Winter Solstice, Australia 2016

Happy Winter Solstice everyone. Here in Narooma, on the east coast of Australia, i watched the sun rise over the beautiful Pacific Ocean and sent out my thanks for life to the sun. The traditional owners of the country here, the Yuin people, address our local star as Grandfather, so i was happy to take that on as a sign of respect for their ways of being here over thousands of years.

The Youtube video embedded here is of this dawn, Tuesday June 21st 2016.

The words are inspired by the evolutionary interaction of the elements, as well as by what i have learnt from Yuin elders, especially the Harrison clan (more to come on this in the City Living, Nature Calling ecomythic documentary film series). I’ve been spending as much time as possible around these parts watching and listening to the sun, the ocean, the sand and the land, the birds and animals around here, the stars at night, the wind and the trees and that deep inner voice that reminds us about what is important.

The sun gives birth to life, which rises out of the ocean. We, along with all creatures, give it body. Every day we are fired back into life by the power of the sun. We rely on the salt water to maintain the basis for life and the fresh water to keep us hydrated. We are elemental beings, with conscious minds, who are sometimes confused into thinking that the sideshow is the main attraction.

The earth, the sun, the ocean, the stars and the other creatures. This is home. This is what matters. When we get our minds and bodies together and remember this we are better for it.

Let the light return and draw you up.

Ecospirituality – The Hero’s Journey for the 21st Century

In the mid-20^th century, Joseph Campbell showed that a Hero’s Journey was available to us all, as an exploration of our own minds and hearts and as a way of regaining our personal power and rightful place in the world. In those days, America still seemed like the land of the free and home of the brave. Campbell’s book The Hero with a Thousand Faces was published in 1949, just years after the US Army had helped the Allies rescue Europe from the clutches of the Nazis. It was an era of optimism, and Campbell’s later TV appearances in The Power of Myth cemented his fame. He inspired George Lucas’s Star Wars, especially in the lead character of Luke Skywalker and his mystical martial arts sect the Jedi, who could tap into ‘the force’ behind the physical world.

 Ah Luke. That was nuts about your dad. Talk about nasty Oedipal issues!

 

I love the potential in all of these ideas, but while they still retain a timeless quality to compel, they also need to be updated for the 21^st century. The Hero’s Journey in Campbell’s era was still about the individual, who needed to find the power within to overcome their challenges, regardless of the expectations of society. This model remains an excellent guide to anyone’s inner life today. It involves a cycle, from the everyday world to a place of inner depth, after a ‘call to action’ compels us to look within and find the source of our strength.

 

This follows an ancient practice, for instance when Greeks over 2000 years ago went to ‘Mystery Schools’ to immerse themselves in such experiences, participating in rituals where they entered a metaphorical underworld and returned with great gifts of self-empowerment. It’s so inspiring, there is no wonder it has continued to influence writers and film makers such as the Wachowski brothers in The Matrix. As their archetypal modern hero, Neo, found out, the key to accepting the Hero’s Journey is to take the right pill! While the truth may challenge us, it is far more satisfying than accepting the comfort of mundane routines.

 Dude, take the red pill! The red one and wake up – it’s worth it, trust me!

 

While this remains a vitally important process for us all, we are now living in a new era, with a changing climate and other challenges that face us on a global scale. It doesn’t seem enough anymore to just evolve as separate individuals; we need to do it together, as a community, in touch with nature and its other beings. The question that has kept jumping out at me over the 20 years since I began working with these materials is: how do we forge links with the power of nature, so that we find healing within ourselves and become better ecological citizens at the same time? The answer came in evolving the Hero’s Journey to a new paradigm of ecospirituality. This is where quantum fields meet nature spirits and we discover that what Carl Jung called the archetypes are similar to what Aboriginal Australians call the ancestor spirits: figures from the otherworld, which lead us to a greater sense of personal power and connection to nature.

Any idealised version of the hero becomes, or draws upon, the archetypal spirit of overcoming. Jake Sully from Avatar might have been another example of the white-boy-turns-native-and-rescues-poor-savages cliche, but at least he stood for indigenous rights and listened to their culture …

 

And we can do this right now, here in Melbourne – although maybe not in the comfort of our own homes! Because we do have to get outside our own comfort zones to really get the juices out of this kind of work. It’s exciting and mysterious, like a dream you’ve had that you know is deeply meaningful, but that leaves a tantalizing feeling in its wake as well, so that you want to follow it but you don’t know where it leads. What I want to do is to help people to see that where it leads is a place where Psyche – the soul of the mind – meets Gaia, the spirit of the earth.

