Barefoot With Nature

Animal and Spirit Guides

Categories: Spiritual, With Nature

Tags: Animal and Spirit Guides, Animal Guides, Dreams, Guides, Nature, Pagan, Shamanic, Spirit Guides

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Published on: April 13, 2012

In several of my previous post I have mentioned or spoke about Animal and Spirit Guides, so I thought that is was about time that I discussed my interpretation of these guides.

Animal and Spirit Guides cover an extremely large amount of material, and I am only going to be able scratch the surface of the subject in this post, but hopefully it will give you the basics.

Wolf is one of my more permanent Animal Guides

Animal and Spirit Guides are Within

The first thing to say is both Animal and Spirit Guides are not external or outer influences, both are in fact aspects of your own essence. Many believe that these guides are outer influences from The Source, Great Spirit or The Universe; they are in as much as they are potential external influences that highlight these guides. However the guides themselves are actually an element of your Higher Self, your own Consciousness or your own essence. After all we already know everything that we need to know but sometimes we just need reminders.

Many believe that because Animal Guides and to a lesser extent Spirit Guides are seen, felt or experienced as an external influences, for example you unexpectantly see a badger and feel that Badger has come to you as an Animal Guide, you could be forgiven for believing that the Animal Guide, Badger, is an external influence or guide. The external influence is only to high light the essence of Badger that is within yourself. This may seem to be a little confusing but ultimately the guides are within.

How Do I Know My Guides?

Your guides can ‘appear’ to you in many forms and ways. Depending upon your beliefs these guides can be of various types and offer guidance in many ways. I’m not going to go into the details of the various types of Animal and Spirit Guides and the specific ways that they give help and guidance, as this in itself is a massive area for discussion.

The first thing to say about knowing your guides is to say that in pretty much all traditions and belief systems your guides pick you and not the other way round. They represent essences of yourself that can offer you help and guidance at either specific times in your life or for the whole of your life.

Part of being able to find your guides is being open and aware enough to be able to sense their presence or calling. There is often an element of intuition, a gut feeling as to what or who are your guides, in some traditions it is an elder, mentor or spiritual leader that is themselves guided as to what or who are your guides.

Also guides are not necessarily from the same origin as yourself, for example you may have Badger come to you as a guide and you may have been born and live in a country that has never seen badger as a native animal.

Your guides can come to you in many, many forms. From physical appearances, as in the example above, you seeing a badger and get a feeling that the essence of Badger is here to guide you, to images that repeat in dreams, books, patterns or in meditation. Or they may first appear in any combination of different forms, most often your guides will continue to present themselves to you until you acknowledge them or the time of their guidance has past. This is why until we are sufficiently aware that we often will see these guides in a number of different and unrelated sites.

Seeing our guides in a number of unrelated places is the most common way that we first meet with our guides. For example you may be out walking and see a badger, later that day you open a book and the page you opened it at had a picture of a badger on it. The following morning you hear badgers mentioned on the radio. Badger IS trying to get your attention. The essence of Badger within you is coming to the fore to offer you guidance, and badgers will keep appearing to you, as I say until you either acknowledge Badger or the time of the guidance passes. Badger in this example is coming to you as a guide.

Acknowledging Your Guides

Each tradition acknowledges their guides in their own way depending on the type of guide and various other criteria, I believe that it is a purely person thing the way you acknowledge and approach your guide.

Possible ways of acknowledging and approaching your guide could include one of several of the following, trance work, meditation, cards such as Tarot or Medicine Cards, even research into your guide can be acknowledging and communicating with your guide. Once you start to communicate with your guide, in which ever form best suites you, then you will start to understand the guidance they can offer.

Are My Guides With Me for Ever?

That really does depend on the type of guide, some are with us for the whole of lives, and we can communicate with these guides in whatever form we use at times when we need their help or guidance. Others are only transitory and fade into the background as we follow their guidance and move on.

What Can Our Guides Be?

Our guides can be literally anything, plant, tree, animal, bird, insect, spirits, Angels, deities, even the essence of the dead, or they may have no physical appearance. There is no limit to the form that your guides can take.

So There You Have It!

This is a short summary of Animal and Spirit Guides as I see them, from what I have learnt and what I understand. I have purposefully avoiding talking about any tradition and belief system as Animal and Spirit Guides cover all traditions and beliefs.

I know that the above may sound very surreal to some but I believe that connecting with your guides is a purely personal experience, something that once experienced you’ll understand fully.

Image courtesy of Sometimesong

It’s Cold Outside! – Embracing The Cold

by Chris

Categories: With Nature

Tags: Challenges, Cold, Common Sense, Emotional Release, Expanding Awareness, Meditation, Shamanic, The Woods

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Published on: January 30, 2012

Brrrr… It’s cold outside!

Well at last the weather is more fitting for the time of year here in the UK. We are coming to the end of January and are entering a period of seasonal cold! It would seem that at we finally have a more Natural Nature.

