My Pipe

I have mentioned recently that a reader at my old blog Defining Spiritual Presence discovered a post that I had forgotten about and that led me to take a look at what else I might have missed bringing over to my new site.

Primarily, I found posts about my pipe. I have not discussed my pipe here at all as yet that I can remember. In fact its a very important part of my life. It is also something that I find difficult to put into words at times….but I want to begin to share a bit here about it….so I think I’ll start with sharing those old posts here for the next few weeks. When I’ve done publishing these reposts, I’ll see what I can add about my pipe. By then, I hope to be in a good place to be typing here regularly again because my holiday job that included typing will be complete by the time I’ve published these four or five posts on my pipe. Here’s the earliest from my old blog:

My sitting meditation these days has taken on a new activity. These days I am smoking a pipe. That is, I have been attending Native American ceremonies for nearly 15 years. As the years have passed, I have gained a profound reverence for the power and healing that’s available in this unique way of praying. In this prayer form, the pipe is considered the most sacred thing there is…a joining of male and female energies…a living being of power. Taking care of a pipe is considered a deeply sacred duty and anyone who keeps one in their home has a duty to keep their word if that word is given with the pipe. It is a matter of honor, but also there are karmic consequences for not keeping your word. It is believed that anything you pray for with the pipe will come true…so be very careful of what you pray for. Countless times over these years, I have seen that truth manifest in my life.This prayer form teaches people to pray for only what matters, to respect others’ right to fail, to have lessons that are harsh if that is what is needed to help them have strength and wisdom….because in this culture, strength and wisdom are the highest of achievements and this is profoundly revered because wisdom and strength in an individual serves the good of the people.

In this culture the group is always put first before the individual. This may seem like the individual would therefore be always left in the cold, but it doesn’t work that way. Communities that form around the pipe are formed of well cared for individuals. Each person within the community is a precious part of the whole. The group takes care of the individuals, just as the individual takes care of the group.

This prayer form is unique to this culture of North America…and it is an integral part of the way the land here speaks to the people. Smoking a pipe is like coming home to the land here. It is like becoming a part of it. It feels right…even though it is not my blood culture…it feels like my home because I am a part of the land here….I was born in this place, I am nourished and kept alive by this land here…it feels like it is my duty to pray in a way that the land here resonates with…

I did not always feel that way. For many years, I felt that it wouldn’t be right to have a pipe. It isn’t my culture. It isn’t respectful of the culture it sprung from…a people who have had so much stolen from them…stolen by my blood relatives in fact….actions which I benefit from still I reminded myself.

But I could not ignore the incremental, determined call of my pipe. It took 16+ years to get here. I took the long road because I yearned for the healing and strength that pipe ceremonies gave to me. My resistance to having a pipe fled before my sense of responsibility to what has given me so much wholeness in my life. I had to listen.

Somehow holding this pipe feels like a circle has been closed…that I have joined two ragged ends and made them whole inside my own heart. So I am sitting with this pipe to meditate and pray. I pray for the land, for the people of the earth, for everyone who is starving, who only have dirty water to drink, who are embattled and in danger, for the warring nations, for those who are ill, for the children without guidance and protection…

I pray for my family, my chosen family and my relatives.

When I sit in that smoke, when I am surrounded by the spirit of the pipe, I feel a deep peace. I feel that I am following guidance that I long resisted and that being in the smoke is an affirmation of listening deeply to guidance that is true.

I have been smoking someone else’s pipe these past months. It was loaned to me until I could obtain my own stone and stem. I have the stone now and I will soon begin carving it. Another sort of meditation that will infuse my sitting meditation in the months to come.

I do not have a particular point to this post…mostly, I wanted to share the peace; the stillness that smoking the pipe creates in me…to plant that seed…to let it ripple into the world. May you be well and at peace. Blessings

This was posted to Defining Spiritual Presence a year ago now. More to come….

