Courageous Heart
August 2016 outline
After a nice long mini vacation, I’m ready to dive back down into the work. This blog post is going to be the brief outline for August, and a breakdown of the overall topic of what we will be exploring this month at each Fairfax Shamanic journey group. Click here if you’re unfamiliar with Shamanic journeying.
So what are we exploring this month? Last month we explored the energetic bucket. I have plans to record more guided meditations and post them in accompaniment with the energetic bucket. That was the month where we explored what our energy body is, and how we take care of it.
This month we will cover transformations and transformational processes. A lot of people are not differentiating between change and transformation, and in doing so they are not acknowledging the steps of a process. With change you can always change back. With transformation, you cannot even fathom going back – something has happened to you and you are a different person because of it. As we grow, and as we transform into different people throughout our lifetime, we are being given the opportunity to create our own containers for transformation. We sometimes spend years working on transformations, and then there is this big event where we break down, transform, and step out of the other side as another person.
These are some examples of transformation. When a woman becomes pregnant and gives birth to a child, she is no longer considered the woman who she used to be. From that point on, she is considered a Mother and has undergone a transformation. It took 9 long months to get to that point, to set up the container. Perhaps even longer than that if she’s been trying to have a baby for a long time. Another example is if we get our high school diploma or college degree. We are recognized by the community and a ceremony is held for our “graduation”. After we walk that stage, there is no taking away our diploma. That is something that is earned and no one can take that away from us because it’s ours.
These are physical examples of a transformational process, however what we will be talking about this month are emotional ones (more to expand in the upcoming blog post, will update this when it is done). There are some times in life when we are exposed to something that changes the way we learn, the way we behave, or how we think. Sometimes these processes still take years to “build the container” so that we can turn into a different person.
Again, the fundamental difference is the difference between change and transformation. How many times have you heard someone say “I’ve changed”, but hanging out with them after, you notice they have superficially changed and not really changed as a person deep down inside. Those are markers of “change” and not “transformation”.
The question we face this month, is are we allowing these transformations to take place? If we set up these containers within ourselves and having others hold space for us – is it healthy? What is a healthy transformation? A majority of us know that transformation on an emotional level is a messy process, and it can hurt. Let’s explore that this month.
August 1st – No journey group (Momma needed a vacay)
August 8th – What is the difference between change and transformation? What is a transformational process? How do we set up a healthy container and what are some things that could pollute a process trying to happen? Change comes about because we realize deep down that something is not working. We can sometimes set up the container for us to transform, but we sometimes wreck our own process and instead of a transformation we emotionally settle for a change.
August 15th – Personal transformation – is our container for our own transformation healthy? What makes a good and healthy transformation? Are we polluting our own process and sometimes derailing a process that is trying to happen? If our emotions or mental processing gets in the way, we resort to a short term change instead of a long term transformation. How much are we willing to hold onto these old patterns? How do we recognize them?
August 22nd – Interpersonal transformation – sometimes it feels like we are going through something that’s so big that we need at least one other person to lean on. Humans by nature are social creatures, and even if someone is an introvert – finding a friend to talk with and help them through something helps transform them. Sometimes we don’t need someone to heal us, we just need to be reminded of our strength. How do we find that strength and how can we be there for someone else in a healthy way?
August 29th – Community transformation – after we go through a process, how does the community see us after? After getting to know and connecting with a certain group of friends, they notice that you might have changed in some way. In what way can we do a “rites of passage” ceremony for another person? If someone went through a really tough time, can’t we do a “you survived and you’re a badass!” type of victory party? We will also cover processes that are sometimes too large to be held by one singular person, and sometimes for big shifts, we need the backing of a community in order to safely transform – where many people see our process and hold us in this safe space while we transform.
Heavy stuff this month! But I guess that’s why you guys keep showing up for journey group, eh? Journeying is a wonderful technique where we can go to ask our helping spirits/inner guidance/spirit guides/power animals for help. Haven’t journeyed before and don’t know what spiritual guidance is? No worries. Message me before you come (not required, but helpful if you do). Even if you can’t journey or are unsure if you can, feel free to attend and see what happens.
Shake a rattle this month, guys!