 

This new art brings together quantum physics, which reminds us that everything is connected, and ecology, which teaches us where we fit in the wider web of life and how to work with the laws of nature. The science of ecology teaches us that nature loves biodiversity and all its unique forms of life, but also that it works in cycles. No matter what ‘season’ our lives seem to be in at the moment – the letting go of Autumn or the new growth of spring, for example – it will inevitably come around full circle. The trick to ensuring that we always have a sense of abundance, no matter where we are in the cycle, is to recognize that the physical world is not here to supply our every need and want. Rather, as wisdom traditions constantly remind us (if we listen!), the way to make our dreams of enlightenment real is to carry them within, regardless of external circumstances. It’s kind of ironic, because we learn to love and protect nature better when we get to know our own inner selves better.

 

Tapping into our inner riches, which is the aim of the Hero’s Journey, supplies more of what we really want – things like self-love and acceptance, spiritual generosity, peace of mind and an openness to true community. This means we rely less on the things that are so often ‘sold’ to us as the answers; like consumer products and the corporate interests that try to convince us we consistently need more of them. And this is where the Hero’s Journey can become an Ecospiritual path for us all. Because it goes beyond better relations with ourselves and others, and puts us back in touch with the healing power of nature!

Paradoxically, as we become more attuned to the song of the earth and to our allies, guides and guardians in nature, we become less focused on ourselves as individuals but we feel more complete. This is the same outcome of many mystical traditions, such as Sufism, Kabbalah, or Zen; in becoming less attached to our everyday experiences of fear, anger and worry, we become more full of a flowing energy, which lives and breathes through everything, including the planet, the trees, the birds and rivers and stars. This life force is beyond our individual self and links us to all the other lives on Gaia, our Mother Earth, and throughout the whole universe. This is the Ecospiritual hero within, speaking loud and clear of the journey we can choose as we evolve and adapt in the 21^st century. Join me, and the members of the Hero’s Journey Collective, as we enter into this grand new realm with no fear and an abundance of love, a sense of self-empowerment, and a quest to be the best we can in a world that needs every hero it can find!

 

Geoff Berry, of White Fella Dreaming, will be appearing at The Hero’s Journey Collective event, held on Saturday 8th August at the Speakeasy Bar in South Yarra, Melbourne, Australia. This event raises funds to help the Art2Healing project end sex slavery.

Some tickets still available at: http://www.theherosjourneycollective.com/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How Do We Relate to the Elements? In rock and ritual

What White Fella Dreaming supports is a way of being that allows every facet of every potential there exists in the human framework to be made possible to us right here, in the body, while remaining true to the earth and to its inevitable limits also. This is sometimes known (erm, well at least by me and a handful of other brave or foolhardy souls) as ecospirituality, or embodied spirituality – allowing that we, as individuals, can enjoy our own relationship with what we deem sacred, within ourselves as nature and within the ecosystem of which we are but a small part. To use some religious language, we recognise ourselves as the holy, or the divine, as this force exists in and through us, as we experience it, as it is communicated to us and through us as human beings. To throw off the shackles of received conventions, in the sense that any priestly caste could speak for us, and to realize that relationship for ourselves, in alignment with our own conscience, with intellectual integrity and critical thinking coming along for the ride; as independent, mature thinkers with a full emotional life and deep respect for the body and its innate wisdom as well. And celebrating this in ritual, so that we don’t forget.

 

 

Rituals of letting go of the old to make way for the new: burning down the house – and the man – at Burning Man

 

But dispensing with traditions we don’t need any longer does not mean turning away from ancient traditions altogether – in fact, far from it. If anything, we need the wisdom of the elders more than ever right now, to remind us how to be human without necessarily relying on technological or other crutches, without getting too caught up in the consumerist materialism of the global marketplace; to bring us back to earth and its inevitable cycles of feast and famine, or at least to the lengthening and diminishing of the light as it arrives here, the filling and emptying of the moon in its lunar cycles, the way that seasons come and ago with regularity but also with change, with multiple sets of co-respondent signals, with differing facets of symbols and meaning depending on our shifting circumstances, needs and relationships.

 

 

The body of the earth, the clay out of which we arise

If we are going to enjoy a truly embodied spirituality we need to align ourselves with the things that make up our selves: the earth that is our bodies, the waters that flow through us, the air we breath in and out, the flame that ignites our warrior spirits. There are plenty of systems that deal with these kinds of relationships, but none better than the one that states it is your right to figure out your own way of weighing up how these elements are allocated to your personality – to the extent that your personality is a stable entity at all. This stuff shifts all the time, so listen to your soul! Wake up to your dreams and to your Dreaming, hear the spirits call your true name from the depths, within and without, and respond in the way you live: true to self, to earth, to fresh air and water, to the quickening of fire on fuel and to the emptiness that is exactly fullness in every moment of your life.

