Five Elements And The Feminine Divine Meditation – Video

My friend Jim recorded a conversation we had a few weeks ago about the elements and the divine feminine.

It’s now posted at the Meditation Techniques website, along with some commentary and context.

I really like the site, which has a variety of quick and easy techniques that anyone can do to find their way into meditation. We all know that changing your mind and heart and body happens at deep levels. These can best be accessed through inner concentration and meditative techniques that have been known down through the centuries by the sages and wise of all the religions and traditions. It’s great to see it becoming so accessible!

I thought I’d post the video here, too.

 

Old Friend

I’m sad today knowing that an old friend is close to his final passage, and that there is nothing I can do but send loving thoughts from a distance. I’m also sensing the collapse of my own history as it reconfigures to continue without his presence, feeling these shifts and changes. Memories of course come rushing in, along with understanding that as he lets go more and more of the life in the seen universe, he becomes a pinpoint in preparation to pass through the narrow gate. Dissolution or reunion? Natural reality reveals itself no matter what you may believe. This is the greatest human journey.

“I was a young man, back in nineteen sixties. You made your own amusements then, going to the pictures….” Incredible String Band.

Moroccan Tea and In Love with the Mystery

We celebrated the arrival of the book and cd In Love with the Mystery, and Ann signed dedications to all the people who had pre-ordered. Now we are planning launches in Victoria and Vancouver in early November.
I’m really thrilled about this whole project and felt truly inspired to write this reflection on it:

Ann Mortifee, A Contemporary St. Hildegarde

by Carol Sill

A contemporary St. Hildegarde whose visions find expression in an integration of the  arts, Ann Mortifee has done it again with her extraordinary book and CD In Love with the Mystery.

Perhaps her most complete and integrated expression, a natural development from the masterful Into the Heart of the Sangoma, In Love with the Mystery reveals Ann’s core of wisdom and meaning that she has found in the inner life. A mature integration, it is born of the completion of her life now with her soul mate husband Paul Horn. Through this relationship a new love of the mystery has revealed itself. But make no mistake, as a woman whose inner guidance has taken her around the world (both inner and outer) many times seeking the truth in all its forms and manifestations, Ann Mortifee herself is a force of nature.

What strikes me most is the way she seemingly effortlessly expresses the depth of humanity’s greatest aspirations and most profound seeking. She is a contemporary shaman, whose work reveals a personal integration of the world’s highest meditation teachings and new age spirituality with depth psychology and the hard-won truths of existence. Her expressions are not wishful thinking, speculation or theoretical. They are lived and breathed in the life of a woman today.

“Sacrifice all your resistance on the altar of your own becoming,” is something that she is doing each day. Her voice is the voice of experience.

Musically I compare her to Hildegarde because her inspiration comes so much in sound, and In Love with the Mystery reveals an intimacy with the essence of sound’s source and the celebration of this that music affords.

The progress of the recorded pieces acts as a complete mystery process, enabling the listener to sense and feel the divine relationship: from aspiration, to removing barriers, to contemplative silence, then ecstatic union, and knowing celebration. Each of these is expressed and explored in music which speaks to the body, heart and soul. It bears much more than just one listening. Move with it, dance with it, or sit and contemplate with it: this music opens the heart.

Her book, on which the lyric of the music is based, offers rich images to enhance the inner contemplation of each of the passages. It is a book to be opened and savored again and again, as each time another facet reveals itself.  Ann’s inspired words bring home simple truths and profound contemplations in a stunning revelation of what it means to be human in these times of profound transition and change.

To me, In Love with the Mystery ranks with the work of the great mystics and seekers: poets like Rumi who whirled and spoke poetry in his love for Shams Tabriz, or saints like Hildegarde who heard, saw and felt the Divine. The whole work is a synaesthetic feast, an offering for the Divine Beloved.

Mindfulness and Intimacy Retreat

I’m looking forward to the upcoming Women’s Mindfulness and Intimacy workshop with Nancy Mortifee, once again at Cascadia in Roberts Creek BC.  Three days on the beautiful Sunshine Coast! Sept. 24th -26th.

Click on the flyer to view the info full size

Connect at the Cascadia site

See Nancy’s info at Mortifee Training.

