The Voice Inside

in the Labyrinth at Damanhur we are invited to meditate in front of windows that represent one of the 37 gods on display.  The windows are stain-glass, coded with colors and symbols that activate something inside of me.  We are chanting, and the chamber resonates with the sound of angles as we move from window to window.  

I am struck by awe as some windows that seem to call me, Pan, Wakan Tanka, and others. While standing in front of some of them there is a whirlpool of of colors pulling me deeper and deeper into the window.   The vortex of colors activated something in my DNA to assist with my spiritual evolution.  At last I sit and meditate at the beginning of the hall where we entered and realize that Gaia is looking down the hall to me.  

I am here for the Earth.  Where some come from different places in the universe, I source from the Earth.  She is my inspiration and the reason for my quest.  How appropriate that she watches over me as I digest the messages that 37 gods have just downloaded in me.

Damanur is built on art, ceremony and a quest for knowledge.  They have crated their myths that guide them through forty years of community.  Open discussions that sometimes put people into different schools of thoughts, each searching for the truth, knowing the the truth changes with time and discovery.  It is really beautiful, even if I can not fully get behind everything they have discovered in 30 years as presented in a 3 hour lecture.  

The Damanurians have built a series of fantastic temples in that mountains.  These are called the “Temples of Humankind”.  The temples were built with with hand tools and volunteers wortking to carve out the temples, reenforce the space and decorating them with amazing art that touches my soul at the mythic.  You can see then here:  http://www.thetemples.org/.

The next day we go to the Sacred Forrest to meet the elementals and hear a concert performed by plants.  Here I start to sense the elementals in the forest.  There is one checking me out, reminding me to listen to the forrest and source from nature.  

In the Sacred Forrest there is a tree house village.  There is a small child that has live her whole life in a tree house.  “How cool is that”! the tree climber in me saids.  The beauty of the place in the summer with filter sun through the trees is stunning.  The Damanhurians say people dream purer dreams in the trees.

They have developed machines that allow plants to play music.  The plants are hooked up with a clip to a leaf and a stake by the roots and generate wave forms that are converted to music.  We have a concert with a improvisation jazz singer and the plants.  Mostly she follows the music of the plants, but sometimes a plant will follow her as it adjust to the vibrations we call sound.  Now, I wonder what is the soundtrack that the insects and animals of the forrest play to.

While at Damanhur, I had the opportunity to meditate each morning in front of a statue of Pan.  Pan for me is the wild masculine in nature the raw sexuality.  We connect and he plays his flute over me.  Who needs Viagra with Pan in his corner?

When I left Scotland, my trip was open to what ever that needed to happen.  I took a train to Paris and met up with a friend, Aleksandra and spent a day visiting the sights.  She introduced me to her favorite park and the tree of lovers.   Two trees grown together and a bench with a young couple making out.  It was a beautiful day, Paris in the spring time.

The next day I took a train to Spain. It took a couple of days to get from Paris to Santiago, Spain.  Santiago that is the end of the road for people who go on pilgrimage.   The cathedral I found dark and intimidating as I do most.  While here I was thinking that this place was built to steal your light from the cosmos.  When I visit with god it is in the forrest where our lights joins to shine over the world.   But that is me.

I enjoyed Spain.  From Santiago, Madrid, Ibiza and Barcelona all where great.  In Madrid I attended a breath session with my friend Aixa.  Here we breath for three hours.  Like most breathing sessions I go to a happy place.  

There a river with people floating down it and arriving at the river bank in front of me.  They leave their canoes and a celebration forms on the bank.  Its a party with food, music and dancing.  From this party, I am transformed into light and shoot up into the world of light.  Here I see the controls to switch on and off traits in my DNA.  I choose health and optimism.  Then, I notice that there is a collective DNA, a global DNA or the collective consciences, that can be changed as well. 

After Spain I take the train to France and rent a car to visit the Cathar Castles.

Walking through the ruins of some of Cathar Castles, in France, I am struck as though I have been here before.   The stones speak to me, “everyone has a value is worth a life’.  

