Songs of Awakening
November 5 and 12 ~~ 10am to 1pm
8801 Skyline Blvd
Oakland, CA
RSVP requested
contact: Ali @ 415.722.1840; 510.530.8907
earthmemory@yahoo.com
~~ $10 suggested
Part I ~~ Nov. 5, Saturday 10am - 1pm
What the Plants Teach I: the Human Flowering Response
The frequency: Thru breath, visualization, toning, ‘soning’
(the liminal world between toning and singing), and singing, we will work
with whole body breathing and voicing, tuned to the organizing intelligences
of heaven and earth. Organic 'framesongs' of blessing, devotion, celebration,
and appreciation will then be used to cultivate the plant within. Check
out here for examples: http://www.tribesofcreation.com/newsite/pages/songs.html
The story: This expands upon the story told in the songs.
The structural destiny of the body is to flower into complete and conscious
identification with the Divine. Spiritual life can be understood to begin
as the sprouting of the divine seed in our bellies, aka dan tien, or hara.
There it is warmed, and drawn to root, rise, branch, and bloom beneath
the radiance of our heart. How we fertilize the soil of our incarnation,
tend the garden of our relations, and purify our heart, determines the
extent to which this impulse awakens and matures in each of us. To cultivate
oneself with the intention to flower defines a way of life, one previewed
in sacred cultures of the past, and given new forms and urgency in modern
life.Part II ~~ Nov. 12, Saturday 10am - 1pm
What the Plants Teach I1: Our Birthright as a Singing Species
The frequency: The will again take us thru a plant-inspired journey
of voicework, this time with even more songs!
The story: Plant teachers can restore our awareness of
many primary qualities of humanness, among them our innate disposition
to sing. Here we explore the evolutionary dimensions of singing and languages
of resonance. We will touch on a web of subjects including: singing as
interspecies communication, using the voice to move and dissolve energy
blocks as well as to surface intuitions, the intentional language of spells,
organicizing our metaphors to enliven our reality, the importance of verbs,
why new tribes need new songs and how Spirit provides, the perennial 'bard'
tradition of oral teachings, and the creative potential of chanting worlds
into (and out of) existence.
What the Plants Teach
Salt Spring Island talk with Morgan Brent
At The Salt Spring Center of Yoga (B.C., Canada)
Friday Sept 16, 7-9pm & Saturday Sept 17, 9:30am to 12
Part I - Friday 7 - 9
What the Plants Teach I: Indigenous Consciousness
We are inheritors of a culture of separation from Nature so severe that
to be ‘normal’ is to act contrary to our own survival as a
species. The primary guidance offered us by the original instructions
encoded in our body, the ‘old language’ of spirit and its
teachings, have been largely forgotten. The earth is calling us to re-member.
Whispers awakening us from the trance of modernity are everywhere. This
talk identifies and clarifies these whisperings, giving voice to a perennial
indigenous consciousness. We will explore the Gaian metabolism, the ‘dharma’
(teachings) of its functioning, and the transmission of this dharma into
mythic archetypes. These myths, have birthed lineages of ceremonial and
transformative arts. Those are now alchemizing with the rational mind
of modernity, cross-pollinating, and blowing as seeds across the planet.
From these currents a world-wide neo-indigenous movement is shaping itself,
sprouting out of the compost of predatory capitalism. Part II - Saturday 9:30 – 12
What the Plants Teach II: the Human Flowering Response
The frequency: The 1st hour will connect us
to our birthright as a species of sound. Through breath, visualization,
toning, ‘soning’ (the liminal world between toning and singing),
we will cultivate whole body breathing and voicing, tuned to the organizing
intelligences of heaven and earth. This will be used to cultivate the
plant within.
The story: The 2nd hour expands upon the story
told in the songs. The structural destiny of the body is to flower into
complete and conscious identification with the Divine. Spiritual life
can be understood to begin as the sprouting of the divine seed in our
bellies, our dan tien, or hara. There it is warmed, and drawn to root,
rise, branch, and bloom beneath the radiance of our heart. How we fertilize
the soil of our incarnation, tend the garden of our relations, and purify
our heart, determines the extent to which this impulse awakens and matures
in each of us. To cultivate oneself with the intention to flower defines
a way of life, one previewed in sacred cultures of the past, and given
new forms and urgency in modern life
.
Suggested Donation $15
Sliding Scale
Evans Creek, Redmond, WA
Friday, Sept. 2, 7:00 pm {with overnight option}
Saturday, Sept. 3, 8:00 am
The Human Flowering Response - This class is as experiential journey into perennial teachings
arising from the Mind of Nature. These upwell through any individual or
community who seek deep communion with the divine through the bridges
of the natural world. These include pilgrimages to sacred sites, and opening
to the voice of the temple-body; communion with the devic realm, and meditations
with the crystal kin-dom; ceremonial intimacy with medicinal plants, and
peaceful interludes in gardens and forest glades;. Such experiences heal
the wounds of separation between humans and the greater society of Nature,
between ourselves and the ancestors. They serve to restore organicism
to our spiritual life, to understand our instincts towards union, meaningfulness,
purpose, expanded identity, prayer, and ceremony as natural acts of evolution.
These draw upon our shared heritage with the tribes of creation, all essentialized
in the human body. The human spirit is structurally destined to flower through
the body that unfurls from it. Spiritual life can be understood to begin
as the sprouting of the divine seed in our bellies, our dan tien, or hara.