The Soul of Fire

I posted this on my first blog ever and when I moved my blogging activities to Blogger, I reposted it on Defining Spiritual Presence. It continues to be a topic that I love and when I found it nestled in the archives at Defining, I knew I wanted it here…so yet another reposting of this soulful subject. *smiles*

“I love fire. I spend alot of time with it. At least twice a month, I keep a fire going to heat stones for ceremonies I participate in.

The other day, I was helping a friend with his bon fire for brush. I had offered to help and that day he took me up on it…to my great pleasure. To me it was alot of hard work, but it was also yet another chance to be with fire.

I asked my friend what the definition of life is. He looked at me a little puzzled about where that left field question came from. I had a point to make and he knew it or I wouldn’t have asked such a specific random question. He answered that it consumes and breaths. I said yes and it reproduces, needs heat to live and leaves waste…then I pointed to the fire and said, that is alive. By that definition fire is alive.

I have come to believe that fire is a living entity. I have seen amazing things happen around a fire…especially in the company of people who have made a special relationship with it. I have a close friend whom I have watched put his bare hands on a flaming log, pick it up and put it where he wanted it, which was back covering the rocks the log was supposed to be heating for ceremony. Flames danced all over his hands, but left no marks. He didn’t know I was watching him until he was done or he wouldn’t have done it. I have seen this same man and several other people I know well pat and rub stones that were red from the fire as they entered the ceremonial space.

I have been making a relationship with fire myself over the years. I can’t do those things that I just described, but I have been healed instantly after the fire has kissed me. I’ve had my hair, eyelashes and clothing burned but not been hurt…so many times I can’t count them. Often times I don’t even know it has happened until someone points it out to me. I’ve been singed now and again by heat from the fire, but the fire itself has never hurt me. Even those singe marks are always healed without scarring by the following day and sometimes even within moments. I have grown to trust fire…and I have grown accustomed to getting right in close to large fires and I love the heat of it…the vital life of it. My friends call it dancing with the fire.

Being with fire this way reminds me of loving. It is a dance. It is a risk. It is a living breathing experience of life. It is not predictable. It is a relationship that has to be nurtured. It is easy to get hurt. It is entrancing, beautiful, mercurial. It is life.“

This was a post I wrote on an old blog…from May or June 2006 I believe….My relationship with fire has evolved in these intervening months….and I had some more to add.

I don’t think it’s a philosophy or a personal story that I have to share. It is more a visceral experience to put words to…

The sense that it is untamed…

That might seem like an obvious statement, but by this I don’t mean that it will consume what it wishes…I mean that it is so ephemeral that we are not able currently to understand it’s spirit, only it’s science…no by untamed I mean just that…that we can lay no claim to it’s spirit. It is beyond our ken, though it is a living being. It is something that we can birth as we choose, that we can make alliance with by controling it’s environment…but we have no true power over it… Sooner or later it will burst the walls we place around it and find a way to be free…and isn’t that really the one quintessential aspect of life that’s so Divine, so hopeful, so inspiring?

Its been a long time since I reposted this on Defining. I have again evolved in my relations with Fire. I have even more respect for it than I did when I updated my thoughts last. I have had some far deeper experiences with it in the last year. It seems a being of Love to me now. Before it was an untamed essence…not a thing…but also that in fact. Now it is an entity of Love…in every sense of the word…something that takes care.

I know that must sound quite odd…but I see this being as intelligent now…or at least something capable of being a robe for something very beautiful and Divine. I do not know which. To me, if it was the Fire and something More. It was seamless….and I was mesmerized and awestruck and rendered speechless on this subject for months now. I still cannot set words to it. I can only say that at the end of the six days that I got to care for this fire during a special ceremony I attend each year, I knew that I had not deepened my relationship with it enough to care for it safely any more. I had to step back and out of that fire or be burned.

I have always thought about what I was taught as a child in Sunday School. I had asked by we couldn’t see and experience God directly. The teacher answered because it is so brilliant, so beautiful and refined that it would burn us. We are not ready.

