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Chaos
Awakening to the way
Nature is the last representation that we have of the true way, of true balance.
We are experiencing out of control weather patterns and out of control fires as we view them because of the imbalances we have created in our efforts to override nature. For example, some of us have constructed our homes in the forests. Then, in order to preserve what we have built, we haven't allowed forest fires to burn so a large amount of natural fuel has accumulated.
We use fossil fuels to stay warm and get there faster. The resulting pollution is causing global warming, which in turn causes the climate to change, resulting in droughts. The next thing you know, there are forest fires raging out of control and people having to evacuate their homes. Everyone is so surprised and victimized by this. It is viewed as a tragedy. And surely it is to those who have lost their homes. Yet if you look at the bigger picture, at the way life works, it is all quite predictable.
In ancient times, when we were more nomadic and earth based, tribes and communities had a shaman who kept his or her finger on the pulse of the earth. "Natural disasters" were foreseen and the people moved out of harms way. Game was located and the people would follow the herds that, in turn, would follow nature's way and avoid droughted areas.
Even today, there were indigenous tribes on some of the islands struck by the tidal wave in December of 2004 who "knew" to go to higher ground before the wave hit. Unless they were caged or locked in houses, animals moved inland and few died in any of the areas struck. Because of this, scientists are now doing studies on animals to try and figuring out their natural early warning systems. (I say, how about accessing our own but that is another chapter)
If we look at it spiritually, fire and tidal waves are transmuters.
I was teaching a workshop on shamanism at a ranch that was located at the border between Canada and Washington some years back. We were surrounded by forest fires and we were off grid with no outside communication. We probably should have been evacuated. In order to keep my students safe, I was staying up nights monitoring the fire's path and working with it shamanicly.
During those long nights on a remote mountain, looking out at the raging fires making their way down the neighboring hillside, I began to commune with the fire element in a different way. What my eyes saw as a raging destructive force, my heart felt as a joyful dance of transmutation. The fire was longing to swallow the trees and the trees longed to yield to fire. As I watched with my heart I witnessed the birth, death and rebirth. I embraced the passion and rightness of it, as did the trees, as did the fire.
One night the wind kicked up and the smoke engulfed the ranch. It was clear that the fires were moving our way. I went out to my hillside lookout, the raging wind whipping my braids this way and that. I stood facing the wind and saw the flames were making their way toward us.
On a whim, I said to the fire "I have work to do here. If you could see your way clear to spare us and the ranch, I will try to better understand your ways and work with you.
To my great surprise, my heart heard the fire cheerfully answer "fine by me, talk to the wind".
When I got over my slack jawed amazement enough to speak again, I addressed the wind, "fire said I should talk to you about sparing the ranch and my people. If you do so, I promise to try and better understand your ways and cooperate with you". The wind did not speak to me but it changed directions and did not blow our way again until the fires were out.
In the years that followed, I have remembered my promises. I have communed often with fire and wind, with water and earth as well. I have learned their lessons.
I have learned to draw on that fire to transmute. I work it with my hand, with my will. I can journey back any time something needs to evolve and wield the power of the fires that burned on the hillside so many years ago. They are mine to work with now as I am theirs. I have that energy to call on in order to help my clients transmute their spiritual illnesses into spiritual gifts.
It is the same fire that burns in the center of my being. We are as one.
There is a spiritual phenomenon known to the Celts as Femorians. These energies were thought to be evil spirits, if you will, that caused chaos, misfortune, famine and disease. It was the sacred duty of the shaman of the clan to battle and destroy (transmute) the femorian energy every all hallows eve when the veil between worlds is the thinnest.
Femorian energy is simply the bound up power of our partially manifested intents as individuals and as a culture. That is to say, whether consciously or unconsciously, we are always intending something. This is not without its effect in our world. Any time we intend something by accessing our desire and sending it out into the world through our will, it starts to form itself around the intent. In order to complete bringing it into being, we have to follow through the remaining steps to manifestation (which we further discuss in chapter**). Few of us are conscious of this process so the partially formed manifestation is left out there as an unfulfilled wish which ties up some of our energy and pollutes the womb space of the pre-manifestation process. With this energy bound up, our ability to manifest is impaired. Further more, we have all these Frankensteins (Femorians) bouncing around out there marring what we are trying to create causing chaos, misfortune, famine and disease.
The practice of "battling the evil Femorians" is actually breaking these energies back down to their constituent parts. This frees them up to be used for new creations and cleans up the space in which to create.
In our culture, we have no provision for this practice. We don't honor tearing down or transmuting, only building or throwing away. In short, we are infested with Femorians.
Our ability to manifest is greatly impaired creating fear of lack and hording which further bogs down the system.
To demonstrate this, I like to use the following example:
In the wild, a deer doesn't carry a bail of hay on its back because it fears there's not going to be grass over the next hill. It doesn't burden itself so. There's grass, it's drawn to it, the deer follows its instincts and knows where to go. It doesn't live in fear of lack and stay overgrazing a meadow and gorging itself, or try to gather enough to make a bale for its trip. It just nibbles and goes on, leaving the grass healthy, able to continue growing and holding the soil in place. The deer may even leave a few droppings for fertilizer on its way.
We strip the land, compromise the topsoil, hoard and pollute. If an animal would act in such a manner it would be so blatant. We would see the ludicrousness of it because nature is a representation of the way life really works. It is the way. It is the original blueprint. Unfortunately, due to our meddling, even nature is getting somewhat distorted, but it's hanging in there, bless it.
Our society is lost, we're asleep, we're asleep to what's really going on and we're like a terrified child wakening up to find itself living a nightmare. We're in victim and we're looking to the system to parent us, just tell us what's real, just tell us what to do. Yet it is the system that is failing us and destroying our planet. Our only hope is in awakening to the way.
Awakening to the way is really a process of remembering. All of us, at one point or another, came from the way, (the way being God, Spirit, Source, Creator) and we return to it. So instead of going outside looking help and guidance, it requires going inside and remembering it.
It is the same fire that burns in the center of my being. We are as one.
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