Nature is cheaper than therapy: Walkabout!

Xochitl, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Tim Martinez, Arroyo Seco Foundation (facebook)

"NATURE. CHEAPER THAN THERAPY." (Sun Gazing/facebook.com)

The shores of Hahamongna "Lake" along JPL and Watershed Park, Pasadena

How the native inhabitants, the Tongva, saw Hahamonga at the head of the LA River

  

Go with the flow. If nature is cheaper than therapy, what could be more therapeutic than a walkabout in spring?

Wisdom Quarterly will join the Dry Riverbed preservationists of the Arroyo Seco Foundation to talk about Tongva culture, engage in environmental activism to save and restore the sacred site, and enjoy what Douglas Adams coined "sand, surf, and suffering" (Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy).

The sun will be up, sand underfoot, surf lapping on the eastern edge of the park (thanks to the recent rains that came mysteriously out of nowhere), and "suffering" is ever present to remind us that enlightenment, nirvana, and freedom beckon.

• Hahamonga Walkabout 2014
• Watershed Park, Pasadena (lower lot)
• March 22, 9:00 am to noon

7-Day Kwan Yin Ceremony (March 9-16)

Dhr. Seven, Ven. Abbess, D. Tan, Wisdom Quarterly; Ling Yen Mountain Temple, California

Kwan Yin Bodhisattva, Kwannon, Avalokitesvara (Mig_T_One/flickr.com)

In celebration of Guan Yin Bodhisattva’s BIRTHDAY as well as that of beloved Ven. Master Miao Lien, Ling Yen Mountain Temple is conducting two 7-Day Guan Yin Dharma Services.

Kwan Yin Bodhisattva, Mu Ryang Sa Temple (WileyImages.com/flickr.com)

• To save all beings from Hell (Ksitigarbha)
• Adventures in Mahayana: Ling Yen Mountain

When we were in the Spirit World (video)

Xochitl, Ashley Wells, Seth Auberon, Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly Wikipedia edit

The spirit world can appear as weird and strange (Alex Tooth/deviantart.com)

Mother Earth, Father Sky, one a womb, the other a seed, brought together by falling rain.

(KE) The shamans of Mongolia and Siberia who preceded Native Americans illustrate that knowledge of the spirit world is not limited to any culture, group, or period. These Vajrayana Buddhists and animists as well as the rishis (seers) and yogis (hermit-ascetics) of India were well aware of these strange realms and their inhabitants. In northern Europe the spirit world was sometimes referred to as the Wyrd (like our word weird).

Rain Dancing Our Way into the Spirit World

We dance to make it rain calling on spirit helpers and spirit guides. The rain dance of the Navajo Native American was influenced by the Hopi and others (sonocarina)

 

Dryad or "tree nymph" spirit

The spirit world (spirit = breath = an invisible force like the wind), according to Spiritualism, is the adjacent world inhabited by spirits. (WQ Rain Dance)

In Buddhism "spirits" are variously called devas, petas, nagas, suparnas, gandharvas, kumbhandas, yakkhas, narakas, and asuras, or "light beings, ghosts of the dead, dragons, avians, fairies, gnomes, hellions, demons, and titans").

 

Whereas religion concerns the inner life, the spirit world is regarded as an external environment for spirits (Spiritualism - Its History, Phenomena, and Doctrine, Arthur J. Hill 1918, p. 211). Independent from the natural world, both the spirit world and the natural world are in constant interaction.

Through mediumship -- through local shamans, curanderos or healers, medicine women and men -- these worlds can consciously communicate with one other. The spirit world can be described by mediums in trance (Ibid., W.J. Colville, Universal Spiritualism: Spirit Communion in All Ages Among All Nations, 1906, p. 42.

Anyone who does not believe the spirit world is real and right there before on blind third eye, there are three dangerous routes to personally prove that it is: drums, drugs, or trying to get through Finnegans Wake in one sitting.

Journeying to Three Realms in under 30 mins.

(NW) Use headphones. This is a shamanic journey led by Glenn Sullivan (NaturalWisdom.ie) explaining the landscapes and calling in the directions with a 16-min. drumming journey. Come together into a sacred circle and learn to journey into non-ordinary states of consciousness. See the spirits, gain a deeper understanding of the "human" plane and its many inhabitants, cycles, and patterns to problem solve in everyday life and the spiritual path.
 