 

The face of the deep

There are gateways of metaphor everywhere and these lead us beyond metaphor to a deeper experience of reality. Water is our feelings, your tears, the oceans of unforgettable memories; the flames of passion drive us to love and war; the body limits us to plod like clay and also allows us to dance like leaves on the breeze; air is thought, as free as a bird, filling us with life in a lungful of oxygen. This is all to be celebrated, in the danger of great, uncontrolled feelings as in the embrace of all that is, as it supports every part of our being; as it is in this song by punk industrial art rock band The Severins:

 

Oxygen

I wanna be kissed by your fire

I wanna be washed in your tears

Oxygen;

I need another hit.

Grounded;

I’ve gotta feel the clay

Find me, thrill me, lose me, kill me.

I wanna be appeased by the presence of your anarchy.

Repeal the need for torture in your sense of wiccan ecstasy.

I wanna be kissed by your fire;

By your flames, by your uncontrollable passions.

I wanna be washed in your tears;

In your oceans.

Oxygen

I need another hit.

Grounded

I’ve gotta feel the clay … I’ve gotta feel the clay

Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3btmXLQ3Rg

Words and singing by the author (Geoff Berry, albeit in a younger body); music by The Severins: Steve Bruce (drums and a substantial portion of arrangement), Richard Anderson (bass and good looks), John Wilson (guitars and atmosphere).

Images: The Severins, still shot from video, Central Club, Richmond, Melbourne, Australia, by Optus Pay TV. Water (sea): “Nordsee Wellen” by Muns – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nordsee_Wellen.JPG#mediaviewer/File:Nordsee_Wellen.JPG. Fire: “Burningman 0078”. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Burningman_0078.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Burningman_0078.jpg. Clay “Clay-ss-2005”. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Clay-ss-2005.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Clay-ss-2005.jpg

Rainbow Serpent Dreaming – it comes to heal

Dedicated to the Lightning-Tongued Rainbow Serpent of the Deep Fresh Water in the Yarra Yarra River, who appeared to me on this day and brought its healing powers for all to share

I set off on my bike for an afternoon ride, in the fresh air and down by the river. First i pass some neighbours but don’t stop to say hi, recalling that my loyalty is to country. The reason i keep coming back to the people is to tell them the stories (although i know too that i need to make a home in society, that it’s a necessary crucible for my experiences as a conscious human being).

The it’s off down a bushy track, following the path of  enchantment. At one stage i get off my mountain bike to walk through tall grass (over 2.5m high). This overgrown track may reveal a snake if i am lucky and quiet enough. But what i find instead is an irresistible challenge – a fallen tree, across the creek. Crossing it, i remember my place in the world – walking the fine line, always honing my skills to make sure i can cross between the worlds and return with the gifts of healing and power for my people. On the other side, i see that the return trip starts out narrow, so i make extra sure i am centred, balanced, fluid enough to walk with the confidence of knowing. Just knowing; the truth, my place in it, the endless beauty of the world.

Returning through the tall grass, i figure out that if i want to see the snake i must become the snake. So basic, the elementary lesson of tracking. It must be, i laugh to myself; because I know nothing. Then, back on the river bank to pick up my bike, i bow in silent gratitude to the river. Thank you, master, for the challenge.

Following my intuition (and recent discoveries on similar rides and walks), i soon head right towards Westerfolds Park, riding alongside the Yarra River. Again i head off onto a rough track as soon as possible, this time one that leads towards direct access to the river. Not asking for anything, i just open to listen to what nature has to teach. Breath rises from around the bend downstream, blowing gently upstream and eventually caressing my face and body gently. Then, after I thank the fresh water and air spirits for their presence – and for mine – the next voice literally blows my mind, as it reveals to me healing power from the otherworld, the place within this dimension that nourishes all worlds and brings us closer to the higher, deeper truths within them.

A lightning tongue comes flashing along through the water, from the same direction downstream and directly towards me, before rising up and out of the water and into my body, at the abdomen. It speaks to me as the Rainbow Serpent and it brings me healing, as I see glorious colours rippling in the late afternoon light on the river. It shimmers through the water; in silver, in red gold, in iridescent purples, taking form sometimes in a clearly visible serpent shape; snaking towards me in diamantine patterns, while at others dispersing to snake across the river in scattered lights and colours at their own pleasure. As I raise my arms in exultation, to better receive the glowing power of the spirit, I am given to chant: Lightning-tongued Rainbow Serpent of the deep fresh water of the Yarra Yarra river, I accept your healing power. And as I accept it, and am healed by it, I promise to offer it to others; so that they may be inspired to do the same, and your honour is re-lit for the current times. We know the ‘gods,’ the archetypes, live through this kind of ‘belief’; worship, attention, re-creation giving them breath and keeping them alive. But the dreaming spirits of this country … the black fellas tell us they exist independently of human society; that they speak directly from the earth, water, air and other material manifestations of spirit for any who will quieten themselves and listen.

