of the Earth, so any work that we do to bring ourselves back into vibrational alignment and completeness in any moment helps the Earth and all its people. Often, the specifics of our vibrational imprints as they manifest in our lives can represent a microcosm of larger issues that are going on around us and on the planet as a whole. Since we share and create stories together — all across the planet exists a web of dreams — our stories, our imbalances, our challenges and our healing mirror the stories of others.
EXERCISE: Immersion with the Four Directions
Purpose
You may experience people honoring the four directions at the beginning of ceremonies as a method for grounding. Often, I find honoring the four directions to be a time in a ceremony where participants from Western cultures seem unsure of or unengaged with why we are doing this. There are many reasons to engage in this practice: honoring spirits of the Earth and our elemental nature energies, ancestors, stories and so many more.
For many years, I intentionally avoided practices that seemed to have indigenous roots. The way of honoring the four directions seemed to me devoid of feeling and true engagement; the process seemed borrowed and unauthentic. I needed to find a way to feel into relationship with the directions, and through this seeking I found new ways of practicing rituals for the directions.
Description
I use two ways to help myself and others connect with the four directions in an embodied way. The first is to spend extended periods of time with each direction, speaking with the wind, the nature beings, the spirits that come from and reside there. I ask myself and others to invite the directions to open up and reveal themselves, always with great gratitude for anything that may come.
To begin, inside or outside, locate and face each direction. I begin with the north. Again, I am not trained in this by people, but by the Earth; I felt my way into the practice. If you subscribe to a specific belief system with the directions, start with whatever direction fits with your current practice. Sit facing each direction for an extended period of time. Whether on your own or in a group, this can be minutes, hours or a day. If you have a day for each direction, then you will begin to foster profound understanding of the directions. Since most of us don’t often have a day to honor and connect with each direction on a regular basis, I recommend taking a length of time between 15 minutes and an hour. One way is to set aside a week to spend your spiritual time each day with a direction.
I get a very interesting reaction with groups when I set aside two hours of a workshop to be with the four directions. They are more used to five to 20 minutes at the most for any four-directions activity, so they often balk at this radical slowing down. In some cases, relating to the directions is the entire ceremony. As with most of the practices that bring us back into contact with our natural sensitivities, this simple commitment to slowing down reaps surprising realizations and rewards of expanded connection with the life-world.
There are two ways to expand this practice. The first is to imagine, or ask others to imagine, any significant nature beings or landmarks in each direction and reach out to them to ask questions, give gratitude and invite direction on how we can honor and bring healing through our relationships with them. In my bioregion, Lake Erie is most often the largest significant nature being to the north, so we start by speaking to the lake. At many of my retreat locations, we have an important river to the east. I also acknowledge any creeks, trees, glens or other beings in each direction in our immediate locale.
Another method to expand the practice of connecting with the directions is to imagine as you, and others, face each direction that you are reaching out with your light from your heart all the way around the Earth in a band of light until this beam connects to you again through your back. With a group, each person does this in the direction that they are facing. The result is the experience of a web of light originating from the circle and expanding around the body of the Earth in every direction.
EXERCISE: Clearing Sacred Space
Purpose
To support a practice of healing with vibrations, it is helpful to create vibrationally clear “zones.” Many rituals that we take for granted in our religions and/or spiritual practices come from an unconscious (or conscious, but long-forgotten) sensitivity to supporting vibrational and consciousness shifts to support spiritual experience. Creating rituals to open our vibrational and energetic practices helps us to clear space to support our work to bring healing and transformation with light.
Description
Though each person’s practice can be private and different, common practices that are used around the world are a good place to begin. Later in this book we will talk about the importance of music and dance to help raise vibrations, but for now I want to talk about some very simple ceremonial elements. Also, it can be easier to clear space and raise vibrations in peaceful nature settings, as these environments help us develop a sense of calm and bring us into a reverential state.
I use rocks to help balance and clear vibrational space in rituals. I used rocks for spiritual practice for many years without understanding what they provided. Through extensive practice, I now feel circles of stone as vortices of vibrationally cleared and open energy. Rocks in a circle can support our communication with the Divine because messages from elemental earth energies and spirit helpers are difficult to receive through our typically dense vibrational reality. It is a mystery that many cultures have known over time, that circles of rock and stone support our connection as gateways to other realms and shift our consciousness for perceptions of “other worlds.” Also, circles that are drawn or created with other natural objects can support our spiritual awareness and development, as described in the Earth-connecting practices earlier in this book.
Other elements to add to your ritual are fire, smoke from burning herbs or incense and water. I have seen people use these in many religions and spiritual practices but didn’t understand, until I started moving into deeper vibrational awareness, that fire, water and smoke clear vibrational space. Smoke truly does carry our prayers to heaven, and helps us listen to the wisdom that returns, by lightening vibrations so that communication can happen across the veils.
