David is currently traveling the world with project SHINE channeling the messages from Arcturus and working with people in a variety of capacities.  Click the below link to stay updated on this great and wonderful adventure.

READ THE PROJECT SHINE TRAVEL BLOG HERE

"You must be unafraid, and you must be vast.  You must pay homage to the ancestors and the rain, the sea, and all the great beings that have come before you.  You must give thanks, you must be humble, and you must be tireless in your pursuit of what you know to be you, the real you, and in the real way giving everything for the cause which is the cause of light."  The Way Home p. 49

Our giving wants to come from the natural palce inside of us, the deep place.  Not the place of "have to's" and "I need to," but the real place of the heart that is vast and wide open.

When we give from this place all is well.  We can do no wrong.  All corresponds with our vibration, all the helpers and the ones who know, all the truest servants to the way of the heart.  For it is this way, the way of the heart and spirit and the quest for the light, it is this way that is the way home.  When we come from here, and our giving is from here, and we make our life's purpose and journey from here, then all is well.  We can do no wrong.  There is no tomorrow, there is no guilt, because we know.

For each of us this place is an individual vibration, an individual connection.  No one can tell us this connection, we must know this for ourselves- the warrior spirit in each of us lives strong.  But the place that we connect is the place of the quest, the journey to the light.  The journey that is not about controlling more, or gaining more power over others, or getting more stuff.  The journey of light which is the journey of giving, and compassion, and real empowerment from one's true heart.  It is the journey of the warrior spirit, and in this journey we must be truly unafraid and ask our helpers for help.  Our ancestors. The wind in the trees.  The hawk that flies overhead.  The rocks and stones.  The Source.

There are many helpers and allies on this journey, this journey whose cause is light.

I went out on a limb a little facilitating a woman's workshop this past weekend.  My beautiful wife tells me that I am somewhat clueless, which is the only reason I can pull some of these things off.

Clueless or not, I have a deep, and somewhat renewed respect for raw feminine power.

Having worked with groups of men, and mixed groups, I can safely say that there is nothing in my experience like working with a group of women.  In a group of men the underlying energy is a perceptible sense of fragility, a need for understanding, a certain lost quality without the presence of the feminine.  The underlying energy in a group of women, however, I would liken to a volcano.  A volcano, perhaps, ready to explode.

There is a strength present in the women that is clearly not present in the men.  There is a knowing.  This is not to say that women are stronger than men, and that men are by nature weak, but rather that there is an earth in women, a subtle quality, that when accessed is nothing like what a man possesses.  It is that thing that, emotionally and spiritually, allows a woman to go through the process of giving birth.  Many of the mystical traditions claim that the woman is naturally closer to God than the man, and I believe this has something to do with why.

When this power is unleashed, and recognized by groups of women across the world, it will bring the planet back into balance.  When women are no longer afraid to express their own power, the world will be a better place.  And this is not to say that there need be any man-bashing involved, but instead that we all, men and women alike, learn to bow, honor, and deeply respect the divine feminine force, and allow this force to guide our civilizations rather than building civilizations that try to stamp this force out.  Aho.

"You are the universe, and the universe is you, and the planets and the stars and the people, these are all you." The Way Home p.68

Each and every one of us is connected.  Deeply connected, truly connected, connected to all things.

It is this connection that is the key going forward, as it has always been the key but we have forgotten, largely, as human consciousness.  We have begun to think and act as if we are separate-from one another, from nature, from the animals and plants and stones.  This way of separateness has resulted in the world we have today.

Connectedness comes through listening.  It arises through the feminine.  It is the art of listening to the wind, the trees, the rivers.  It is the art of listening to the depth of one's intuition, and one's heart, first and foremost, before action is taken.  This is the deep listening, the way of the shaman and the mystic.  This is the way of the divine feminine spirit.

It is this way of connectedness that will save our world, that will heal our planet, that will raise global consciousness.  The more that we start to listen, the more that this listening will pervade human consciousness. The more we will teach our children about this listening, and they their children, and pretty soon it becomes impossible to live without the utmost reverence and respect for life.  When we can embody this state, the universe will sing with us, will dance with us.  We will all sing and dance, truly, as one, and realize that we are all truly interconnected.