Time to turn this experience to ritual, so that i can recall it for healing, share it with others, keep it alive for the people. I had been praying that Pegasus would show me how he handles lightning, the thunder bolts he wielded for Zeus. I knew i had to be very well grounded to handle that kind of power; but i had it the wrong way around. Surprised, i realise now that I needed to figure out how to draw the lightning power up from within the earth, where i was already grounded, through ritual. The Rainbow Serpent Lightning Spirit of the Deep Fresh Water of the Yarra Yarra  comes up from where the river cuts through the land. This is where water rests, at the lowest point. With the Tao – and with the wound. This is where the healing power enters the body – at the deepest point, where our wound opens us out to the rest of the world, and to the otherworlds. It is perfectly safe, once the rites are performed, and the Spirit transports us into another dimension of our own experience. One that showers honour upon the earth, accepts blessings in return, and strengthens relations between. Gain blessings without end, by listening, and speaking that truth. Rainbow Serpent comes to heal.

All photos by author.

Cacao Ritual – is chocolate sacred?

Chocolate. We all love it. But is this another case of modern society simply farming the land, ripping off the locals, spraying alarming amounts of pesticides around and reaping the profits? If chocolate is so great, is there some kind of super ingredient in it, a chemical that makes us feel love or power, a natural kind of magic that deserves a bit more respect than we grant when ripping off the wrapper to another bar of our favourite variety?

The cacao ritual altar

I love the move towards more organic, raw, whole foods as well as fair trade. These shifts in consumer sentiment reveal a deepening awareness of and care about the source of our foods and this shows more respect for the earth – a shift that underpins a lot of what White Fella Dreaming is all about. But the next step – the thing that brings us back in line with the source at another level, that hums with the sacred and fills life with meaning – is to perform ritual.

The chocolate being dispensed

Ritual can be very simple and brief, a silent giving of thanks or a bow, or it can be complex and lengthy, as in many initiation rites. It can help facilitate transformation, from one time of life to another, from everyday to sacred space, from one state of mind (such as so-called ‘ordinary consciousness’) to … something more. A type of awareness that appreciates more of the different levels or dimensions of a thing, or a time, or a feeling. So, yeah, I participated in a cacao ritual.

Asher and Lydia

Facilitated by Asher Glass and Lydia Marolda, the group imbibed a batch of cacao imported from Guatemala specifically for this purpose. Inspired by his meeting with Keith Wilson, when travelling in Central America, Asher has begun bringing this same amount of respect for the active ingredient in chocolate – and for the place it is from, the people who farm it locally there, the process that goes into transforming it into an edible delicacy for us western consumers – to Melbourne. After discussing how we could allow the cacao, under these conditions of conscious intent, to help unfurl the body’s prayer, we danced. What’s the body’s prayer? Whatever it is for you. Mine, when offered to the group as we all did, was to more deeply embody the sacred mysteries. Yours could be whatever arises – yes, you can try this at home!

Getting down for chocolate!

The dance session was facilitated in the same style as the Dancing Freedom events that Lydia runs. We dance as if we are earth, which we are; water, air, fire … we dance in the elements and celebrate life. The wind-down included some feedback from each participant following their experiences and their body’s response to the unfurling of its prayer through the ritual. For myself, I felt the usual reawakening of spirit I get from successful ritual; no surprises there, after the vehicle of ritual opened me up to a wild dance with conscious intent.

Meditating on & sharing the experience

Finally, though, I just have to add: how easy would it be to dismiss this as a laughable new age fad, without some context. Chocolate shamanism, pfff. If I hadn’t shared so many of these kinds of experiences over the years, I might be part of that dismissive crowd. The intellectual field of academic thought and research, for sure, works hard to protect itself from seemingly irrational challenges much of the time. I know, I have spent years in that game. But what that perspective misses is what I had to go outside and look for – or rather, remind myself I always had – direct relationship with the sacred behind all things. To keep that alive, I’m prepared to consider rituals that resacralise any aspect of modern life; especially when such practices also align with the values of environmental justice I support as part of the ecospirituality movement. So enjoy your next taste of chocolate – in the best possible way!