I have walked out the house on the past few mornings to be greeted by several degrees of frost. The ground has been covered with a blanket of frozen dew, my breath instantly freezes and the cold air makes my nose run! My feet have been a live to the tingle of the cold, it’s been great! We just need a little (or a lot) of snow now!

“The cold is really”
~ Apache saying

In The Woods

I case you didn’t know last weekend I was once again in The Woods attending a Shamanic ‘Workshop’. This visit to The Woods had us working with the cold amongst other things.

Embracing The Cold

The processes or exercises that we used to embrace the cold are really too detailed to go into great in depth here but I will outline some of the more simple straightforward techniques that we were shown.

Before I go on I will say that these exercises are not an alternative to actually wrapping up against the cold, they do raise your core temperature and you don’t ‘feel’ cold but there has to be a level of common sense applied if you are not to get hyperthermia. Also we had an experienced guide with us at all times, while we went through these exercises.

Relax

This is the easiest to do but the hardest to achieve. When we get cold our bodies instantly start to shiver, it’s a natural process that generates heat by rapidly contracting the major muscle groups of the body. However the process of shivering also brings your full attention to THE COLD, your mind instantly starts to focus on the reason why you’re shivering, which just makes you colder!

Energetically, the contracting of the muscles also inhibits the natural flow of energy around the body. If the natural flow of energy around the body is interrupted then those areas that need an increase in energy just won’t get it.

So the first step is to relax, to relax into the cold. To start with it isn’t easy to stop your body shivering but with a little practice you can relax into the cold and stop the shivers, once you stop the shivers you’ll instantly feel warmer as the energy flow around the body picks up once again.

Focus

What you focus on is what you experience; this just doesn’t apply to the cold it applies to many areas of life also. If you focus on the cold, for example you focus on the how cold your hands or feet feel (as it is your hands and feet that generally feel cold first), then you are opening your mind to the experience of this cold.

So the second step is to focus your attention on the more subtle (and NOT the cold). Very much like out of mind out of sight. This is where Expanded Awareness comes in; this is a process that I have mentioned before (and at some point will into greater detail). Expanded Awareness allows you to easily move your focus from the obvious to the subtle, in this case it may be that you move your focus from the cold to the sensation of the ground below your feet, or the sound of the wind in the trees or the feeling of your clothes on your body.

Movement

Before anyone says, ‘of course I’ll warm up if I start running!’ By movement I don’t mean major excretions of energy like jumping up and down or running, but these also will keep you warm, however how long you could maintain this level of movement is another question.

In this context, movement can be as subtle as slow walking (fox walking), by moving your body, even slow deliberate movements are enough to help ‘pump’ the energy around the body. The whole idea is to keep the energies moving around your body instead of being centred in just one or two places.

Raising Your Energy Levels

There are a number of yoga or meditation practices that are based around raising and focusing your personal energy levels. While in The Woods we used a combination of movements adapted from Qigong and Shaolin Kung Fu that allowed us to raise and focus our internal energies. We only needed to practice these movements when we could feel our energy levels dropping, which is normally at the beginning of the exercises. Once our internal energy levels where raised they were easy to maintain without having to revert back to the yoga exercises.

Playing With The Cold

So with these in mind we were presented with a couple of exercises to do both of which would allow us to embrace and become friends with the cold.

In The Woods

The first exercise was straight forward enough and not too much of a shock to the system; well it wasn’t a shock to the ego. We were sent off alone to find a space in the wood where we were comfortable, once there we went through the various exercises to raise our core temperatures, once ready, we then took off items of clothing, stripping down as far as we were emotionally comfortable with. Once at the edge of our comfort zone we then blindfolded ourselves and proceeded to move (slowly) around the woods until we had embraced the cold at which point we took off the blindfold and proceeded to move around as normal.

After being in out in the woods for an hour or so we were all summonsed to returned to camp, even back in camp we sat and stood around in tee shirts and shorts for another hour or so, totally oblivious to the temperature.

Moving around blindfolded helps the mind to focus on the more subtle, humans are extremely visual in their outlook; removing or inhibiting the vision almost forces the other senses to come alive, resulting in the subtle being experienced.

In The River

The following day we were to put these exercises to the test, a swim in a local river, in mid January!

Yes you did read that correctly! The idea being that we would gradually enter the river allowing the water to slow rise up our bodies and NOT to plunge straight into the water.

I will not lie this was a challenge, especially when the water level reaches your genitals and mid-rift! However by applying the same principles as in the woods (minus the blindfold) we all embraced the cold, in fact we all became friends with the cold.

For me, and everyone else agreed, the whole experience was that of a physical, emotional and spiritual cleansing, a truly enlightening moment. I have never felt so a live as I did when I got out of the water. I truly understood what the Apaches meant when they say ‘the cold is really’.

Again after getting out of the river we stood around on the river bank in shorts and tee shirts chatting about the experience, without even the smallest consideration for the air temperature.

A Funny Story

One thing that I haven’t said is that the visit to the river was an unscheduled event and as such none of us had any swimming costumes with us, so in the true sense of living in the woods we wore our birthday suites!