To begin my ceremonies, I arrange a circle of rocks small, large or very large, depending on the size of the area I have to work with and the way in which I want to work in the space. I may want to sit inside or outside of the mandala, sit on one position or move around the mandala. I follow my intuition and connect with the place to help me choose the size of the circle. I arrange my sacred stones and other beings and objects, start a fire if in a safe place outside (or use candles inside) and also make sure I have a bowl of water. I circle my body with some kind of smoke, imaging a cleansing of my circle. I found my own way to many of these practices, and only later pieced together why they are part of traditional religious practices in Western and many other cultures.
Again, it takes consistent practice to understand and embody the experience of these methods. You don’t need to feel anything special for these ceremonies to work, and over time people often do begin to feel the shifts that these practices engender.
You can also clear space with singing, with drumming, using singing bowls, chimes and crystals for visualization. When you clear with sound or images, imagine a divine light coming down through the top of your head and through your heart into the sound or image, lighting it up. Then picture this light moving out in every direction, creating a center of clarity and peace in your ceremonial space.
EXERCISE: Opening Your Heart
Purpose
After creating sacred space, grounding and setting an overarching intention, the next step to increasing our vibrational awareness is to connect with our own light, which enters and exits through our heart-mind. Our heart is a center of experience, but also offers us a method of knowing and direction that can send messages of healing to our head/brain-mind.
When you begin a vibrational awareness practice, ideally you will be well prepared and present in your body from engaging in Earth-connected embodied practices. As we move fully into our own bodies, this enhances our recognition of the energy flows and vibrations present in our bodies. To begin this practice, we open the source of light in our own bodies, our heart centers.
Description
First, slow down — always slow down — so that you can feel your heart beating. Listen to your heart and feel the energy of the blood leaving your heart and moving throughout your body. As you focus on this movement, imagine that each beat of your heart is sending not just blood, but streams of light through your veins. Feel the light move from your heart to the surrounding areas of your body in concentric rings. Then, imagine someone you love. Feel the emotion of deep love that you have toward this person. Picture that love spreading out to the universe and coming back to you. Imagine that you are surrounded by a loving force that is holding you in a bright, white light all around you. Feel love from this force coming into your body, holding you, loving you exactly as you are, with no expectation.
You are complete and everything is right and at peace for you in the light of this love. Imagine now a beam of light emanating from this divine source of love and coming toward you. As this light reaches you, it suffuses your heart, which begins to grow and glow around your body with the force of the love. Your heart is now full, round, pulsating, softly yet brightly glowing with this love. Divine love has entered your chest and lit the candle of your spirit. You are now awake to the reality of the center of divine light that lives in your own body.
EXERCISE: Waking Up Your Energy Body: Creating Your Ball of Light
Purpose
This exercise helps you work with, feel, shift and clear vibrations in your energy body. At first, you may not feel anything. The great thing about vibrational work is that it’s effective whether you feel it or not; it happens because of the creative power of thought forms and stories. In this exercise, you will envision a story of a ball of light moving through your body to help you see and feel your personal vibrational field.
This exercise is much like a “body scan,” something you may have tried in the past. The goal is to wake up to your entire body; first its physical element, then emotional and energetic.
Description
To begin, find a comfortable, safe place to sit or lie down. With practice you’ll be able to do this exercise anywhere, but for now give yourself quiet and privacy, if you can. And, remember that all vibrational work is enhanced and supported by direct grounding with the Earth. So if you can sit or lie down outside, with some part of your skin touching the Earth, that will make this exercise even more effective. It is helpful, but not necessary, to play relaxing, meditative music, preferably with no words, as music helps to shift our brain-waves for easier access to the imaginal realms.
Once you are comfortable and settled, gently place your hand on your belly and feel yourself breathe, five or ten times. When you feel in synch with your breath, imagine that each inhalation is sending your breath to a specific place in your body — right toes, right foot, right leg, so on — until you have imagined breathing into every part of your body. You can do this in even closer detail if you want to, such as breathing into each toe, then each part of your foot, ankle, calf etc.
Once you are breathing into your body, imagine that there is a ball of white light over your head, resting a few inches above and behind you. Imagine that this ball of light is the size of a medium-sized orange. Take time to let the image of this ball of light come into view for you. What is its temperature, its size? What is the surface like? Can you see through it? Is it glowing? Is the surface swirling or still? Is it circling or rotating, or just a solid stationary mass? There are no right answers to these questions. You are imagining this light, so it can be whatever you want it to be.
Once you are comfortable with holding this ball of light in your mind’s eye, let it begin to move slowly up and down your spine. Imagine that it is softly drifting down your back against your spine. Not inside your body for now, but just touching your spine as it moves down your back to your tailbone. Let it rest against your tailbone briefly before moving back up your spine to above your head again. When you see this, imagine clearly in your mind that the ball of light is entering through the top of your head and moving throughout your entire body, in whatever order or way that you want it to. Do this exercise often to help you learn to imagine your body as energy.
