HempCredible

ALTAR WORK: A Simple Egg Limpia

Let’s talk about that egg a bit, or more precisely: that Egg. That little guy has three positive destinies ahead of him/her, at least positive from our point of view.

One: she can experience life at the chicken farm – the courtyard life – laying many eggs, or she could be a he (therefore a Rooster) and be the cock of the walk.

Two: he can wind up at the grocery store in one of those little egg boxes (a long way from the chicken farm) to be consumed by humans whose life would be in the pits without Eggs.

Three: this little Egg knows about removing foreign energies from living organisms.

I mean, obviously, the Egg didn’t learn it or plan it quite the way we describe knowing, but Egg’s power resides in the energies that flow through it.

OK, basic physics: everything is made of energy. Those energies have purpose and duty, and the programming to do both. These energies make babies, grow cotton, fall off trees, make something tasty or make something poison. Any life that comes to this planet has to face those energies, good and bad. In other words, Egg has to survive an onslaught of energies to reach one of those three destinies.

That sounds a little like the struggle a sperm cell endures to be the “chosen” one that manifests a soul, doesn’t it?

Egg has a serious job: LIFE. Egg promotes life, supports life and simply is life. For instance, if any air gets in Egg’s shell, all destinies are off the table (except maybe number three, depending on the circumstances). Does this maybe remind us of our own birth?

Weren’t you pretty much like an Egg at some point in the process of conception to age 0?

“A little bean,” our baby doctor said at the imaging of our first baby.

Consider what Mama and Little Bean (which looks a lot like Egg, too) have to do for 260 days during this critical human cycle. The little Bean-Egg has to eat, breathe, be warm, cool off and together, Mom and Baby make sure a thousand different systems are functioning properly for that entire period so it has a chance at life!

That’s the human gestation period and Egg has one of those, too. It’s about 21 days for our feathered benefactors to sprout. In many ways they are like a very simplistic model of us.

Wait, are we just giant Eggs thinking we’re something else? Kidding, of course, but on the spiritual/metaphysical side of things, our aura is often compared to the shape of Egg. Many traditions refer to our overall energy make up as a “luminous egg.” Luminous means light, which we need in order to be, just like Egg.

It appears we have a certain parallel energy with Egg. We are both made of energies needed to experience life. We both have instincts to protect the future. One could say we have some life function in common.

The best we can think of regarding the science in this, being that we’re not scientists, is that Egg has some kind of magnetic quality to it that picks up foreign energy on other living beings.

In the scientific movement known as the Theory of Everything, quantum physics says there are four basic forces in the universe: Strong force, weak force, electromagnetic energy and gravity. If you place the energetic exchange you are having with Egg in that perspective, maybe it isn’t superstition. Maybe there’s some science to it?

Our shared life function is coming together, Human and Egg, in the cause of increasing the quality of our survival. Two Eggs dancing.

**The Simplest Egg Limpia Ever**

Set an egg out a few minutes or overnight in order to make it an Egg and your partner in this limpia.

Set a clear glass or plastic cup that from now on will be only for Eggs (no more drinking from it). Fill it half-way with water. Do this the same way you’re doing the Egg, giving it a little consecration time.

Learn the word “Pass” as we use it here: an elegant, subtle and effective action of a hand and two objects. In this case the hand uses Egg to connect to one or two Human Eggs, so to speak. The pass-over, pass-under, pass-around, pass-at, touch it, don’t touch it or come close to it are all valid passes. Using passes becomes second nature with practice and becomes a personalized tool for life.

Take the Egg and begin the passes over yourself or the person for whom you’ve chosen to perform a limpia, two minutes or maybe longer, as you judge best. Make crosses, circles, infinity symbols, touch the Egg and withdraw it, as if you are withdrawing something, linger with the coolness of the Egg on the eyebrows at the temples, trace your chakras, tap all the joints, whatsoever comes to your mind and hand, organized or random, it’s all good.

While you are doing this affirm you are seeking clearing and clarity. Say it, sing it, pray it, think it – again, whatever comes easy to you, put your words into it. Elaborate as you are inspired.

Break the Egg into the water, throw away the shells and wash up well. Keep the Egg and glass close overnight or a few hours, then send it down the toilet. Wash out the glass or cup for next time.

Note: Eggs in water like this show many things about the energy that was cleared out of the person. This is a topic that will come again in the future, since we did promise simple this time. You could also send us a picture of the Egg and we’ll give it a shot, facilitator@hempcredible.org You know we’d love to hear about it.

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Honor Your Ancestors: Don’t Ignore DNA

It’s a fact of life.

Blood. If there’s anything we have in common with other humans and the animal kingdom, it’s blood. That includes, of course, everything that goes with blood: the blueprint we’re made from plus our physical, mental and spiritual traits. The blood we come in with determines to a great extent how we will deal with the environment we are born into.

