|
Samhain 2006
|
|
Happy Celtic New Year!
This is Dr. Geo Athena Trevarthen's newsletter. You're receiving it because you or someone at that email address signed up at my website, www.celticshamanism.com. Please let us know if you wish to unsubscribe and notify us of any change to your address. Please also make sure that your email server and spam filter will accept email from tuath@btopenworld.com as that's where this mailing will normally come from.
The newsletter has five sections. First, below, is News, which covers what's been going on generally, and then Events, which gives the schedule for any upcoming teaching. This time, talks and workshops at Celtic and Shamanism conferences (the Celtic conference is coming up soon, on November 24th and 25th) and a Sumerian workshop at the Edinburgh International Festival of Middle Eastern Spirituality and Peace. I've never taught about Sumerian religion before, though it's become an increasingly dominant part of my own spiritual work for fifteen years. Finally, I'm also really looking forward to teaching a course using the Harry Potter books as a 'taking off point' for looking at everything from social issues to literature and ritual magick at The University of Edinburgh this April through June.
Next is a section entitled Good Works with information on websites and charitable organisations that can help us make a real difference in the world. This time, alternative Christmas gifts, or how to give a yak for Christmas.
Then there's a section entitled Websites and Discussion. Here I'll put selected websites and online discussions that I've come across that may be of interest. Below are ones that focus on increasing happiness and a couple on the ancient Celtic Coligny calendar, including one that gives you the modern date according to it.
Sometimes there'll be a section on seasonal reflections and observances, and sometimes this theme will be incorporated into the main article, as I've done this time. Many of us make resolutions in various areas, including our spirituality, at Samhain, the Celtic New Year. The article this time, titled Gratitude and Re-Linking, discusses an easy step that we can all include in our spiritual practice that recent research shows can make a real difference to our state of mind.
Enjoy!
Le Beannachdan,
With Blessings,
Dr. Geo Athena Trevarthen, Samhain 2006
(PS: I'm signing off more formally with website details because I recently had someone contact me after great detective work. All she had was a forwarded newsletter signed 'Geo.' I didn't know my newsletters were being so widely forwarded! I am quite happy for them to be, but want people to be able to get in touch if they want! :-)
News
The main news is that I had my second daughter, Aurora Rosín Trevarthen, on June 28th. A much easier go round than last time, it lasted only 22 hours and I had a doula, Christina Mark, who was a fantastic support. David stayed home with Téa, which was fine. Personally, I feel like labour's a 'girl thing.' The first labour did bond David and I in a way, kind of like being in the Somme must have bonded you with your brothers in arms. I decided he'd do Téa more good as company than me.
I was mostly enjoying the gas and air, listening to Gregorian chant, Hildegard of Bingen, Conrad Praetzel and REM, and reading the DaVinci Code! My mum introduced me to Holy Blood, Holy Grail, the book that was drawn on for the DaVinci Code, when it first came out and has always been interested in ancient mysteries, religion, etc., for obvious reasons given our family predilictions, Don't worry though, I wasn't reading it as 'gospel,' (har har :-) but as a 'ripping yarn.' I started it in May, but was so instantly absorbed after a few pages that I decided to save it for labour, when I'd need distraction. It was a great strategy.
All of us went to the Clan Lamont Gathering in September in Dunoon, which was nice. We met the Chief and Aurora attended her first formal dinner at two months of age, happily asleep snuggled against me in her sling.
Events
There are quite a few events coming up in Edinburgh over the next few months.
The Celtic Spirituality Conference and Shamanism Conference are both organised by, and under the auspices of:
Edinburgh International Centre for World Spiritualities
1) Celtic Spirituality Conference
Organised by, and under the auspices of,
Conference Speakers and Workshop Facilitators:
Conference Registration:
My contributions will all be on the Friday:
An ancient Irish prayer affirms that Deity is with and within us, as well as all creation. The ninth century Irish theologian, Eriugena, continued a long tradition of 'emanationist' theology in Celtic, earlier European Animist and Indo-European traditions. The idea that Deity poured creation forth from Itself takes us far beyond abstract ideas of unity.
Irish and other Celtic traditions held that humanity was the tenth angelic order, able to bridge the heavenly and earthly realms. By engaging in compassionate action in the world, and experiencing ourselves as part of the Sacred order, we find a sense of purpose and power beyond 'fixing' perceived imperfections in ourselves and the world. We come to a freeing, compassionate world view that provides an antidote to both the alienation and the avarice of modern culture.
Heaven in Here: Experiencing the Sacred (Hour long workshop)
Ancient Celtic traditions teach that it isn't difficult to experience the Sacred, because Deity is present in all Being, experiencing reality through each of us. The question is, are we showing the Divine a good time? Celtic tradition reveals heaven as an imminent reality, not just an aspirational afterlife. We experience heaven, here and now, by first, cultivating gratitude for all creation's heavenly aspects, second, by using a simple meditative technique to intensify our awareness of all Being as in-spirited and inspiring. Through meditation, ancient chant in Old Irish (the root language of both Scottish and Irish Gaelic), and personal reflection, we'll have the opportunity to taste the glorious reality that heaven is truly in here.