HISTORY

Mayan shaman, Day of the Dead (IR-M)

By the mid 19th century most Spiritualist writers concurred that the spirit world was of "tangible substance" (ectoplasm) and a place consisting of "spheres" or "zones" (John W. Edmonds, Dr. George T. Dexter, MD, Spiritualism, 1853, p. 262). Although specific details differed, the construct suggested organization and centralization (Bret E. Carrol, Spiritualism in Antebellum America (Religion in North America), Indiana Univ. Press, Oct. 1, 1997, p. 62).

 

The 18th century writer Emanuel Swedenborg influenced Spiritualist views about the spirit world. He described a series of concentric spheres each including a hierarchical organization of spirits in a setting more earth-like than theocentric (Ibid., p.17). The spheres become gradually more illuminated and celestial.

 

Spirit travel through astral space

Spiritualists added a concept of limitlessness (Buddhism's "boundlessness") or infinity to these spheres (Edmonds, p. 123).  Furthermore, it was defined that "Laws" initiated by a god apply to Earth as well as the spirit world (Edmonds, p. 136).

Another common Spiritualist conception was that the spirit world is inherently good and is related to truth-seeking as opposed to things that are harmful residing in a "spiritual darkness" (Hill, p. 168; Edmonds, p.143). 

This conception inferred, as in the biblical parable of Lazarus and Dives, that there is considered a greater distance between helpful and harmful spirits than between the dead and the living (Hill, p.208).

Scandinavia: land of the Sami shamans (VN)

For some the spirit world was "The Home of the Soul," as described by Theosophist C.W. Leadbeater, suggesting that for a living human being to experience the spirit world will be a blissful, meaningful, and life altering experience (Colville, pp. 268-270).

Most shamans were women (DA)

Yet, John W. Edmonds states in his 1853 work, Spiritualism, "Man's relation spiritually with the spirit-world is no more wonderful than his connection with the natural world. The two parts of his nature respond to the same affinities in the natural and spiritual worlds" (Edmonds, p. 104). 

Edmonds asserts, quoting Swedenborg through mediumship, that the relationship between humans and the spirit world is reciprocal and thus could contain sorrow. Though ultimately, "wandering through the spheres" on a path of goodness "is received at last by that Spirit whose thought is universal love forever" (Edmonds, p. 345). More

(PD/EOC) What begins as a Christian program branches out with science in an attempt at credibility. Is the spirit world real? Who dwells in it? How did the spirits come into being? What do science and religion say about the spirit realm? Does the spirit realm affect us?

The Buddha: Knower of Worlds

Knower of the Worlds (Amrit Vismay)

The Buddha frequently said, there is this world and the other (or next) world. And a teacher who is enlightened directly knows and directly perceives these worlds. He frequently is shown to be aware of other planes or dimensions as well as worlds in space and underground (the 31 Planes of Existence). A buddha knows all of these worlds and the paths (karma) leading to rebirth there as well as liberation from them. 

Buddha life panels, Jing'an Temple, Shanghai

Four worlds he frequently saw and interacted with are enmeshed in this human plane -- the worlds of devas, yakkhas and maras, animals, and hungry ghosts. But he could see and visit all the manifold realms in this world system and even worlds between world systems (the interstitial hells of desolation and isolation). It is not clear if he visited other "world systems" (galaxies or universes), but it is certain that he knew about them. Buddhist cosmology describes them as having similar qualities and stations occupied by different beings such as each having a Maha Brahma and a Sakka and some having a Buddha from time to time.

• VIDEO: Sandra Ingerman on becoming a shaman (training) First set the intention. Shamanic teacher gets up close and personal with deep training insights on the benefits of a mini healing retreat (thecenterforhealingarts.com).
• VIDEO: Amazon Shamans and Ayahausca (DMT)
• VIDEO: How to see Spirit Realm (biblical "gift of discernment" with Jonathan Welton and fanatic Sid Roth)

"Desert Breath" spiral

Seen from high above, this spiral in the Egyptian desert captured by Google Earth appears to be a mystery. It's actually an enormous environmental art installation called "Desert Breath" created in 1997. The artists Danae Stratou, Alexandra Stratou, and Stella Constantinides originally designed the 1 million square foot piece with a small lake in the center, which has since dried out. LiveScience.com

Rain Dance (Wisdom Quarterly ceremony)

Xochitl, Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Seven, Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, Dev, Wisdom Quarterly

Watery woodland in Washington's Tatoosh Wilderness north of California (Lila Daley)

California is a facing a withering drought. What can we do? What have Native Americans ever done when simply managing the water on the ground was not enough to cultivate the land?

We can ask the Earth spirits (devas) to make it rain! Consciousness controls our reality, which we are always creating by our:

• intention (cetanā),
• perception (saññā),
• attention (sati), and
• action (karma).