Regarding the Ancestors, it’s clear that while the ancestors are gone, body and soul, they appear to be very much in our blood, as per the best science of the day, in its way proving the pertinence of honoring our ancestors.

Not only do we get the color of our eyes and shape of our hands from our ancestors, we get the talent with numbers, a strong back for hard work, but we also get the alcoholism, poverty and abuse.

What does this tell us?

Whether you believe in an afterlife, in ghosts, in the religious beliefs around ceremonies, or not… whether or not you believe in ancestral homage of any kind, they are still with you, simply a third dimensional reality.

That’s some strong words there, but more than that, strong facts. Is something in your blood bringing scenes into your life that you want, the strengths of the family blood? Or is it bringing scenes you don’t want, like addictions and abuse? Are you harvesting your potential and breaking through, or are you trapped in a pattern, or a bottle, or a nowhere relationship?

The biggest question, after all the DNA research that has come out, is: can we enhance DNA traits, can we change them, heal them?

Scientifically sound programs are coming to light, to bring out the best of our DNA and to eliminate some of the worst. We read a book, Super Genes by Deepak Chopra. Deepak’s conclusions about the future of this subject and the amount of research he points to is amazing. If you search Google for the same topic around DNA, you’ll see work with sound frequencies, music and mind control, to name a few, going on now.

HOWEVER

Our ancestors told us most of this a long time ago. Told us, in fact, it was our duty – each human being’s – to clean our blood, told us how the sins of one generation affects future generations, told us how to respect the departed, help them to help us, told us where the departed are and what they go through, set us days and times to communicate and honor the dead, and wrote down much of it, enough to fill a few libraries. Wow.

I’m not only talking about the ancestral traditions that I am proud to be a member of; I’m talking about the ancestral traditions in your blood, too! East, West, Native American, African, Caucasian, Neanderthal, Asian, Christian, Muslim, lunatic, name it. Every one of our bloods has a story for the dead.

Are these good reasons to Honor Our Ancestors, especially when it includes making changes that improve our life better in the process? While we will be sharing some traditional ways of honoring the old ones, Toltec ways specifically, in our Altar Work series, here, in the Ancestors Series, we want to keep it generic, multi-faith, multi-dimensional: at least for anyone who has active, living blood coursing through their bodies, and naturally, all of those who speak to us from our blood.

Want to do Something?

We offer a simple way here to both honor your ancestors, and to test whether or not any benefits are available to you and yours. Before we do, we need to define “honoring.”

We know honoring means showing esteem and respect; however – and important for our purposes here – it also means complying with an obligation, fulfilling a promise, implementing a promised plan. That’s precisely the element of the definition that will make this mutually beneficial to both you and the ancestors being honored.

Nobody likes being obligated by something we don’t really understand, but we have the blood we have. It means we accept the fact of our blood, our DNA/our ancestors, and so acknowledge their role in our life.

Think of it as being a conjoined twin. You’ll have differences, but what are you going to do? To have a good life you have to embrace the obligation.

With that thought in our mind, our next installment of the Ancestors series, Simple Ancestral Synergy will present a simple, generic, non-denominational approach that alerts you to expect a benefit (or many) from its practice.

You know we’re prone to going with the spiritual side of this coin, so you’ll see that, of course. We really hope, though, you’ll also see our deep respect for science and how it supports the spirituality.

The main idea is to give you a door into this ancestral/DNA question so you can try it and determine for yourself if it is more than nice thoughts.

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Intentional Breathing: What’s The Internal Dialogue?

You know exactly who that is.

When you intend a breath – count it, hold it, feel it, whatever puts your attention upon it – it becomes power. The more you do it, the more you’ll feel the power.

If you’re reading about the internal dialogue, you’ve likely been working on your meditation and intentional breathing with high enough goals to be encountering the internal dialogue in a serious way. One thing us breathers can agree on, with the mental conflict we all have, is the importance of stilling our thoughts so we can focus on what we want, and reach our true selves.

We started this blog as Focus Desire or Release Into Peace, the first question serious breathers wind up asking in one way or another. We’ll definitely get there, but our struggle and resulting realizations with the internal dialogue pushed its way into a priority. The amount of progress we’ve made, since we found a way to handle this, is amazing.

That mental conflict is known as the internal dialogue and I’ll have you know it has nothing to do with thinking. Our internal dialogue is more like a playback of previous episodes of our life, and the scenes are not at all well edited.

In other words that playback we’re constantly hearing is not the good stuff from our lives, not the highlights or even just the facts. It’s more about doubt and fear, judgements running rampant, nagging tasks left undone, not having enough time, frustrated desires, the lie you told the boss.

The internal dialogue is the stuff that comes when you try to focus, also when you try to relax, or when your girlfriend is asking something pertinent and you’re thinking about what that guy said at the gym.

How does an event in our lives make it on the internal dialogue playlist?