That’s how the fire felt to me on that last day.

I aspire to be ready some day…to dance in that fire even on the last day.

I wonder what changes will arise in me from doing so…?

Invocations for Celebrations

One of my favorite writers is MotherWintermoon from Romancing The Crone. Recently she wrote a lovely post called Celtic Blessings to You in which she included some Celtic invocations and blessings that I thought were just marvelous…I thought you’d enjoy a redirect to her place so you too could enjoy these traditional and original spiritual poems if you hadn’t seen them already:

I am the Creator that Dreams

by Mystery School Initiate, Ember Flower - Northernway

I am the Creator that dreams
I am the Creation
I am the atom, the molecule and the space in between
I am the trees and the forest, the wind and the air
The stars and the twinkle
I dance the cosmic dance , I am the dance
I am you and you are me
There is no separation only oneness
I am thought I am matter
I am love and I am joy
I am sadness and sorrow
I am he and I am she, and I am it
I am the flower and the stone
I am the heartbeat and the rain
The sorrow and the pain
The moon and the stars
I am all and all is me
Life is my thought and my dream
I am all there is and all there is, is me
I am now and becoming
Forever unfolding in the mist of time.
I dream and so it is
You are child of light, I am the Flame of Life
No separation exists, only union
The child lives within the flame
Feel my presence, feel my magic
All is magic, all is life, my beloved flower
Allow the joy and love to flow through you
And out there.
As you touch the word know that it is my hand and my voice
As the world touches you, know that it is I
Feel the exchange folding back into itself
As I touch your mind know that you are transformed
Never to be the same again
Transformed from darkness to light
From sleeping to wakefulness,
And so the world awakes, one cell at a time
One cell in happy awareness of union with the divine
Your time has come daughter of Light arise in your wakefulness and help to create paradise, in love and joy
Be a conscious participant
Live in the now.
Not tomorrow or yesterday but in the only time that is real, eternity.

Invocation

 

 

The effect of this invocation is to bring your whole being into the now moment. It will orient your being in time and space and orienting your focus to the sacred around you and in you. It will elicit the subtle essence of the five elements of earth, water, fire, air and spirit. It will elicit the subtle essence of your five levels of being to be in balance, body, mind, heart, soul and spirit. It can also elicit the attention of supportive consciousness that you find important and helpful to your comfort, serenity, protection and guidance through life….and it can even help with spiritual development in that it provides a constant safe space in which to rest, cocoon, renew and source.

I am sharing the invocation, which I use in my pipe ceremonies and in my personal meditations. The language I have chosen reflects my current needs and shamanic focus and it reflect the current primary influences of my ceremonial and meditation experiences. For instance, it is my personal focus to start things where nature begins…in the darkness. It is my personal focus to start things with a period of introspection and rest, so that power is gathered….hence I start my invocations in the West and not the East as most start directional invocations. This is what I do. I am sharing this with you as an example of what the invocation can be like. It is not necessary to use this language or to start in any particular place on the wheel of the seven directions… It is simply an example to follow. It is, however important that you use directional influences to get the effect the invocation should offer, which is to orient you through the space and time around you and direct your focus eventually into the internal safe space called YOU.

 

Seven Directions Invocation

 

Blessed Holy Spirits of the West

I call out to you. I send my voice…

I say to you, Friend, look over here.

Blessed Holy Spirits please send,

The Bear and the Horse Nations and the Thunder Beings.

Blessed Spirits of the West

I ask that you fill my body, mind, heart, soul and spirit with your love, your healing, your wisdom and your joy.

Mitakuye Oyasin (Mee-tahk-oo-ee Oy-ah-sin; means I agree and send this prayer to all my relations.)

 

Blessed Holy Spirits of the North

I call out to you. I send my voice…

I say to you, Friend, look over here.

Blessed Holy Spirits please send,

The Buffalo, the Deer and the Heron Nations

Blessed Spirits of the North

I ask that you fill my body, mind, heart, soul and spirit with your love, your healing, your wisdom and your joy.