All photos by author. Asher and Lydia are intending to hold this event monthly and the original invitation can be found here.

How Celestial Intelligence and Earth Wisdom work together

 

When you look up at the stars at night, you can feel your soul called by something higher, something free of worldly desires and attachments (the things like wealth and fame, which so often draw us away from our hearts and the appreciation of the most valuable things in life, like love and the simple comforts of adequate food and water and shelter). The little things that beset our daily lives can fade away and be replaced by our birthright, the sense of wonder with which we entered the world, the childlike reverence for just being in such amazing company, in bodies, with stars in the night sky and trees and birds and hills and rivers to gaze upon and walk within during the day. The wisdom of the stars – the great story they retell every night, encapsulated in countless systems of astrological lore, the constellations of timeless tales reminding us of how to live right in temporal and physical circumstances, how we can modify our destructive tendencies according to the better potentials of our personal tendencies, how to find accord with the songlines of the universe – this is what I am calling celestial intelligence. Reminding us of who we are and can be and come from – the great explosion of life in the universe, the fire lit in immeasurable, countless, unimaginably vast galaxies and stars and planets; and us, so lucky to have arisen here in human form, like the Mud People of the Hopi* emerging from the soil of life and looking about and breathing in and giving thanks.

 

 

Then comes Earth Wisdom. Where the stars at night teach us openness and vastness, freedom and expansiveness, the earth asks us to be true to this place and its limits. I don’t use the word limits here in a pejorative sense. I mean the realities of life, which comes with death written into its original agreement, as we lease these bodies from the biosphere; which requires for survival clean water, fertile soil and fresh air; which punishes anything that destroys its own habitat, whether that be elephants eating out all the grass in a good year to find none left for its expanded herd in the following season, or humans overexpanding in their own technologically developed ways. Earth Wisdom is absolutely unforgiving and therefore utterly clear (although we can erect barriers to it so effective that we can momentarily convince ourselves that it is not so, that we can enjoy an eternal feast in the halls of immortality – a falsely optimistic tale now becoming undone after a blindingly brief amount of time, mere centuries, a moment in the oceans of eternity). Earth Wisdom asks that we engage in and develop relations with all our kin, the other life forms on earth as well as immediate family, out to the other tribes in a planetary network of fair trade, the other animals and plants and rocks and rivers, all of whom are known as people in so many beautiful, traditional cosmologies. Earth Wisdom asks us to look at the small things, the grains of sand on the beach or in the soil outside the home, the little daisies poking their heads up out of the grass, the grass itself, perennial as love, the terrestrial teachers such as lizards (so patient in the patch of sun on the rock, awaiting the fly), the fish who take advantage of currents to roam the oceans and seas, sometimes returning to their place of spawning as if magnetized by life, the sea turtles doing the same, the way clouds form and drench us with life giving rains, the way this turns to storm and rends our cities with death and destruction under certain climatic circumstances.

 

  

 

When we instill our acceptance of a life of earthly limits with a sense of endless awe we can live in harmony with the greatness of the universe. This is what the combination of Celestial Intelligence and Earth Wisdom offers.

 

*Mud People of the Hopi – yup, that’s another story …

Images: 1. Milky Way over desert. 2. Mud Head Kachina from the Airzonan Hopi, Honolulu Museum of Art; photo by Hiart (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons. 3. Lichen and fungi on a wet rock, Cradle Mountain, Tasmania; photo by author.

Practicing Embodied Spirituality

After introducing the idea of Embodied Spirituality recently, i promised to begin to ground it in some actual ideas about how such a thing could be practiced and experienced. When it comes to actually finding a way to experience transcendence while still firmly in the body, I have previously mentioned breath meditation. You can find my introduction to Zen here, if you are interested; it isn’t limited to that particular practice, although that is what I wrote it for (as a member of the Melbourne Zen Group). It’s just a set of simple instructions to help get you sitting right for a meditation practice in general (the stuff on posture and the point of meditation will probably seem most helpful).

 

Part of what I think is important about any experiential awareness exercise – this includes mindfulness, which I may discuss in more detail some other time – is what I call ‘synching in.’ I like the play on words, because using this term reminds me that I am both sinking in to the body and to its intuitive awareness of the world around me right now, and I am getting in synch with that world. When I get this flow right – breathing just so, nothing forced, allowing myself to become more deeply aware of being here and all the subtle sensations that often go unnoticed during everyday life – I can also pick up on other dimensions of my experience.