The guy at the gym said, “Bet your Mama doesn’t know you’re trying to lift weights all by yourself.”

When you take a step at him, he laughs and slaps you on the back. You feel a bit stupid because your Mama did protect you a bit much and that’s history you’d hoped was gone out of your life. This has been quietly, unconsciously, nagging at you and joins the playlist, in spite of it happening almost 20 years ago. We still think about what we should have done, what we should have said. Crazy.

Think about all those moments when we were in a peer pressure situation where those judgements, fears and doubts were flying around in the silence of our minds and heart.

Give it a minute, locate some of those replays and think about how long they’ve been on the internal dialogue playlist.

Another example might be fear-based. If you are trying to do a complex project but can’t stop thinking about the fact that you have to ask the landlord for mercy, for instance, one could say that is internal dialogue, at that moment, getting in the way of your project.

How about wondering in some way, all the time, if you are good enough? If you have enough? Anybody familiar with that one?

How about us jealous folks? How do we deal with the constant suspicion, showing up whether it’s justified or not?

You see it. Concerns, doubts, deadlines, relationships, entanglements, confusions, all those, in some form or fashion, rather quietly, muttering in our ears, making their presence known when they don’t count. Can you imagine if we could stop that noise? How that might improve our focus? Our confidence?

Thinking, Knowing and Being

Those examples, Dear Readers, are not thinking. Thinking is now, it’s focused, it has depth and width and relevance. Thinking leads to knowing.

Unresolved issues of any kind, like Mommy/Daddy issues, resentments, abuses, and the long list that follows act like thinking. They’re so close to our active, focused mind, that no matter how well we deny them, they find a way to show up, either with the constant murmur, or taking the stage, so to speak, with drama, depression or tantrums.

Editing the Internal Dialogue Playlist

On a personal level, when we finally began taking the internal dialogue seriously, we found that several of our major life obstacles connected directly to the murmurings from the playlist. For instance, the fear of failure was showing up in our internal dialogue, murmuring behind our backs, at the very moment we were applying courage to our efforts.

That made it very clear: it’s time to Stop the Internal Dialogue if we want to accomplish something, if we want to heal, if we want to take an alert, responsible approach to our lives.

We said the following in Intentional Breathing: Let’s Do this!:

“When distracting thoughts come, accept them without judgment, let them go as soon as you can, and continue the breathing count as best you can, without judgements of your abilities, until you finish.”

As we explained, that’s a universal response to those mental interruptions that come at us, but as you can see the problem is a little more complex. The advice is indeed solid; however, we believe dealing with the internal dialogue to see where the noise comes from, is worth the effort if we can improve our focus or the bliss of emptiness, whichever may be our goal.

Our work with this debilitating internal dialogue was a long time coming. We studied, but mostly we stumbled into a decent understanding of the concept. The result has been more clarity, more success and more peace while we meditate. Maybe we can share some of that.

Our next article will make a serious attempt at giving you a viable way to observe the inner dialogue so we can defeat the nasty beast all at once and /or a little at a time.

MAKE ART

Spirit Hemp: Do Plants Dream?

Who’s Dreaming Who?

The question made me jump when I saw it. We think a lot about dreams and plants, both, in our work, but mostly in separate contexts, each with their own separate shelf. Today we want to see if these two ideas can dance.

When one ingests a plant, it is easy to see how, at least biologically, plants can affect one’s dreams. It’s in your body so it contributes all of what you do which must include dreaming.

On the other end of the spectrum, psychoactive plants like psilocybin mushroom, peyote or ayahuasca most definitely affect our psyche, therefore our dreams.

But how does that in any way mean that the plants are dreaming?

If plants dream, what are they dreaming? Are they dreaming like we do, concerning their life in general, and most importantly for our discussion, are they dreaming us, like we also dream the other beings that surround us?

Creation, no matter how you look at it, underlies our question. If we understand it, rocks were here first, then the plants came, then the animals, then us. Now that’s way too simple to be scientifically accurate, but dirt and rocks did form into locations. Plants grew in those locations and grew into food for the animals and the eventual humans. Makes sense, right?

Well, that I know of, rocks, like plants, don’t have brains either, but where would we be without plants on our planet? Being that we ingest something from the plant world every single day, again, where would we be without plants?

Now since the rocks and the plants had to be here for the animals and humans to show up later, with brains, by the way, do plants or rocks need brains as we know them?

Do crystals need brains to power rockets and heal illness?

We human beings certainly need brains to operate. For the most part rocks and plants are doing OK without brains, it seems, except of course for the greedy destruction of Mother Earth for profit, by those with brains, no less.

In the article, Is Cannabis Divine? we visit the Garden of Eden and how, in its aftermath, the plants were the key to our survival on the hard Earth. Of course, that doesn’t only apply to cannabis. Survival, healing, vision and knowledge come from all the plants.