Also, because of the time of the year and the rainfall over the previous week, the river was quite high and fast flowing, something that I should have taken note of when entering or more accurately exiting the river. We entered the river in a secluded spot, not obvious to those passing by, and it was at this point on the river bank that I got undressed and left my clothes. After swimming in the river for a while I allowed the current to take my about 20 or 30 meters down steam, what I didn’t realise was that the current was too strong for me to swim back up river, so I was left with no option other than getting out where I was. So I dragged myself dripping wet and in my birthday suite up onto the river bank, only to be greeted by a group of anglers heading off for a day’s fishing! A cheery ‘Good Afternoon Gentleman’ was all that I could muster as a strode along the river bank back to my pile of clothes as if a January swim in the buff was a perfectly normal pastime!

At least it gave them something to talk about that night in the pub

Barefooting – The Benefits

by Chris

Categories: Barefooting

Tags: Bare foot, Barefeet, Barefoot benefits, Barefooting, Nature, Shamanic, The Woods, Walking

Comments: 8 Comments

Published on: January 6, 2012

I have spoken about the dangers of going barefoot in ‘Barefooting – The Dangers’, I now want to have a look at the benefits of going barefoot. I discussed the dangers first as this seems to be the most commonly asked questions when strangers approach me.

The Benefits

The dangers of going barefoot are factual, sharp stones, glass, cold etc. the benefits or reasons why people go barefoot however are far more subjective. There are probably as many reasons why people go barefoot as there are people without shoes (discounting third world countries).

Lower Back and Leg Pain

I know many people wander into barefooting for medical reasons. The most common conditions or irritations are back and lower limb joint pain of one sort or another; these people are normally but not exclusively runners.

We are all unique individuals with a unique make-up and design, we all walk differently, distribute our weight differently and move differently and there is no shoe designer that can accommodate every possible configuration and shape of the human body. This means that any shoe (unless you are extremely lucky) will cause you to alter your natural gait slightly, this can be seen in the way different people wear down the soles of their shoes differently. Going barefoot allows you to move naturally the way you were designed to, with altering your gait, this means that there is no unnatural pressure on the lower body, result no pain!

Balance

One benefit that is often reported is improved balance.

Here’s a little experiment for shoe wearers (it will need two people); With shoes on stand on one foot, without any support get a (trusted) friend to gently sway you side to side or back to front and notice how difficult or easy it is to maintain your balance. Now take your shoes (and socks off) and try again. This time you’ll find that with bare feet you’ll be able to keep your balance far better.

Walking barefoot increases both the flexibility and strength of the muscles in your feet (something that shoes have previously done for you). This increased strength is what gives you that additional balance. Have you have wondered why gymnasts compete barefoot?

Verrucas, Athletes Foot, Corns and Other Nastiness

Most complaints of this nature come from having your feet in warm, damp conditions for prolonged periods. Obviously being barefoot allows the foot to naturally condition itself and provides an environment where these conditions cannot survive let alone thrive.

Not all conditions of this nature are caused by the warm damp conditions in a shoe, some are caused by the shoe itself, especially if you have unusually shaped feet that don’t fit into shoes. The shoe can and does apply pressure to certain parts of the foot resulting in corns and bunions. No shoe, no corns!

Also it is recognised that being barefoot helps those with flat foot, due to the strengthening of the foot muscles from being shoeless.

Spiritual

The reason why I started barefooting was a more spiritual reason. To cut a long story short I went on week’s Shamanic retreat where the Apache trained Shaman actively encouraged us to go barefoot for the week… and I just never put shoes back on! The primary reason why we were encouraged to go barefoot was so that we could feel the ground beneath our feet, so that we could walk with Nature with the minimum amount of disturbance. It is almost impossible to walk through a wood with complete anonymity with any form of footwear on.

Being barefoot, especially in Nature, does give you a direct and physical connection to the Earth and Nature. It literally grounds and in some cases energies you. Remaining grounded, which is quite literally that, achieving an energetic or electrically neutral state, is I believe a most fundamental part of our overall well-being.

There are any number of Spiritual practices that recommend being barefoot, and I have spoken of one on here before; Sun Gazing.

It’s Natural

Shoes have often been seen as a symbol of civilisation. However if you look at the majority of the Earth’s indigenous cultures they are all barefoot! Some of these indigenous cultures are anything but uncivilised; take the Ancient Egyptians although they had sandals they were reserved for special occasions only. There are still cultures in the modern world where barefooting is a part of everyday life; New Zealand and Australia are prime examples.

It is a perfectly natural state to be in, and before anyone says “so is being naked!” a bare foot is more socially acceptable than a bare backside!

I Like It!

Finally, we come to the reason cited by most; they just plain like the feeling of the ground beneath a bare sole.

Being barefoot does allow you to feel, or as the Shaman told us, see with your feet (this is true if you walk through a wood at night under a New Moon with no artificial light, the only way you can stay on the tracks is by seeing with your bare feet!)

The change in texture and temperature under foot as you move through any terrain be it a city street or a remote forest is one of the most amazing feelings that you can have, try it you might be surprised

Are You Barefoot?