Sense of Purpose and the Open Heart Path
Eagle Therapies is about empowerment versus enabling – and the point of Eagle Therapies is to point people to the tools and resources that most resonate with them. There is a core group of teachings that are based off of my experiences and what has been taught to me – but I am still a student myself and do not claim to be an expert on anything. My teachings and events are fueled by my motivation to get people exposed to more holistic ways of living, as well as finding ways to connect more profoundly with themselves on a deeper level.
One of the consistent things that Eagle Therapies offers is a weekly journey group.(If you are unfamiliar with journeying please click here) The groups themselves only meet for about an hour once weekly on Mondays to make it easier to fit into one’s schedule. They can be a-la-carte and people can drop in whenever their schedules allow, without fear of missing a “curriculum”. I offer “suggested journey topics” that are broken down into 15 minute learning tidbits, followed by a discussion between fellow journeyers before we actually journey. These journey topics rotate based off of the themes that I see present in society, or just good introspective tools that might be useful.
As Eagle Therapies is still new to the scene of offering a safe and sacred place for people to explore their individuality, there is questioning from participants as Eagle Therapies comes to discover itself. This questioning is valuable because it helps the small community forming around the Eagle Therapies events to define itself, while Eagle Therapies shapes itself to fit the needs of the community. This article is meant to provide a brief summary of the Open Heart Path and why it’s a good tool for cultivating personal development.
There is a lot of movement in the growing spiritual community in terms of getting people to “awaken” somehow. A lot of these ideals and concepts are too large and grandiose to condense into a short blog post meant to provide highlights and a general summary for the Open Heart Path. I mean no disrespect to some of these movements, and I encourage you to research them if they intrigue you. However, they are pretty much the same thing but called by different names. You may have heard of the New Earth movement, the Great Awakening or the Great Turning. There are many other names that it goes by, but it is all a matter of how you resonate with either the message or the speakers that have stepped up as leaders in this movement. This movement encourages disengaging from the mass unconscious and becoming more aware of our actions, empowering our sovereignty/how much control we have over our choices (like choosing to be happy despite horrible circumstances). It can be as small as realizing your impact by supporting local farmers, or aligning your purchases to buy from companies that have values that support fair trade. We are realizing as a society that when we feed the illness, we are starving the cure. Slowly we walk more in our authenticity and become an advocate or steward for the Earth by caring about the environment and turning around the pollution that humans have inflicted upon Mother Nature. Every great movement starts with the individual, and these are what the movements focus on.
Sandra Ingerman is a wonderful example of a leader that is an advocate for this movement. She is an author, teacher, and Shaman that encourages focusing on ourselves, advocating for personal development and living in a way that is in good relationship with nature and all that is around us. If interested, there are many good books that she has written on the topic. Walking in Light is a wonderful introduction and provides direction to the path.
There are many wonderful teachers that are out there participating in this movement, and each has their gift that they bring to the greater community. The path that resonates the most with me is Christina Pratt’s version of the movement called the Courageous Heart. Christina is the founder of the Last Mask Center for Shamanic Studies and she has a podcast called “Why Shamanism Now”. Her teachings have come from her lessons that she has received from her Guides and Teachers. Medicine of the Courageous Heart is based off of Angeles Arrien and her work called the Four Fold Way. These teachings have evolved in a way that is great for standard application with contemporary people. It’s not too “far out there” in terms of hard to grasp or understand.
I strongly believe that the medicine of this time is the medicine of the courageous heart, or the Open Heart Path. So many people have grown weak hearted in their actions, and their integrity does not match what is within their hearts. Our consciousness as a culture is in our head, and we need to be able to bring that consciousness down into our hearts. The heart has four chambers that work in tandem with each other, and all four of these chambers should be functioning properly in order to have a strong heart that is not easily seduced by things that distract us or draw us away from our paths. In order to work with these four chambers in a tangible way, there are four main archetypes that represent these chambers.
If you’re interested in the source of these teachings, please click on the links above or below to lead you to Christina’s Podcasts, or to Dr. Angeles Arrien and her book the Four Fold Way.
