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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Healing the Ancestral Lines

When people call out to their ancestors, they call out to a diversity of energies. Some people call out by name to the men and women of their bloodline all the way back to the first man and first woman. Others call out to all of their relations; their request reaching out to all life through the interconnectedness of all living things. While others call out to their ancestors and visualize that request reaching from humankind to nature and on through their cosmology until they reach Grandfather Fire, Grandmother Water, and the Void from which the dream of life unfolds.

Though we call out in different ways and mean slightly different things, traditionally "the ancestors" is a universally good thing. So what does it mean when we diagnose "the ancestors" as the cause of chronic disease, family patterns of addiction, or lose of hope and passion for life? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores why the dead aren't becoming traditional helping spirits and why they remain stuck here hijacking the lives of the living. And more importantly she will share her non-traditional shamanic healing practices that effectively heal the energy stuck in the ancestral lines, which frees the living from the unresolved issues of the past and the dead take their place as helping spirits who offer us the rich legacy of all those who have gone before us.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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Why Shamanism Now? on Co-Creator Network
Questions? Comments? Call: 1-512-772-1938

All episodes are now available in the iTunes Podcast Library.

Suzanne Toro

BeSimply...LoveSelf {Respect}

Join 'She' for 54 minutes to work on the Inner Self.

During this segment:

'Our' energy fields are sacred and precious...In this segment we explore self respect and respect for others. We will explore how we embody respect for self and with others. Especially great for anyone with patterns and habits that keep sabotaging 'self.

Explore and Align with 'Self', How to reconnect to Self?

Parables shared...Walk through a guided clearing experience and meditation. This episode will assist you in BEing...the Jedi!

Please send in your questions to s@suzannetoro.com or call in during the episode.

Fri, May 11, 2012 12:30AM ET

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/suzannetoro

Just Energy Radio

Keith Blanchard: What Do You Love?

Keith Blanchard joins Dr. Rita Louise on Just Energy Radio where he askes the question "What do you love?"

About Keith Blanchard
Best selling author and composer, Keith Blanchard, was born on November 30, 1963, in Houma, Louisiana, and had a typical middle class Catholic upbringing. In his early teens, he often entertained himself by pondering the big questions about God and the universe. Little did he know that the day would come when those questions would form the spiritual foundation upon which he would build the rest of his life.

Fri, May 11, 2012 03:00PM ET

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/just-energy-radio

Awake: Now What?

LGBTQ: Empowered and Free: Motherly Love

No matter what your relationship with your mom, whether your mom is alive or crossed over, learn to connect with the mother within. We all have the ability to nurture and love ourselves! This is an opportunity to heal mother issues Feel good about who you are regardless of what your mom thinks.

Join us!

Sat, May 12, 2012 01:00PM ET

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/awake

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Rob Kerby Pagan Bashes on Facebook

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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I know. I'm like a dog with a bone. But it turns out Rob Kerby leaves his Facebook profile open to the public, so... I skimmed. And if I ever had any doubt that Kerby has nothing but contempt for "witches," it's gone now. Here he is delightedly mocking the upset of the self-described witches who complained to him about his vile post. Screw the Pagan community on Beliefnet, man. Screw Pagans, period. Let 'em burn.

Nothing like Christian kindness, huh?

As to the other commenters in this odious little back and forth, as of this writing, their Facebook pages are also wide open. If they'd closed them to the public, I'd have blacked out their identities. But they haven't so I didn't.

For back-story on Rob Kerby's assault on the dignity and safety of modern Pagans, Wiccans, etc., see here, here, and here.

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Past and Portents in Graham Hancock's Mexico

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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Well, this could explain all the piercing tones I've been getting in my head for the past couple of weeks. (Of course the supermoon hasn't helped this weekend. I mean these pics are pretty but, oh, my head.)

North America's second-tallest volcano recently rumbled to life, putting authorities on edge. Big eruptions of Mexico's massive Popocatepetl volcano are "few and far between," as one geologist says. Yet even without any dramatic fireworks, 17,800-foot (5,425-meter) "Popo" has the power to wreak havoc.