Before I finish I must say that I am NOT a medical person and as such some of my comments relating foot pathology and physiology are all from the research that I done and I cannot testify to them being medically correct.

So are you a barefooter? If so please tell us why you started out on the barefoot lifestyle.

Barefoot… The Start

by Chris

Categories: Barefooting

Tags: Bare foot, Barefeet, Barefooting, Scandals, Shamanic, Sore Feet, The Woods, Walking

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Published on: December 5, 2011

I know that going barefoot isn’t everyone’s taste or thing; however I personally would recommend that you try it for a while before you make up your mind.

The reasons for going barefoot are different for everyone; I have talked about the reasons why I go barefoot, for me it started out as a more Spiritual way of being and has slow has become more of a way of life. I now realise that I don’t want to go back to wearing to shoes or boots… barefoot is the only way forward for me.

Starting Off

I want to tell you how I went about starting to become a barefooter.

It all started on a week’s Shamanic retreat, on the South Downs, in England. For that week we were encouraged to go barefoot for the whole week. The entire week was spent in the woods, and although there was plenty of leaf-cover on the ground the woods are also home to a number of Holly trees and Sweet Chestnut trees!

Holly leaves are very unpleasant and at times painful to walk or stand on, but they have nothing on the Sweet Chestnut shells that are scattered around the floor of the woods! The husks from the Beech nuts are also objectionable to bare feet!

With so many potentially sharp things to stick into our feet the first thing that we were shown is how to walk ‘properly’ barefoot in the woods, but it can be applied to general walking as well.

The Walk

It’s really very simple, instead of walking heel to toe, you walk toe to heel. As you put your foot to the ground, the ball of your foot closest to your little toe makes contact first; you then bring down the rest of the ball of the foot, so that you can bare weight on the foot. Then finally you bring your heel down to the ground.

At first this does seem like a very strange way to walk, but it’s something that I would recommend that you practice as it’s a method of walking that has got me out of some potentially painful pavement spots. Walking like this is not a quick way to walk, but then ‘route marching’ barefoot isn’t something that I would recommend anyway!

There are two advantages to walking this way; the first is that you can feel underfoot anything that is sharp or uncomfortable before you bare your full weight onto it, giving you the chance to adjust where you put your foot. The Second advantage is that walking in this way is also far gentler on your joints. Shoes and boots cushion the impact of you foot falls on your leg joints, in the early days of barefooting I found that walking normally especially on tarmac and concrete was jarring my knees.

Use Common Sense

For me, I started slowly, introducing my feet and lower legs to the idea of being barefoot. To start with I would wear scandals while walking on tarmac and concrete and as soon as I was in an area where I could walk predominantly on grass, soil or leaves my scandals would come off. It did mean lots of on and off with the scandals but I found this was best for me.

I then slowly started to introduce longer walks on concrete and tarmac, until I found that I could leave the house barefoot, walk into town and back again, without the need for scandals. Because I was introducing the barefooting slowly I would always carry my scandals with me as a precaution.

It really is common sense, if your feet start getting sore or painful but on some scandals or flip flops!

Dealing With Sore Feet

At some point you are going to get sore feet, I still get sore feet especially if I have been walking on concrete or tarmac for several hours, admittedly nowhere near as bad as when I first started, but it still happens every now again.

There are two methods of dealing with sore feet, and hardening your feet off that I am aware of, one I have tried the other I haven’t.

Now this is most definitely not going to be to everyone’s taste, and no doubt there will be a number of people of turn their noses up at the idea but the method that I have tried, and it has been very successful for me, especially in that first week in the woods. Is to urinate on the soles of your feet!

Yes you did read that correctly, this is something that I was told about by an ‘Old School’ Sergeant in the Army, and it’s something that he recommended to all his new recruits, and IT WORKS! Urine as it leaves the body is sterile so there is no concern about infecting any small cuts or abrasions, obviously larger cuts should be treated with more conventional methods. Also something in the urine hardens of the skin as well as stopping or slowing down the formation of blisters.

I was finding myself ‘peeing’ on my feet at least once a day while in the woods and by the end of the week the skin on the soles of my feet were considerably tough than that on the feet of other members of the group.

The second method, and this was passed on to me more recently is to use a foot wash of potassium permanganate and surgical spirit, which apparently has the same effect as urine, and is considered more socially acceptable! Please Note that POTASSIUM PERMANGANATE IS TOXIC, so please research or seek advice before using.

Two Months Later

Using common sense and slowly getting my feet used to being barefoot, it took me about two months before I could happily wander into and around town for several hours barefoot without the need to use scandals or shoes.

Perhaps the winter months are not the best time to introduce your feet to the idea of going barefoot, but it really is something that I would suggest you try.

