There’s nothing quite like a fire or music to bring people together and as a shamanic practitioner, I often hold full moon ceremonies in the garden. They stoke the fires of people’s hearts through any hardship or suffering, as well as helping us to let go of a quality that we no longer need in our lives, or that may be holding us back. The full moon fire ceremonies are a chance for like-minded folk to gather together and re-connect. Anyone can join our circle to experience the essence of this beautiful energy that’s created when we re-connect with each other and ourselves. This in turn helps to build our awareness about how we can bring our own lives into balance and dream our world into being. Circles are a strong way to hold and share light with each other through the level of the heart. When we sit in a circle, we share our highest most talents and skills with each other. A mayan elder said that when we create circles of light and they interconnect, this creates an invincible chain.
A community can share a vision, dreaming it into being and holding the energy of that vision as a group until it manifests. One example of this is the Camphill Communities. I have worked there as a crafts tutor for young adults with special needs. These communities live with the students or adults and have a beautiful Ethos developed by Rudolf Steiner and Karl Koenig. The qualities that come through most strongly here are respect for each other but also working together for the good of the whole, with a shared daily and seasonal rhythm. This rhythm and togetherness builds resilience and helps to negate any unhelpful addictive behavioural patterns through the crafts we offer, which are weaving, basketry, pottery, felting and woodwork, as well as cooking and baking. Of course, it isn’t always easy to do this but the strength of any community lies in its strong roots and a deep connection with each other.
Like a tree, a community needs to have a strong foundation or root structure that connects deeply to the earth, as well as the highest branches that connect to the stars, then it can create beautiful and tasty fruit!. Trees communicate with each other through fungi in the earth and have built up a huge network of communicating light energy across these lands.
Unlike trees, humans are also able to create and manifest their creativity into beauty. One of the most important lessons I’ve learnt is that in order to honour my community, I need to honour my true self and let that be expressed in the world.
‘Ayllu’ means tribe in Quechuan and I have found that as I work on my self and my own awareness, I meet others who are like-minded. I feel like they are part of my soul family or tribe. In Peru and with the Q’ero medicine men and women, there is no word for ‘I’, it is always ‘we’. A high priest or Alto Masayok (a shaman who works with the spirits of the mountains) will still be helping his brother to build a fire or bring in the potato harvest. In the High Andes, working together is imperative for their survival. However, as someone who lives in the West, it’s also important to nurture myself first, in order for me to give my highest energies to my community.
I believe that before we are born, we make sacred contracts to meet or learn certain lessons from soul mates or friends during our lifetime. I believe that Karma has a great deal to do with our daily life and the friends we meet on our path. Synchronicity is a way for the universe to help magic in our own lives to unfold, through meeting the right person at the right time or seeing the right piece of information amongst other things. If we are open to this, then we can achieve so much more than just making plans with our rational brain. It’s about being open to a flow of energy that is bigger than we are and trusting that we are going in the right direction.