There it is warmed, and drawn to root, rise, branch, and bloom beneath
the radiance of our heart. How we fertilize the soil of our incarnation,
tend the garden of our relations, and purify the light of our heart, determines
the extent to which this impulse awakens and matures in each of us. To
cultivate oneself with the intention to flower defines a way of life,
one previewed in various sacred cultures of the past. The great diversity of this inheritance has brought us sufi
dances, tantric sexuality, yoga, Christ conscious service work, Tibetan
sand paintings, digeridoos, African drumming, Native American sweat lodges,
and a plethora of other ceremonial and transformative arts. These lineages
are now alchemizing with the techno-rational mind of modernity, revivifying
in new ways with new adherents, cross-pollinating, and blowing as seeds
across the planet. From these currents a neo-indigenous movement is shaping
itself, sprouting out of the compost of predatory capitalism as it globalizes
its karmas into acts of self-destruction. Beneath the escalating crises we see in the news, another
story is emerging, a cyclic story of death and rebirth. The perennial
wisdom cultures attuned to the ever-evolving Gaian metabolism may have
been colonized, Christianized, industrialized, and consumerized into the
earth, and may have been bulldozed, burned at the stake, poisoned, and
buried under concrete. But to the earth they have gone, and from the earth
they arise. The earth is baring her belly before the onslaughts of deforestations,
factory fishing, and strip mining; she is laboring beneath the cries of
a civilization in its death throes, and the prayers for a peaceful world;
she is giving birth, as so many prophecies have foretold, to a more conscious
era of her life. The hue-man native to this era is maturing, like the
earth herself, to the harmonic of flowering, to the songs of a culture
come home to the family of creation. It is this, the frequency and the
story, the song of awakening and the culture it describes, which we will
explore in this class.The frequency: This 1st hour is designed
to get us in touch with our birthright as a singing species. Through breath,
visualization, toning, ‘soning’ (the liminal world between
toning and singing), we will cultivate a yoga of whole body breathing
and voicing, tuned to the great organizing intelligences of heaven and
earth. This will be used to cultivate the plant within, to flower our
voice and ourselves in songs of devotion, blessing, gratitude, and celebration.
See:
http://www.tribesofcreation.com/newsite/pages/songs.html
for a sampling of the songs. The story: This 2nd hour expands upon the
story told in the songs. It begins with a re-membrance of indigenous consciousness.
From there we explore modernity, which like a great annual plant has flowered
and is now dying, like so many civilizations before it, releasing the
nutrients and toxins of its life into the womb of the earth, fertilizing
and forming that which will follow it. How do we place ourselves in this
cusp between the ages, one that threatens to exterminate humanity and
much of the planet? We will create a space to discuss the teaching of
the “Nature Channel” on this, giving much attention to how
a planet-wide change in frequency urges itself through us in the impulses
to purify and flower ourselves and our surroundings.Donation suggested
go to: www.communitythreads.net / events page for more information.
Call 253-677-7420 for registration and directions
10th Annual NorthWest Herbal Faire
http://www.nwherbalfaire.com
River Farm, outside Bellingham, Washington
August 19-21, 2005
What the Plants Teach I: Indigenous Consciousness
Plants are an elder life form to the human and have worked to keep us
attuned with the society of Nature since our species began. They teach
that to honor the body is to honor the earth, for it is thru the medium
of the body that the land births spiritual traditions, ways that nourish
our success as a species. We will explore indigeneity as a birthright
of everyone, how to claim it, and what is to be claimed. We will cover
our legacy of separation from Nature/Spirit, and the elements I feel are
most useful in aiding our re-indigenization, including the Gaian dharma
(teachings of the planet), archetypal myths of re-membrance, and eco-cosmologies
of past and future.What the Plants Teach II: Cultural Evolution
This discussion begins with an exploration of the active constituent (AC
or pharmaceutical) model of herbal efficacy and its application to culture,
or, how things got to be the way they are. We use this metaphor to understand
the authoritative God, the forces of monoculture, origins of the drug
war, addictions and the culture of fear and alienation, and globalization
and its discontents. We then turn to the whole plant (WP or ecological)
model of herbal efficacy and apply it as a metaphor to understand the
life cycle of cultural revitalization movements. These two models illuminate
the modern cultural wars, and point towards their resolution in ‘bridge
cultures’ sprouting thru communities of conscious evolution planet-wide.Singing Alive with the Tribes of Creation:
An opportunity to further and flower your voice thru breathwork, visualizations,
toning, improvisations, prayer, and devotional singing. ~~ Every morning
of the three day Faire at 7 a.m..
The 5th Annual Fairy and Human
Relations Congress
http://www.fairycongress.com/
Riversong Forest Sanctuary - On the Hood River near
Mt. Hood, Oregon
Singing Alive with the Tribes of Creation:
An opportunity to further and flower your voice thru breathwork, visualizations,
toning, improvisations, prayer, and devotional singing. ~~ Every morning
of the three day congress at 7 a.m..The Human Flowering Response:
Within the plant is the potential of the human being, and within the human
being is the underlying energy structure of the plant. This talk takes
an anthroposophic understanding of the life cycle of a plant, and applies
it to the development of human spiritual life and culture. This organic
view of spirituality allows us to consciously participate with Nature's
flowering impulse, and all the helpful attention this brings from the
devic realm. ~~ Sunday, June 26th, 11:00 am