Feeding the Ghosts

From The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology by Jack Kornfield, p. 287:

...I told Bruce that in the Buddhist tradition, when demons and hungry ghosts appear, there is a ritual practice of feeding them. In this practice we transform the worst, most rabid, most fearful energies by deliberately visualizing what we can do for them. We picture giving them whatever they want and need, even our own body, until they are fully satisfied.

My spirit guide is Buddhist (no surprise): During an early journey I was being taught that I have nothing to fear. I met a being who wanted to eat my heart and so I gave it to him, repeatedly.

Thick

I can be kind of thick sometimes.

I had a general confusion as to how a flesh-and-blood psychopomp could be of use. That is, couldn't the spirit guides and other more-knowing beings accomplish the task that I'm learning to do? Especially since I've been advised by experienced flesh-and-blood psychopomps to rely on my spirit guide for direction and assistance in the process.

So I asked my spirit guide.

And heard the familiar refrain: I am a bridge.

My services would be needed for those "earthbounds" who cannot or will not see the spirit guides who are there to help them successfully cross over. Perhaps the earthbounds' belief systems prevent them from knowing they have spirit guides to help them. Perhaps the earthbounds are confused on some level about their status and so don't know that crossing over is what they should be doing.

Because they are earthbound, they can see me even when unable to see their spirit guides. So I am the bridge between.

I am a bridge.

Mannaz

If you look up the rune Mannaz, the descriptions mainly reference its association with "man." When it presented itself to me, it was in the context of "bridge."

From the Wildspeak description of Mannaz:

Mannaz is the personal rune of the god Heimdall, who was also known as Hvitass, Rig and Mannus (hence name of rune). Heimdall was the god who had three children that in turn were the original ancestors of the three different branches of the Germanic people. It is Heimdall who stands between the deities and the humans as the bridge between them. Heimdall is the representation of the 'truth' of the divine in man. Heimdall is the god of bridges, making them, walking them, and understanding their necessity. As such Mannaz itself is a god of connecting two opposing points, and then walking that bridge in balance and harmony, to better understand the deeper nature of ourselves and others.

This is a rune of human development, the deep human development that often leads to great wisdom, access to powers and the inner divine. It is understanding who, what, why, when and how you are, through building bridges within and without the physical body. It is the balancing of intuition with the intellect, the understanding that all wisdom needs to be tempered with joy, humour and respect. The inner understanding of the relationship between divine and man, and how we bridge the gap between is revealed to us in depth when working with Mannaz.

During yesterday's sit, as I was breathing in Fuck You's and breathing out sweet caresses, I was awash in the duality of my nature and struck how this rune captured that. And how, while I don't want to be a bitch/blue, I don't have to be an angel/red. I can be somewhere in the middle, purple.

Tonglen

When I sit, I often see my drum as a membranous doorway that I'm pushing through. That's partially due to the primal image above, from The Prisoner, a 17-episode late 60s television series. My internal image is full body.

I sat yesterday for the first time in a long time. A couple of days ago, I got up on the wrong side of the bed. I was a nasty bitch. I have a nasty, self-centered bitch side.

I sat yesterday with the goal of starting down the path toward eradicating that demon within me. Then I thought that perhaps I needed to befriend that demon. Then I remembered the practice of tonglen:

From Making Friends with Death by Judith L. Lief:

When we are in the greatest pain, we have the hardest time stretching beyond our own concerns. There is a famous story in which the Buddha encounters a grieving woman, carrying the body of her only child. This woman was completely stricken by grief. She had lost everything-- her parents, her husband, all her family, and now she had lost her only son. She would not let her fellow villagers take him or bury him; she refused to even acknowledge that he was dead. When her friends heard that the Buddha would be passing through their area, they suggested that she go and see him and ask him to cure her son. So in desperation, she traveled to the Buddha and asked for his help. The Buddha told the grieving mother that he could indeed help her but only if she brought him a sesame seed from the home of a family that had not experienced death. In great relief, the woman set out to find that seed. But as she went from house to house, she found not a single one that did not have a tale of loss. In her search for the sesame seed, gradually she was drawn out of preoccupation with her own pain as she realized the level of suffering all around her. And when she returned to the Buddha, she was ready to bury her child.

