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Healing the Parasite of "Brokeness"

7/25/2018

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PictureArt: Shaun Mooney (Click the pic)
It's a conundrum: why so much of our life is focused on convincing us we suck. Our mainstream religious tradition tells us we are literally born broken, born diseased with original sin. And sermon after sermon tells us how broken we are, and will be our whole lives. Many of us grew up in houses in which we were told how deficient we are, how disappointing, how stupid, how ugly, how smothered in failure. Capitalism sprang from this cosmic worldview, in which we are never enough, and we need to constantly prove ourselves worthy before God by acquiring more, or tgetting the next better thing (like yoga with goats). My teacher calls all of this the self-deprecation parasite.

Just like the intestinal parasite that comes home with you from Peru, this self-deprecation bug is not us, it is something that comes into us to live, to feed on our essential energy. Many people never rid themselves of this parasite, and it feeds on them their whole life - and through them, it feeds on their children, spouses and others. The self-esteem parenting movement in the 1980's, which is now roundly ridiculed as "kids getting trophies for last place," was cosmetic. It didn't remove the parasite, it just put rouge on cheeks drained of life energy by the self deprecation parasite. In the weakened state as the parasite feeds, we become more vulnerable to other parasites: fear, depression, anxiety.

The self-deprecation parasite infests individuals, but it also spreads to an entire culture, making an entire people so hungry that no luxury or privilege they receive is ever enough. Well, this is a huge topic that can barely be opened here, but hopefully you get the idea.

So how can we rid ourselves of the parasite? Here are four ideas:

1) The teacher I mentioned above has a very good book about dealing with the seven parasites that infest humans. I frequently use this book in classes and it's required reading in my shamanic training programs.

2) A book is helpful, but it's a cerebral approach, and it is best accompanied by ceremonial healing work, which takes a non-rational approach. We can analyze and think our way out of many traps, but the mind really is not the tool to remove embedded energetic and spiritual patterns. The "Summer Mini Apprenticeship" mentioned below is a way to get some actual healing of the parasite.

3) Ready for the crazy? We are coming into the last full moon of full summer, and as absolutely crazy as it may sound, moonlight is medicine. That sounds crazy because a) the parasite tries to convince us to look for medicine everywhere that will be ineffective, so that it can continue to feed on us and b) moonlight is free and does not depend on an ordained man to dispense it to you. Nature is medicine.

So, try this: in the next couple of days, make prayers to the moon to remove the parasite. These prayers need to he deeply heartfelt. Tell Madre Luna (Mother Moon) how tired you are of being controlled by this goddamned parasite that drains your energy, makes your relationships suffer, your art-soul suffer, and how it separates you from the love of life.

Sometime during the three nights of the full moon, (or all three nights) stand in the moonlight and let it bring you the medicine. While She is pouring the medicine into you, accept it. This is the hard part. Let it flow into every nook and cranny in you. Visualize it doing so. The parasite (which infests every level of our culture) will be telling you this can't possibly work - it's too simple, it's too woo-woo.

But it's not simple. When you call on moonlight as medicine, you are calling on a vast system of energy to come and work on your behalf.

4) We will be doing work like this at this Saturday's drum circle/ceremony. There are some spots open - email me to make a reservation: drummingthesoulawake@gmail.com

I leave you with this poem, my adaptation of Rumi:

Come, play your drum
Calling, Calling.
Now the skin of your soul has been touched.
Now the body of your soul has been opened.
And that moonlight
Hidden on the other side for too long
Comes dancing across your face.
Once again, 
You are new. 
New.

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Summoning Prophetic Fire

7/9/2018

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Picture
(At the end of this piece, I offer you a shamanic practice that I hope will be useful.)

We are in the hottest part of summer now, the apex of the direction South on the Celtic medicine wheel.

The sun is in its full song of love for the earth right now. The old man sings his wooing song, bright and fiery, and the old woman swoons with delight. Her skin glows green with her pleasure, and she sighs with the sound of birdsong and flowing water. The wave crests glisten and sparkle with the old man's fiery kisses. The lilies open, the bees dance in. This is how this world moves forward - through love and delight. It is only humans who don't see this, and if you want a shaman's definition of sin, that would be it.

It's difficult to see the world through this lens of love. We are taught hundreds of times a day, from the internet, the newspaper, the classroom, and the pulpit, that we should see the world through the lens of fear and anger – that to see the world through the lens of love is namby-pamby new age unicorn fart woo-woo, or it's denial, or white-privilege-induced, or unrealistic. Many voices line up to tell you to cease and desist seeing the world through the lens of love.

The famous biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann wrote about the role of the prophet in ancient Israel: "It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of imagination, to keep on conjuring and proposing futures alternative to the single one the king wants to urge as the only thinkable one.” *

In mythic terms, the King uses his power to constrict the people's imagination, to shrink their ability to imagine new futures that operate outside of the King's old rules. But this is what I call the Negative King. The positive King uses power to expand blessing, to expand imagination and beauty for the people. 

Our current negative king is the voice of twisted, ill, toxic masculinity, and it is that voice telling you to cease and desist seeing the world through the lens of love. Why? Because love is about connection, and the toxic masculine is wholly devoted to disconnection. Everything our current negative king values can only be achieved through continued disconnection from nature and from one another.

But the direction South on the wheel urges us to summon in us and in the world, a healthy masculinity. (Please be aware that I'm not talking about human gender here, but spiritual energies present in each of us, no matter where we are on the human gender wheel.) Healthy masculinity turns its power toward expanding imagination, not enforcing obedience to a limited imagining. Healthy masculinity honors and actively summons grief and beauty, which are eternally bound together and cannot live without one another. Healthy masculinity trades in its old tired certainty for new awe, and it welcomes when the watery Feminine corrects his impulse to destroy the world through fire. Summoning the healthy masculine is a form of calling in your prophetic powers to help change the world.

So, here are some ideas and practices you can employ in these fiery days:

  • Stand on the land and feel the power of love whirling around you in nature. Notice all the ways that love expresses itself. This seems so simple, but it is prophetically aberrant in our current time.
  • Make a simple prayer to the South: Ask the South - or Spirit, Godd/ess, Creator, The Boundless Blessing- to bring the power of love into you, to infuse it into you as strength against the crushing, shrinking power of the King's small universe. Ask it to bring the power of love into you to expand your imagination for yourself, to cleanse away old shame and self-deprecation. Ask the South to bring you into your fullness as a human being. (Remember, when you make a prayer like this, you need to fulfill your part of the agreement by actively taking steps to become what you are praying for. Spirit work in partnership with us, and we must step up and be a partner.) 
  • Look for opportunities to put your love into action. Ask yourself what your life would look like if you activated the prophetic power of Love and sent it into your world. Form (or repair) a connection that you know you want, but have been afraid to form. This connection can be outward, but it must also be inward. For example, it may be the connection to your own creativity, or to your own faith. The negative king doesn't want you connecting to your creativity, he doesn't want you to connect to the power of forgiveness, or awe. And he surely doesn't want to you to connect outward into the world - he would much rather have you at home worrying and fearing. Ask the powers greater than human to help you move past any fear that disconnects you and any grief that holds you back. (For this, you may need to work deeply with grief, which means working with the powerful ally West on the medicine wheel. The thing is, when you work well with one part of the wheel, it helps you work well with the other parts of the wheel. ) Ask to be reconnected internally to Love, and ask the Powers to help you use that inner power to connect you outward to the world. ​

Summer blessings to you.

* Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination (Fortress Press 1978), 45



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    Jaime Meyer is a writer and Shamanic Worker living in Minneapolis. 

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