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.