"Fear is the thing holding you back.  When you let go of the shore you encounter all of your fears , in that dying moment, and that one moment...and you dissolve yourself into time that is timeless, and you push yourself over the brink of your beliefs..." The Way Home, p.99

Often times if I find myself stuck, my life not moving anywhere, if I look deeply within my heart I can see a place of fear, holding back, hesitancy.  This fear is usually related to stretching myself in a direction that I am not comfortable with, where I am being asked to grow, to change, to make a difference.  When this change is made, this step taken, I can feel that it effects not only my life in the present, but all of my monments, my lifetimes, and the lives of those around me.

If we were not afraid, what might we do?  If we were to look deeply into our hearts at what we really want and need to be truly vital in this life, what might we change?  If we were not afraid of failure, or being alone, or not being provided for, or opening ourselves to criticism and judgement.  What might we do if fear were not, on some level, ruling our lives?

We might dance.  We might sing more often.  We might leave our jobs.  We might seek to truly transform our relationships.

We might let go... and we might dive in.  To the river of the truth of our existence.  And we might let this river carry us, carry us home.

The men built a structure to honor, to remember, our place in the Sacred Hoop of Life.It is this that matters.  the Sacred Hoop.  It matters not what religion, what culture, what color.  It matters that we honor her, the Great Mother.

Without her we will not survive.  Without her we will not be here long.  Why would we forget her when she has been here for us always?

Look around you.  Everything is from her.  Every single thing that you touch, and taste, is from her soil.

If we are not in right relationship with her.  If we are not giving thanks and prayers to her.  If we are not honoring her, then we are honoring nothing.

The men built a symbol on the earth to honor her, and to honor our place in the Sacred Hoop of Life.  To honor right relationship.  To give thanks and praises.  To pave the way for all men.  Let it be so.  Aho.

The Warrior Spirit is alive and well.  Let this be known.

The twelve men who gathered this past Sunday to experience their inner warrior proved this, beyond any doubt.  There were tears, there was togetherness, there was sharing.  There was fire.  Mother Earth. There was letting go.

To a man, the reason for gathering was the open-heartedness.  A space to be real, to be honest, to not have to put on airs, or pretend.  To know that it was okay to be vulnerable, and to know that in this vulnerability was the real warrior spirit, the true courage, and the medicine for our culture and for all men.  In a society where we value the strong, we rarely realize the truly strong are the ones with the willingness to look within and face the truth of what is there.

A real warrior must do this.  A real warrior must face his own death, and understand what this means.  He must face his death to know what is truly important in his life, and in this way he must also know his interconnectedness, his place in the Sacred Hoop of Life.  He must realize that anything he kills, or tries to kill, or injurs or harms, is really himself.  That he is inextricably connected to all things, and he can never be separate.  Therefore he must treat all things, even his enemy, with the greatest of honor.

The men built this symbol in silence, to honor our part, as men, in the Sacred Hoop of Life.

"Relationship is the way in which we walk, in which we grow, in which we see ourselves in somebody else completely as the holy mirror, the divine mirror, the reflection of The All within us.  This is the purpose of relationship, the real purpose, to see oneself in another completely, and to walk through this other as the perfect vehicle to the realization of God, which is the realization of the essence of you." The Way Home p.53

I am always amazed at what transpires between couples at our couples workshops.  I do not think there is any harder path than the path of relationship-my apologies to all the ascetics out there, but relationship is as tremendous a challenge and opportunity for awakening as exists in this world.

Julia and I facilitated a couples retreat at Breitenbush Hot Springs this past weekend, and there was a point in the weekend in which we split up the men and the women.  At first the women gathered with me and the men with Julia.  Then we switched, I took the men and she the women.  The idea was to open each sex to the parallels that are at play in the larger masculine/feminine dynamic, the truths and patterns that we all work with-much larger than any individual or couple.

