Cleansing ritual, first time

Cleansing ritual, first time

This ritual is copyright Steve Seer and the Shamanism101 folks. I had to practice this ritual as part of my week one initiation, and I’m recording the various experiences I’m having with it. My notes / thoughts appear intermingled with the steps of the ritual.

1) Kneeling before sage in a bowl (such as Abalone shell), consciously light the sage. Best is to hasten the flame by gently ‘swirling’ the shell (not so fast as to lose embers!) Blowing on it to hasten the burning is in certain circumstances considered disrespectful, and is generally discouraged.
Thoughts: The wind that’s blowing across the table is more than taking care of the embers – it’s going to blow them away. I had reservations about this ritual from the beginning because I *loathe* incense and smoke of any kind. That’s why I opted to do this outside. I don’t feel ‘respectful’ in the least, as my thoughts don’t seem to settle and I’m looking at the smoke with something akin to hatred. However, as I began to the light the incense, I could feel a heightened sense of physical awareness, and I was able to ground and center.

2) Carefully place your hands in the smoke as it rises before you and ‘wash’ your hands in it. Here, as in all the washings that follow, consciously cleanse as you do the movements. As you ‘wash’ your hands, concentrate on washing free any ill that these hands have done in the world, even if from ignorance, and cleanse them as preparation for ‘doing’ well in the sacred work that follows and in the future.
Thoughts: Oops – forgot to pay attention to the intention. I was so busy reading the instructions and trying to get the movements and sequence correct, I didn’t pay attention to releasing the nonphysical debris. There’s just enough smoke to coil over my hands, so that’s good.

3) Gently obtain some of the smoke in a ‘cup’ of your hands, and bring it up to wash your head. Concentrate on cleansing your mind.
Thoughts: Okay, well, that’s not so bad. I can ‘cup’ some smoke, and I can even smell it, so I know I’m ‘washing’ my head. Well, forgot the intent that goes along with it again. Still focusing too much on the movements and sequence.

4) In the same way, bring some to wash your heart at your chest. Concentrate on cleansing your heart vis-à-vis others and the
world.
Thoughts: A wee bit better here, got to cleanse my intentions in the heart better – starting to focus on the purpose of the ritual now. Spent most time doing this. This is where I feel it’s most needed.

5) In the same way, bring some to wash your abdomen. Concentrate on cleansing your intake and gut/visceral urges.
Thoughts: Okay, I was able to REALLY visualise that. I had to spend as much time on this part as I did on the heart above. I really need to clean out this area. In fact, I can tell that this area and the heart area are were my energies most need to be concentrated at this time.

6) Then gently bring some to wash down one leg.
Thoughts: I did sweep some smoke cursorily over my leg, but forgot to add the intention; tried it again, that was better. The smoke is beginning to really bother me and I’m starting to rush.

7) And bring more to wash the other leg. As you wash your legs, concentrate on how these legs take you to so many places in the world, that you wash away those ‘goings’ that were not clean and good for yourself and others, and that you now use them to take you through the world in good ways.
Thoughts: Okay, sticking with this, I redid the first leg and went back over both legs several times, but more distracted by the smoke than the visualization and intent. Kinda not working well this first time.

8) Then placing one hand on the Earth (or floor if indoors), breathe silent or audible words of gratitude for our Earth and all beings, and as you do so bring to mind the many beings in the world and the Earth herself, and feel this thankfulness. In a sense, this is an offering.
Thoughts: I didn’t think anything, I didn’t push any energy into the Earth, I just lovingly touched the Earth gently. I just felt those feelings, and then I rushed to get rid of the damned incense.

Ugh, ugh, ugh. I can STILL smell the smoke on me. It’s been a half hour. My chest is tightening up, and my face is swelling. I *loathe* incense and smoke. But, I’m determined that I give the ritual its due, and not just summarily reject doing it just because of allergies. For my next working of the ritual, I’m going to switch to my sage stick and use that, instead of drawing smoke all over me by ‘cupping’ my hands. I will, however, continue to try the ritual outside. I don’t want an asthma attack.

In need of personal healing

The following list is what I hope to deal with personally as I strengthen my spiritual practice. They are somewhat ‘course goals’. Items to look at, mindsets to explore, pain to release.