. . .

Popocatepetl lies about 40 miles (70 kilometers) southeast of Mexico City. The mountain reawakened in December 1994 after five decades of silence. Yet in the nearly 20 years since, the volcano has rarely exhibited the kind of vigorous activity that began the week of April 12.

Minor earthquakes have rocked the mountain, it has spewed out plumes of gas and ash, and multiple explosions have shot glowing rocks from the summit. [ Images of Popocatepetl in action.]

The mountain has the potential to erupt magnificently once every 2,000 or 3,000 years. "It has big eruptions, but they are so few and far between," Sheridan said. "But they have been pretty big. So that is the scary part."

I have a particular affection for the Mexico City area and tend to be sort of dialed in to earth changes there. It is an area rich in history. One of the most transformative experiences of my life involved a trip to Mexico City. And I owe at least a little of that to Graham Hancock. I was reminded of that yesterday morning when I stumbled on this lecture he did some years ago.

Fingerprints of the Gods, which he discusses here in some depth, was the first of Hancock's books I read, and it began a love affair with his writing. But the way I came to read that book was somewhat peculiar.

The book had belonged to a friend of mine. I noticed it on her bookshelf where it looked a little out of place. I borrowed it and had begun to read it when she and I had a huge falling out and I had to the give it back. I had fully intended to get the book for myself but I hadn't yet got 'round to it when, some months later, an opportunity to travel to Mexico City came up. It's a long and complicated story but suffice it to say it wound up with me going there to do a Flower of Life teacher training with Drunvalo Melchizedek.

When it came time for me to make my travel arrangements, it occurred to me that I should probably do at least a little research about the area first. I stopped by the Montclair Book Center to pick up a Fodor's. There, thoroughly misplaced in the travel section, sort of shoved in awkwardly on its side, was Fingerprints of the Gods. I picked it up and started to leaf through it. And there it was. Teotihuacan. Now, geography has never been my long suit and I really hadn't grasped until that moment that the ancient site was spitting distance from Mexico City. I really knew very little about it except that Hancock had included it as a site of some importance in advancing his theory of an ancient, lost civilization. But in the split second it took me to put those few pieces together I resolved that one way or another I was going to get there during my trip.

It occurred to me that Drunvalo might take us there as part of the seminar but I wasn't going to leave that to chance. I built an extra day into my trip so I could go there alone if needs be. As it turns out, he did not take us to Teotihuacan. Although he did take us to Cuicuilco, a round pyramid that isn't nearly as well known, and that was also an amazing experience. But the opportunity to go to Teotihuacan fell into my hands as if by magic. There was a gentleman in the class who was a professional tour guide. He graciously extended an offer to anyone who wanted to go there on the Monday following the seminar which, as luck would have it, was the day I had left open for just that purpose.

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Hancock goes into some detail in this presentation on the relevance of Teotihuacan to his theory of a lost civilization. I had read everything he had to say about Latin America, with its ziggurats and plumed serpents, before I got there. Even so, I was unprepared for the intensity of this "place where men become gods."

I spent that day doing rituals with the small group of travelers and our wonderful guide. We came to realize the entire experience was one long ritual and we were not the one's directing it. Mostly, our job was to listen and do as we were told. Teotihuacan is inhabited by wise spirits of ancient origin. 

The conspiracy of events that put me in Mexico City at that particular time with those particular people is something I could only marvel at. And the process of transformation that was initiated in me at that time is something I'm still sorting out.

One of the things that struck me as I was listening to Hancock explain his research is just how impermanent it all is. I still marvel at the hubris with which so many people disregard doomsday theories. I'm not saying that I think 2012 signals such a doomsday and I think if anything is clear about the Mayan long count calendar, it's that, for all the theories, no one really understands it. It remains a tantalizing mystery. But something is happening and the energy shifts we've been experiencing are fairly amazing. So are the earth changes.

