SpiritMaa

well, i made it to new orleans! after a hella time packing up 15 years of my life (and all the markers of my psycho-spiritual process) and saying goodbye to san francisco (and all my favorite nature spirits), i got in my car (packed to the gills), and started driving. i knew it would be a long trip, but crossing 3 deserts and the whole state of texas! seriously? the whole desert thing was so bleak and desolate it felt kinda like a death/rebirth experience... i made a skull offering to the mojave desert (the first and most desolate) after making it through... stopped at the halfway point - albuquerque - with friends and explored a bit. enjoyed seeing the native american art again... but when i finally saw the green of west texas, my whole mood shifted. then the deeper green of louisiana, and all the water (bayous) started lifting my spirits... only traffic jam of the whole trip came when i was an hour or so outside new orleans... finally entered the city as a rainstorm was starting...

the first few days in new orleans have been all about unpacking the car, adjusting to the heat, resting, getting groceries, setting up internet, all those kinds of settling in things... after i redecorated with my indian batiks and crystals, my studio apartment in a 150 year old house with a balcony on a street filled with live oaks looked more like me :)...  though i received a great SF style welcome when i awoke the first day to the Red Dress parade - men in drag and women in tutus (!) - things still felt a bit 'foreign' to me... then yesterday i finally had a chance to walk around the french quarter for the first time, and headed to a couple voodou spiritual centers... later went to listen to music on frenchman st... first some zydeco, then danced all night to a samba band... made some new dancing friends, and remembered why i'd come to new orleans...

p.s. did i mention the seafood gumbo and red beans and rice?(!)

so much energy, so much power my body is shaking when i stand up to dance in front of the other women in the group. we are asked to move sensually, almost in slow motion, but i want to just cut loose, let the energy go wherever it wants... why not? why not let kundalini ma have her way with me? i don't understand why the facilitator calls me to source the energy in my womb... so hard, so hard to bring it down.... but the second time in front of the group, i do. i keep going back to the womb, grounding in the womb, opening my heart and third eye, connecting the energy... my prayer to the serpent mother, my offering to Her who moves me... as i finally surrender to the energy in my third eye - with power coursing through my veins - my fingers move into mudras of their own accord, i bare my teeth and start hissing like a snake... Jai Ma, Serpent Mother Kundalini Maa!

all souls day meditative concert/ritual... as jennifer berezan sings her prayer, she calls 2000 people to chant with her: the audience, then the chorus - first in the foreground, then in the background as other singers step up: korean temple nuns, tara chantress, african spiritual voices, dakina dancers, multi lingual, multimodal: we watch images of the moon fade into images of the earth, fade into images of endangered species, fade into images of green tara. we cry as the beauty and suffering of the planet overwhelm us, we laugh as the wise woman and trickster jolly us into gentleness with ourselves on our zigzagging spiritual paths...2000 strong we spontaneously rise to our feet, raising our arms as we heed the call to open our hearts.... we chant, and we chant and we chant. our voices rise - sending out healing across the planet to all beings, living and not, all our relations... MAY ALL BEINGS BE HAPPY. MAY ALL BEINGS BE SAFE. MAY ALL BEINGS, EVERYWHERE, BE FREE!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzPTHstpJ2I

Blessed Be All Beings!

this one was different than most of my holotropic breathwork experiences. maybe because it needed to be? maybe because my right arm was injured and needed to stay immobile? sure there was some outward kriya movement, at the beginning especially, but less than usual. and my arms were at mostly at rest. however, i felt pulsations from an early point along my left arm, and focused in the palm. i also experienced internal vibrations, and they reverberated from one part of my system to another. sometimes the chest vibrating. at least once, my neck. sometimes the solar plexus or sacral region. sometimes my whole body (especially near the end). with this intense miniature vibration... like everything was being rocked by pulsation, but on the inner plane. i called on the beings of greatest love to heal me... i felt physical hunger, and then turned that into hunger for Maa.... when my face became heavy and grimacing, there was only relief when i started making a keening sound that went along with the music. later i seemed to stop breathing... after a while my consciousness noticed this and i thought - i'm human, i have to breathe - and 'i' would take a big breath... but it continued happening - i was really out there (or in there) but there was no content (and little breath (!)... when the music soared (and regular breathing had resumed), i felt my heart opening, and once or twice found the words in my head - blessed be all beings... near the end i wanted to lie rigid (very unusual), but my eyes were moving back and forth so quickly, and there were stars and pulsations inside my head... throughout the session kali's eyes were there too (inside my head), every time i took a full breath, and once or twice i saw a lion headed face/maybe goddess... being accompanied by the iconography of the divine hasn't happened since the early days...