I Love “In Love with the Mystery”

Editorial work for Ann Mortifee’s new book and cd project, In Love with the Mystery, has been extremely satisfying and a personally deepening experience. Ever since I had the opportunity to work with curator Pavel Alejandro Barrios Sosa on the English translation of his catalogue essay on the group exhibition in Cuba, Los Artistas Majos, I have been yearning to editorially go deep into the meaning and implications of words on a poetic level. Ann’s project brought this to me, and it has been a great joy mining her words to ensure they are saying what her heartsoul was pouring out through her. Along with her exquisite inspired writing, there is also a beautiful music CD that accompanies the book, featuring Ann and her husband Paul Horn and friends.

The book is now available for pre-order, and it is absolutely beautiful. Photos by the renowned Canadian photographer, Courtney Milne are integral to the stunning design by Diane Jensen-Feught.

Find out all about it here on Ann’s new site.

Nancy Mortifee and I put together this new site for Ann’s work, giving her an updated web presence and a place that could be easily added to when her workshop and appearance schedule changes, and as the reviews and interviews happen around the book and other events. Just waiting for the video to come into place and it will be wonderful.

Discovering Robert Lax

I discovered

I could

Call

Robert Lax

with my iphone

His name

like an air port

His text message

One

True

Word

Yesterday I spent wonderful and meaningful time googling Lax, discovering his work. Friend of Merton and Ad Reinhardt, poet, solitary, mystic – minimalist, profound, sincere.

Yoga Nidra

I’ve become more and more dedicated to the inner practice of Yoga Nidra, something I had been interested in years ago through connection with Swami Rama. When I saw that the YWCA in Vancouver, an unlikely spot for inner yoga work, was featuring a class on Tuesday afternoons on Yoga Nidra, I was very excited and have been a regular attendee. The gym is filled with people lying down in savasana, covered in blankets, perfectly still and practicing Yoga Nidra.

Innerly, the process is extremely useful and can be a very high meditation. It also gives equillibrium, great peace of mind, stress relief and profound relaxation. The instructor for the class is very knowledgeable and gives clear, direct and no-bullshit instructions. There is no overlay of the kind of so-called spiritual advice, but rather a direct guidance to the straight goods, for you to find out for yourself.

After taking the class regularly, I interviewed Yogachaitanya, the instructor, for the project I was working on at the time, Open Source Spirit (this site is now in transition.) I’d include a video here, but wordpress.com won’t let me post it. You can find a link and CDs of the instructions for this Yoga Nidra, here at his site.

This practice of Yoga Nidra has been particularly helpful to me in the past few months, when my mother was so ill, and I was travelling back and forth, visiting her at the hospital and then at the hospice, and then after her passing. I just followed the instructions on my ipod and there was immediate relaxation and peace of mind that persisted within me through the days during one of the most stressful and intense times of my life. Using these instructions from the CD was a godsend, and kept me in the spirit of the process at its most meaningful, and the practice has remained helpful to me to this day.

Normally, I am not a fan of guided meditations, which I feel are more a form of hypnosis than training, and there comes to be a reliance on them, rather than self-aware involvement that is your own. In this situation however, I was very grateful for the assistance, and the leading of my conscious awareness into the openings of spirit.

8000 Sacred Drums Ceremony in Vancouver

8,000 Sacred Drums Ceremony

March 21, 2009 2:00-5:00 pm Victory Square Park (Cambie and E. Hastings)

This is a worldwide call to Indigenous Peoples and Humankind to join together. According to a 500 year old Otomi (Mexico) Prophecy, the day when the sounds of eight thousand sacred drums join together an intense healing Healing of Mother Earth will commence. The earth we share today is in total disequilibrium. Let’s work together so we can live together on the road to Sacred Peace, in harmony with the Universe, Mother Nature, the Community, the Family and our own Hearts.

** PROGRAM:** – Gather at 2 pm – Elders opening, followed by speakers – 3 pm: Drumming circle (ALL NATIONS, PLEASE JOIN US!) – 4 pm: Elders/youth storytelling and sharing circle hosted by Indigenous Action Movement and No One Is Illegal

Organized by the Indigenous Action Movement with the support of No One Is Illegal, Anti Poverty Committee, and BCGEU.

Email: powwowlistings@gmail.com or see Event page on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=56178215317&ref=nf

New Quiz on Agrippa

I had fun today putting together another quiz on esoteric lore. Enjoy!

Test your skill!

New Quiz: Mantra and Meditation

Here’s another quiz – you can add your own questions to it if you like! Click on the image and you should go directly to the quiz page.