Blissfully Barefoot

Were Mental Illnesses Responsible For Leaps In Human Evolution?

by Chris

Categories: Things You Should To Know

Tags: Adapting, ADHD, Autism, Bipolar, Evolution, Genetics, Mental Conditions, Mental Illness, Schizophrenia, Shamanic

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Published on: November 30, 2011

There is a line of thought that says inherent mental conditions had a key role in the evolution and success of the human race. If this is the case then should we not be nurturing and encouraging these maverick minds instead of drugging them up and pushing them to the edge of society?

We Are ALL Mad!

Currently in the industrialised world approximately 1 in 25 people have what is considered a severe mental disorder, 1 in 4 will have some form of mental health problem in the course of a year and almost 50% of the population will experience some kind of mental disorder in their life time (Mental Health Foundation). The frequency and severity of these disorders is increasing!

Whether there is a greater prevalence of mental conditions now or modern diagnostics and labelling is picking up more cases, it’s hard to say, as the guidelines for what and who has a mental condition seems to change year upon year.

Wouldn’t Natural Selection Remove Mental Illness From The Gene Pool?

A number of these conditions including schizophrenia, bipolar, ADHD and autism are to a degree inherited from our parents. This then begs the question; if these conditions are a threat to the survival of the human race would natural selection not have eliminate them? Would they not have been evolved out of the gene pool?

Because these conditions are genetic, they leave their markers in the bones and bodies of our ancestors going back over 100,000 years. Advances in genetics mean that we can how ascertain if our ancestors did in fact have these hereditary conditions and also to a limited degree how prevalent they were.

Learning From The Past

Archaeologist Penny Spikins of The University of York (UK) argues that high levels of these conditions persist because in the past they have been extremely advantageous to the advancement of humanity (Autism, the Integrations of ‘Difference’ and the Origins of Modern Human Behaviour). “Early Homo sapiens were so successful because they were willing to integrate people with different minds into their society.” This fostered the development of more complex emotions, like compassion, gratitude and admiration, all of which helped embrace the unique skills and attributes that are part of these different ways of thinking. All of which Spikins attests to being responsible for the overall success of Homo sapiens over the other hominines at around the same period.

Genetics have shown that some genes associated with these conditions were prolific around the time that the Human species started to flourish and thrive, attributes that were not present in the other Hominines. In other words there were a high number of these genetic markers present in our ancestors at around the same time Homo sapiens took a major evolutionary step, the formation of complex tools! It would seem that the two are indeed connected that what we call mental disorders have some important role to play in the evolution of mankind.

What About Cave Paintings?

At around the same time as this major leap in tool technology (about 35,000 years ago) there were also advancements in creative artistic abilities with the emergence of decorative artefacts. Nicholas Humphrey from the London School of Economics has drawn the similarities between cave paintings from this period and the art produced by some autistics with savant qualities (Shamanism and cognitive evolution).

What About Spirituality?

Also around this time there was a major advancement in Spirituality and the emergence of more structured religions. Again these members of this society can be attributed to being a contributing factor here. The connection between Shamans and socially different thought processes has long been recognised. Whether this is genetic or not I have not been able to discover. However these specific members of this society certainly bound the community together and imparted belief and structure to what had previously been unexplained.

Are these maverick thinkers responsible for binding together these societies; are they responsible for these advancements in tool technology; are they responsible for the advancements in Spiritual thinking and the early formation of religions? I believe so.

Some Of The Genes Responsible

David Reich of Harvard Medical School has shown that the AUTS2, CADPS2 and NRG3 genes, those directly connected to autism (the former two) and schizophrenia (the latter) are subtly different in Neanderthal to modern humans, sufficiently so that it is believed that mental illnesses of the type being discussed were pretty much nonexistent in Neanderthals; Neanderthals become extinct about 30,000 years ago! Connection?

How these genes aided in the adaptability of Homo sapiens isn’t really known, however it is known that these genes are responsible in some way for our ability to adapt to most environments. SERT, the transporter protein for serotonin, which has been implicated in many inherent mental conditions, is found in two forms ‘long’ and ‘short’. In all humans both forms exist simultaneously, however those with predominantly ‘long’/’long’ seem to be protected from major mood swings and depression, while those with ‘long’/’short’ or ‘short’/’short’ combinations are more susceptible to depression. Klaus-Peter Lesch for the University of Wurzburg has shown that of all the primates studied this ‘short’ version of the SERT protein only exists in one primate, the Rhesus monkey, like human beings the Rhesus monkey can adapt to live in new and challenging environments (Molecular Psychiatry, DOI 10.1038/sj.mp.4001157) all other primates are confined to niche living conditions.

This is only the beginning, research undertaken by Henry Harpending and Gregory Cochran has exposed another gene variant that is responsible for the D4 dopamine receptor commonly associated with high energy levels and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and its link with adaptability especially among migratory societies.

Cultivate Not Cure

It would seem that the development of these more complex emotions that allowed our ancestors to not just accept but embrace those members of society with what we call mental illnesses, have allowed these gifted people to not just flourish but to contribute to the evolution of the human race. Is the increase in these mental conditions just the way we diagnose them or are they really on the increase? If they are on the increase are we on the cusp of an evolutionary leap? What are the implications for humanity and our continued advancement if we quash people with these conditions by the use of drugs and incarceration?