I sit by a familiar stone and listen. 

“Our collective mind is what changes the world”.   It reminds me.

All around people are beginning to change.  More and more, realize that what is “real” does not seem to serve their higher purpose inside.  This awakening is happening across the globe.  We are being called to change our reality.

Back at Damanhur, I witness their full moon ceremony.  The stage of fire for such an event.  The Damanurians show up in their colored ropes, red, white and yellow.  There are 12 oracles wearing blue.  The ceremony builds with drumming and dancing.  The fires burn, incense is added, the stage prepared.  It is quite a ceremony to behold.  

The community summits questions at least a month in advance to be answered at the full moon.  The oracles channel the answer and read to the questioner behind a veil.  This keeps it impersonal as the answers come from another source.   But then, those are the answers, the ones inside, that I seek.

I leave refreshed to continue this journey.

Play and Magic

I am sitting at  restaurant in Edinburgh looking out the window and watching a young man run up and down a hill with a eighty pound punching bag across his shoulders, thinking of that wonderful feeling when the muscles are taunt and the heart in pounding in the chest from the strain of physical exercise and am glad that I no longer need to train for that kind of fight.  

On the Isle of Skye, I am lying in bed as the walls start to fall away from the room and I a exposed to the night sky that is shining brightly with the stars.  I am naked to the night sky when three portals of light appear.  

To me these portals represent the three ways to go in life, there is the path of least resistance where your are like a leaf on a stream bobbing along to the strongest current until you’re sucked under or the path of most resistance where you stand strong in your ego like a boulder in the wind letting everything that does not stick to you, pass you by, or some in-between way as a boat on the river that makes the proper adjustments for a meaningful ride where you arrive at the place life has destined you to.    

The path between ease and ego.

I am finding this path more and more in my life with gentle lessons and meaningful adjustments.

My experience week at Findhorn was full of play!  That was our group angel, “PLAY”.  A continuation of the Irish adventure, where the Earth called out to honor her with play.

And I have been playing sense leaving the fire vigil.

My last day in Ireland, John and Karen took me to the faery tree where the rights of faeries where first transmitted.  We honored the tree with oats and blessings.  John then introduced me to “Irish Manhood” with a introduction to the game of hurling.  

Hurling is a team game played with hurly, sticks of the root of the ash tree and a silotar, a leather ball.  It is the fastest team sport played.  Once John Wayne, at a hurling match, was asked if you would like to be down there with a hurly, to which he replied “I wouldn’t want to be down there without one”.  Or so legend has it.  Much more practice is required before I hit the pitch.

After, we went to the “grave digger” for a Guiness.  This pub is the wall of a graveyard and would serve a beer to the grave diggers out the back door.  The pipes have never been cleaned with soap, only hot water.  The Guiness is as pure as you find anywhere in the world and the wall are steeped in sweat, smoke and stories of the people that frequented this pub for centuries.

Here, I was discovered the art of Brewination, where you blowing a question into your brew and reading the foam to predict the future.  This only works with a proper Guiness.  

So what does the future have in store for my current journey?  My journey will many layers and a rich and creamy ending.  

Sweet!

In Glastonbury, somewhere between the Chalice Well and the Tor the sacred masculine and feminine are dancing with me as I meditate.  This is the male/female union that the Earth loves.   A place for mediation at this place of balance.

Standing by a fountain that flow in the garden of the Chalice Well I am taken by a feeling of love and bliss.  The feeling comes in from behind and wraps around my hearth in a way that is both healing and affirming.  Nearby grows a Hawthorn Tree said to be taken from the thorn crown that Jesus wore, but I know it as the tree that holds the Faeries that just paid me a visit.  

I also, manage to find the Gog and Magog trees.  These trees are last two of a road of trees that the druids gathered before their processions.  One tree is hanging on to a small branch of life and the other is still flourishing.

