Patrick’s Blog.
The west direction and the slow decent into darkness is the time to both forgive ourselves and learn from silence and solitude. In attaining mastery over anything requires this “hero’s journey” – the decent into our darkness. From my surrender to alcoholic insanity and learning to lend a hand. AA taught me to discern the difference of lending a hand and giving a handout. By loving and forgiving ourselves first, we learn the noble truth of it is in the giving that we receive. The fall is learning and practicing fire tending. How to warm up and slow down. We first learn to tend our souls fire. Learning and practicing nurture. Step seven of the 12 steps is “we humbly asked spirit to lift our barriers to love”. I can’t “fix” myself. Humility is seeking to deflate the falseness and to surrender the past. I love the words from the healing song “Pacha Mama” – “Theirs no high, theirs no low, there is nowhere you need to go, just inside of you is a star, saying just be as you are. We carry the light into the darkness.
. Acceptance is the key to all of our problems. the soul tending is going into nature to heal. Going into the silence and darkness are what Grandmother bear and the trees are teaching us in late September.. Nature is wearing her coat of many colors as she reminds us to go within. We had a great sweat lodge, and prayed to the stone people to lift our spirits by letting go of the toxic poisons, anger and underlying tears, opinions, and beliefs we have ingested.
We line our lodge with cedar boughs on the earth. The stone people and the cedars can take our rage and anger and transform them. When we clear the belly of self defeating beliefs, we access our hearts songs. From lead to gold. From rape into noble passion – gratitude, Hope, kindness and love of life and art. Living a life of heart and meaning means following what has heart and meaning. The drum, drum making and drumming have taught me that. Together we can do anything. United we stand, divided we fall. Take down your barriers and let the emotions flow – letting go of worry and doubt and remembering the words of great teachers like Maya Angelou: “It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody”.. And that begins with me.

All is well and all will be well

They can be a great help—–words.  They can become the spirit’s hands…and lift….and caress.“The Spirits Hands” – Meister Eckhardt 

I wrote this in 2013, and edited it..

What a wonderful weekend we had in the beauty and mystery of bear creek and nature.  Words, silence, space and drumming.  On Saturday, as we were sitting in circle by our medicine wheel

, and a doe and her faun came to visit us.  Spirit was there, and magic was afoot.  Bear Creek contains the mysteries, which exists in the present moment.  The Mysteries is where truth meets beauty and heals the people and culture.  Mysteries can put us in a hypnotic trance or altered state.  The term mesmerized came form the research of Franz Mesmer who began this work in the 1700’s and was most popular in Europe, Germany and America.  Benjamin Franklin was involved in a scientific study to prove the presence and healing power of “animal magnetism”. (including the indigenous people’s belief that animals have powers and can heal us.) I have been mesmerized many times in nature.  The verb mesmerize is to hold the attention of (someone) to the exclusion

of all else: “she was mesmerized”; “a mesmerizing stare”.  The 28 classes I teach a year is all based on the sacred circle, or wheel that is eternal.  In order to earn the “gifts” of each direction, we must learn about releasing the victim/predator consciousness and move from wannabes and “I need to” toward willingness, which sets in the center of the circle. (your own hoop)

In recovery, acceptance and willingness are the keys to earning the promises much like the medicine wheel, and the gifts of the four directions which have to be earned through will or Volition.

Volition has five steps

The first step of volition is attention.  In my years of play therapy I practiced the Zen of “ball watching”, often referred to as tennis.  My teacher was an ex professional tennis player and holistic studies master. We would go three to four times a week for hours with the simple agenda to hit the ball to each other.  I hadn’t played like that since childhood, and was resisted to the idea, since my agenda had been to “beat” someone, and then to sabotage myself. I slowly broke my addiction to competition with others and began to come to my senses – in this case my eyes. His mantra was “to see or not to see”. He would often catch the ball and ask me which way the seams were turning? I went from “I don’t know” to actually seeing the ball, and not get caught up in planning results (looking at where I wanted to ball to end up rather than seeing the ball) and noticing I was holding my breath.