In the dreaming beliefs at this altar, we start with the idea that the Creator is dreaming us, so we, in turn, can dream our creations. We believe we are all little suns of our own mini universe, a universe we’re trying to grow from and within our Earth life.

We start our Earth dream in our human mother’s womb for approximately 260 days, and then when we come out, everybody else’s dreams start interacting with our dream. Then things, many times unfortunately, go haywire in life; our original dream is attacked, stretched, torn, dominated, seduced, and a whole list of manipulative actions that usually include us as victims and perpetrators both.

It may sound a little simplistic, describing life in the vocabulary of dreams, but when there is a need for healing, we assume something is wrong at the dream level. Our client’s dream of a good, harmonious life has been infected, we believe, by other dreams around them.

These are truths we find in ancient studies of dreaming, and what makes it pertinent now is that modern sleep and dream research is starting to prove some of those ancient beliefs. For instance, the idea that, at some level, we are always dreaming. Even in full waking mode, some part of our brain – the subconscious – is in dreamland preparing our next dream, basically 24-7.

This view of dreams in no way eliminates the need for medical attention, common sense, and care. On the contrary, the dream approach includes all of that, but that’s a talk for another time.

For now, our question – Do Plants Dream? – still stands.

Plants are part of all creation stories, in some ways they are part of every human story, a clear element in our creation and survival, for sure. In addition to their role in creation, plants live in our tradition and are a powerful element of Spirit.

“Creation, tradition and Spirit” sound kind of sacred, don’t they? I guess we can say divine, too. Are plants divine?

Dear Readers, if you hold plants in a way that approaches sacred, then maybe you’d be open to the idea that plants are dreaming us. And pushing on that a bit, perhaps plants, like us, have dreams of what they came to do on this Creation.

The plants known as Cannabis, along with its cousins, Marijuana and Hemp, show up on Mother Earth some 12,000 years ago. Findings dating back to that time show it in use around the globe. Those of you who have studied shamanism know how significant it is that the same skill is learned across the globe by people of all kinds with no communication. Maybe dreams come in there somewhere.

Cannabis spread all over the globe and into shamanic cultures of all kinds. It’s been medicine in too many ways to mention here, and for a whole lot longer than its been a criminalized crop. It has a specialized vocabulary in almost every language and culture, on the street and in the lab, with only a few misinformed law and order groups still locking people up. Now the plant speaks loudly to the world in two ways we understand, health and money. Maybe Cannabis was dreaming it all along.

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DIY Limpias: The Right and the Power

You have the Medicine in you.

Limpias are cleansings of the excess and foreign energies that we human beings attract over the course of our lives. In many Hispanic, Latino and indigenous communities, the limpia is a functional practice that falls under the heading of traditional medicine.

We see medicine as anything from the realms of matter, space, energy and time that improves our life, our path and our relationship to the Earth.

Many of us seek a limpia when stress comes in extra doses, or maybe once a month, whether we need it or not. When we feel an emergency, be it of this world or something from the invisible worlds, a limpia is the first thought for many of us.

A previous article, Altar Work: The Limpia, provides some more background and covers one of the most common limpias, performed with an Egg, and sometimes to add more juice, accompanied by Chile and Lemon.

When the altar hosts quick limpias, it’s a 15-20-minute movement of thought, emotion and other energies. It changes one’s perspective, or clears the mind at a minimum. Many times illnesses show up and get some healing, along with clearing conflicts in the person’s life. Even patients who are working with a doctor will come for a limpia for help from the spiritual/emotional/mental side.

Last thing, as we arrive at our point, limpias can be done a thousand ways at every level of need, for a minor headache or for PTSD.

We want you to realize you have the right and power to perform limpias on yourself and others! And we hope you try it. It’s a human skill, not for just a few. It’s for humans to face life on the planet Earth. (It gets dirty down here!)

Perhaps some people do have additional skill, perhaps “sight,” that allows them to see more detail and perhaps move more energy. But that is a vocational thing. Just because you’re not a mechanic doesn’t mean you can’t work on the car.

All of us, lawyers, laborers, bus drivers, along with healers, have lives that go haywire: at work, at home, in relationships. When we humans fall off our train, we seek clarity in the issue, along with healing, of course, or conflict resolution, maybe an exorcism.

Just being human gives us the right to seek help from the world around us. This can mean I ask my brother in law for a loan or I buy some eggs, or just maybe, go perform a limpia on myself.

We’re talking in essence about an intervention to an energy contrary to our well-being. We want to interrupt the negative flow that’s crept into our lives. Again, we know the intervention may take more resources than a limpia, but maybe a limpia is a good place to start.

Over the next couple of months, we want to share a few ways to do a limpia, from the simplest possible ways to more traditional, established limpias, such as the Egg, Chile, Lemon and more complex methods.

We’ll talk about good times for a limpia and outline a method. Every method we share will have a thousand variations and options, so we offer these methods as seeds you can grow into a tree. Once you do it a few times, trust us, you’ll get creative.