The contemplative practice called tonglen in Tibetan, or "sending and taking" in English, works directly with this powerful tendency to focus on ourselves. The practice of tonglen exposes the depth of our self-absorption and begins to undermine it. It is a practice specifically designed to remove that obstacle and the many other obstacles that stand in the way of our natural impulse toward kindness.

The practice of tonglen is sometimes described as a practice of "exchanging self and other." This is because the goal of tonglen is to flip that pattern of self-absorption around completely, to the point at which instead of putting ourselves first, we put others first. So if I were continuing that game with my daughter it would go differently: "I'm 'you,' and you're 'me'." "No, I'm 'you,' and you're 'me'." Tonglen practice goes from the starting point of putting ourselves first, through the middle ground of viewing ourselves and others equally, to the fruition of putting others before ourselves.

If our view is to focus on ourselves, the our actions will tend to feed that view by grabbing on to whatever builds us up and pushing away whatever threatens us. Our habitual activity is to protect ourselves by constantly picking and choosing, accepting and rejecting-- but in tonglen practice, once again we reverse our usual approach. Instead of taking in what we desire and rejecting what we do not, we take in what we have rejected and send out what we desire-- basically the opposite of "normal." Tonglen practice completely reverses our usual way of going about things....

In the same way that it is possible to cultivate mindfulness and awareness through meditation practice, we can cultivate kindness through tonglen practice. Through the practice of tonglen, we learn to work straightforwardly with the difficulties we encounter and extend ourselves more wholeheartedly to others. Tonglen is training in how to take on suffering and give out love. It is a natural complement to mindfulness practice, a natural extension of the acceptance and self-knowledge that come as a result of sitting meditation.

Tonglen Practice

Each time you practice tonglen, being with basic mindfulness practice. It is important to take some time to let your mind settle. Having done so, you can go on to the practice of tonglen itself, which has four steps.

The first step is very brief. You could think of it as "clearing the decks." Simply allow a little pause, or gap, before you begin. Although this first step is very brief and simple, it is still important. It is like cracking the window to let in a little fresh air.

In the second step, you touch in with the visceral world of feelings and emotions. Each time you inhale, you breathe in heavy, dark, hot, sticky, claustrophobic energy; and each time you exhale, you breathe out light, refreshing, clear, cool energy. With each breath, the practice shifts direction, so there is an ongoing rhythm back and forth. You are taking the habit of grasping and rejecting, and you are reversing it.

The third and fourth steps take that same approach and apply it to specific topics. Start as close to home as possible, with something that actually affects you personally. You should work with a topic that arouses real feelings, something that actually touches you or feels a little raw. It need not be anything monumental; it could be quite ordinary. For instance, maybe someone screamed at you when you were driving to work. You could breathe in the aggression that person threw at you, and you could breathe out to him a wish to free him from the pain of that anger. Or if you are worried about a friend who seems to be spiraling down, you could breathe in your friend's confusion and breathe out to her your strength and support. If you yourself have just come down with a sickness, you could breathe in that sickness and breathe out your feelings of health and well-being. The point is to start with something that has some reality or juice in your life.

Once you are under way, it is good to let the practice develop on its own and see where it takes you. In this case, no matter what comes up in your mind, you breathe in what you do not like and breathe out what you do, or you breathe in what is not so good and breathe out being free of that. For instance, after you breathe in that driver's aggression and breathe out your soothing of that anger, what might come up next is your own anger at being so abused first thing in the morning when you had started out in a pretty good mood. You could breathe that anger in and breathe out the ability not to take such attacks so personally. In that way, your thoughts follow along naturally, revealing more and more subtle layers of grasping and rejecting.

When you let whatever comes up, rather than directing your mind along a particular theme, you find that everything that arises feeds right back into the practice itself. For instance, if you feel bad that you cannot do tonglen properly, you breathe that in-- in turn, you breathe out your wish to be good at it. Because the habit of grasping and rejecting runs so deep, there never seems to be a shortage of topics for tonglen.

In the fourth step, you expand the practice beyond your own immediate feelings and concerns of the moment. For instance, if you are worried about your friend, you expand that concern to include all the other people now and in the past who have had similar worries. You include everybody who has suffered the pain of seeing someone they are close to in danger or trouble. You breathe in all those worries and breathe out to all those countless beings your wish that they be freed from such pain.