An Evening of Celtic Music, Poetry and Storytelling
Link for full Celtic conference details: http://www.eicws.org/content/view/9
2) The Edinburgh International Festival of Middle Eastern Spirituality and Peace 2007, http://www.mesp.org.uk
I'll be teaching a one-day workshop I'm very excited about. Through various synchronicities, visions and research, Sumerian traditions have become central to my spiritual path over the last fifteen years. This is the first chance I've had to share any of these teachings, so I'm really looking forward to it. My contribution is:
The Treasures of Sumerian Spirituality (Day Workshop)
Sumerian tradition is literally an 'Ur' spirituality, taking us back to the 'trunk of the tree' from which facets of many Middle Eastern and Western traditions have branched. Studying it can bring us to a deeper holistic understanding of the underlying unity of all spiritualities, and the deeper meanings of themes in many traditions, ranging from Judaism, Christianity and Islam to Western mystery traditions such as alchemy and ritual magic. Here we'll have the rare opportunity to experientially explore some of these themes through discussion, meditation and Sumerian chants. Topics will include Sacred Marriage, especially as an alchemical, internal process, Sacred Sovereignty, or governing your own life, bearing the oscillation of union and loss nobly in life, and, one of the central pillars of Sumerian religion, our relationship to what we might call a guardian angel, a personal manifestation of the Sacred.
3) The Magic of Harry Potter
The fictional world of Harry Potter has inspired a huge response from children and adults alike. Here, we'll explore the narrative themes in the books and films, trace their roots back to myths, legends and ideas about magic and spirituality, and discuss their literary and cultural significance to us today.
Contact: Office of Lifelong Learning
4) Shamanic Spirituality Conference
The purpose of this conference is to learn about and explore the roots, contemporary expressions, challenges, opportunities, and the future of Shamanic spirituality; and provide a forum for contemporary Shamanic practitioners to network with each other and with others who are interested in Shamanic spirituality; and facilitate open and mutually respectful enquiry and communication among scholars, Shamanic practitioners, and those who practice other spiritual traditions regarding the nature of Shamanic spirituality and its relationship to spirituality in its diversity.
Organised by, and under the auspices of, the Edinburgh International Centre for World Spiritualities, EICWS, Scottish charity.
I'll be speaking on: Celtic Shamanism
Good Works
Why not give a yak for Christmas? Wish List by Save the Children is a range of presents for your friends and family that makes a difference to children worldwide.
When you buy a gift from the Wish List, they send that gift to a child and their family in one of the poorest places around the world. For example: "A yak might not seem like the obvious present for Christmas, but for some children it is top of their wishlist. For families in Tibet they provide nutritious milk, wool for knitting and are also used for ploughing. By buying a yak you've made sure a family has milk, wool and can plough their fields to provide for the future." There are also less expensive options, such as chickens, high protein peanut butter for malnourished children, etc.
http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/scuk/jsp/newhome.jsp?flash=true (UK site)
Their Christmas wish list link is: http://savethechildren.sandbag.uk.com/Store/DisplayAllItems.html
(The US site link is http://www.savethechildren.org but they don't seem to be offering this list. You can, of course, use a US credit card and it will convert the purchase into dollars, or you can try googling 'alternative Christmas gifts' from US sites for suggestions. There are a number of international organisations doing these kinds of programs.)
Please consider doing something, however small. I saw a commercial on TV the other day watching cartoons with Téa. It was for a huge array of accessories to buy for a popular baby doll. You could easily spend a couple of hundred pounds on all of it — enough to keep a real baby alive for a long time.
Obviously, it's okay for children to have dolls. I don't mean to be a downer. It just struck me as very sad that our culture lavishes care on a piece of plastic shaped like a baby here while real ones are suffering around the world. It's weird for the symbol to be treated better than the real thing.
You have the power to do something! Do it right now, online, before you read the rest of this and see how empowered it makes you feel.
The recent UK program, called Making Slough Happy, (website below) included doing things for others in their list of happiness promoting activities.
Websites and Discussion
I recently found a fun website, an online Coligny calendar to the present date at http://pagancentral.com/cgi-bin/ColignyOnline.exe. The Coligny calendar is an ancient Celtic calendar found in France. You can see more at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coligny_calendar
There was a recent UK program called Making Slough Happy. It applied various principles that psychological studies show make people happier. At the end of the project, test results showed that participants were, on average, 33% happier, a remarkable result. (2 links below)
http://www.richardhill.co.uk/makingsloughhappy
A UK website adapted their program for mums in a project called Making Mums Happy. The project has ended, but all the materials can be found at http://www.netmums.com/lc/makingmumshappy/programmeintro.php
I'm about to start following the suggestions myself. (Some of them, like the practice I'll detail below, I do already, and find effective.)
