So far its been really busy. My feet haven’t touched the ground. I spent my birthday working with the Luminous Warriors in Dorset greeting my 53rd year and the Chinese new year over the same weekend. My dear friend Margaret gave us a Chinese blessing and we all went out to dinner to celebrate. She sent me this about the New Year and how it effects each sign Continue reading A New Year-Metal Tiger
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What a delight to pull this on off the shelf! This is a lovely little recipe book given to me by the Monks during their visit to Deal last November. The quantities for the recipes are enough to feed 260 people! “THEN THUK (Noodles in soup) Ingredients: 12 kg flour 50 litres water 2kg onions, chopped Ginger and garlic chopped extremely fine and made into a paste 4kg tomato 5kg vegetables, such as mooli (white radish) and green leaf veg 1 litre vegetable oil Soya sauce Salt to taste Fresh corriander and Chopped Spring onion Put the flour onto a flat board and make a well in the centre. Add the water, and mix to a soft dough. Cover and leave to rest while preparing the veg. Heat the oil and fry until lightly brown. Add ginger and garlic paste, and fry for a few minutes. Then add chopped tomato, and cook until well mixed. Add salt to taste. Chop mooli nad green veg roughly, add to the tomato and onions, mixing well, for ten mins over a low flame. Add water, soya sauce and vinegar and keep the mixture bubbling over a medium flame. Meanwhile divide the dough into fist -sized lumps, rolling it into long snake-like shapes, about the same size as a finger. Coat your hands in oil to prevent the dough sticking. With your thumbs flatten the rolls of dough between your thumb and forefinger and pull off smalll pieces, dropping them into the boiling veg mixture. Keep the mixture simmering over a medium heat until the dough is cooked through. Add more slat if necessary, and add fresh chopped coriander leaf and chopped spring onion.” Yummy. Obviously you can adjust the amounts required! Enjoy your meal I have become an avid Facebooker. I have my own personal page and also one for Shamanicplanet. Something that I have started to do on the SP page is a quote of the day and suddenly I thought what a good idea for the blog So as there is more space here for longer quotes I thought a weekly selection would be better. The idea is that I pick a book at random-eyes closed! Then again at random open the book and see what it has to say.. Divination..a snippet to meditate on for the week or just an interesting something. So over to my bookshelf, eyes closed and voila! I choose a book by my good friend Anne Geraghty called In the Dark and Still Moving-a story of her Spiritual Journey with the guru Osho. I met Anne, then called Vismaya, during my days in Osho’s commune back in the 8O’s. It was a vibrant time in my life and one I look back on with great fondness. It was a Spiritual Adventure of the most exhilarating kind…..Love, Life and Laughter was our mantra and we did all to our best ability! There were casualties on the way but I ended my time, within Rajneesh’s metaphorical embrace, a truely better and happier person. So here I go and open the page……………………….. “Work is the meditation. You watch your personal trips come and go, while all the time you focus on the immediate demands of the task in front of you. In this way your personal ego dissolves as naturally as a dewdrop in the morning sun. Or did it disappear like a cloud or withdraw ‘dancing lightly on the tide’, I can’t quite remember? Or perhaps it just faded away in the brightness of so much light. My first two weeks were in the Records Department. I wandered along rows between banks of filing cabinets, full of cards listing every sanyassin and their psycho-spiritual history. Each card had its own photo, usual details, date of birth and address, and lists of key ‘events’ such as a precis of a letter sent to Bhagwan, the groups they’d done, useful skills such as accountancy or plumbing.” I remember spending a few weeks on the Ranch in Oregon doing the same as Anne did in Puna and feeling quite disturbed at the information on the cards. But that was in the day when personal information was sacrosanct and looking back from a future that is filled with Information and easy access to it, it seems old fashioned and slightly precious! What an amazing year we’ve had in Dorset. A group of 18 women decided to ‘grasp the nettle’ and sign up for the Shamanka Training. The journey they began last February has taken them places they’d never dared dream off. Claire said “Powerfully transformative: through this training, I have changed my life more than I could have believed was possible.” This training is for women who really want to change themselves, their lives and the World! To finally make a difference in the personal and global. This is an era of great upheaval and often difficulties. Time appears to be speeding up, as we experience cultural shifts in months that once took centuries. This training will give you the tools to deal with the changes and to help heal any damage. It is now we need to stand in the Light and be counted. Everything we do as individuals DOES MATTER. Every word we utter, every act, every thought-we are creating our own reality as individuals and as a global consciousness. There is only now. THE WORLD WILL NOT END IN 2012 By Carlos Barrios Carlos Barrios was born into a Spanish family on El Altiplano, the highlands of Guatemala . His home was in Huehuetenango, also the dwelling place of the Maya Mam tribe.. With other Maya and other indigenous tradition keepers, the Mam carry part of the old ways on Turtle Island ( North America ). They are keepers of time, authorities on remarkable calendars that are ancient, elegant and relevant. Mr. Barrios is a historian, an anthropologist and investigator. After studying with traditional elders for 25 years since the age of 19, he has also became a Mayan Ajq’ij, a ceremonial priest and spiritual guide, Eagle Clan. Years ago, along with his brother, Gerardo, Carlos initiated an investigation into the different Mayan calendars. He studied with many teachers. He says his brother Gerardo interviewed nearly 600 traditional Mayan elders to widen their scope of knowledge.”Anthropologists from around the world visit the temple sites,” Barrios says, “and read the inscriptions and make up stories about the Maya, but they do not read the signs correctly. It’s just their imagination. Other people write about prophecy in the name of the Maya. They say that the world will end in December 2012. I have just booked my flight to Lima leaving next March. One of my Shamanka sisters went there last year and met a wonderful man, fell in love and stayed. We keep in close touch by email and Facebook. Before she went we ‘dreamed’ of the possibility of special tours organised to visit the Sacred Sites especially for women , to do ceremony and ritual for the Divine Feminine Spiritual Path and here we are a year later booked on a Shamankatrail tour and ready to go! Look at the itinerary and you’ll probably understand why I am so excitied! Just over a week ago we had the most delightful visitors come to stay at Champlain’s Well. Eight Tibetan Monks and their translator came for the weekend to run a workshop and give a performance of their world famous masked dances, chanting and mudras. What wonderful company they were. They bought their own food and cooked for all of us. Their energy was so gentle and innocent. They loved the dogs, were fascinated by BBC Parliament on TV and laughed so loud when the oldest Monk had a turn on the massage chair.