To show you what I mean, let’s start with the foundation of absolutely everything: our breath. Think about it, what better place to cleanse the self than your very source.

You’re feeling lousy, things aren’t working, husband’s upset at you… this is a good time for a limpia. However, there’s no money for a visit to a curandera until payday, and that’s still two days away. You find suddenly the Simplest Self-Limpia Ever!

**The Simplest Self-Limpia Ever!**

Covid Factor: Wash your hands thoroughly before and after this exercise, before contact with anyone else. Be at least 12 feet away from anyone when you do the exercise.

Exercise: Take a few deep breaths. Fill, expand, your belly, then cup your hands to your mouth. Blow all the air out into your hands, then release your hands out, like you’re getting rid of something, because my friend, you are!

Repeat that a number of times, a number you like, maybe three times – always magical – or four times – always brings order. At the very least you will find a little clarity. As always, we’d love to hear how it goes.

Think it through with me. Your stress is in your breath, in every breath you take, whether you know it or not. If you intentionally push out that stress, through your breath, shouldn’t some of it lift?

That was a seed you can grow into a tree… and if you’re interested in how this breath work becomes a tree, check out the following article. It’s a classic Eastern technique that we recommend for some of our customers. This breath not only cleanses you for the moment; used over time, it can do deep cleansing work.

Nine Purifying Breaths, by EternityofSpirit

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Ancestral Healing and The Sacred Hoop

It was a few hours after he died that he showed up in my garage where I was mourning him like I’d never mourned anyone before.

He reminded me of a Peyote Meeting at his home where we looked at the dark to the South of the hogan where we met.

“Yeah,” he says, like he heard me thinking, “It’s always dark out there.”

It felt like he was going to say something else, but he turned back into the hogan, traditional Navajo housing with many ceremonial uses.

The night he died he showed me that dark little valley again. This time, though, violet flames were flying out of the dark into the skies. Triumphant flights, they were. Flames, freed.

“You have to get them out of there, free them,” said my brother, “they’re holding back the living!”

Then the vision disappeared, and I broke down.

In our communities, which can be loosely described as Hispanic, Mexican American, immigrant, Native American, and/or multi-cultural communities, conversations about ancestors are quite common. Sightings of recent dead, mourning altars, celebrations for the dead and all kinds of lights, candles, asking for help from and for the dead – in the daily routine of our lives.

In our healing work, in our meditations and teachings, in almost everything we do, the ancestors are included. They are either at the base of the healing, the subject or the actual key to the healing.

I remember – and it’s been awhile – hearing criticism and humiliation around our ancestor songs, about making such a big deal about people that are gone. Judgments about us living in the past, trying, as many accused, to hold on to hollow, empty traditions.

Lots of history in all this, but cutting to the chase: DNA research is now proving how right our ancestors were about ancestors. The ancestors, it seems, are in our blood, scientifically documented and researched endlessly for its potential in human evolution!

Alcoholism, physical and mental abuse, poverty, creativity, healing gifts and long-term beliefs (whether we like them or not) all pass through our blood and affect our daily lives.

That’s why Healing the Blood is always in the mix. A friend asked me if we did “ancestral healing” at our altar. I’m still trying to figure out how to answer her.

We do things to heal the blood on an almost daily basis, so in that way, yes, we do ancestral healing.

However, we’ve also noticed several organized approaches to ancestral healing sprouting up everywhere: serious, scientific/spiritual approaches to healing family trauma.

This is a good thing. If the living and the dead flow as they should, everyone benefits.

The research on DNA and the science coming out about the spiritual dimensions and the many who live there, in the afterlife, psi, hyper-dimensions, and other worlds, is fascinating, especially in bringing these things into a real and functional understanding.

Within that wide world, “Ancestral Healing,” as it has developed, deserves some study before we can say we do what is now known as ancestral healing.

We are encouraged by this development in the healing arenas and want to support the practice of healing the blood. Our next article will look at some specific things anyone can do to heal their blood, and eventually come to understand what we see, feel and dream about our ancestors.

Your questions, suggestions, ideas about ancestral healing, will help us open this up as an avenue of information. We look forward to it.

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Finding Healing, Part 1

Awareness, Acceptance, Intention, Treatment, Results

The Act of Finding is a critical skill for us human beings. Whether it’s finding things, or jobs, or answers, we need to find it if we are to proceed.

We’ve looked a little bit at the huge subjects of finding Love and Success. Of course, there’s so much to talk about in those areas that we could never cover all the angles. The same applies to finding Healing, big subject, and there’s only so much we can say in a thousand (1,000) words or less.

Aside from the sheer size of these objects of desire, we notice another commonality. All three – love, success and healing – are related. It should easy to see we’ll be talking about finding Balance. At some point, we hope you’re so good at finding, we have to shift our conversation to begin talking about things not to find.