 

In this way I can experience immanence, which as I wrote earlier is a more ecospiritually attuned form of transcendence. I’m not looking up or out to some external agency that I hope may help or even save me. I’m looking in, for resources that may enable my abilities to dissolve challenging circumstances – and this means I am often looking through myself, to the more-than-human forces that are active behind the façade of persona or the toolbox of ego. To get to this place means I have to get to know my mental patterns and habits fairly well, so that I can catch the little games I play that maintain my identification with more ordinary states of consciousness, and move on from them when they limit my awareness of deeper levels of self.

 

Because I need to attend to such habits, this practice is not always pleasant or easy; and it does not always lead to a feeling of freedom, overcoming or transcendence of worldly limit at all (in fact far from it). Sometimes I may end up crying myself to sleep and needing to let myself be sad (aka depressed) for a while. Telling someone that cares about me often helps at this point, although I am usually more inclined to simply wait it out; not because of some over-imagined sense of independence or fear of burdening others, but because I find such times so close to who I am that I sometimes find I can even cherish them once they have passed. And at other times, this kind of subtle attention to the endless realms accessible through going within leads to the discovery, reconnection and/or building of relationships with guides, guardians and allies that I meet in dreams or these kind of meditation experiences. Such relationships can be ritualised so that these powers can be called upon – silently, not always consciously – as we go about everyday life. Either way, I get to deepen my relationship to other dimensions of the self, whether that seems personal or more-than-personal/transpersonal/archetypal/ sacred or other.

 

Part of what can help at these times is the memory that in many traditions, especially native wisdoms of those who live in close relationship with the rest of nature, all life sings. As such, even when parts of the self are in conflict, each part belongs, or finds a home, within the extended psyche. Myth relates powerful stories about such relationships, through conflict and diversity and harmony and transcendence, as a set of models we can use to experiment with transformation. The kind of transformation I am most interested in developing on behalf of White Fella Dreaming is from the limited story of self we are conditioned to accept by modern consumer society to the deeper sense of self we can discover and support that works in alignment with Earth Wisdom and Celestial Intelligence.

Images 1, 3 and 4 purchased from Shutterstock. Image 2 is my photo of the passageway leading in to the central chamber deep in the heart of the magnificent mounded dome at Knowth in Ireland, certainly one of the most impressive megalithic sites in the world.

Dealing with Worldly Challenges – Ganesha & Pegasus

Most of us will recognise Ganesha, the Elephant-headed god of the Hindu pantheon. Millions of people in India and beyond pray to him every day, to help them overcome worldly challenges and to maintain peace of mind. As White Fella Dreaming is devoted to generating a spirituality for the 21^st century world, especially from a western perspective, it seemed to me important to be able to provide some uniquely modern parallel for this commonly utilised mythic imagery. But first some background, to explain my relationship to the Hindu icon.

On a trip to Varanasi I met a holy man, or guru, who gave me this mantra, which at the time I had never heard of: “Om Gaṃ Ganapataye Namah.” It seemed a helpful ritual, to chant this once each morning and remind myself of my access to resources helpful in situations requiring conflict resolution, healing, overcoming and other responses to obstacles that arise in everyday life. (Resources that appear within my inner world, which have arisen from my Dreaming, from a place that includes but is also more than the sum of my personal history; from the sacred, transpersonal or archetypal realms beyond …) A good mantra eases access to this realm and its sacred qualities, developing our personal relationship to the more-than-human and keeping it as operational as possible; and it also hones the mind, concentrating energy for the tasks at hand. This is all good and I did not mind accepting a practice from the Indian tradition, not as a matter of simply choosing something exotic from the spiritual supermarket of the new age, but as a way of connecting to something that had come my way along the path of discovery, something relevant at the time of its appearance (synchronicity and serendipity and all that jazz), and anyway something not that distant from my own European traditions (given the ancient links between Indo-European languages and colonising forces – bit that’s another story).

But one day in late 2013 I had a very powerful dream that superceded my relationship with Ganesha and provided me with a new way of meeting the same realm of worldly challenge and spiritual concentration. Standing at the edge of a forest, I saw Pegasus fly over [writing this sentence, lightning flashed across the sky and thunder struck in an unseasonal summer storm over Melbourne; the import of this synchronicity will become apparent by the end of this story]. His milky flanks were enormous, filling half the sky, as he galloped through the air towards the horizon ahead. Shortly after this, he reappeared, flying over our heads again, on the same direct path. However, this time he was higher in the sky and therefore slightly smaller. The third time he appeared, Pegasus was higher and smaller again (although still very large and dominating the scene). By now, he was mouthing bubbles, as if he’d hit the level of ether and was leaving the realm of oxygenated atmosphere behind (some mythic paradigms speak of a watery realm above, where the rain is kept until it is released). Now my friend, standing next to me, nudged me and said: “You believe in him, so why don’t you go to him?” So I did.