With the men, we first spent some time in circle discussing purpose.  It seems to me that purpose is foremost on our minds as men, the key to our availability, our happiness, our presence.  We then went to the forest (the old growth Emerald Forest that surrounds Breitenbush is an astoiunding and magical place) on a silent expedition to locate a sacred object that represented our purpose.  Once found, this object was to be given to the woman, in ceremony, for her safe-keeping, her cultivation, her care and support.

This giving of our purpose as men to the woman for her cultivation and care was a powerful exchange.  What this means, in the way of medicine, is that this object that represents our purpose, our gifts, our work in the world as men, is actually not in our own keeping but in the keeping of our woman.  It is ours as men, yet it lives in her medicine bundle or mesa.  This, as Wake Wheeler of Sacred Pathways pointed out to me, puts us as men in quite a conundrum for it means, in order to access this medicine, we must be in right relationship with our woman!  And if we are, we access this medicine not only with our own masculine power, but also the deep feminine support, love, and trust.  Aho.  Now this is the power of relationship.

"Your garden is not the garden of heaven, for it is heaven now for you.  It is the waking up now for you, and the realization that you are a star, a bright shining star that is to shoot across the galaxy and leave a trail of light."  The Way Home p. 72

The realization that we are all one, that each and every one of us is here for a specific purpose in this time, that each of us is full with divine light and this light is here to be accessed now is a powerful thought.  Yet it is more than a thought, it is an experience, and this experience is surely an experience that can carry us home.

Why do we doubt ourselves?  Why do we make ourselves less, and make other people more.  When we look into the deep reality of life we can see that we are all more, and in this way we are all intertwined, and interconnected, no matter our race or color or religious path of choice.  The connection is this light, this inner light that we share. The stuff that the universe is made up of, the stuff of the stars.  This is where we are one, and this is power.  This is the power that is rooted in the truth and the love that touches us all, that lives in us all.  And it is here to be accessed now, not in some far off place that is attained after we die.  The dying is now, to a way of life that is full with the loving and the dancing, for the birth of all things.

We Are the Ones We've been Waiting For

I was blessed to have been invited last week to the Intenational Gathering of Shaman hosted by Wake and Kinlen Wheeler in Yachats, Oregon.  Five days between the ocean and the fire.

What came to mind for me, and perhaps many others at the Gathering, was the Hopi poem and line "We are the Ones We've Been Waiting For."  It took a measure of courage as facilitators for Wake and Kinlen to step back and allow the unfolding to take place.  As facilitators we often want to control the situation, make sure people are having a valuable experience and get what we think they need.  But when we step back and allow, we are leaving it up to something greater, a greater force that moves through all the people, and moves through the space.

For it is not as if Wake and Kinlen did nothing.  They created, and they held the sacred space.  They created the space for ceremony.  They were the poles.  But perhaps this is really the role of the facilitator-to create the space, the ceremonial space, for others to flourish.  Kudos to Wake and Kinlen for this as I, for one, felt truly free to dance.  Click the link below for chanting around the fire.

The sacred fire is there for us to pray, for us to give thanks, for us to put everything that we have into its flames for the purpose of transformation, for the timeless song of prayer.

IGS, International Gathering of Shaman, took place this weekend on the coast in Yachats, Oregon.  The purpose, as far as I understand for myself, was to build a fire, a fire that is being built at the same time in hundreds of locales around the globe.  The fire is a fire of transformation, of prayer.  It is a fire for the healing of humanity, for world peace.  It is a fire for the Great Mother Earth and all that she gives to us.  A fire of community, of sacredness, oneness, and a way of life in which all things are honored and respected, in which all of humanity is one.

"The truth lies between what you think to be true, and what is the real reality of all things.  This is the real reality of you, and it is in the middle of these two things, in the middle or center of your chest, in the middle of your heart."   The Way Home p.76

The truth is the single most important facet of the spiritual journey.  Success, in any area of ones life, is directly linked to authenticity.  How authentic are we living our lives?  Are we speaking our truth?  Are we really living, or are we holding back for fear of judgement, what someone might do or say?  The truth is powerful.  The truth is empowerment.  Without this component there can be no path, for the truth is the path.