That’s why we’ve centered on the skill of finding: a skill useful at every stage of life, from finding the can-opener to finding peace.

Obviously, the first step is to know what you’re looking for and what you want to accomplish. If you’re reading an article about Finding Healing, chances are good the pain has been talking to you, along with the limitations and other discomforts caused by whatever it is needing healed.

We know three things about healing:

1. With few exceptions, anything can be healed, although we may not be able to prove it in all the cases.

2. Every case is different and every person has some level of responsibility for their own healing.

3. No one is powerless in the struggle, even though it may appear that way.

This brings us to our first of five principles to guide us to healing:

Awareness

There’s more to awareness than knowing where the pain is. It involves knowing where the pain is coming from, whether it be a back pain or a terminal disease, how something we are doing is causing the discomfort.

Awareness includes knowing what can help. The doctor is supposed to know, but you may be reading this because the medical community isn’t quite solving the problem.

Are you aware of the alternative methods that are being used for your malady?
Do you know what homeopathic medicine would say about it?
What about the chiropractor?
What remedies would your aunt use?

The challenge to being aware of all this information is with confusion and fear. The confusion comes fast, as there is a lot of information. Some of it is contradictory and some of it stretches the limits of your beliefs. On top of that, it all relates to you, your well-being and your future. That lets the fear come in.

Fear comes in two sizes: fear of real threat and just fear. The first one can save us while the second can bring our defeat. In the first case, I jump away from the snake I almost stepped on. In the second, I’m wondering how bad this problem can get, after doing some research.

The challenge with fear is that it’s very well-disguised. No one wants to be afraid, so our minds find all kinds of ways to cover it up and make it seem reasonable. That’s a battle we all have to make peace with. Fear truly is our number one enemy, yet our first ally in a bad moment.

So, our first principle gives way to the need for the second principle:

Acceptance

Stop. Breathe. Fear and Confusion are precisely the battle you are fighting. They are the enemy, if you will. Your intention to heal will affect the enemy. Again: your intention to heal will affect the enemy. To what extent your intervention affects you, and who wins in the end, who knows, but your intention (below) will change the game!

That knowledge, that your intention affects the outcome, is, at this point, your peace with the issue. Spend some time accepting that. If you put your mind into it, of course, it will change.

This is where any faith or knowledge you have comes in. If you add whatever you have to your acceptance, believe me, you’re miles ahead. Even if you have seen enough that you believe it’s impossible, anything you do will make the journey better.

Find a way, in other words, to make peace with it: peace and acceptance. This alone creates fertile ground around your healing.

Once we accept that we are aware, we’re ready for principle number three:

Intention

Of course, we want to get well. And that is our intention, but what is there to talk about besides that?

Remember: we, you, the doctor and family are already talking about the awareness part of it. Everyone in it has opinions and the doctor seems to be the final word. You just read that using supplement A, which works so well for you, may be causing symptom B. Damn.

All that, let me remind you, goes in the awareness column. Yes, it’s stuff you need to deal with and know all about in order to beat this pain.

But regarding your Intention, all that is information on the enemy, awareness research, the state of things, etc. Your intention is where you want to be when the war is over.

What do you want?
What’s your highest dream/goal for this healing?
What do you want to do with your healing?
What do you want to be able to do, without pain, anxiety or sleeplessness?

We have plenty of evidence that we’re sick. The doctors, the tests, the fact I can’t get across the room, all of that proves I am sick. If all we think about is the evidence of our illness, maybe that’s all we’ll wind up with.

If, however, we have a vision for our healing, we bring some balance to our quest by defining the evidence we want to see.

We want to see the evidence of healing! Isn’t that worth some of our time?

Write this Intention down, take inventory of your awareness and accept the conditions of the battle.

Finding Healing, Part 2 will look at the Treatment and Results Principles. Feel better and make art.

MAKE ART

Ceremonial Structure

IT’S TIME TO DO THIS

It’s Ceremony time!

If you’re doing a Fall Equinox Ceremony on September 22, this is last minute guidance.

If you’re working on the Personal Ceremony for Gainful Employment, this is the final instruction, and maybe it’s time for you to schedule that.

If you are doing both ceremonies, this may help.

Beginning: FOCUS

You and what you believe are the first role you step into. If you’re invoking Deity, now is the time to call. State your purpose as well as the result you are seeking.

This is also the time to thank participants for being present, if applicable, and to assign roles. The goal of a good beginning is your deep respect for the forces about you and the quality of your approach.

Example:
“Good morning, Creator, we thank you for allowing us the time and place to seek help for the coming Winter with all the issues we are facing as a nation and a global community.

Thanks to all of you (traveling, getting a babysitter, simply supporting us) joining us in the ceremony. Paul, I hope you’re still good with watching the fire and Mary, thanks for holding the water.