Hancock touches briefly on Charles Hapgood's theory of crustal displacement and the possibility that we may have had previous pole shifts. Whether any of that is tied into the vestiges of a lost civilization and the out of place artifacts Hancock has spent years researching is hard to say. Even harder to say is whether it will happen again. But to pretend that civilization ending cataclysms are silly wives tales is arrogant. The people of Pompeii were apparently enjoying life as usual when they found themselves engulfed by the sudden, massive eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. We certainly know more about volcanoes now than those ancient Romans did but we are no more immune to a grandiosity that convinces us that we know enough.

I was reading the other day about some new theories on the volcano that is Yellowstone. Something many Americans don't realize is that Yellowstone is actually a "supervolcano" and a full scale eruption would be devastating. The new study I was reading up on found that it might not "wipe out half of the United States, covering the rest in 3 feet of ash and pushing the world into hundreds of years of nuclear winter, challenging human civilization to a game of death and survival." So that's... kind of... good news. The bad news? It's much more active than previously believed and even a lesser eruption would be inconceivably disastrous.

My point is simply this. As tempting as it is to think that we know all we need to about the potential for sudden, radical change on this planet, history has shown over and over that we don't. And the clues are there to a prehistory of which we know nothing with any certainty. Embrace the mystery. That's all I'm saying.

A side note: I love Jungian synchronicities. As I write this I notice that the movie Matilda has come on ABC Family. It's one I've watched over and over. But the first time I ever saw it was when I was taking my red-eye flight back from Mexico City, after a full day of tromping up and down those divine temple monuments. On the nearly empty plane, I stretched out over several seats and drifted in and out of sleep, surfacing just long enough to ask myself questions like: Is that little girl making things fly around the room? This movie is about a telekinesis? Maybe I should be paying more attention? Zzzzzzzz...

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Following Orders: The Vatican and Beyond

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

The trial of Monsignor William Lynn is bringing some fascinating insight into the internal dynamics that have driven the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. I say that because the Philadelphia diocese is by no means an anachronism. If anything it's emblematic of the top-down authority structure that has allowed these wounds to fester in parishes all over the world. I found this tidbit particularly juicy.

Monsignor Michael Picard was punished for complaining when the priest was assigned to his Newtown, Pa., parish in 1996. Picard said he had heard disturbing information about the priest from reliable sources — and acted for the sake of his parish.

The late Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, angry that Picard was rejecting his decision on the placements, ordered him to apologize and take a two-week retreat to reflect on his actions.

"Cardinal Bevilacqua noted that he will not tolerate even the appearance of disobedience by any priest," states a memo of a disciplinary meeting read in court Wednesday.

So a priest questions the placement of a suspected pedophile in his parish and the response from higher is to stop being disobedient. And his response was to plead that he was not being disobedient. He even accused Lynn of "falsifying the disobedience charge." He was merely raising a reasonable question. Silly priest. Doesn't he know that questioning the absolute authority of the Church is disobedience?

Monsignor Lynn, for his part, has defended his actions -- and inactions -- by claiming that he was simply following the orders of Cardinal Bevilacqua.

This was not the first time this week that I was brought up short by the very concept of obedience.

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The other evening my husband and I were watching this interview on the Daily Show and were struck by a peculiar irony -- one not addressed at all by Jon Stewart, or anyone else that I'm aware of. I have no quarrel with Zach Wahls but I did find it fascinating that he structured a book on being raised by a lesbian couple around the Boy Scout Law.

A Scout is:

• Trustworthy,
• Loyal,
• Helpful,
• Friendly,
• Courteous,
• Kind,
• Obedient,
• Cheerful,
• Thrifty,
• Brave,
• Clean,
• and Reverent.

Why do I find this odd? Because the Boy Scouts of America strictly prohibits gay people from participating in the organization. So right off the bat, Eagle Scout Wahls has proved himself to be at least a little disobedient to the spirit of the organization. And good for him. No, really. Good for him. But you gotta wonder how the parent organization feels about being thematically tied to a book called My Two Moms.