and what my breath was doing, teaching me to be totally absorbed in the ball, truly seeing and detached from thought…seeing each moving shot anew.  This would lead me into an incredible state of concentration, where time disappeared, my body started making moves that I had no idea it could make, all following my commitment to see the ball.  I have entered t

I have entered that same state on a day of fly-fishing.  The path to the mysterium is the walk into nature. Angeles Arrien in her book “The Second Half of Life” refers to the gates of wisdom, the passages we are invited to pass through, and one of these is the clay gate, which is about sensuality and sexuality, calling this gate “the gate you will never understand”  The creative fires in me were awakened this amazing weekend.  I am in town for a day, and I head back out to bear creek to feed my soul and spirit.  The four places to tend to the soul’s fire are the deep woods, the mountains, the desert and the seashore. I am learning to tend my souls fire by being in nature. Blessings, Patrick

 

Following a break for six months, I am beginning my teaching and healing circles on Oct. 16th in our “Heartspace ” above the store at 2239 E. Burnside.  Continue reading “Teachings of the West – Autumn’s gifts”

Thanksgiving may have its roots that cut across the different ways we still have ritual and Ceremony.  Christians have a way way of giving Thanks, as do most on the Red Road, as when we are aligned with the elements (in balance and grateful), magic begins to happen.  Continue reading “Thanksgiving”

Every Autumn, I explore fresh perspectives that keep my mind sharp and open to new, yet loyal to old.  In recovery, most all I have known with long term abstinence from alcohol have done the personal inventories and as a result of the “into action” steps, have been rewarded with the promises of recovery.  Continue reading “Moving through the Darkness”

I have a friend who has been rebuilding my well house at bear creek, and we had coffee this morning at my favorite coffee shop up the street.  He went Continue reading ““Teachings of the West””

Drum making in North Carolina and Washington. 

Among the greatest joys I know is helping others create their first drum.  Making the drum is a great venue for teaching how the breath (air) is

involved in movement.  How often do we move while holding our breath?  To become mindful of this cessation of breathing is the first step toward ease and grace.  Holding on creates many perverted bodies, minds and spirits, dis-eases as we spend time  guarding and armoring our wounds rather than feeling and healing them.  On the week

One of my best teachers of presence and heart was a man I met several years ago.  I was a fairly good racquetball player, very able to focus in the present, but my fear would come in and sabotage victory.  He reminded me that playing with my whole heart was the true nature of play, like the children.  I was addicted to “winning”, so I would get way ahead and then give up.  My false pride hated that.  We went on to form a short lived partnership that together, we would revive the spirit of play in America.  He taught me the simple act of hitting the ball to each other rather than  away from.  He invited me to begin using my atrophied side to gain more balance.  My relationship with the man taught me the importance of suiting up and showing up.  I journeyed to Marin County, California every month to complete 500 hours of “teacher training”.  I completed that task and my life changed.  I saw the correlation of grace and ease and how much I distract myself in my victim consciousness.  At the time I smoked tobacco, and I was the only one in the class who used tobacco.  I carried my shame well as I have always seemed to argue for the right to kill myself.  Many say that when the student is ready, the teacher appears.  I went on to look deeply into my life in AA’s “searching and fearless inventory” step.  Granted, I focused on what wasn’t working rather than what my assets were.  My guide or “sponsor” reminded me about the “white wolf” –seeing the beauty inside.  My next major learning was two years of “walking around the wheel” a course that was offered by some Souix teachers about the importance of balance.  I learned to make my first drum there, and I was hooked like an unaware trout.  I began to slowly shift my addictive nature into drum making.  I had no “intention” for making drums other than the joy it brought me.  One of the questions I was asked  by the first teacher was:  What would you give your whole heart to? My vision of Heartspace is the answer to that question.  From the lower world comes the fire-bird, the eagle that arises out of the ashes.  Can I attune my vibrations to that of the fire, air, earth and water.  Each element as each season have a teaching, and my 20 acres was/is to be a model of what can be replicated, yet part of the teachings are that growth has to be organic or it won’t last.  So my shifting into a real and authentic luster has taken and takes practice, polish, time, space, patience and faith and trust.  We are led by our breath and give thanks for the breath of life – our inspiration.