I flew up and met Pegasus at a table, where he sat opposite me as if it were all perfectly natural. By now he was a life-sized horse, white as snow. He began making a series of movements with his hooves and I instinctively attempted to mimic them, but I knew even as I did it that I was destined to forget these ritual forms. Still, I clumsily followed until he stopped and then I noticed the doses of medicine that were spread across the table in rows. He indicated that I should chew on one and swallow it, so I did. It was horrible. The texture was of moist and sandy soil, the colour was a sickly greenish blue, and it tasted exactly how it looked – like wet earth that was hard to swallow. I guess if medicine is supposed to taste bad in order to help heal, then this stuff must be dynamite. Then he gave me his parting words: you will need to initiate through your woman [anima] for around the next 5 or 6 years. Then you will be ready to do it on your own.

 

The deep wisdom and sacred nature of this dream has developed in some interesting directions for me in the year or so since then, so I will enter those into this log in a series to continue soon. But for now I just want to end by returning to the theme of this post: that Pegasus can be a portal for dealing with worldly challenge, in some very specific as well as quite general ways; and that he can help us to develop peace of mind under stressful or pressurized circumstances. And the link to the storm that burst open above my head as I wrote this? Pegasus became the bearer of lightning bolts for Zeus, in his aspect as storm god of the Greeks.

Images: 1. Ganesha by Nagaraju raveender (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons. 2. Pegasus line drawing by Pearson Scott Foresman [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. 3. By User:Fsphil (File:Pegasus vector drawing.svg) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons. 4. “Lightnings sequence 2 animation” by original data: Sebastien D’ARCO, animate: Koba-chan – original source is Image:Lightnings sequence 2.jpg, animated by me.. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lightnings_sequence_2_animation.gif#mediaviewer/File:Lightnings_sequence_2_animation.gif

The Real Meaning of Christmas

It’s not just about the birth of Christ and recognising that spiritual generosity, compassion and irrational, beautiful love should guide the way we live. It’s also about the solstice. Like churches built on old pagan sites, most seasonal festivals we know today originally replaced events on the annual calendar that celebrated the turning of the natural cycles. Around December 21 every year in the northern hemisphere, the sun hits the lowest point on the horizon and this means the shortest day of the year. Downunder, here in Australia, this is reversed; but the same cycles operate (obviously life at the equator presents a whole different scenario! Generally, i will take any opportunity to reflect upon inner riches, even if it is summer here!). But think back to the early Europeans, who are my generic and cultural forebears. Winter is closing in, the leaves have fallen from the trees, we’ve eaten all the berries, many animals are hunkered down in dens and lairs to hibernate … life is retreating.

There is less to eat, less sun to draw us out into the day, more reason to rug up ourselves and hope to survive the coming of a cold, dark period. What I would like, under these conditions, is to remember that everything comes back; that life returns after this symbolic death; that the sun awakens from its slumber, shakes the hoary frost from its shoulders, and beyond its all back to life. And now that I am reminded that we are all in this together, that in order to survive we need people to gather and store, some top stitch up rugs and cloaks, some to nurture little children, some to keep the fire going, some to sing and tell stories … I want to be reminded life goes on in company. I want the tribe to come together, to celebrate this important moment in the year with my kin, to forgive the ones that have annoyed me and to have them get over my own dumb transgressions. Not only because we need each other – which we do, and may do again soon, as the ecological crisis decreases the capacity for industrial society to cater for our every need – but because I need to be able to draw on everything within me to come through this physical challenge.

And just as importantly, because I can now take this opportunity to do as nature does – to go within, to purify my heart and soul and therefore to breathe more fully again when spring finally arrives, to stretch my arms and legs and move in the world in the fulness of my strength as soon as i get the chance again, to feel liberated in my body and mind, to be free of spirit. When there is so much death and withdrawal in the outside world, it is time to follow suit. Let yourself lose the external sun, for a while, and remember to draw on the powers within. The winter solstice presents us with real challenges and metaphorical possibilities at the same time. And when we give ourselves over to the full story of the inner world, the parallel life we lead in our heats and minds and bodies and souls, we come to know it as just as real as the physical world. These are the kinds of lessons we have too often put aside with the modern world; forgetting to learn from nature, we forget also our deepest inner worlds, our greatest spiritual treasures. Ironically, getting back in touch with the natural world can also lead us directly back to our souls, our depths, the greater realities of the more than human world, the archetypal realms, the gods within and without.
This Christmas, dive in to the ancient truth of your body. Let the solstice remind you of your beautiful spiritual greatness and give freely of this wealth. Blessings be upon all those who align with earth wisdom and celestial intelligence.