So how's all that moral prohibition working out for the Boy Scouts? Not so well, really, as discussed here:

Stealing attention from the Catholic Church's problems, allegations recently came to light of similar incidents within the Boy Scouts of America under the patronage of the Church of Latter Day Saints (aka the Mormons). The Catholic and Mormon churches are two of the most vociferous arbiters of morality. Both invested heavily in promoting the passage of Proposition 8 which rescinded the law allowing gay marriage in California. Both are sponsors of Boy Scouts of America and have campaigned against allowing gays and atheists to participate. The Mormons threatened to pull their memberships if the Scouts changed their rules, which would have devastated the bottom line for the organization.

When it comes to sexual abuse in their own midst, these moral authorities have been strangely silent. Mormon Bishop Gordon McKewn withheld the identities of 17 boys, who Scoutmaster Timur Dykes admitted molesting, from police investigators. The "morally straight" Boy Scouts now stand accused of secreting away at least 1000 such "perversion files."

That I would choose tolerance of gays and atheists over tolerance of sex offenders kind of goes without saying but I'm not making the rules for the Boy Scouts of America. The Mormon and Catholic churches are, apparently. And that concept of obedience to insane rules that enable child abuse is overdue for scrutiny.

The concept of obedience, I think, gives rise to abuse in a much broader sense. Right off the bat, when children are taught to obey their elders without question, what are they supposed to do when confronted by an authority figure who insists on sexually abusing them? What a conundrum for the child faced with that horrible reality.

While many of the principles on that list that Wahls has highlighted with his strangely ironical book are lovely, any list like that is a double-edged sword. Such words and phrases can also be used as thought-stopping maxims and as such are bludgeons in the hands of abusers of power. I wrote a great deal about thought-stopping maxims and the psychology of influence when I was covering the James Ray sweat lodge trial. In that horrible for-instance, an adherence to buzzwords instilled by a charismatic leader were a primary factor in preventing people from leaving a human kiln that killed three of them and permanently injured many more. And as discussed, an understanding of the lessons of the Milgram Experiment could prevent so many of these disasters. To review: A staggering number of people proved so obedient to authority that they were willing to kill people rather than question anyone with a lab coat and clipboard.

"Well-behaved women seldom make history." ~ Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (Self described Mormon feminist. Yes. They exist.)

My husband and I have committed ourselves to raising a disobedient child. No, really. Not a child who doesn't have responsibilities or keep commitments. Structure and boundaries, yes, but mindless adherence to our authority, never. She has been taught since she was very young that we have good reasons for our rules and have always been willing to hear her questions about those rules, even though we are often at pains to put them in terms a child can understand. We consider the alternative terrifying in its potential to leave her vulnerable. As you might expect, it has repeatedly put her -- and us -- on a collision course with some educators. Fortunately, we have also been lucky to find a number teachers and administrators who, more or less, share our viewpoint.

Schools are in many ways conformity factories and even the most well intended educators are faced with a difficult balancing act. It's a microcosm of the ongoing social struggle to support the individual and the common good at the same time. A recent study found, for instance, that teachers, usually inadvertently, squelch creativity because creative people tend to be disruptive.

From Creativity: Asset or Burden in the Classroom?, a good review paper. What the paper shows is that the characteristics that teachers use to describe their favorite student correlate negatively with the characteristics associated with creativity. In addition, although teachers say that they like creative students, teachers also say creative students are “sincere, responsible, good-natured and reliable.” In other words, the teachers don’t know what creative students are actually like.  (FYI, the research design would have been stronger if the researchers had actually tested the students for creativity.)  As a result, schooling has a negative effect on creativity.

In other words, creativity and obedience are kinda like oil and water. And whenever I hear that word thrown around my hackles go up. Also, when I hear teachers or parents requiring children to call them sir or ma'am. Because it's all about getting children to submit to adults as unquestioned authorities, which sets them up for inconceivably horrible abuses. And it creates whole new generations of adults who don't question authority or the most authoritarian of structures. It fosters the notion that we should shock heart patients until they die because the man in the lab coat says to, or leave people who've stopped breathing in a tented inferno so as not to upset Mr. Ray, or stop whining about the priest who's molesting children because the Vatican tells us to. It's dangerous. Obedience to authority is dangerous.

