The Mouse and the Star

The Mouse and the Star

by | Jun 9, 2023 | SPIRITUALITY

I got out of bed at 4:30 in the morning for some wee-hours playtime. I have a strange relationship with sleep; I joke that I was bitten by a vampire bat as a baby, and I’m only up that early if I haven’t slept yet. On this particular morning, I made my way through the house into my wife’s office and was visited by a mouse.

I glanced up at the early morning sky and saw Sirius for the first time in awhile, and it was accompanied by a shooting star descending past Procyon. It was what Dr. Amen calls a “micro-moment,” or what I call an “enchanted instant.” It’s always a big deal for me when I see Sirius in the sky again after about six months of absence during spring and summer. For me this star is a spiritual beacon with more ancestral meaning than I could communicate in writing, though I’ve tried and have spoken and written about it a lot in the past. In brief, from my personal cosmological standpoint as well as other traditions like the Dogon tribe of people in West Africa, Sirius pinpoints the place of origin and point of entry of all consciousness in this universe and maybe multiverse. It is where we all ultimately came from. Not as physical beings, but as consciousness, energy, light, soul-spirits.

As I looked east straight out from my front porch I saw Orion’s constellation in the sky and felt excited because soon Sirius would be rising through the tops of the pine trees that obscure my view of the horizon. The timing of all of this isn’t subtle as we enter the hottest week of the year in Northern California. It is forecasted that some communities will reach 117 degrees, and it feels to be a time of energetic significance.

Tanzania Journal: Safari & Service

Tanzania Journal: Safari & Service

by | Jun 9, 2023 | AFRICA

Whenever I go to Africa I am changed to my core. The journey is not always easy, but is consistently thrilling. There is an element of animism, a palpable sense of big spirit in all things including people, animals, and nature. There is also a sense of dynamism, a huge expression and interaction of the elements of earth, wind, fire, and water on a scale and magnitude that I have experienced nowhere else, and especially in wild East Africa.

The feeling is of a primordial Great Mother. This is a rich and dark space that bore the human race into being in ancient times after the conditions had been cultivated following eons of creative upheaval, yielding a terrain and terroir that could host our earliest ancestors. When I go to Africa I feel Her there, rejoicing in my presence and imbuing more life into me along our shared adventure.

Archetypal Sound

Archetypal Sound

by | Jun 9, 2023 | DRUMMING

What do drumming and archetypes have to do with everyday life?

Everything.

We live in an interconnected web of internal and external rhythms that both motivate and punctuate existence. The ancients knew that life moved within them and around them, driven by the engine of archetypal force. That is why they connected the inner and outer states of advancement through ritual; harnessing and making conscious the massive power of unconscious forces—marking the evolution of the human, animal, planetary and cosmic occurrences with meaningful rites as an expression of soul.