i've got scorpio in the ascendant, and venus and pluto in my house of philosophy - does that explain this sometimes exhausting focus on love and death i've experienced from an early age? maybe it has to do with family dynamics, and/or being socialized with the 'original' love and death story as a catholic? or, perhaps, past lives coming through?

everyone has lost someone they love (for me it was my grandmother/heart-mother when i was 12), but by the time i was in high school i was writing reports on massacres of native americans by U.S. 'christian' soldiers...in college, i studied liberation theology and cried in front of the grotto when i heard that archbishop oscar romero was killed in el salvador for standing up to the u.s. backed death squads... in my twenties i read martin luther king, gandhi and cesar chavez, trying to understand how they managed to love in the face of such violence. by living and working in inner city detroit, was i testing my own capacities?

in my late twenties and early thirties, after a move to the texas/mexico border, i was soon off doing research on social justice issues in nicaragua and guatemala - gathering stories on how people lived and loved in the face of human rights abuses - again putting myself 'to the test' (and realizing i might not be non-violent after all). as i was also choosing to be sexual in the age of AIDS, the personal and 'political' was dovetailing...

in my forties i heard the call again. first in the form of the warrior/mother goddess kali in my meditations (queen of love and death). then skulls became a regular feature of my dreams as i watched my father, best friend, two other friends, students, my uncle, and a dear co-worker all become ill and die within a few years... is it because i love them that i am still in denial they are gone?

now i'm contemplating a move to a place where my astral-cartography warns there is a venus and pluto line. haven't i been making friends with death all this time? so why should i be hesitant to test myself once again - isn't this what i was born to do?  during meditation i see the goddess' fierce gaze turn into a big heart - the answer?...

drums, two trumpets and a tuba, rhythms so good, the crowd gets bigger and bigger and we take over canal and bourbon, dancing the electric slide in the street...thunder and lightning don't matter, we just keep on dancing... the joy theater sign accompanies us as we walk to marie laveau's final resting place. a city for the dead... xxx's all over the walls of her tomb... is she still there? or is that her palpable presence at the voodoo shop altar we visit? a beautiful dark woman with neon blue eyes at the grave talks with us - is it the energy from the other side coming through?... spanish architecture in the french quarter, art and music on every corner. colorful creole cottages and shotgun houses discovered on long hot walks through the marigny...green trolleys taking us through the arched canopy of live oaks with those big 200 year old pillared houses on both sides...the city delights with beauty around every corner... the mississipi winds its way around us, cooling the heat coming from every pore as we walk, ride, dance, eat.... gumbo, etoufee, po-boys, crawfish, fried chicken, red beans and rice and lima bean dishes that melt in your mouth - the best food in the country... wide open waters of ponchartrain, the green waters of the bayou, standing trees and alligators' beady eyes staring back as you shrink away from their nearness... dragonflies making it safe for human skin as they dine on the mosquitos... tall cypress trees 700 years old with that mystical spanish moss hanging down... cajun camps on the bayou, mardi gras indians in their stunning beaded presence, african americans, from trini and new york, west africa and haiti grounded in traditions hundreds of years old - all healing, rebuilding and reenergizing the city...the creative heart of the country... there are no strangers here...

or click this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dUhgbcqruM

somebody from my michigan hometown in the corner store... somebody from south texas staying in my guest house... someone from the bay islands talking to me on the street.... new orleans just keeps circling around and around the signposts of my life... and yesterday a huge painting of kali ma in the local healing center.. Ma is here too???