When you are comfortable with the ball of light exercise, you can begin to clear space in your body. Feel in your body for any tension, pain, discomfort or illness. When you locate a block in your body’s energy flow, feel into it and let it become a color, a temperature, a texture and/or a shape in whatever way that it presents for you. Move your ball of light to that place in your body, and imagine the ball of light surrounding it, not seeking to change anything but just to hold it in light just as you are. Acceptance of whatever is held in our energy bodies begins a process of transmutation by allowing our own healing processes to flow. It is releasing blocks through love, and light vibrations.
EXERCISE: Calling Your Spirit Back to You
Purpose
We put our spirit out to many things in the world. Issues and events in our own lives, in our families and our communities, as well as events and problems around the world, pull our energy. When we do spiritual work, it is important to call our spirits back to ourselves, at least for the moment. Other ways of expressing and understanding this concept include “leaving our worries at the door” or “being in the moment.”
Calling our spirits back to us is more than this, though. It requires developing awareness of what issues are drawing our spiritual resources outside of us, whether good or bad. The parts of our lives that pull our spirit can sometimes be felt as tendrils reaching from our spirit bodies out into the world. To use all of our resources for any specific spiritual work, we need to call our spirit back to us as much as we can, even if only for a short time.
Description
Use the karmic eddy exercises to become aware of what is drawing your spirit into the world in general or most specifically at a given time. Recently, I am reliving old patterns of overly care-taking others. This is pulling a large amount of my physical and spiritual resources. I am actually giving my spirit body to others.
Sometimes this is a good thing to do, although we need to do it consciously or it will drain us. Sometimes I do this for other people’s benefit, and sometimes to soothe myself or manage my own anxiety. Whatever the reasons, this is one area that at the moment I need to work on with my karmic eddy contemplations and when I am doing spiritual work.
When you prepare to call your spirit back to you, consider any old stories or patterns that are coming up in your life. These are often represented by repetitive thoughts or worries, or compulsions (one of mine is overworking). Other things that call my spirit right now are important to me and part of my sacred work: supporting my family through the death of an unexpected loved one; helping my children navigate the challenges of growing in difficult times; keeping my marriage healthy and strong over decades.
Good or bad, when we call our spirit back we use awareness and kindness with ourselves as our primary tools. We may not know all of the things that are pulling us, and we don’t have to resolve or fix anything in the moment. Sometimes, we suddenly wake up to something that has been just behind our conscious awareness for quite some time. These things may require more attention in the moment as they can be accompanied by unexpected and intense feelings. These are important to tend to, and are often worth setting our plans aside for the time being.
Once you feel aware of what is calling your spirit, imagine a soft white light all around your body, and see or feel tendrils of this light connecting to each of the things that came up for you during your reflection. Imagine, for the time being, that you are releasing these tendrils and see this energy coming back into your light body. If you feel strongly that you need to keep any of these tendrils extended, let them be. Sometimes we are holding active connections with others that need to be kept and honored as part of a sacred duty. Sometimes we can’t let something go just yet, even for a short time. With gentleness and patience, let yourself be where you are.
Once your tendrils are called back to you, feel your light body relax and expand with the renewed energy of your spirit returning. Sit with the feeling of completion and fullness for a few minutes.
The next chapter provides skills to engage, create and influence vibrational fields on personal and global levels, through the work of managing and shifting our karmic eddies. Moving into work with our own karmic eddies, it is important to understand that we are either sending or receiving in the vibrational realm. Years ago, due to my intense sensitivity to psychic phenomena — again, limited words — I learned to create a bubble around myself that would repel unwanted incoming vibrations, from other people, spirits, thought forms and the field of human consciousness in general.
Now I know that there is much more to do than walking around protecting myself, and that the idea of protecting myself creates the opposite effect by drawing my fears toward me. Instead of imagining myself as armored for battle with dark and malevolent forces, I now know that I can take an active role in healing and transforming the vibrational fields of other people and the world by sending them light. It seems too simple to be true, as our minds complicate and question us out of knowing our own power, but sending light and love to people, situations and the planet is a source and expression of this power.
Once enough of us are sending love and light into the vibrational field of human consciousness, we will transform the direction of Western culture and our planet. This is already happening on a huge scale globally and when I meet people doing this work we know one another immediately. While the people of the planet, and our shared grief and pain, often seem insurmountable, we must believe that the impact of one person vibrating to frequencies of love and divine light does truly change the world. This is happening now; this shift in consciousness is growing; we can join together to encourage this shift of consciousness worldwide and bring ourselves into a new story for the planetary era.