Courageous Heart Part 1: The Healer – 45 minutes
Courageous Heart Part 2: The Warrior – 45 minutes
Courageous Heart Part 3: The Teacher – 45 minutes
Courageous Heart Part 4: The Visionary – 45 minutes
This consciousness that is beginning to form is based off of a collapse of vision. Most Americans live in a very mentally stimulating society. We have cell phones and are constantly plugged into social networking, emails, and constant flows of information. We are encouraged to multi-task and skim the surface of many different topics at once so we can move at a faster pace. The last chamber of the heart is the Visionary, and the archetype of the Visionary has grown weary of untruths. The relationships that we have established with money, housing, and politics have grown too complicated with too many clauses in the contract. The contracts are falling apart, which (in my opinion) is the source of more people stepping into an awareness of their own actions and the actions of their communities. People are waking up because they were caught up in this superficial “big vision” that society has helped weave together. A lot of people are realizing that there is no depth to it, and instead are reaching inside to deepen themselves. The way I have deepened myself is with an open and courageous heart.
When we move through our lives with an open heart, we are able to communicate our boundaries effectively, interacting with others in an open and aware manner. Life happens to us, and I’m one of those people that believes that life is a mixture of things that happen for a reason, and sometimes things just happen. That’s the beauty and process of life! Things happen! Our job as we navigate through this life is to be able to be in control of our actions and reactions as these life processes happen. We are human, and being able to have an open heart while moving through these life processes enables us to get more out of the experiences that life provides. When we are living with an open heart, our passion and our unique genius is able to flow through us. We are able to live our lives in a way that is good for all living things, and to communicate effectively with others because we are aware of our actions and the impact it has on others.
The problem comes in when we come across a life process, and our heart shuts down due to fear. When fear gets in the way, then we tend to have our life force energy moving through what is called our “Shadow”. The Shadow is an archetype that was introduced to Western Contemporary culture by Carl Jung. When our life force energy moves through our closed heart or shadow, our good intentions don’t matter and we instead do things for the right motivation, but our actions speak to something else or just “come out wrong”. It can sometimes be a compulsion or an easy fall back pattern to become the victim in a situation – to see how everything is working against us. We can fall into the martyr where we feel we have to sacrifice in order to get what we want in life. Sometimes when we see a leader or someone in power, we subconsciously project our power onto them, making them “even bigger” in our minds in terms of us never really reaching to that level of awe. When we pedestalize, we give away our power because we subconsciously are down on ourselves since we cannot reach that “level” the person in power has. These are all examples of meaning well, but our intentions being shifted by our shadow.
The medicine or the remedy to this is by realizing when our heart shuts down, and doing the work to open our heart back up. We do this by stepping into our sovereignty and realizing these patterns that we move into subconsciously. The archetype of the healer helps us realize these patterns so we can do something about them and work on them. The archetype of the warrior helps us to be in the moment, and fully present with our experiences in hand. The teacher helps us draw the wisdom out of those experiences that we move through. The visionary helps us see the bigger picture and how we fit into it. All of these chambers work in tandem, building on the other for strength. If one chamber is weak, then we will encounter these “Shadow” aspects of ourselves, and our actions that mean well are instead misinterpreted by either society or those we care about.
As we become more present and learn to live with an open heart, we begin to uncover the wisdom of the heart – which is our own unique genius. Everyone has a different medicine we bring to the table that no one else can bring. We have been incarnated into this life for a reason – and that reason is to express our own unique genius, or to express our lifes purpose. To wield the power of the medicine we possess, we need to step fully into the path of the open heart. We are not here to meet the needs of other people. But as we learn to step into our own sovereignty, we realize that our gifts meet the needs of others. This is the core belief of the Great Awakening. To know that everyone has a purpose and that their own unique genius is what is needed in order to fit into the greater community.
This is why I work hard as a networker, to provide sources for people to uncover themselves on a deeper and more profound level that works for them. My journey groups may not resonate with some people – and that’s okay. However the reason why I host these weekly journey groups is to have space for people that wish to explore this framework of personal development. To ask themselves these fundamental questions as we explore the archetypes in a way that is personalized by them, with their own sets of teachers. When we ask these bigger questions of ourselves, we are able to receive insight that is more impactful. This is the path of direct revelation. And I stand firm in offering the space once weekly at the Cardinal Center for people that wish to delve deeper into their own work.
You are more than welcome to journey at home, and are even encouraged! But for those beginning, it can be easier to do it in community and not feel as “alone”. All of these are “suggested” topics, and you are always free to bring your own questions to the journey group. These journey groups are run off donations to cover the cost of renting the space. A distance option is also available through google hangouts. Visit the Eagle Therapies Facebook page for more information or visit the calendar section on the website.