Glastonbury is a spot where poetry flows through me.  I am taken over often with prose that spring forth into my head.  I am reminded:

When the heavens

open

and you are standing there

naked and free

your love shining

in the dew

left by a soft rain

and 

spirit is flowing 

all around

miss not the moment 

looking for 

the message

Later, I meet with Sara and we talk about the Fire Vigil in Ireland.  We agree that something big happen there as if, the entire group, has shifted up to another level.  Sara invites me to a ceremony on Sunday, but it not meant to be as the buses do not cooperate.

Off to London and there I meet up some old mates.  One is Paul, who I haven’t seen since Peru.  We have have a nice stroll through High Park in the afternoon and night of Doom at his local pub.  This night, the company, the ale and the food are too good not to indulge.  So we do.  It is an incredible good time.

Next up is my Experience Week at Findhorn.  Findhorn is a place built on magic.  Can you imagine growing 42 pound cabbages in the sand?  Now imagine eating 42 pounds of cabbage with five other people while living in a small caravan, camper.  It is magical that the caravan staid on the ground and did not fly away to the stars.

Today there are no longer 42 pound cabbages and the eco-village built next to the park has homes that rivals California in cost and square footage,  There is, however, still the possibility for magic and that is why people come to Findhorn to live, work and play.

Somehow they have design a week that is an introduction to Findhorn and seems to be just right for anyone where ever they are on their path.  We attune, play games, work and interact with nature in a way that we all discover something about Findhorn and ourselves.  In a week, I feel to have eleven more bothers and sisters, which my personal angel of Brotherhood/Sisterhood seems to confirm.  

I am re-introduce to the Pan spirit, the wild masculine, that was also part of Findhorn.  Most know that Eileen listened to the inner voice and Dorothy listen to the Garden Divas and some know that Peter was the believer and organizer acted on the magic and built Findhorn, but I did not know about ROC and his introduction to Pan until touring Findhorn when I am overtaken again with bliss on the spot of ROC’s trailer.  

I investigate more and it seems that another character in this saga is ROC who one day he saw a little satyr in a park in Edinburgh.  The creature was surprised that he saw him since most humans choose not see these creatures.  This meeting led to a meeting with Pan, who at one point walked into him and let him experience nature though his eyes.  

With this knowledge, I decide to focus on meeting the spirits.  We go to the Findhorn River one day and I sit by a tree in the rain.  After a while, I feel the presence of another spirit, but can not see it.  We have a telepathic conversations where I am told that I will see when I am ready.   Am I delusional?  Who knows, but I am tardy and nearly miss the bus going back to the college.

The next day at the morning mediation, I try to go to my quiet place but there are faeries on both sides of a wooded path leading me to a different place.  A clearing in the forrest.  There is a rock and I sit down.  There is magic all around as I watch the woodland spirits play.  I am encouraged by the spirits to believe the magic and follow through on my visions.  I shape-shift into a sea bird and fly over the shore.  It glistens in the sun as the waves gently roll upon the shore.  As I return, I see Pan.  He has a message for me.  Then I notice my breathing as I return to the reality that is Findhorn the gong is sounded and it is time to go to work.

I leave Findhorn with Gabrielle and Celia.  We give Celia a ride to Erraid,  a little island off the west coast of Scotland.  We drive through the rain to reach the sunshine of the island.  After four days of rain on the island the sun greets us.  Erraid is small community of nine adults, two children, three cats and seven cows and a bunch of sheep.  It is peaceful and nice to unwind here and I wake up to the sounds of getting the cows to the dairy for the morning milking.  “Come on Jennie, that a girl”.

A couple of days on Erraid and then Gabrielle and I go on a seven day adventure to the Isle of Skye and the North Coast of Scotland.  Where we drive, there is pretty much a postcard at each turn.  

We explore this part of Scotland, hiking each day and finding interesting place to spend the night.  We go without plan open to the journey and what it has to offer.  Most times we arrive a place for the sun to greet us as we begin a hike.  The magic follow us as we play, finding great restaurants and places to stay, like at Ocean’s where the walls fall away as I sleep.  Our last night, together is spent in Jail.   Well, an old police station converted into B&B.  We sleep where the two jail cells use to be.  

The next day I was freed from the jail and another layer of myself, that I brought to Findhorn,