They really loved the dogs!
Before the Workshop began we all went for a walk along Deal Pier. It was a cold and blustery day!
I will be running 3 drum making workshops this year (2010)
Beltain Drum Making 1st-2nd May We will be tuning in to this special time of year. Celebrating the joys of Spring. It is a time of creation, perfect for Drum Making and we will be calling in the energies of the season. This is a special time for relationships-so come with a friend or a lover and celebrate your partnerships by making something together. We’ll make a Beltain fire and jump it in the old way to strenghten partnerships. Its the perfect Feast for a wedding so if any of you want to ‘tie the knot’ in an unusual way join us! Solstice Drum Making 19th-20th June
The longest day (well almost) ….so plenty of daylight hours to sit in circle and make our drums. We will journey to the Spirit of the animal who gave its hide, discover your drums nature and name. Midsummers eve is tradtionally a time when Faeries make an appearance so we will be calling on the Faerie energy within-if we dare-with a celebratory fire ceremony on the Saturday. So bring your wings! Lammas Drum Making 31st July-1st August The Harvest Festival. A celebration of all the Earths bounty and beauty. It is also the festival of the God, Lugh, the Celtic Craftsman so a perfect weekend to craft a drum. As well as making your drum we will have our own Harvest festival with special rituals for the time of year. For more info on any of the weekends above please email me. I am running a couple of introductory workshops this winter. The first will be on the 5th Dec. This time of year is a good time to reflect on what has gone before and look forward to the future. A time to call upon the Ancestors for their Wisdom and Guidance. A time to sit beside the fire and tell stories. You are invited to join me round the fire at Champlain’s Well. The next one day workshop is on the 30th January 2010. This is the closest Saturday to the Imbolc Festival. This celebrates the first signs that Winter is over. It is dedicated to Bridget-the Goddess of the Fire and Hearth. It is the celebration of rebirth after the barren Winter months. This is the time to plant the seeds of your intention to bring them to fruition in the months ahead. If you’re nterested in either of these please email me for further info. I’ve just returned from a really lovely weekend workshop called “Flowers of the Spirit”, run by Claire Harvey, one of the UK’s leading professionals in the field of Plant Remedies. Her Grandmother was a close friend and colleague of Dr Bach and Nora Weekes so her ‘pedigree’ is impressive. Dr Bach is probably the most well known name in this field although since Nelson bought out the brand the intrinsic energy of these remedies has been lost to big business. The remedies are still efficacious but not as potent as they were. Somehow the secret of this kind of vibrational medicine is the method of production and an industrial process does not sit well with them. Over the weekend we became ‘guinea pigs’ and blind tested a number of different rememdies all with the theme of Spiritual growth and movement with a specific bent towards Shamanic practice. We sat in circle, grounded ourselves and tried a few drops of remedy. We then allowed any physical sensation or emotional response or insight or vision to come and wrote down our experience which we then shared with the group. It was such fun! Everyones experience was different but often a common theme would run through. Over the weekend we tried 18 different remedies from different sources: Bush Flower and Animal Essences to name two. Claire also showed us how to make our own remedies using two different methods. The classic sunlight method and a more modern approach of using crystals. This has really fired me to experiment with the plants in my garden. I have an interest in Herbal Medicine and practice the ‘grow your own’ philosophy and have various different medicinal herbs available. I am interested to discover if the medicinal effect has any bearing on the vibrational effect e.g will the purple sage that I grow for treating sore throats and culinery purposes work on the throat chakra enabling people to speak their truth or have some other totally unexpected result? Of course this isn’t necessarily the best time of year to be making plant remedies here as the natural order of Life is slowing down and contracting so I will have to put my enthusiasm on hold until the spring unless any winter flowering plants catch my eye. In every way I enjoyed the weekend with Claire and thank her for all her teachings and insights. |
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This shows two of the monks with the large trumpet like instrument called the Dung Chen. When this is played any negativity attached to your energy body will be blasted away!
At the workshop everyone had the opportunity to learn a little Tibetan.
We were taught a few steps of the famous Black Hat dance.
At the Monastery the Monks make something called a Dukka. This is a protective Mandala which promotes good health. The prayer of Dukka is written onto a piece of paper then wrapped in silks to make a beautiful square small enough to fit into your pocket. Here the monks are showing interested people how to make them.
Here the Monks are debating on different scriptures. It got very lively with a bit of pushing and shoving and a lot of laughter!
This is Jane explaining the fabulous costume for the Black Hat Dance.
We also learned to print prayer flags.
We were shown and had a chance to try our hand at making a sand mandala. Much harder than it looks!
They spent the night in our Sitting room.
It was a great blessing for us and a priviledge to meet the Monks from Tashi Lhunpo and I will definitely be inviting them to stay again!