In tonglen practice, we start with our own concerns, because those are what usually preoccupy us, but we do not get stuck there; we extend out to others. There is very little in our own experience that has not been experienced by countless other beings. The point is sincerely to include other beings in our practice. By the way, this does not mean only humans; it includes such beings as dogs, insects, birds, even bacteria....

If you are sick, that is also a good time to practice tonglen, taking in that sickness and sending out your wish for recovery. I had a friend who was sick for a very long time with recurrent breast cancer, which eventually spread throughout her body. As she struggled with her disease, she began to visualize that on the inbreath, she was taking in healthy energy that was clean and clear, and on the outbreath, she was breathing out her cancer, which was ugly and murky. She was trying to get rid of her cancer, which was ugly and murky. She was trying to get rid of her cancer and replace it with health. When she talked to Trungpa Ringpoche about this practice, he was very concerned and told her that she was doing exactly the opposite of what she should be doing. She was making things worse for herself by not accepting her cancer and working with it on that basis, and making things worse for others by projecting her negativity out toward them. He told her to practice tonglen instead. The odd thing is that once she change her practice, her condition stabilized and she lived far longer than anyone had expected. During this period of borrowed time, she was able to make a real breakthrough in her understanding of life and her relationship to death.

Keep Going. Keep Practicing.

Tonight my lesson was: Keep going. Keep practicing.

I drummed for a long time trying to break out of my verbal left brain and cross over into my right. I felt like my drum was a membrane that I needed to break through. But I had trouble escaping self-consciousness and my cynical ego.

I connected with my Leuki spirit guide. We melded and I danced and drummed for her and let her dance and drum through me. I kept drumming. I tried to get lost in the drumming. I tried not to try to get lost.

I danced in Leuki's long grass and caught a whiff of its grassy, sagey scent.

I kept picturing a band from my heart chakra to Leuki, a band like the one that joined Chang and Eng Bunker, the original "Siamese twins." The band grew from my heart chakra. It grew out into a long tube that became a bridge. The bridge looked a lot like the picture above (right down to the sepia tone) but it was a bridge with handrails on each side.

I slapped my foot with every step along that bridge trying to feel it. Trying to be there. I kept going.

The bridge led into a building that reminded me of a library. I ended up in a small room with yellow walls. A being who introduced herself as Abigail sat across a desk from me. We reviewed how I got there so that I wouldn't forget: Connection from my heart chakra that stretched out to become a tube then became a bridge that I walked along into the building and into her room. She nodded and directed me to look at the wall, which seemed to dissolve into another passageway to follow.

At some point I felt the presence of my indexing helpers and I got to thank them.

I felt the glow of my golden ball of protection around me. Abigail assured me I was safe. Leuki's presence was felt and assurance made that I was safe. I started to feel restless, as though I needed to go.

I was told this connection is always there. I can walk it again. And should. Keep going. Keep practicing.

I thanked Leuki and Abigail and my indexing helpers and then sang Cindy's song of thanks:

I give thanks for this time, for this place, for this life, for this love.
I give thanks for the ground that I walk on.
I give thanks for the sky up above.
I give thanks from sunrise to sundown.
And all through the night
I am wrapped in a blanket of gratitude and love.
I give thanks.
I give thanks.
I give thanks.

Trying Too Hard

I think I've been trying too hard. In wandering the web, I've found some fun sites, like Lady Skye Fyre's page on learning how to channel (and her blog) or this link on channeling through automatic writing. They have the playful attitude that I've been told repeatedly to adopt.

So I'm trying not to try so hard.

Last night I sat and drummed. I attended to the fundamentals, mainly my breathing, which I hadn't been doing recently. I saw a level of energy around me; it formed a sphere around me with something between the sphere and my belly. I was told to scan the sphere of energy. I found a glop of yuk (a "smudge") that I pulled off. As it pulled off it sort of became human with a tired demeanor. I greeted it and asked if it had anything to say to me but I didn't hear anything. So I pictured Light coming down to it and pulling it away. I found another smudge and it too became human-like when I pulled it off. When I greeted it, it sort of came at me, going for my throat. Somehow I knew this was an aspect of me-- my lack of patience. So I befriended it and filled it with light. It became honey-colored, which matched the color of the sphere of energy surrounding me. My patience and I finished scanning and kind of polishing the energy sphere.