It would seem to me that we should do as our ancestors did and embrace these gifted people, nurture and encourage their gifts, as it would seem that history has shown us that they are the key to the next step in our evolution. Without them could we go the way of the Neanderthal?

As always your comments are more than welcome, I am by no means an expert in this field, I have a number of very close friends who fall into the bracket of having a mental condition, and to me they are gifted beyond belief, they have gifts that we should be embracing, nurturing and allowing to flourish. I believe these people are our future.

Mad Hatter image courtesy of Two Pink Possums
Shaman image courtesy of A Davey

Thursday 27 October 2011 – Day 6

by Chris

Categories: Back To The Basics

Tags: Back To The Basics, Challenges, Dynamic Time, Expanding Awareness, Into The Heart of The Earth, Life Force Energy, Meditation, Nature, Shamanic, Time

Comments: 2 Comments

Published on: November 10, 2011

The Letter

Yesterday I received a letter! Now this may not seem much but when your only form of communication is either spoken or handwritten, letters become important.

There’s something magical about a letter, a piece of paper with words written on it. The letter for me has something that a text, e-mail or instant message doesn’t have. I know the electronic forms may contain all the same information, it may be written exactly the same, but the electronic version seems to lack the energy of the author. A hand written letter, or typed in this case, seems to carry with it all the feelings and emotions of the writer, if just seems to me that these energies are somehow lost during the delivery of an electronic letter.

Is the true art of letter writing being lost in a sea of electronic shorthand and smiley faces and funky fonts?

Thanx Mel, g8t 2 no u care <3! Thank you Mel for making my day!

The Tech-Challenge

Up to this point I have limited myself to places where either I can control the tech or avoid the tech with ease, The Woods, my flat, the old fashioned green grocers. Last night I ventured out to see some friends for the New Moon celebrations and ritual.

I ventured to a house with loads of tech, knowing that there would be several very techie people there… could I resist the pull of the tech?

Electric Lights

The first thing that I noticed was how harsh the glare from the electric lights is. Over the past few days, my eyes have become accustomed to the soft flicker of candle light. However this wasn’t too much of an issue, as is normally the case we spent most of the evening sat outside around the fire. With hind sight I should have taken some candles around, as finding the toilet in the dark, without flicking the light switch was a challenge! Mental note to Self, take candles when you go round for Samhain!

LOUD Tech

The other thing that I noticed was how loud the tech is. Noise from the TV (I didn’t go into the front room where all the tech is housed, but I could still hear it), the computers, the mp3 player. So much tech related noise. Until you remove all of these distractions you don’t fully realise just how much noise they make! Even when they are not meant to be omitting any sound, the tech seems to have a constant hum that fills the silence; that fills the void.

Tech Distractions

Once again I observed the way that people interact with their tech. Constantly changing the playlist on the mp3. Constantly checking their phones. Constantly checking the time. Constantly using tech to distract themselves from the experience of the evening.

When a group of people come together, how often do you hear it said “Stop! Wait let me get my phone and video that” or “I must get a picture of that” or “Let me show you this video on youtube”. Constantly distracting themselves from the moment, from The Now. Don’t get me wrong it’s great to have photos and videos to remind ourselves of a great time, or show others who weren’t present but surely the videos and photos should be spontaneous in order to fully capture the energies?

The other thing that I noticed, and I hope that I don’t offend anyone from last night with this observation, but those who use their tech the most were the ones that had the least inner calm. Those who are happy within themselves were the ones who left their tech alone. Those who got constantly distracted by their tech were the ones who have the greatest inner turmoil. This observation came from a single evening, maybe it was a one off, I don’t know, there may be no correlation between inner clam and the distractions of tech. However I feel that those without an inner calm more fully utilise the distractions of tech and I’m sure that if I took all their tech away they would find some other distraction.

All in all I passed the challenge, I didn’t interact with any tech and everyone was considerate in making sure that photos on phones etc were not passed in front of me and that no one told me the time. It’s not easy when you see the sudden glow of a mobile phone in your peripheral vision not to look to see what’s going on. I would have preferred it if there was no tech but this is my Tech-Free 10 days not theirs. These are going to be the challenges that I face when I come out the other side and make the decision about what tech I keep and what I loose.

This Mornings Meditation

My meditation this morning was somehow different. I didn’t do anything different, I went through my usual routine but for some reason this morning a deeper sense of calm descended upon me. It was just me in the void, in the silence, in the stillness from which everything comes and everything eventually returns. Just me in the void, with a still candle flame burning inside me. Peaceful!

Food Glorious Food

I am rediscovering the joy in preparing, cooking and eating three square meals a day! To some this may seem strange but when you consider that up to the point of starting the 10 days or Back To The Basics, my life was so busy and filled with tech that most of my meals where out of a tin or bottle, anything that was quick and easy. I suppose it’s not dissimilar to the bath I had on Tuesday, when you actively and consciously engage with the process that you are doing the result is far more fulfilling and joyful. If you take this one step further and actively and consciously engage with every process that you undertake then life becomes more fulfilling and joyful.

