pillar of creation are dead

12.19.13.17.8 3 Lamat 1 Muan
I had this as my wallpaper for a while (and then I had the Witches Broom Nebula). I can't believe it's gone.
Pillars of Creation Toppled By Stellar Blast
(A)new study suggests the famous Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula might have already been toppled long ago, and that what the Hubble Space Telescope actually captured was their ghost image....A new picture of the Eagle Nebula shot by
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope....show the intact pillars next to a giant cloud of glowing dust scorched by the heat of a massive stellar explosion known as a supernova. (clicking on small image will bring you to original large image).....
Astronomers think the supernova's shock wave knocked the pillars down about 6,000 years ago. But because the Eagle Nebula is located some 7,000 light years away, the majestic pillars will appear intact to observers on Earth for another 1,000 years or so....Humans living 1,000 to 2,000 years ago might have noticed the supernova event that destroyed the pillars as an unusually bright star in the sky.

That I don't understand. How could Earth have seen the shockwave from 7,000 light years away 1,000 years ago but we can still see the (dead) pillars?
In fact, the new show at Peabody Museum (Yale-New Haven) has extensive pictures of the pillars. Wonder if they'll add this new info? It started just after Pluto was demoted, and they had already changed some of the exhibits to reflect that.
I could muse on this. Life is fleeting? Enjoy what you have while you've got it? Beauty is fleeting?

Incan Shamanism--follow-up

12.19.13.17.3 11 Akbal 16 Kankin
I just received this follow-up from Gail:
I forgot to mention on your hand out that it is recommended that you bring water from your pacarina to bless and activate your mountain as well. If your birth waters and mountains are too far away and you wish to do this now, you CAN do this in the visionary journey and create your apuchetas in your yard/home representationally as surrogates for actual ordinary reality journeys and apuchetas. It is JUST as powerful when done with intention.
She also posted a comment on the original entry.
If anyone does not know how to program crystals and build altars with intent, please let me know and I'll explain it.

Incan Shamanism--free info

12.19.13.17.1 9 Imix 14 Kankin
I took mini-class in Incan shamanism last night (on the full moon). The woman who led it, Gail Gorelick, told us to teach it to as many people as possible.
So here it is.
This information is part of the North American Ceque Project.
After a lot of instruction (below) we went on an unguided shamanic journey (to drumming) to find our Birth Mountain and our Birth Water. (I will detail mine at the end.)
Her handout information is in color. The handouts were hand-written and sometimes hard to read, especially the foreign words.
We will journey to find your Itu Apu=Birth Mountain and Itu Pacurina=Birth Water.
Call in the 4 directions & create sacred space
Build an Itu-Apucheta (stone altar) to these sacred places, then build one at your home & feed it by placing offerings there: flowers, herbs, water, tobacco, essential oils, cornmeal, etc., for 28 days. (Itza, in other words.)
Your home apucheta=7 stones from each of your sacred places. (Note: blow your prayers into each stone while building them.)
Your main apucheta is your itu apu & itu pacarina can be 49 stones as it is in the Incan work (or you can journey to your helping spirits for an amount which is right for you.)
Please bring back 2 extra stones from your apucheta site, 1 for Big Turtle Aiju in Jupiter Farms, Florida, and 1 for Little Turtle Aiju in Trumbull, Connecticut. We are creating a prayerful web of Ceque/Energy lines. (not ley lines)
Prior to building your apucheta, cleanse your energy body by opening the 1) belly 2) heart 3) head in a counterclockwise direction then annointing it with water from y our Itu Pacarina. Then cleanse these 3 areas energetically in a clockwise direction. Seven days is recommended or journey on it.
Not a lot of information, I know. So I will expand on it. This is MY understanding, based on what I was told last night.
We all have an energetic connection to 2 places, a mountain and a body of water. This may be where our soul entered this world for the first time, where it will leave it, or some other connection.
Using your animal helper/totem animal/spirit guide, go the place where you meet him/her/it/them (I used the basic HeartLight Wood meditation to take me to the Heartlight Wood, since like I said, the mediation was unguided except by drums). Ask it (for simplicity's sake) where your birth mountain and birth water are. (They may not be in the same place.)
Once you know, you have to physically go there (if possible). At the water, you have to bring back a sample for the cleansing described above. (Someone can send it to you if you can't make more than one journey there.) Once you are cleansed, you visit the water in person and make a little stone altar with the number of stones indicated by your guides. You must blow a different prayer into each stone. Then take 7 extra stones from that place for your home altar, and 2 extra stones to share with the group, and bring them home with you. I got a strong message that at the beach you can use coral, shells and driftwood to build your altar, and someone else in the group actually said they were told to use shells at the beach for their altar. I assume that means you can bring 7 (9) of those same type of item home with you.
You also need to visit your birth mountain. Same thing, build an altar with stones you find there, blow a prayer into each, take 7 (9) home.
At home, you build your 14 stone altar (or add to an existing altar or sacred place, like my Mayan healing/meditation Circle). Blow a prayer into each stone. Feed it with itza for 28 days every day (and then I'd give it offerings on a regular schedule--full moons or according to the Mayan-Aztec calendar or the 8 holy pagan days).
Send or bring your extra 2 stones to Gail (I won't publish her address or email here but will share on request). If you're doing this through me, I'd appreciate a stone for MY altar too, so make it an even 10 you pick up...!
Not addressed: if you are not allowed to bring back material from the place. (Like Grand Cayman Island, where they check your bags for shells and coral and turtle products at the airport. Or the whole Hawaiian Pele curse thing.)