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Pagans Down the Beliefnet Memory Hole

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

So, there was a little dust-up on Beliefnet when Pagans began to notice that the Senior Editor, one Rob Kerby, is a bigot -- something I first realized last fall. In addition to the homophobia, there were hints that he was not at all comfortable with modern Paganism, or other non-Christian faiths for that matter. The latter became very explicit in a recent article which posited the theory that third world witch hunters might know better how to handle the scourge that is Harry Potter. So Pagans took notice. And I noticed, once again, that Rob Kerby has a penchant for disappearing comments he doesn't like.

As previously noted, one of my comments regarding the hypocrisy of Biblically based homophobia  disappeared. A second attempt to comment found me unable to post at all. Now, my IP has changed at least a couple of times since that incident, so I felt inspired to give it another shot when I saw this post on the power of forgiveness. I did so for two reasons. One was to test a system that appears to be losing comments left and right. The other was to satisfy myself that Kerby is aware that he's hurt people and has been called upon to make amends. So under an article subtitled "Time to Forgive," I posted the following comment, with a link to Gus diZuniga's post:

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As you can see, it went straight into moderation. Methinks Mr. Kerby is tired of hearing from outraged readers. And he's definitely tired of letting them get a word in edgewise before he's had a chance to silence them.  In less than 24 hours my comment was "moderated" out of existence.

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So, Mr. Kerby knows he's insulted people. He knows he's been called upon to apologize. He knows that he would be welcomed to the table to have a mature, interfaith dialogue with members of an ostensibly ecumenical site. He just doesn't care.

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George Harrison's Quiet Legacy

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

George Harrison: Living in the Material World

"Who's George Harrison?" my daughter asked me this morning.

"Oh, that's easy," I answered. "My favorite Beatle."

"What's a Beatle?" Obviously, this conversation went on for a bit. How and why did it start? My daughter, being far more visual than I, had apparently noticed something on the news crawl that I hadn't.

I'm going to assume that what piqued her interest was coverage of a Scorcese documentary on the life of George Harrison that just released on DVD. At least that's what topped my news search. So now, of course, I will have to see that.

When I was my daughter's age, 10, I had a very solid grounding in The Beatles. It was an education that had started when I was much younger. When I was 3 and 4, Magical Mystery Tour was my favorite album and I played it over and over on my little record player. Now, if you'd asked me at 10 who my favorite Beatle was, I would have said Paul -- the cute one. But with age and wisdom has come a deeper appreciation for George -- the thinky one.



George Harrison is the Beatle to whom I can most easily relate. In part because of his well-known spiritual quest, which led him, amongst other things, to learn sitar and to study with the deeply sublime Ravi Shankar.

But also because -- and this is a less well-known aspect of his personality -- he would apparently do anything for a laugh. Anyone who knows me well knows of the depths I will sink to to crack myself up.

I only lately learned of Harrison's long relationship with members of Monty Python and his involvement with Rutland Weekend Television -- the show that was the genesis of the brilliantly funny Beatles parody The Rutles: All You Need is Cash. His appearance on the BBC series shows what an incredible sense of humor Harrison had about himself.

One of the revelations in Scorcese's documentary -- at least it was news to me -- is that Harrison mortgaged his house to help finance Monty Python's Life of Brian. Risky move, although I'm assuming it ultimately paid off. It was very controversial.

The film contains themes of religious satire that were controversial at the time of its release, drawing accusations of blasphemy and protests from some religious groups. Thirty-nine local authorities in the UK either imposed an outright ban, or imposed an X (18 years) certificate (effectively preventing the film from being shown, as the distributors said the film could not be shown unless it was unedited and carried the original AA (14) certificate). Some countries, including Ireland and Norway, banned its showing, with a few of these bans lasting decades. The film makers used such notoriety to benefit their marketing campaign, with posters stating "So funny it was banned in Norway!".

The film was a box-office success, grossing fourth-highest of any film in the UK in 1979 and highest of any British film in the United States that year. It has remained popular since then, receiving positive reviews and being named "greatest comedy film of all time" by several magazines and television networks. The film is the first Monty Python film to receive an R rating[3] in the United States.