Mitakuye Oyasin

 

Blessed Holy Spirits of the East

I call out to you. I send my voice…

I say to you, Friend, look over here.

Blessed Holy Spirits please send,

The Winged Nation. the Morning Star to guide me and the Star Nation

Blessed Spirits of the East

I ask that you fill my body, mind, heart, soul and spirit with your love, your healing, your wisdom and your joy.

Mitakuye Oyasin

 

Blessed Holy Spirits of the South

I call out to you. I send my voice…

I say to you, Friend, look over here.

Blessed Holy Spirits please send,

Iktomi and the Spider Nation, the Reptile Nation and the Ancestors and Progeny.

Blessed Spirits of the South

I ask that you fill my body, mind, heart, soul and spirit with your love, your healing, your wisdom and your joy.

Mitakuye Oyasin

 

Blessed Holy Sky Father

I call out to you. I send my voice…

I say to you, Friend, look over here.

Blessed Holy Spirit please send,

The Beings of Light, the Cloud People, and the Beings of Air, Scent, Color and Sound

Blessed Spirits of the Sky

I ask that you fill my body, mind, heart, soul and spirit with your love, your healing, your wisdom and your joy.

Mitakuye Oyasin

 

Blessed Holy Earth Mother

I call out to you. I send my voice…

I say to you, Friend, look over here.

Blessed Holy Spirit please send,

The Tree and the Plant Nation, the Stone People, the Bee and Ant Nations, the Little People, and the Fire and Water Beings

Blessed Spirits of the Earth

I ask that you fill my body, mind, heart, soul and spirit with your love, your healing, your wisdom and your joy.

Mitakuye Oyasin

Oh Great Mystery, Alive in all things,

Awaken me…

Make me aware of your life inside me each moment of each day of my life

Blessed Mystery

Awaken my body, mind, heart, soul, and spirit to your love, your healing, your wisdom and your joy.

Blessed Reiki, Prana, Kundalini, rise in me gently and make my life better, more joyful and more full of what I need.

Walk this day and this night with me. Protect me. Guide me. Help me. Comfort me. Heal me.

Pilamya(pee-lah-mea; Thank you)

Mitakuye Oyasin

 

As you can see, Invocations with repetitive elements are hypnotic and they are easier to remember. This leaves you freer to memorize the prayer and will leave you freer to focus on the parts of the prayer that you should be focused on; the Beings you’ve asked to pay attention to you and the orienting slowly toward the center and now moment as the prayer unfolds. So, when designing your own invocations, try to create a cadence that will lull the mind and which reflects your personality and ritual/meditation style. It will make the practice more effective in its impact because the intellect will relax under its repetitiveness. I’d also recommend that you give yourself time to feel the presence of each direction’s energies and entities as they do as you ask; gather round you before you call the next. Consider that your inward voice is calling into the air loudly, though your voice may be a whisper. Your everyday voice is not really what calls the Spirits, it is your internal one, so be aware of this when you make your payers.

Understand that you have called for the attention of Spirits that you’ve invited to help you in certain ways. Relax into it and know that your prayers will be answered. Let them help you…

Mitakuye Oyasin

 

Copyright 09/2006 Shannee Green

Prayer For Guidance

Beloved Creator, Almighty Maker,

Through the rays of the sun,
Through the waves of the air, Through the all-pervading life in space,
I am of You, You are of me, We are one… I am Your tool. May I listen well. May I act wisely and with compassion. May the words from my lips be spoken purely from you. May my choices and true will be directly aligned with Yours. I begin in the name of the Merciful and Compassionate Ones… Blessed be.

I use this prayer to activate my shamanic connection with the Divine and with the elements. I use it to activate a humble and loving state of being prior to doing service work such as healing, guiding, ritual or meditation facilitation. Sometimes this prayer becomes the medium for that service. The beginning of this prayer finds inspiration in the Sufi Nayaz prayer.