These are either ‘in need of personal healing’ topics or ‘axes to grind’, depending on how you look at things 🙂 I tend towards the former in outlook; that’s one of the reasons why I’m in the Shamanism101 programme. Talking about these sorts of topics with most folks gets a disgusted ‘forget about it‘ or ‘stop being a victim‘ or  my PERSONAL favorite (not) ‘stop dwelling in the past‘. Those are all forms of people saying ‘shut up, I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to listen, and I don’t want to comfort you. I want you to stop talking about this and go back to being convenient and having no needs and not expect anything from me emotionally.

Well, guess what, I’m done being convenient, folks. You can’t reciprocate emotional nurturing? After I listen to your ass for hours???? There’s the door. Don’t let it hit you on the ass on your >permanent< way out.

Okay, so that was MY axe to grind.

[alert type=”general” accent_color=”#7f1515″ background_color=”#ededed” border_size=”1px” icon=”fa-exclamation-circle” box_shadow=”yes” animation_type=”fade” animation_direction=”down” animation_speed=”0.3″ class=”” id=””]Things that need to heal:  I’m making it all up; my spiritual path is a load of horseshit; and I don’t have any right to practice shamanic techniques.[/alert]

Moving on to topics that need to heal:

a) I’M MAKING IT UP.
Worrying that, in journeying, I’m ‘making it all up’ and ‘it’s just in my imagination’. Now, I’ve had some experiences to challenge these beliefs, so I’m in a better place with it now, but it may come up again for me. I can share one of them: I journeyed to the Upper World to met a Teacher, and I was told by this Spirit, who took the form of an Old Woman, that I could call her ‘seanmhair’ ( that’s pronounced SHUN-a-ver ). I thought, well, doesn’t that mean ‘grandfather’???? Really? I instantly thought I was making everything up. Until, that is, after the journey and I looked it up in my dictionary. Grandfather is ‘seanair’ (SHUN-er). Had I been making it up, I would have gotten the Gaelic wrong. Had I been imagining her, I would have imagined her speaking in Gaelic to me, using the wrong word. She also used words I genuinely didn’t know, and had to look up. This was beyond my experience and my knowledge. The communication I received was too accurate and too detailed for me to have ‘made it up’ and gotten it correct.

And that’s only one example. I did a journey for someone else which I can’t share, but the advice, the responses and the accuracy of the situation (of which I had no knowledge of – this person I had never met prior to journeying for him) were spot on, according to him. I would have no way of ‘guessing’ or ‘imagining’ that.

b) MY SPIRITUAL PATH AND BELIEF SYSTEM IS MALARKY.
I periodically seem to go through a complete loss of faith that anything I’m doing is real and legitimate. These dark nights don’t happen often. The last one I faced was a number of years ago, at a period of great stress, but, it may come up again.

c) I HAVE NO RIGHT TO PRACTICE CORE SHAMANISTIC TECHNIQUES.
Another challenge I have is that I feel at times that I have no ‘right’ to practice shamanism because I’m not Native American or Siberian or Eskimo or African – that I’m just a white girl from America ‘stealing’ other people’s spiritual practices – it’s the same issue I have with my Scottish heritage – since I wasn’t born and raised in the Highlands, I HAVE NO RIGHT to speak Gaelic or follow my cultural heritage, even though my family came from Scotland in living memory, I wasn’t born there. Since I was born in America, and I’m white, that means the only thing I’m allowed to do is go to KMart and eat at McDonald’s and go to the local Baptist Church. It feels like a horrible straitjacket, due to my place of birth. I can’t tell you how much this bothers me. This is one of the things I need to work on healing, the feeling that I have no right to anything because I wasn’t born in a particular place and embedded in a particular culture from birth.

Item C is the worst one. Even though I had my ancestors come to me in dreams and say ‘you need to learn Gaelic – not Irish, not Welsh, SCOTTISH GAELIC’, I still have a hard time with present-day, embodied humans saying ‘you’re not Scottish. You weren’t born there. You’re an American. Said with eye-rolling and disgust and meant to shut me up and shut me down. You don’t belong, you shouldn’t be doing that, you’re stealing, you’re a horrible person, etc. etc. Mind you, this comes from my family – who are first generation American. It’s like our heritage is taboo.