the huge blue sparkling sculpture of yemaya with eyes staring back at me was more what i expected. or the multi-skull painted fence as i walked down the alley to the voodou ritual... inside, the sparkling sequined altars to the loa - full of as many skulls as i've ever seen.... i knew the ritual was dedicated to erzulie dantor, the loa syncretized with the black madonna of poland, but seeing her image on the walls of the temple - an image familiar to my grandparents - was calling me home... i listened to the initiates summoning the spirits in haitian, and watched the mambo priestess drawing cornmeal mandalas on the floor... i danced and swayed in the heat - as we circled the altar and asked the spirits to turn away the hurricanes... the more i looked at the sacred symbols, the more altered i became... the energy started building, and my guides were the guardians at the gate... i felt my hands vibrating, and my dance step changing... trance was close - i could feel spirit knocking on the door to come through... i sat down and let the kriyas happen... my head was vibrating... there was ONLY love... though i didn't get ridden by the spirit - not quite...it was close, and welcome.

early saturday morning in new orleans. walking to congo square - we hear the drums calling up the ancestors... the ones who sang and danced here every sunday during slave times (and birthed something new)... will they help us with the ritual today?

everyone in white, sun beating down... we gather to send love and healing to the ones who died in the middle passage - the ones who jumped overboard and the ones who perished in the hold - and the ones who somehow survived and made it possible for many to be here today...ashe welcomes us, calling us altogether... the children dance their prayers, the singer calls the orishas to bless the ritual... multi-faith we are - christian voices rising in solidarity, buddhists chanting their support, muslims calling a benediction down from allah... and then the drums start again, and the haitians move in circle, dancing their trance, calling down the spirits to guide and bless the ones who suffered so... the witness trees are honored, the wandering souls are danced and drummed into healing... the loa come and ride the waves of energy... then the indian chief speaks his native tongue - calling the four directions, blessing all our relations - reminding us of the days when the natives took in the africans fleeing the whip, and the healing power of the trees who witnessed all.... call and response - all our voices raised together to heal and love the ones who withstood so much....

we follow the drums out of congo square to the tomb of the unknown slave, where chains cross and manacles rust with the blood of so many... we walk in the treme, we walk in the french quarter, we walk and we walk and we walk in remembrance and healing for the ancestors of new orleans....

or click this link to see maafa video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLatQId1fww

dreamtime: i'm standing outside leaning on a fence with a building in the background. it's a sunny day... there is a raven sitting on the fence, and i think it's going to fly away, but instead it hops over and climbs on my arm. then starts pecking at my watch, flipping the circular time piece onto the ground. after the raven has made mincemeat out of my watch piece, i realize - he's not just a raven... i hear a name in my head: san geronimo....

when i wake up i wonder if that name is related to st germaine. however, i can find no link on the web, and give up. however, in a phone call a few days later to a friend, i tell her the dream - and BEFORE i mention the connection, she asks - did you know that this name is italian for st germaine??? and that he is related to the purple flame (just invoked for the first time during a recent merkaba meditation(!).... it's all related, all our relations... it all circles in on itself... trickster raven speaks... forget about time... there is no time... just time for st germaine and the purple flame...

her eyes were so intense... her gaze so direct. i had to turn away from her (and i don't turn away from many - knowing kali as i do... ) i hadn't been sure who i was coming to see that sunday afternoon driving down to half moon bay. just that she was one of the 13 indigenous grandmothers that were prophesied to come at this time on our planet. the time of consciousness shifts. that they are here to do ritual and pray for the people, the planet and all our relations - that we may come back into balance... this one - wow - her energy was strong. and her teaching stories even more-so. of course, i had seen the whale beings spouting and breaching on the drive down the coast, so maybe they were giving me the 'head's up' (literally) :).

she is the grandmother who visions - both in dreams and waking time... and she lets those visions direct her day to day life... those were the stories she told. e.g. of going to find a stove and instead being led to the grandmother rock for her medicine circle. of letting spirit provide the money to purchase the 2 ton rock, which came days later via an anonymous donor... sometimes the meaning of her visions comes that clear within days or hours. sometimes years later...

when she touched some of her marigold energy on my forehead, the meditative energy increased, the vibratory energy started moving...the stories deepened their magic... i aspire to this grandmother's way of life. i aspire to the way she holds her power... i aspire to letting my dreams and what visions may come be my guiding force...

what is happening these days? so many teachers are making themselves known. i feel blessed to be in their presence, whether it's in dream or waking time... thank you grandmother!