E-Squared

(See Pam Grout's E-Squared for first-hand experimental and scientifically verifiable evidence of this).

We will gather at the sacred Tongva ceremonial spot by reaching Hahamongna, the great gathering place of the people, the watershed for the San Gabriel foothills and the Angeles National Forest, which rings the megalopolis and leads to the Los Angeles River running southwest to the Pacific Ocean in the Land of the Chumash.
  

Northern Los Angeles County: Our San Gabriel Mountains, part of the Angeles National Fores, southwest view from Islip Saddle at Bear Creek, a tributary of the San Gabriel River that lies within the San Gabriel Wilderness, and Twin Peaks (7,761 ft/2,366 m). More

With abundant rainfall, the land comes alive, Landmark National Park (13som)

 

The Isaiah Effect

Our gathering will occur tomorrow, Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2014, at 11:00 am as an experiment in consciousness. How will we "pray" when we arrive?

We will not "pray" in any ordinary sense of the word -- not petition, not plead, not propose, not beg. Instead, we will do what the wise have always done: We will use the recovered science. (See Gregg Braden's The Isaiah Effect: Decoding the Lost Science of Prayer). It is the way of our siblings to the east, the Hopi/Anasazi of Tuzigoot (Pueblo peoples of Arizona).

 

Ask and It Is Given

We will enter the ring where the veil between the worlds is thin, and with all our senses we shall feel with the body the rain, the mud squishing between our toes, the tops of the wild amaranth and buckwheat and grasses and vines...growing up green as shoots and climbing tendrils and flourishing. Our noses will be overtaken by the sweet smell of damp, the rain trickling down our faces into our eyes, our hair soaked, our tongues out, the sound in our ears of the rain dancing in thuds on the forest, our minds flooded with happiness to see the Earth (Bhūmi, Gaia) drink and grow saturated.

 

Rain makes forest as much as mycelium.

Then we will dance for joy (as shown above)! All are invited to attend and participate with us. We will also make an offering to the land and its ancient caretakers then run from police who obviously want this drought to continue or why are they leaning on us? So we will it, so let it be, so it is.

Basic Guidelines: How to Rain Dance

Sonocarina edited by Wisdom Quarterly

(wayanadnoticeboard.com)

Every tribe is unique, so be creative, remembering to honor Mother Earth, where nothing is taken unless something is given.

1. Perform rain dance on a flat, level surface, never on a hill.

2. Make sure there is a lot of room so as not to run into anything.

3. Spin around in a clockwise circle while dancing.

4. Make rain chant rhythmical and easy to say quickly.

5. Yell the rain chant while spinning around in circles.

6. To stop rain, spin counterclockwise and chant backward.

[7. Do it with someone who has successfully done it before.] More

Katina Ceremony: Buddhist "Lent" ends

Dhr. Seven, CC Liu, Ven. Chandananda, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly

The "Rains Retreat" period (Vas or "Buddhist Lent") comes to an end with the Kathina Robe Offering Ceremony, Los Angeles Buddhist Vihara, Pasadena, California

 

St. Francis and the animals (Catholic Fire)

The Katina Festival is celebrated in Theravada countries around the world. It marks the end of the three-month Rains Retreat (Vas) period when monastics retire to monasteries for intensive meditation, study, and/or teaching.

Lay Buddhists gather weekly on lunar observance days (uposatha), which falls on new-, half-, and full-moon days, to hear the Dharma and cultivate learning (suta), virtuous behavior (sila), and meditative techniques (bhavana).

Monastic study during Vas (theworld.org)

At the time of the Buddha a special durable-robe, the katina robe, ceremony was designated. The Buddha called this the highest offering of laypeople to the Sangha since it is given to the entire monastic community, which after intensive practice likely contains more enlightened individuals than before the Rains Retreat. Therefore, the karma one generates in giving to them collectively is more "durable" like the sturdy robe constructed just for this occasion.

The three-month period corresponding to the ancient Indian calendar's monsoon season has come to be called "Buddhist Lent" just as Vesak is sometimes referred to as "Buddhist Christmas," marking the same full moon day of the month on which the Buddha was born, attained enlightenment, and passed into final nirvana. This shorthand may seem silly, but it is only meant to facilitate understanding of the significance of these events around the world. It may also point to a common Eastern origin in Buddhism, Hinduism, and/or Paganism for many festivals now unquestioningly considered "Christian" holidays. 

 

Many beautiful Catholic, Orthodox, and Essene (early mystic Jewish and early Christian) monastic/contemplative practices have direct origins in the Buddhist monasticism they inherited as the wisdom of the East.