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My shamanic journey:
I was thinking that I'd probably get Sleeping Giant for my mountain, and either Long Island Sound or the Quinnipiac River for my water. I was hoping. Or I'd get something in Hawaii or Mexico that would "require" me to go there (would it be tax-deductible as a business trip, I wonder? "I had to go to Hawaii to my sacred mountain and to the Yucatan to my sacred cenote--honest. I HAD to.") Nothing old world for me (Europe/Asia)--I didn't even think of Australia. I guess an connection to Egypt wouldn't have surprised me much either...
Like I said, I did my own quick version of the start of the HeartLight meditation and got myself to the forest to meet Edward, who was in tiger form, a very pale golden tiger, not a bright orange one. He led me straight through the Heartlight Wood to the beach. Across it was an island. (What's there changes every time. It's like a staging area.) It was volcanic. The cone had collapsed into a flattened shape that was about twice as tall as the trees at its base. The edges weren't beach, just black rock going into the water. (Maybe caves?). The water around it was not the greenish-turquoise shade of the Caribbean, it was much more blue, but still clear. and warm. The volcano was NOT active.
Edward told me that was my birth mountain. He explained that it existed so long ago it never had a name, and that it no longer exists now. I had the impression it was during Pangea, because the next thing he said was that back then all the oceans were one, and it's been so long that any water is my birth water. There is no "place" for me to go. It's everywhere and no where.
I found this picture of a volcanic island called Camiguin. It's not right, but it's better than I could draw. The mountain itself was much darker, almost black, and the tree line was more even. The top of the caldera was also more even. And the water was more blue. And obviously no other island right next to it. (Even if that picture had been accurate to what Edward showed me, the island was much farther away from the beach.)
photo source

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I have done so much earth working with Merlin as part of my Shamballa Multi-dimensional healing teaching/learning that most of this was familiar to me (not the terminology but the concepts).
Hari Baba Melchizedek said years ago that no one needs to leave their homes to do earth work anymore. I used to teach the whole way of etherically implanting a cleansed crystalline matrix (12 pointed) into the earth as part of level 3/Advanced Healer. With the change to Shamballa Basic, it's been taken out, but I intend to teach it as a separate class because the knowledge is valuable.
So I know I could go back in time and find this island and build a matrix there. And one in the water too, and they would still be connected to me in this place and time, and all the other places and times I've been incarnate.
I was part of Steve Rother's Web of Light experiment a few years ago, to set up an etheric web of energy between lightworkers. (I can't find it online anymore but it used to be on lightworker.com)
And the concepts of how the energy flows along those lines (ceques, she called them,--aka cords, in Huna) is also very familiar to me, and another concept I've taught in Shamballa MDH and also used in my Mayan-Aztec readings.
So was it a waste of my time? No. It's always interesting to see information from a different angle. I will do the etheric placement of the stones, and place more at Gail's and in Florida.
And I've told people about it. Feel free to contact me, as always. If you use comments, put your email address if you're commenting anonymously.