Images: 1. “Weihnachtsbaum Römerberg” by Thomas Wolf (Der Wolf im Wald) – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Weihnachtsbaum_R%C3%B6merberg.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Weihnachtsbaum_R%C3%B6merberg.jpg 2. By Goldmann Jo, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. 3. Russian Bear coming out of winter den. By Photochrom Print Collection [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. 4. By Emilio del Prado from Valladolid, Spain, España (Acebo – European Holly) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

So what’s it all about then?

 

 

I guess i’d better define my terms and honour the inspirations behind this blog site, before i go much further.

‘White Fella’ is a a term used for ‘new Australians’ by Black Fellas, which is what many Australian Aboriginal people proudly call themselves. You’ll note there’s no gender distinction; it’s a bit like the old fashioned term ‘man’ as used for all humanity. As a matter of fact, great and influential Australian anthropologist WEH Stanner’s collection of essays was titled White Man Got no Dreaming, which was a wry comment on the comparative poverty of our connection to the land (or ‘country,’ which has a very definite connotation of a place filled with living resonance and relationships amongst kin, both human and more than human). The idea that we have no Dreaming applies in some way to all modern people who are removed from that kind of kinship identification with the earth that sustains them – and sadly this means even those living right where their ancient forebears lived, if they have lost that connection.

Therefore white fella doesn’t necessarily connote Caucasians, or those of British descent, or western Europeans on the continent or displaced … it just means those who are not living (or who are now beginning to live) in deep connection to the land upon which they live. But for me, as a white fella, it can also mean that, because we live in a westernized world, a Hindu or Chinese wearing jeans and t-shirt, any shopper anywhere out for a dose of retail therapy, all those speaking and reading English and using this kind of technology – the kind I’m composing on and we are using to communicate with – we are all implicated in white fella ways.

 

The train – it seems such a symbol of western technology, following inflexible straight lines mechanically to the next trading post.

 

It could have been different, but the combustible steam engine was invented in England, where there also happened to be a steady supply of local coal and a competitive market … and bingo. Now us ‘new worlders’ are a long way from our ancestral lands and we have a lot to learn. But how many modern people anywhere today are really in touch with the traditions that link them to the sacred, to earth wisdom, to celestial intelligence? How many Europeans still living in the same ‘hood where their ancestors lived, breathed and worshipped still ceremonially link themselves to their indigenous soul, follow rites to embody an animistic conception of the sacred, regularly get in touch with the pulse of the land and rivers and seas and trees and birds and animals around them, as well as to the stars above? In my PhD i traced this loss to the rise of large scale settlement civilisations – basically, the same story being told by many ecocritics, that the agricultural revolution changed our relationship to ‘resources’ such that soil and fresh water were now thought of as the basis for farming, trees became known for timber, the discovery of metals leading to open cut mines and so on. While we need to re-know ourselves as nature, we also need to redefine what we are prepared to accept as culture; and enjoying mutually sustaining relationships with the land and its other creatures is part of the redefinition project that i like. White fella dreaming draws from ancient traditions, but in a way that is true to self. A black fella once said to me, you’ve got to get your own dreaming back. This is my report, my thanks, my path back to the earth and the stars.

 

A billabong amongst the Henty Dunes, Tasmania

 

‘Dreaming’ is a term to help cover all these possibilities. Thinking up new ways, having vision and making that real, creating, or divining, or perceiving other worlds, whether asleep or awake; experiencing otherwise hidden realms behind or within this one/these dimensions, bringing forth and holding true what we find sacred anywhere (in the mind, heart, body or world), getting in touch with the creative force of the universe and staying there (thanks to Joseph Campbell on that one), finding responsive ways to mediate conflict or to evolve towards a higher synthesis of complexity beyond seeming oppositions … recognizing the underworld journey we all take beneath the veneer of this ‘ordinary’ reality every day; becoming something fresh and new, emerging transformed from the night, waking up to new realities where utopian potential hasn’t been erased or edited yet, where cyber codes rain down from the stars, where breath rises up through us from deep within the earth and from the rivers and the salt water and the sand dunes, where we give thanks to the trees and welcome kinship with the other creatures and live more free of unworthy concerns.

 

 

White Fella Dreaming is a lot like all the ancient stories from everywhere but in new forms. Respect for the ancestors (that story coming soon), experience of the immediate sensory aspect of timelessness, embodiment of the unlimited spark, grounding of all that is and was and ever will be in self-aware primate bodies … breathe it in and let go into the Dreaming. All the time.