Some of you many know that last night was a full moon night. For those of you who connect with astrology, the full moon was a significant event, adding to the intense energies of change and chaos of the times we live in. This is a story of how I received a Shiva teaching for these times from a group of possum visitors.
Read MoreUnraveling is a central practice in ancient spirituality. My philosophy teacher used to call it unlearning or dismantling. I like the word ‘unraveling’ because it connects with the movement sensation. All the words allude to the essence of spirituality which is not about acquiring, not even spiritual “information”, but about unraveling the stories we carry with us so we can be present and attending to the movement of reality in the moment.
Read MoreFor centuries women’s roles have manifested the service principle and asked a sacrifice of their passion, presence and unfolding, in service to this service principle. As mothers, wives and daughters, many of us as women have implicitly and explicitly been required to service the very foundations of the kind of societies we all live in today. These kind of service models are deified as Mother Goddesses who are infinitely giving and ask nothing but childlike affection in return. It is women’s unpaid (or underpaid) and unseen work in domestic and care giving roles that sustain the kind of lifestyles held as aspirational all over the world.
Read MoreWhen the ancients proposed dance as a lens of Reality, they were not simply being poetic and imaginative. They knew something essential and vital about the nature of consciousness and how to transform this so we can live within Earth Consciousness and not separate from Her. And dance, poetry and myth are necessary in this radical transformation.
Read MoreShiva comes at a time when we are in throes of a mind-dominated reality that is increasingly remote from its organic and material reality. For centuries we have sought to mechanically construct realities that separate us from Nature and Earth, having forgotten that Earth is our own consciousness and the fullness of our self.
Read MoreIn this video I share the archetypal and ancient story of the Churning of the Ocean, which is the opening of Natya Sastra, the 4000 year old text on Indian dance. I also share the practice of churning as consciousness cleansing movement.
Read MoreIn this video I share is my personal practice. I invoked Earth in the ancient wisdom of the Atharva Veda, the more than 8000 year old compilation of invocations that signals the embodied dance I practice. The oldest hymn to Earth is here, holding a moving acknowledgement of Earth’s intelligence, Her unfolding movement as Truth and Her infinite abundance. The ancients also recognise Her ferocity, not separate from anything, not punishing, not moral, but simply Her nature.
Read MoreIn the Shiva world, His dance of destruction invites inquiry into the very nature of the mind and its foundational lens of duality. Shiva’s dance is the movement of the dynamic, “unstable” cosmos, ever unpredictable in essence, even when it can delude our minds with moments of seeming conquest by our duality.
Read MoreMeasurement attempts to tame the ferocious energy of Reality, its matted locks flung across the cosmos, its wild and unpredictable dance and the awe-inspiring beauty of its unleashed infinity. None of this is measurable or even knowable by the mind.
Read MoreThere has been much discussion lately about the “tipping point” of our relationship with Nature and Earth, which of course is our Reality. And on individual levels many of us have also felt the urgency of recalibrating our place in Reality. People have been speaking about how we have created Reality as a “machine” or how the mind is “mechanistic.” And they have been speaking of the “wild” as being the way to balance this soulless reality we have created.
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