Sacred Cactus

I didn't have room to bring my big pot of sacred cactus inside this year. There are many cuttings from it which live year-round in the yard so I figured it would be okay outside. Then it started drooping from the frost so I had my husband put it in the garage. Big mistake. I opened the garage on Monday and it had gone totally limp and dark. I thought it was dead and I felt horrible. But just now I cut it up and the heart piece, the one I got from Florida in 2003 during my shamanic training, which was already old then, looks okay and a few older chunks growing off it it look okay inside. When I cut between the growths they were still green and moist inside.
The new growth on the ends, which was very long and thin this year, rather than short and fat, looks like it's not going to make it.
The pieces I KNOW will live I'm bringing inside in a separate container. The rest I'm leaving outside (not in the garage) to fend for itself.
I wore a pair of thick plastic gloves under a pair of thick cotton/poly gloves and you know I still got spines in my fingers. Silly plant, I'm trying to help.
It's funny that I posted this today because one of the first growths off it was shaped like Manik the hand.

the road from monotheism to atheism

I read a wide variety of material, both online and in book/magazine form. Lately it seems to me that atheists are getting louder, or maybe there are more of them. I also recently met a very spiritual, enlightened person...who is an atheist. That really got me thinking how that could be. Then I saw the connection, and saw that it's a logical outgrowth of my path. Someday I will be an atheist. Probably not tomorrow, but in 10 years? Maybe.
This is the path I see.

• Monotheism. Usually forced on you by society/parents. Rigid rules. One god, usually male, jealous, vengeful. Look at the first commandment: thou shalt have no other gods before me. Wow, does that ever open up a can of worms. #1, it surely implies there are other gods. #2 it also says that as long as Vengeful is god #1, you can worship those other gods. Which leads you to:
• Polytheism. If there are other gods, why not explore them? Check out ancient pantheons. Greek, Roman, Celtic, Norse are all popular. I've gone to the Native American/Meso-American pantheon myself, and some also choose that path. Now might be the time to dabble in Buddhism as well, although there's no god there! Wicca, with its Lord and Lady, fall here too. (I tend to group everything that's not "monotheism" or "atheism" under "Pagan" which isn't a label everyone likes or agrees with.) The more research you do as a polytheist, the more you come to a couple of conclusions: when you get down to it, all religions are very much the same when you get to the essential concepts. (Love people, don't hurt them, be nice) Then you start hearing/reading/figuring out the next step, which is that we are all a part of god:
• Pantheism: Everything is god and god is everything. My pen is equal to me, and so is my cat, and so is the tree outside, and my cactus plant, and my favorite piece of quartz. My higher self contains all the wisdom I need (a concept from Huna, Hawaiian spirituality) so I don't need to go to any gods, goddesses, ascended beings, etc. I just need to ask my soul. A wise person once told me if you keep re-framing your question, the answer is within it and will come out. So if there are no gods, just your higher self, that leads you unerringly to:
• Atheism. There is no god needed. Nothing to worship. Be a good person because you WANT to be, not because some bearded old man living on a cloud wrote it on a rock 5,000 years ago. There are different types of atheists.
• The skeptics, such as you'd run into at the James Randi Educational Foundation, disdain anything they can't measure with science. Some of these call themselves secular humanists. I do visit that site, but they are so close-minded that it's annoying. It seems to me their lives must be devoid of joy and wonder while they have to measure, analyze, poke and prod every little thing to make sure it's "real".
• Religious humanists, which is what the man I met was, practice spirituality without any defined god or defined religion. Buddhism and Taoism live under this branch but are often visited by those under the polytheism branch.
• There are also Agnostics, which I was for a long time, but I don't see it as a necessary step along the path. It can really fit in anywhere.

This is not meant to be the definitive guide to any of these religions (or non-religions) just a starting point....actually just a way to put my thoughts down on paper (on screen). Please feel free to comment or look up these concepts for yourself. (c)