I know that I need to work on my patience. I would rather work on it than get slapped upside the head with a patience lesson.

I love picturing the Light, summoning it, because there's such a wonderful feeling when it shows up and I hear the chorus of hello's responding to my greeting.

I love the picture at the top of this post. I'm using it for my sacred space, though last night I also found myself at my original sacred space. I really like the horse-on-springs rocking horse from my childhood that I have there. I rode it early in my journey, to sort of get me started, and it morphed into my Mannaz donkey. I was on his back and could feel the wind in my face as we flew through a purple sky.

I felt that my honey-colored patience was associated with my third chakra, which I associate with the color yellow. It seemed like the energy sphere was also associated with my third chakra.

Heart chakra

I've been receiving nice tips from someone in the Magick Forums at the Druidsfoot site in the Indigenous Faiths & Shamanistic Practices section under my post Deathwalker-in-training.

To strengthen the connection with my spirit guide, he suggested that I call this being to link in with my body as I sit in meditation. I should then notice at which chakra the connection seems the strongest.

When I tried this, I didn't feel that I could see the being or hear its speech patterns. But I did feel that I had the strongest connection at my heart chakra, which I associate with the color green. I thought my left brain was feeding me this information until I began to see green everywhere. (I don't know why I don't think that my left brain could also make me see green everywhere.)

When I reported this vague connection, his next suggestion contained the following:

Channelling is a bit like opening a heavy rusty door for the first time - it goes little by little, until the joints ease and you can move it more freely.

This sentence has been enlightening for me. For one thing, his use of the word "channelling" gave me a different perspective on the process. In addition, his analogy to a heavy rusty door is wonderful. One morning during my shower, I felt the door budge just a bit as I was lost in thought and felt something akin to a voice in my heart. Then the door slammed shut as my left brain or ego or intellect or whatever panicked. My helpful friend had also said

The difficulty with this, is letting your ego step aside for 5 minutes -because the intellect suddenly freaks out that it's losing control.

Which is what happened.

So I've been trying to let go, play, have fun while I sit. But my left brain/ego/whatever is still holding on tight.

Last night, though, I felt that I was making some progress on focusing on my heart as I meditate. As I finished last night, I might have received the koan (or it might have come from my left brain): To let go, hold on.

Find the Face

Aeschylus's belly button

Secret Light

Secret Light

Secret light,

Secret light,

I have a secret light.

-- The song my guide in Leuki form sang as it drummed through me

More Progress

Another step down the path.

Last night I sat and didn't fall asleep.

My initial intention was to have a fun journey. In the back of my mind was something brought up in a Druidsfoot thread in which I introduced myself as a deathwalker-in-training. An experienced psychopomp asked which part of my body I hear my spirit guide in. He elaborated that I would feel a connection in a chakra.

So as I sat and drummed, I invited my spirit guide to meld with me. I didn't "see through its eyes" or even feel a particular chakra as tingly. What I felt reminded me of a description I've read of dancing your spirit guide, that is, allowing the spirit guide to experience the physical through your movements. I was simply sitting and drumming, not dancing, but I felt a joy in the drumming. It changed from my feeling that "someone else is drumming," with the monotonous journey drumming, to feeling that I was drumming and producing different rhythms.

During this, I asked about chakra connections. I was feeling a connection strongest at my heart chakra, which I associate with the color green. But I felt like my verbal logical brain was creating this feeling, until I saw green everywhere.

It was a delightful session and yet I felt throughout that my left brain was maintaining too much control. I wasn't able to fully let go, climb over, slide into my right side.

I heard Leuki telling me to run as we made our way through tall grass. I tried to feel the running, and felt it like I was in Leuki's body, running. But I couldn't hold on to it.

Progress

When I learn something new, I tend to start out doing pretty well at it. Then I go through a phase, sometimes a long phase, during which I don't do well at all. Finally at some point I start doing better again.

My learning curve for journeying is following the usual trajectory and I'm past the beginner phase. When I sit and drum, I'm mainly just meditating. Which isn't bad! But I'd like to return to deeper levels and resume having journeys.

During last night's sit, I touched a moment of feeling like I was somewhere else, actually seeing the somewhere else around me. I think it startled me so much that I was snapped out of it and back to a lighter meditative state again.