Creator, you know our need better than we do, so permit us to share our desires on the matter, or to seek your counsel, or to release our pain,” etc.

Middle: AMPLIFY

The Circle moves here, or rather our purpose moves through the circle. We go into detail, microscopic when applicable, about what we want. If we are making speeches, singing songs, taking medicine, making offerings or anything else, the Middle is when it happens.

This is where the motivating feelings that brought us here come out, when men cry like babies and women say what’s been on their mind. Feelings are the power behind the ceremony.

Mary, above, could offer water to the Four Winds, say her piece as she goes about her work. Paul can do the same with fire. You might tell the story about what got you here – a story of the energy that is now the middle of the actual ceremony.

Example:
You tell your story while you hold a special feather, which has been consecrated for one speaker at a time. “And that is what brought us to this point.”

You pass the feather (to the left, clockwise) to Mary who will tell us, “How water is so critical to what we are asking today…”

Mary does her thing and passes the feather to Paul and eventually, it gets back to you. Feelings in movement around the circle.

Ending: Assurance

Summarize what just happened, and why it was done, and be grateful for it, to all attendees, living human participants and other forms.

Some like to bring the circle around by everyone moving clockwise toward the door, closing things in formal fashion.

If you’ve planned something like throwing a Paho stick, a prayer stick, or maybe a special song or poem, this is a good place and time, but use your judgement as this may also fit in the middle.

Example:
“Thank you Creator, for hearing our call as we go into Winter. Thanks, as well, to each of you. Would anyone like to say something as we close the circle today?”

That done, “Thank you again, Creator, we look forward to your grace, power and gifts in this coming Winter. Aho.”

IT’S TIME

September 22, 2020, we will perform a Fall Equinox Ceremony here locally. We hope several readers will do the same. If you came this far in Making Ceremony, will you perform it and tell us how it felt, how it goes?

Not knowing your job/career situation, I can’t apply any urgency to it besides the urgency you apply for yourself to make this part of your life better. Will you Make Ceremony for the job you want? And tell us about it? Especially the part when you get the job!

YOU KNOW

Making Ceremony can change lives. You’ve likely witnessed it one way or another, or maybe you trust what we’ve told you about it. We appreciate that and hope you can benefit somehow. Either way, maybe it’s time you experience it for yourself.

Yes, that’s a challenge!

Our next article on Making Ceremony will report on our Equinox Ceremony and a Personal Ceremony for a Job that we will perform for others. Remember, it’s in the feeling.

MAKE ART

Intentional Breathing: Religion?

Does religion improve your results?

“Just don’t talk about religion or politics.” This is an old expression some of you will recognize. They used to tell us that going into a new job or school. Seems to be good advice these days, especially.

When we began our dialogues around Intentional Breathing, we said to benefit from the practice, it wasn’t necessary to bring religion to it. We also said religious requirements were a part of the myth that keeps us from using the most amazing tool we have to face life on Earth: our breath.

And so, it is. You don’t need religion when you’re catching your breath, changing your mood, or controlling your high blood pressure, but:

If you want religion in it, chances are it can help. Religion includes miracles, remember.

Of course it can help, and as you may imagine, we use religion at the altar quite a bit. Depending on the purpose of our work, we meditate both with religion and without religion.

Our decision to use religion or not depends on our state of mind and whether or not we are working for others in the course of any particular meditation. We also work with the religions/beliefs of our customers.

What does Religion mean to you?

That’s one of those questions that’s always being asked, from outside us and from within. We’ve all had family backgrounds along with the results of our own learning along the way. We’ve all rejected some of that background, and sometimes all of it. We’ve added our own ways and experiences. Either way, we are not the same Catholics/Methodists/Muslims our Grandparents were. One could say we have a spirituality made of religious backgrounds and life experiences.

The point is: when you bring religion to intentional breathing, your views and practices will change, constantly, because breathing is about now. That means anything we think about during our intentional breathing is about now.

Should You Decide to Bring Religion To Your Intentional Breathing

Keep it simple and build slowly. We want to keep our focus on our breath so add elements of praise and worship where they don’t confuse your main focus.

For instance: if you’re doing a 15 minute meditation to concentrate, rest, heal or simply learn, see it as if you and the God you invoke are doing this together, as a practice for you, and an opportunity for contact both for you and for the deity.

Look at it as a way to let the deity answer you. He or She knows your situation already, so breathe, call upon your God, and listen, wait. Communication, remember, happens in many ways. With time, trust us, you’ll feel the contact.

Are you asking, thanking or complaining? If you’re using religion, chances are you’re doing one of these things. It’s good to be clear about what you’re doing.

Intentional breathing is also for health and understanding of oneself. Too much religion with hopes, fears and doubts floating around can get in the way of your main goal.