Long term students will remember that I come from a Panentheist perspective. That is, I experience God as immanent and transcendant, in everything and above everything at the same time. As the Old Irish prayer known as the Lorica says, "God be with me, God within me." I often ask the question, "If God is within us, are we showing God a good time?"
In Panentheism, joy is a duty. One of the first and most important steps we can make to fulfill our duty and connect more deeply with the Sacred, with and within us, is cultivating gratitude.
Article
Gratitude and Re-Linking
Religion is all about consciously renewing our connections to the Sacred with and within us. The word 'religion' comes from the Latin religio, meaning 'to link back' or 'relink.' Unfortunately a lot of religions have lost the techniques which make this much easier to do, like the use of chant or specific kinds of music, meditation, and shamanic techniques.
When a religion loses its shamanic roots in personal experience, it's like a cut flower. It will live for a while, but has lost its ability to grow and sustain itself. In a 'cut-flower religion' the priests themselves ultimately don't know if there's a God. That's the state many religions find themselves in today.
So how do we re-link with God? First, we must remember God.
Ancient Celtic tradition generally treats creation as emanation. Because God created the universe out of itself, God was 'dis-membered' in the Creation process. Some creation myths go so far as to describe a primordial being that is dismembered and used to create the material world, like Tiamat of Babylonian tradition, Purusha of Indian tradition or the giant Ymir in Norse tradition.
Creation myths are usually set at the New Year. Because traditional cultures tend to see time as cyclical, not linear, they experience a return to the first creation at New Year. It's a re-creation, hence our New Year's resolutions, etc. It's an auspicious time to re-create, and re-member.
By simply remembering God, we begin the process of re-membering God, of re-linking ourselves to the whole of Being. Prayer is one way we remember God. In fact, the Arabic word for the prayers Muslims perform five times daily is zikr, which means "remembrance."
Prayer is often misunderstood. Some of us think of it as a wish list to 'god the Santa.' Prayer does pour our hearts out to Spirit, and that includes hopes, dreams and fervent wishes, but if that's all we do we miss out on a deeper level of communion.
If you think about it, it's also not the most courteous approach. How would you feel if you were approached for the first time by someone saying, "Hi, not sure what I really think of you but I have all these problems and maybe you could make me think you're okay if you solve them all for me."
Now think about how you'd feel if it went like this: "Hello, I'm so excited to connect with you, I love your work!"
An episode of the British science fiction show, Doctor Who, reminded me of this point. When the Doctor gets annoyed with Rose, one of many human companions he's had, he regrets hooking up with another 'dumb monkey.' "It's never about showing you the universe, it's about what the universe can do for you!"
This really struck me. How often do we go to the universe, and to Deity, as wealthy beggars?
We say something to the effect of: "Well, thanks for all the stars and the ecosystem, food, health, body, relationships, parents, spouse, children, beauty, music, sex, laughter, long walks, popcorn, movies, train rides, cute babies, one-ear-up, one-ear-down dogs, cathedrals, candlelight, sunsets, smiles, laughter, hot baths and long sleeps but what I'd really like is..."
Except we often skip the 'thanks' part and go straight to those last five words.
Where is that at? Can't seeing, really seeing, the universe ever be enough, even for a little bit? Be honest, don't you ever get a little bit bored of wanting? It's exhausting. Gratitude gives us a welcome rest from wanting.
We're also not nearly grateful enough for blessings of absence. Staying with modern entertainment for a bit longer, there's a wonderful exchange in the film The Serpent and Rainbow. The film was loosely inspired by a very good book by the anthropologist, Wade Davis, who learned aspects of Voudou in Haiti.
In the movie, the anthropologist character goes through various ordeals and after a protection ritual, tells the priest he hasn't felt very spiritually protected so far. The priest responds with a smile, "You don't know what hasn't gotten through."
None of us do. God intercedes all the time. We tend not to spot disaster averted because it missed. The car didn't crash today, our loved ones remained in good health, as did we, and no one mugged us.
Sometimes we realise what missed us when we have a scare — the lump that was nothing, the near miss that leaves us panting by the roadside — and we vow that we'll never take anything for granted again.
Even the things that 'hit' often don't hit as hard as they might. I once fell down a spiral staircase, putting my head through a wall and lacerating my face and legs on the way down. An acquaintance asked, "Where were your spirit guardians?" implying that they'd failed me. "Gosh, I don't know," I responded, annoyed, "maybe stopping me breaking my neck!"
It's good to refresh our memories of these things. Not to be morbid, but to cultivate appreciation. People often attribute disaster to God failing to intervene. We ask what went wrong, yet we don't ask 'what went right?'
