We live in a world that normalizes harshness. Each day our world, our conduct, our communication, gets a little harsher because each day what was once harsh is now normal and acceptable. How do we escape being drawn down into it?
The answer seems easy - so easy that it seems trivial and dumb. However, it is quite powerful and even life altering.
It takes intentionality and discipline – two things that the powers that rule your daily life want to keep you from adopting. The powers want you to remain distracted, angry at tweets, fearful and depressed, horny, lonely and envious, so that your energy is drained, and in the end, you yearn to just "Chill and Netflix." In that state, the powers can do what they want, with a numb and compliant populace. How do you pull yourself out of the numbness, and stop being compliant?
Here is a key: shamans say draw your personal power from nature. Nature is a larger power than the foces of culture. Nature carries more weight - and more wisdom - than the King, the Priest, the Judge, and even the executioner.
Beginning Tuesday, we get to live through a wondrous few days of the super, blue, blood moon. This is a great chance to practice drawing power from nature in a formalized way, the way the shamans teach.
How to do it: Make a vow to start your day with a prayer, asking anything in nature to deliver power to you. Right now, you can use this wondrous super moon that is growing. When you wake up, before you glance at that device (and get drawn into its hypnotic power), before you begin worrying and stressing and building your daily armor, lie in the bed, or sit on the edge, place your hand over your heart center, imagine this place in your body being open and soft, and ask the moon, the sun, the tress, the animals, the cold wind of winter – anything in nature that you find powerful – ask it to deliver into you, into your body, into your energetic signature, some of its power. That place in nature can be anywhere - close by, a place you know, or distant - a place you once visited, or want to. It can be the landscape of your childhood, even if you haven't been tehre in decades, for the landscape of your childhood is one of your protectors - it's embedded in your energetic signature.
Here is a way to draw power from the moon. You can use any words, but here's a simple example:
Mother moon,
Growing pure white and radiant in the winter sky,
Send some of your power into me right now
So that I may walk through this day with strength.
Think about the "power" the moon represents to you. Maybe it's "distant calm." Or being receptive to the love of the sun. Or maybe it's the "inconstant moon" that Juliet warns Romeo against:
JULIET: O, swear not by the moon, th' inconstant moon, That monthly changes in her circle orb,
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.
But another way of seeing the "inconstant " moon is "the adaptive, resilient" moon, the moon that reminds us that everything flows, because this is how nature works.
You can ask the moon to deliverer into you - into your heart center, into your energetic signature - these powers. So that you may live with the kind of strength and effectiveness that these powers bring.
Here is a more elaborate version, my version drawn from ancient Scottish prayer structures:
Beauty of the skies, gem of the night!
Mother of the stars, gem of the night!
I bow my head to you.
Weaver of dreams, weaver of the next shape, gem of the night!
Lamp in the dark, guide for the heartfelt seeker.
I bend my knee to you.
Come, Silver-Faced One and play my body like a drum.
Play my skin, play my heart, call them open.
Send some of your power into me.
Mother of the night,
Weaver of the new dream,
Weaver of the new day
and the new song,
Come and call me, too, into my fullness.
On the Celtic medicine wheel, we are in the time popularly associated with the goddess Brigid, seen as the goddess who brings the springtime. Early February is her time to begin to rise up from the land. Bridget or Brigid is a Gaelic/Irish female name derived from the noun brígh, meaning "power, strength, vigor, virtue". You can ask the sun to deliver power, strength, vigor and virtue into your heart center.
Make this a morning discipline. Before your feet touch the floor, make prayers for power and strength, and give thanks to nature for bringing medicine when you ask. Again, the prayer can be very simple:
Hello, sun. You are so powerful, so full of power. You bring all life to earth, and I thank you you and honor you. Send some of your fire, some of your power, some of your light into me right now, so that I can walk though today with strength, vigor and virtue. Thank you.
Here is my more elaborate version, again drawn from ancient Scottish prayer structures:
I welcome you, sun of the seasons
As you light the new day.
You travel the sky on strong wings.
Your steps are strong on the path through the stars.
Each day you climb the high mountain singing the song of life into each of us.
You are the old one.
You are the wise one.
You are the beautiful one.
You are the glorious grandfather of life.
You are the mother of fire
And the bringer of power.
Each night you descend into the deadly sea
Without distress and without fear.
You rise up again on the wave of peace
Like a youthful Queen in bloom.
Great sun, give me a little piece of your power so that my steps may be strong,
So that I, too, may bring life and blessing to the creatures and the earth and the people.
I wish you well on your journey through this day
And through all of your days.
Making prayer in the morning, before you do anything else, is a basic and easy way to integrate shamanic techniques into your life. You may be surprised at how effective they are!
There is a next powerful step too: replace the impulse to check your email with a 20 seconds of prayer, of drawing power from nature. This single sentence can truly alter your life. How many times a day to you compulsively check your phone for em,ail or text or Facebook? Replace one, then two, then a dozen of those impulses with prayer asking for power form nature. You may be amazed at how this shifts your energy.