Of course, those are exactly the thoughts that come up in meditation, the very thoughts you are trying to silence in your breathing. The standard recommendation in meditation circles around the world is to acknowledge the thought, see it, and let it pass working your way back to your focus or mental silence. With that in mind try the following:

If you’re asking, pay no mind to the result, at least not in the meditation. Pay attention to the feeling of what you want.

If you’re grateful, say thanks fully, with and in your breathing. Feel it.

If you’re complaining, do it before or after the meditation. Feeling the essence of a complaining mood just doesn’t help much.

If you have hopes, stay focused on one and fit it in where it makes sense, before, after or during the inhale/exhale. By all means focus on the feeling of what you want, not its lack.

You can see that if we bring all the teachings of a religion to intentional breathing, we’re doing something else besides intentional breathing, aren’t we?

Leave dogma and guilt outside. Bring the essence, the feeling, of what you seek. Let your breath make it sacred in the now.

Be open to what you’ll see, and always remember that all-time favorite – Be careful what you ask for, you might get it.

MAKE ART

Spirit Hemp: Homeostasis

The Motherboard

From Hemp and the Three Chronics, “Let’s say it like this: Homeostasis speaks of a most special balance! We find that talk about pills, memory and prayer can happen in the same conversation, for one. We believe it one of the most holistic, full circle frameworks – mental-contextual – we’ve ever seen! Of course, it helps hemp work better, but it helps anything you’re doing work better as well.”

For this article I decided not to put much faith in my academic abilities, and I asked the Little Plant, Hemp, for help. If you get anything from this be sure to thank a Hemp Plant somewhere.

Fascinating word, homeostasis. The word can hit you different ways, at least the first time. When I saw “stasis” my head went to “static,” which for me connotes boredom, status quo, stagnation, fear of change.

Of course, there’s the “homeo” part of the word which also has some variations in connotations. Anyway, I had to get through all that because Hemp Oil was helping, and they claim it upgrades my overall state of homeostasis. Thought I’d better find out what that is.

Pictures of homeostasis led me to definitions and scientific stuff way beyond my academic capacity in the world. I found it came from a combination of Greek, English and Latin. It means “staying the same,” but not in the sense of flat, non-moving or stalled. It means stay the same in terms of “balance and consistency.”

Balance and consistency apply to a dynamic, something in motion; a system, perhaps!

We have systems in our body whose purpose is to provide homeostasis, balance and consistency as our bodies live life and all that entails. Respiratory System, Circulatory System, Endocrine System, Digestive System, Nervous System, Immune System, …

These are complex systems made up of blood, tissues, cells, their movement, production of fluids for dissemination to the right places at the right time, and as I mentioned earlier, science out of my reach.

And this, Dear Readers, is where Hemp meets our Body Systems. All of those systems I mentioned, and probably many others of which I’m unaware, produce cannabinoids, among their other functions.

Cannabinoids, you may recall, are the healing agents of hemp, marijuana and CBD. Our body, in other words has an endocannabinoid system – it produces cannabinoids as part of our entire health system. This was discovered circa 1992 and eventually led to legalization of marijuana for medicinal purposes and more research.

The logic is really simple. Our body produces cannabinoids to maintain our health, old as milk, and so do Hemp and Marijuana produce cannabinoids. When we need cannabinoids, we eat hemp – simple, hunter-gatherer stuff.

I heard one lady say it went to the “Motherboard!” That was when I understood the word enough to start using it in sentences (the way we were taught in school).

“Homeostasis and Motherboard” describe well how we perceive the medicine working on us: subtle, deep, in flow.

While it didn’t always relieve the pain as much as I’d like, it changed the course of the pain.

Logic: Our body has mechanisms to help us with pain and inflammation. When we feel it, our mechanisms go to work.

If the problem persists, we know the mechanisms aren’t working. I can take acetaminophen to relieve symptoms, but my body doesn’t produce acetaminophen, does it?

What happens when I send something in that’s native to the body, to assist the Motherboard, if you will? I may still need the acetaminophen, but as my system gets stronger, can I begin to phase it out?

That’s my logic. Thanks for listening, but what will the concept of homeostasis do for you?

Holding the concept of homeostasis as a major health goal could be a gold mine in the progress/process of your life. Even if you aren’t the picture of health you dreamed for yourself, could seeking homeostasis – a balanced, nurtured, dynamic – via hemp or the other avenues that exist, help in the long run?

It wouldn’t be bad, for instance, to have all systems in the best available balance when we leave the Earth, would it? I know that carries the concept to an extreme but isn’t our physical state, and its state of homeostasis, a factor every moment we are alive, to the last one?

Let’s take it a bit farther. Look around, doesn’t every living thing you see require balance and consistency – a good mix – for a better existence? Trees, flowers, animals, other human beings?

Now think about what might happen if we kept the idea of balanced, well-running systems in our daily life.

Homeostasis all around!

Seriously, when we tell our mind we want something and we insist on it, our mind will go to work. If you believe in the holistic approach to your own health, homeostasis is required vocabulary.