If He's landed with the blame it's only fair to give Him some credit as well! Praise acknowledges the world's dominant good. It enables us to go to the Cosmos as a communicant, not a God-botherer.
All this is why beginning prayer with thanks and praise starts us off on the right note with Deity, and beginning our days with prayer starts us off on the right note with reality.
Gratitude in the Morning
It's not Pollyanna-like to put gratitude at the heart of our approach to life. Praise blesses both the self and the universe. The Latin benedicere originally meant "to speak good things," to declare the goodness revealed all around us when we experience the universe as part of God. Praise sets a spiritual generator in motion where the energy going out is a geometric increase of that put in. The Welsh poet, Waldo Williams said, the purpose of praise is to "recreate an unblemished world."
It does so, in part, by drawing our attention to how unblemished most of the world is, despite the evening news. Looking out my window at the surrounding countryside, God is happy as far as the eye can see, in each blade of grass, in the sun, the birds, the sheep and cows. This is true over much of the earth's surface and certainly in the heavens. That's a lot of happiness.
Praise is also an offering that we can make to God and the Spirits at any time and under any circumstances. It is the simplest offering. Offering anything automatically extends our awareness beyond ourselves, and expands our energetic fields, as our hands extend to give. It's good to open our relationship with any being in any reality on a note of generosity, even if all we have to offer in the moment is a smile.
We needn't limit ourselves to offering praise. The incense I light before spiritual practice is an offering as well as a sensory cue. When I'm at a sacred site I often pour out mead or whiskey, traditional Celtic offerings to the spirits, no pun intended! The point of offering praise, whiskey, or anything else is the underlying offering we simultaneously make — that of our self-absorption.
I once heard the Tibetan Buddhist tulku (reincarnated teacher of their spiritual lineage) Jetsunma Ahkon Llamo Rinpoche respond to a question about offerings. A strict natural foods dieter asked about the extravagant displays of chocolates and sweeties on the temple altars. Did the Buddha like refined sugar?
The Buddha's not on a diet, of course, but Jetsunma also made the point that no physical object we offer the Buddha can make him any happier. He is, after all, enlightened.
What pleases him about our offerings is that by offering anything we'd rather keep ourselves we're actually offering to release our self-absorption. In offering, we extend beyond the limits of the self to focus on the bigger picture.
Whatever horrible experiences we may have suffered, we are all here now, and that alone is miraculous. First, it means that every one of our ancestors lived long enough to reproduce — for an awfully long time. What are the odds of that? Next, it means that we have survived.
Morning is a very natural time to make prayers of gratitude for our lives, first, because we can. Arising to see the new day this morning meant we were all more fortunate than the 142,000 or so people who didn't survive yesterday, never mind the billions of other beings, from plants to animals. As an old blues song says, "Everybody wanna go to heaven, don' nobody wanna die tonight."
Gratitude is especially important when things are going wrong. When the shaman, Sandra Ingerman, was going through a depression, her spirits told her to make an offering of thanks out on the land every morning, no matter how awful she felt. Eventually, she felt better.
I've done the same sort of thing when depression has been trying to catch hold, and it really helps. It gets our energy, and focus, moving outwards again. I didn't feel it made a big difference every morning, but over time it created a huge change in my approach to life.
Attention
That's because the most basic power we have as sentient beings is the power to choose where we focus our attention. We magnify what we pay attention to, it grows larger in our minds and lives.
If you've ever obsessed about your weight you'll know just what I mean. You look much larger in the mirror to yourself than you actually are. If you're worried about money, all you think about are bills and all you see are things you can't have. More positively, if you're having a baby, it suddenly seems that the world is full of pregnant women and babies. There actually aren't any more than there ever were, you're just paying attention to them.
In Old Irish, the word for praise is molaid, which means literally, to magnify. On one level, then, focussing our attention on good things is simply positive thinking that magnifies all that's right in our lives. Many studies show how optimism mentally and physically benefits us. Stress and negativity cause or exacerbate many physical and mental ills — but depression isn't destiny. Optimism can be learned.
It all begins with where you focus your attention and that constant process begins anew each day when you wake up. Think for a moment about how you began your day. Where did you place your attention? Were your thoughts something like "Ah! Another day in creation, let me take a moment to remember God and notice the Kingdom of Heaven."? Or were they, "Aieee, there goes the alarm, I'm tired, another day at the coal face, bills to pay, the children are up, uh oh, what was that thud...?"
Our first focus of the day sets the tone for all the rest. A few moments of positive focus first thing is one of the best gifts you can give yourself — and those around you. You'll be amazed by what a difference those moments make to your equilibrium throughout the day.
Le Beannachdan (With Blessings)
Dr. Geo Athena Trevarthen, www.celticshamanism.com, Samhain 2006
|