Life of Brian is one of my all-time favorite movies but it was definitely provocative, raising hard questions about the origins of Christianity and about the nature of religion itself. One of the more insightful sequences demonstrates the sheeple effect when the growing mobs of Brian's followers remove a sandal simply because he's lost one. George Harrison was clearly one who was looking for a deeper experience of the divine than can be achieved by accepting dogmatic, rote teaching at face value.

I think the cultural legacy left by George Harrison is only beginning to be understood and appreciated. He was the "quiet" Beatle, seemingly content to live in the shadow of the power dyad that was Lennon and McCartney. But his was also a contemplative quiet. He explored the inner space and embraced the mysteries. It was evident in his music -- a surprising blend of pop sensibility and meditative resonance. His influence on both the Beatles and the culture was subtle but pervasive. But by following his own passions he helped to shape the psychedelic revolution and the proliferation of Eastern thought in the West. He may well have been the most complex of the fab four. The Beatles were a marvelous synergy and none of them approached as solo artists the same kind of musical alchemy. So it's hard to say how much his vision shaped their sound. But he deserves ample credit for their transformation from pop musicians to weavers of unforgettable sound tapestries.

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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Becoming a Shaman

We all have the ability to create art, make love, and offer healing. And some people have the gift. Part of the art of life is to find your gifts and infuse them with your passion so that you do what you have come here to do. How do you tell the difference between the feeling of "coming home" when you are introduced to shamanic practices and the actual call to give your life over to the work of being a shaman? How do you know that you have that gift? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt and she explores the confusing terrain of becoming a shaman in the contemporary world. The greatest challenge is truly understanding how deeply nourishing and healing it is to come into shamanism as a way of life. And to fully understand that the inner peace, blessings, and ecstasy that comes with this way of life is meant for everyone. This is how we are meant to live in the world; it isn't the call. The call to a path is far more demanding. Once you surrender to that call you must resist the temptation to follow others on that path. For the new shaman trusting and following the path your helping spirits lay out for you is paramount. It is in the ever unfolding of that path that you find your confirmation.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012 at 11:00 AM Pacific

Log on to Listen
Why Shamanism Now? on Co-Creator Network
Questions? Comments? Call: 1-512-772-1938

All episodes are now available in the iTunes Podcast Library.

Just Energy Radio

Michael Cremo & Dannion Brinkley

Michael Cremo joins Dr. Rita Louise in the first hour of Just Energy Radio where he will be discussing his finds in just how old the human race really is.

About Michael Cremo
Michael Cremo is on the cutting edge of science and culture issues. In the course of a few month's time he might be found on pilgrimage to sacred sites in India, appearing on a national television show, lecturing at a mainstream science conference, or speaking to an alternative science gathering. As he crosses disciplinary and cultural boundaries, he presents to his various audiences a compelling case for negotiating a new consensus on the nature of reality

About Dannion Brinkley
Dannion ‘s name became a household word when his first, of two, New York Times best selling books (Saved by the Light and At Peace in the Light), was published by Harper Collins, Inc. in 1994. Subsequently, the FOX Network quickly produced the highly acclaimed made-for-television movie depicting Dannion's story of being struck by lightning, and his 28 minute death experience in Heaven. The movie, also entitled, Saved by the Light aired in 1995 and became one of the highest rated TV movies in television history. Today,Dannion and his wife work ceaselessly to champion the virtues of ethical consciousness in daily life.

Fri, May 4, 2012 03:00PM ET

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/just-energy-radio

Awake: Now What?

LGBTQ: Empowered and Free; Taking Pride in Yourself

Empowering the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) community to embrace their authentic selves and ignite the power within

At this time of year, many of us attend LGBTQ Pride Festivals and Parades. What about having pride in yourself? How would that look in your life? Do you treat yourself with respect, the way you would treat someone you love and cherish? Learn the difference between pride and arrogance. Listen in to learn techniques for taking charge of your own self-respect.

Join us!

Sat, May 5, 2012 01:00PM ET

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/awake

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