Purple

A couple of weeks ago, I got a hoop drum to use for journeying. It's been busy times but yesterday I had the chance to sit for a length of time and drum.

I probably expressed a handful of different intentions throughout the process. One was to meet and talk with my spirit guide. I actually found myself "face to face" with my Leuki spirit guide without a question coming to mind, then finally remembered that I really want to remember my dreams.

There were many times when I felt like someone else was doing the drumming and the drum itself sang beautifully. But I had trouble turning off my verbal brain. I walked through cleansing my chakras, a process that I've found helps.

I tend to feel that my fifth chakra in my throat, the blue chakra, is weak or unbalanced. I feel that I don't communicate as well as I could. While cleaning that chakra and picturing blue, I felt my Leuki spirit guide mention my RiverLight voice-- that I do a lot of communicating through RiverLight. Sometimes I worry that my ego drives my RiverLight posts, but what I felt I received at that moment was confirmation that I am indeed following my intention of providing information.

I then realized that I get distracted or hung up on my fifth chakra and don't pay enough attention to my sixth and seventh chakras. My "desire" for purple may be an outer expression of this.

I felt myself vibrating with energy, charged, almost glowing. It felt wonderful.

Be a Bridge

I recently verbalized the metaphor that has formed a basis of so many of my journeys: I am a bridge.

I wrote this as a response to a PaganSpace post and as soon as I posted my response, it felt odd to say. I mean, how was I a bridge? I knew I was a bridge between darkness and light and between warm and cold. But the actual words gave the entire journeying metaphor a lack of reality.

Words can do that. It's part of the balance I'm learning: balancing the spiritual and the real-world verbal. (In fact, my post was in response to someone who said she was a Balancer.)

Since words cast the pall, it seems only right that words would pull the pall away again:

I was reading the Robert Moss book The Dreamer's Book of the Dead and on p. 255, he starts a section called Soul Leading for the Dying-- so appropriate for a deathwalker-- and there below the section head was a quote:

He who will be chief, let him be a bridge.
-- Bran, in the Romance of Branwen

[This page on Bran gives a bit of background to the quote]

So appropriate for a deathwalker.
I am a bridge.

Bridge

I am learning to be a bridge.

I span logical and spiritual, warm and cold, existence in this world and existence beyond this world.

Balance is one lesson I am learning. One balancing act I am trying to achieve is recording my spiritual experiences in logical, verbal formats, such as this blog or the PaganSpace social network. How much do I expose? How much can I express? How to express it?

When I journey, my logical verbal self works the pumps of my breathing. If it concentrates sufficiently on its job then it's able to eavesdrop on the conversation between my child self and my spiritual self. I often feel like the Culver family in the movie True Stories. Dad Earl Culver and Mom Kay Culver don't talk to each other directly. Instead, they talk through their children: "Dear, tell your father that..." "Son, tell your mother..." My logical verbal self doesn't get to talk directly to my spiritual self. Instead, it speaks through my child self or learns from my child self.

I am learning.

Mannaz

Donkey

I read Michael Harner's book The Way of the Shaman and thought I should try journeying "his" way.

I don't have upper and lower worlds when I journey. But I set out with the intent of finding my power animal in the lower world. It did not feel at all natural to me. But I held my intent firmly in mind and eventually saw a cute donkey face. Harner said that you have to see an animal from four aspects for it to be the correct power animal; I "reminded" myself of this. One of the aspects that I was then shown was his back end with his legs kicking out at me. Another was a statue of a donkey so I grabbed that and returned.

I didn't really return up any sort of tunnel, as I'd tried to come down. I just found myself at my sacred space, holding my donkey statue, with Leuki beside me as usual. I really thought that I was presented with the donkey as a power animal on this trip because I was being so "stubborn" about journeying Harner's way.

But the article Donkey, Power Animal, Symbol of Intelligence, Dedication makes me glad to have a donkey power animal!

Duluth

Learning to Journey

I am learning to journey.

I sit (meditate) as usual, focusing on my breathing until "my breath is breathing me." When this happens, I feel a slight separation from myself and that my monkey brain is working the bellows of my breathing.

I have tried to maintain simplicity in this meditation process-- needing only a place to sit. But early on I was urged to find an antler that I have and to hold it as I journey. So I now tend to sit, holding my single spike-horn antler in my hands.