Accepted into my online course

As part of my journeys, I have sought out mentorship and instruction in filling in some of the gaps of my knowledge and abilities. As I’ve stated before, I’ve taken multiple basic workshops and some advanced workshops with the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, the Michael Harner group, and I’ve made wonderful connections there. To continue in my seeking and building, I’ve chosen to fill in, so to speak, with some online Shamanic technique studies, and I was told today that I was accepted into the programme and given a mentor. I’m now awaiting hearing from the mentor…

Although it isn’t specifically ADF-related, this section, I’m including it here because it is a deep part of my spiritual journey and I won’t leave it out to please others.

Looking back at more than a decade of Gaelic study groups

Looking back at more than a decade of Gaelic study groups

I took a moment today to really think about how long Gaelic has called to me and what I’ve DONE about that calling. You know, I came to the path of Druidry through the language. I had a dream… the ancestors told me through the blackness ‘you have to study Gaelic. Not Irish, not Welsh. SCOTTISH GAELIC.’ That was the entire dream, the voices in the darkness. Heading that dream brought me many interesting experiences, wonderful friends and of course, reconnection to the Ancestors and my spiritual path.

But the language is always first.

Fifteen or so years ago, when I was in college the second time, I had an Irish professor from the Republic of Ireland who was a native Irish speaker. He enjoyed comparing and contrasting what I knew of Gàidhlig with his Gaelige. I’ve never forgotten his comparison of my given name with its Gaelige version. He said the two were different because of the Norse / Icelandic and Pict influence from North. I’ve always looked for those differences in the languages, and because they’re just different enough I’ve never tried to learn Irish. I would just be a mess. It’s hard enough to just focus on Gàidhlig.

In my native South Florida, I studied online with a man who became my main Gaelic partner for years, and, although we never met, we attended many classes together and even ran a business together. At that time we started out with Teach Yourself Gaelic. TY was our first manual, our first foray into a language that felt both exhilarating and intimidating at the same time. Later, when he attended an actual classroom with a fluent Gaelic speaker, we switched to Gàidhlig Troimh Chòmhradh, the Catriona Parsons set used at the time at the Gaelic College in Cape Breton. I loved them, and we spent hours on the phone, parrying back and forth, and stumbling along. We used Everyday Gaelic, too, and made conversations about restaurants and cleaning and ordering food. My books fell apart from handling.

When I moved to Central Texas, I was finally able to meet a group face-to-face, and it is this group that has held together over the years, and we still continue to meet, now 4 times a month. Our leadership has changed over the years, and that service is now mine to claim, but, still, the language is still an exhilarating challenge and a joy. We’ve gone on Gaelic immersions together, most notably one in Arlington a number of years ago taught by Muriel Fisher of the Tucson Gaelic Institute, who is a lovely individual; and I studied alone at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, the long-distance course. Our primary books for the group have always been my personal favorites, the ones I’d never go without: Gàidhlig Bheo. They were originally developed for the Scottish Certificate of Education Gaelic ‘O’ Grade at the National Extension College in Scotland.

Our latest thing is to do another immersion next year at Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina, and be ready to have the entire group go into something other than beginners’ Gaelic. Wish us luck!!!!

SOURCES:
Teach Yourself Gaelic. French & European Publications: n.p., 1992. Print.
Parsons, Catriona. Gàidhlig Troimh Chòmhradh. Ceap Breatann: Na Colaisde Gàidhlig Ceap Breatann, 1991. Print.
MacNeill, Morag. Everyday Gaelic. Glasgow: Gairm, 1984. Print.
Macdonald, J. A. Gàidhlig Bheo. Cambridge: National Extension College, 1978. Print.

Bealltainn 2015 – the start of a new journey

For this cross-quarter day, I feel called to do a series of journeys, that usually fall under the maligned term ‘celtic shamanism’. I’m not going to debate whether other folks think it’s proper or not. I believe it has value to explore, and I will do so and form my own opinions, rather than take the word of others. I was able to work directly with Frank MacEowen briefly before he actually published his first book, ‘The Mist-Filled Path’, and I respect him. I also respect Tom Cowen and the Matthews – and I feel called to give these concepts and experiences a chance. I have read Michael Harner and worked with his group, The Foundation for Shamanic Studies, (FSS), and I have read and worked with Alberto Villoldo’s material as well.