The food tastes and looks better, the bath is more relaxing and soothing, the colours outside and inside are brighter and more vibrant, even on a dull day like today. The sounds are softer and more pleasing, life just seems so much better when you actively and consciously engage with it. Worries, what worries? Stress, what stress? Life is just so much more enjoyable.

The Brick Wall

I suppose it was going to happen at some point, not unlike a junky going through cold turkey, at some point you hit a brick wall, where all you can think about is that which you don’t have and that which you want. I’ve started thinking about tech, getting back on-line again. The whole situation isn’t helped by the pile of tech stacked up in front of me! Calling to me, asking me to plug it in and fire it up!

If I weren’t sharing my experiences with you the temptation would be even stronger, but for some reason I feel that if I crack then I’m not only letting myself down but I’m letting you down as well.

I will soldier on, I DO NOT NEED the tech, I don’t need the distractions, I am strong! I’m off to meditate!

Esoteric Ramblings

Indulge me please, I’m going to jump into the esoteric here, if it’s not up your street then please skip the rest of this post I won’t be offended but I feel that I need to say this as it’s been slowly formulating all day, bringing all the coincidences and thoughts and feelings together.

We Are All Energy

Quantum physics has shown what the indigenous people have always known. That the fundamental building blocks of the Universe and its multiple dimensions is energy. Not protons, neutron and electrons, not even quarks, neutrinos and other very small bits(!) but raw energy. Everything that we see, feel, smell or hear is just energy; we are just clouds of energy.

The Three Energy Fields

Some of which is confined to a finite space, our physical bodies; and some to a more dynamic space. This energy that is confined to the dynamic space is often referred to as our auras and these have been researched and photographed. However I believe, and this partly based on what I’ve read, been told and what I’ve experienced, that there is a third boundary which is even more dynamic than the aura boundary, and even more subtle but seemingly far more powerful. I’m going to refer to this as The Life Force Energy. Which really is not a good name, because everything has this Life Force Energy, even rocks and stones, but it seems to fit so that’s what I‘m calling it?

The Life Force Energy

I believe that it’s this Life Force Energy that healers use, it is the power behind what some call magik. The indigenous peoples would access and interact with this third energy field, The Life Force Energy via Witchdoctors, Shaman, Sages, Medicine men, and the like.

So to recap, I believe that we are made up of at least three energy fields, the first in confined to a finite space and is the physical body, the second is a little more dynamic and permeates out from the physical body a short distance (centimetres) and is called the aura, the third is far more dynamic and permeates out from the physical body far greater distances and I’ve called it the Life Force Energy.

Collective Subconscious

This Life Force Energy is so dynamic that it interacts and mixes with other Life Force Energy fields around it producing a global grid of interconnected Life Force Energies. Carl Jung would have called it the collective subconscious, a global or even a universal consciousness, a Oneness. Of course the other two energy fields identify us as individuals.

Life Force Energy and Time

This to me seems to be the only way to describe this, the connection between time and the Life Force Energy. Not only does this Universal Consciousness; this Life Force Energy, connect ALL of space it also connects all of time, effectively making time a dynamic experience and not a linear experience. From what I understand this also touches on Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity. I have personally experienced this, when time slows down or time expands the Life Force Energy becomes less subtle and more observable.

Observing The Life Force Energy

In order for us to observe and interact with this Life Force Energy we must achieve two things.

1. We must slow down time.

2. We must develop our senses; sight sound, smell and touch to the extent that we can observe the most subtle of energies.

Introducing Expanded Awareness

This is where Expanded Awareness comes in. As I said in an early post I knew I would elaborate more on Expanded Awareness, I just didn’t know where at the time. I have only been practicing Expanded Awareness since July this year when I met Ben on his “Into The Heart of The Earth” course. As such my interaction is limited and my observations fluctuate.

Expanded Awareness is a process that teaches you to focus on everything and nothing simultaneously. So you can see everything but nothing, as if focusing on everything all at the same time, I know this sounds like a contradiction but it’s the only way that I can describe it. This is applied to sound, touch, smell and sight individually and then all combined. The result is that you become 100% aware of EVERYTHING around you. It is a truly amazing experience. In this state you can see, feel, smell and hear the most subtle of changes or fluctuations in the energy fields, you can sense the most subtle.

Expanding Awareness and Time

Interestingly enough this state of Expanded Awareness seems to have a side effect, it slows down time or expands time. I believe this is because in this state we expend the space around ourselves which has a direct effect on the time-space continuum. When in this state time passes so slowly almost as if it’s been suspended. The more you expand your awareness the slower time goes.

Ben’s approach to Expanded Awareness comes from his Apache training with Tom Brown in the United States of America. This means that these teachings are coming from one of the planets indigenous cultures, centuries old knowledge.

All of this because of my observations of how my perception of time has changed when I don’t have a clock, now to me time feels far more fluid as if I have control over it and not the other way round. A downside to tech is that it all seems to have a clock, a tick tock that keeps us in a linear time experience and further from the Life Force Energy.