I read that you should not journey without a question or destination. So when I began, I first set up my sacred space. As I was picturing it, there within was my Leuki character! She has been my guardian and guide throughout.

In my early journeys, I primarily hung around my sacred space. I consecrated it with the four elements. I was urged to learn recapitulation, which I've been practicing since. The recapitulation has helped me to sever energetic ties to a wide range of events in my life. I've primarily concentrated on relatively minor things, yet the sessions tend to fan out to include other events, often including online activity.

Once I tried to sit right down, breath a few breaths, and go right to my sacred space. But I need to better enter a meditative state first. I couldn't maintain any images or destinations that day until I finally stopped and slowed down. So I have to "feel my breath breathing me" before I can head off to my sacred space.

I came to this path because I feel myself to be a deathwalker. Twenty-five years ago my father died. He'd been in critical care; my mom and I were in a hotel, visiting him daily for two weeks. I'd been working in our hotel room on a thorny problem as my mom fetched us some supper. My problem suddenly solved itself and at the same time, a curtain of blackness came over me. I fell onto my bed into an instant deep sleep. I was awakened by the phone ringing-- the hospital calling to say he'd died. Though I remember nothing, I've always felt that I accompanied my father to the edge of this realm.

I recently began a serendipitous investigation of deathwalkers and also began regular daily meditation. And began my journeys.

Leuki is always at my side, taking me places and showing me things. One of my first lessons was on fear: Have no fear. She introduced me to a being that wanted to eat my heart. I offered him my heart, which he ate. I offered it again and he ate it again.

My leasson was that we can give without losing anything. We can take without gaining bad energies. We are beings of light and warmth who will not lose our light or warmth even when we give our hearts. We can give our hearts without losing them.

We must be unattached.

Give without energies attached. Take without energies attached.

Do not fear. We are strong beings. It is our fear that makes us weak.

I had some doubts that my journeys were anything more than the imaginative ramblings of my monkey brain, so one day I sat and simply focused on my breathing. I did not try to go to my sacred space, yet I ended up there anyway and off onto another lesson with Leuki.

Leuki showed me that the river through her grasslands can be a scrying tool for me. She urged me to learn how to scry.

I'm just beginning my learning. This Short Course in Scrying nicely covers areas such as creating your magickal space and has an interesting "Magical Mystery Tour" of that space as an introduction to scrying. It also discusses using a magick mirror for scrying.

This simple Scrying Procedures page has a wonderful Do What Works for You tone and includes the following excellent piece of advice:

Various disciplines mandate a consecration ritual before using the scrying medium. On a purely psychological standpoint this makes sense. The subconscious mind must be convinced what you want it to accomplish. This may be accomplished through ritual or meditation. Polishing the crystal or mirror while thinking about what you want to accomplish will be enough.

With Leuki I have met two or three beings who have used me as a bridge to the light. They are cold and I give them warmth as I focus on the light to lead them to it. I am a bridge with no attachments, meaning I form no attachments with those who use me as a bridge.

In real life, I participated in a polar plunge that I used as an initiation of sorts for my journeying. It was more of a polar wade for me-- I didn't get my chest or head wet. But the cold in my legs was something I was urged to remember. I've felt it while wading in Leuki's river when we picked up a being. I've also felt that it was correct for me to keep my upper body warm: I am a being of light and warmth. I am a human bridge, with cold legs and warm upper and a middle zone of mixture. One of the beings we encountered "spoke" of warm red and cold blue within me and mixing into purple in the middle.

At the start of one of my early journeys, not long after learning to drop fear, I was asked if I could stand to see my death. I replied yes, though I had difficulty keeping fear back. I saw only darkness with a dark fog rolling across. I felt only a cold breeze. I feel that it was a test of sorts to be sure I was willing to keep walking this path.

It's a recurring theme, when I return from my journeys, that I'm walking a path, walking a path.

Leuki means "of the light" and she is definitely a being of light. I wanted to explore her woods, but she led me instead to her grasslands and we sat back to back. Her grasslands have the most wonderful smell! She took me to the light. We were surrounded by the light and it was beautiful and felt WONDERFUL! I say hello to every being Leuki introduces me to (even the black void within myself). Here in the light I heard a chorus of delightful Hello's to me.

I couldn't hold the vision for long but I look forward to going back.