I’m not saying that when all this is over I’m not going to follow a clock, we all have timed appointments, but I do feel there would be some benefit from eliminating time when it’s not needed.

I will hopefully me going into this subject in more detail over the coming months as I experiment with and experience the Life Force Energy.

Please feel free to comment or ask any questions, and I’ll do my best to answer them from what I know.

Letter courtesy of kylesteeddesign

Flame courtesy of andersnelson

Phones courtesy of athomeinscottsdale

Sunday 23 October 2011 – Day 2

by Chris

Categories: Back To The Basics

Tags: Back To The Basics, Dream Interpretations, Dreams, Emotional Release, Horses, Nature, Shamanic, The Woods

Comments: No Comments

Published on: November 6, 2011

Yesterday was a powerful day for me; the Shamanic work that we did started to open more doorways, powerful, emotional doorways. My connection with nature was strengthened as was my connection with the other members of the group. This also opened up doorways to my Higher-Self.

These doorways manifest themselves in two very powerful dreams.

Dreams in The Woods

I don’t recall the first dream in full, but it involved Horses, this isn’t the first time that Horse has crossed my path this weekend. Yesterday Paul said that he saw we with Horses when I was talking to the group about our experiences between the last visit and this visit to The Woods, he told me that he could see me surrounded by Horses.

Dream 1 – Horses

Last night’s dream about Horse, as I say I don’t recall all the details about the dream. I was looking after horses and someone had released them from the field and I was running around in almost panic looking for them. That’s pretty much all I can recall.

Dream 2 – Emotional Release

The second dream was even more powerful and a little disturbing. I was in a typical family environment, normal house, wife / partner and the 2.4 kids. I was doing ‘normal’ things. I think I was unpacking groceries. I went into the back garden and saw a small flat bed / pickup truck reverse up to next doors fence and tip the contents of the load (with was mainly rubbish) into next doors garden over the fence. This seemed to give me great amusement initially, after the truck had tipped its content over the fence it drove around the garden and through a new gate in the neighbouring fence, the one it just tipped its contents over. Up to that point I was totally unaware of the gate, once I realised that a gate had been put in the fence, I went berserk. I remember being so angry that this gate had been put in without my say so. The groceries that I was unpacking got thrown on the patio and then I started to smash up chairs on top of the medley of groceries that where now all over the patio. My wife / partner (I don’t recall if this was a real person or not) tried to calm me down, but I kept saying how could you let them put a gate in the fence? I started to calm down then the person who lived next door popped their head above the fence to see what the commotion was about and I erupted again. Although this time it was not a violent outburst, I must have had that look of a mad man on my face because as soon as the neighbour looked at me she instantly knew, started to apologise and retreated straight back into her house.

Well what do these mean? This is what I make of them at the moment; I’ll do a full interpretation when I get home.

First Impressions

The first one is simple, in today’s journey I am to seek out Horse, the Spirit guide of Horse energy. I definitely feel that Horse has something to tell me.

The second is far more complex, it relates to the emotional release of pent up emotions. Which really isn’t surprising considering the emotional turmoil that I have been through over the past 2/3 months, the events that have lead me to this point. I will say that when I woke up I had the complete feeling of release as if I had used my dream reality to release something in my waking reality.

Full Interpretations

Here are the interpretations for the two dreams:

Horses

This dream is telling me that I am to incorporate the symbolism represented by horses (in the context of this dream); strength, power, endurance, as well as strong physical energy, and freedom; that these traits will be needed as I continue forward from this point towards my goals and aspirations. There is also symbolism relating to abundance and happiness and personal growth. This is definitely a period of personal growth for me, and freedom and happiness are my goals. With the traits of horse I can face any problems square on and overcome them and take back control of my life. (Horses also symbolise uncontrolled emotions, which is interesting considering the second dream)

Emotional Release

This dream has so many meaning on so many different levels; the first and most obvious is the emotional release that I got from it, I’m not a violent person, in fact I’m very placid, and rarely get to the point where I have to vent my anger, so this dream is an obvious outlet for that emotion. The interesting thing is, what was the cause of this emotional outburst, the dream indicates that the cause was related to some discord or unresolved issue in waking life more specifically an emotional hole in my life that needed filling. This fits perfectly, considering that I was at the start of an adventure to find out who I am and what I want from life, I can now see that this emotional hole was a need to explore deeper the Spiritual side of myself, and to discover a purpose around this. On another level this dream signifies that I was feeling trapped or confined, spiritually, and that new pathways will open up to a new phase of my life. That I have to break away from the old and make a change in the direction that my life is heading, there is also symbolism in the dream relating to going back basics, making life simpler and more straight forward. (I’m serious about this; you just can’t make stuff like this up). Yet on another level there is also a message within this dream that I should or will move house as part of this new path, which also fits in nicely with my long term plans about starting up or moving to a small self-sustaining community that lives hand in hand with Nature, as part of Nature. May be all this is a lot closer than I thought!

So what are your thoughts?

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