8-08-08

A beggar had been sitting by the side of the road for thirty years.
One day a stranger walked by.
"Spare some change?" mumbled the beggar.
"I have nothing to give you," said the stranger.
Then he asked: "What's that you're sitting on?"
"Nothing, " replied the beggar.
"Just an old box. I've been sitting on it for as long as I can remember."
"Ever look inside?," asked the stranger.
"No," said the beggar. "What's the point, there's nothing in there."
"Have a look inside," insisted the stranger. The beggar, reluctantly, managed to pry open the lid. With astonishment, disbelief, and elation, he saw that the box was filled with gold.

I am that stranger who has nothing to give you and who is telling you to look inside. Not inside any box, as in the parable, but somewhere even closer: inside yourself.
--Eckhart Tolle

On Friday, August 8, 2008 at 8 pm I had the honor of participating in a special 8-08-08 Renewal Ritual of "Healing, Blessings, and Enlightenment." It took place at the Center for Spiritual Living in Dallas, TX, and it is to be the first of 11 such rituals to be held between now and 12-21-2012 facilitated by Br. ChiSing, M.Div., M.A., and Ordained Disciple of the Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. The number "8" is universally recognized as a sacred symbol of "New Beginnings" in many traditions around the world. For example, the Buddha taught the Noble Eightfold Path of Enlightenment, and the name of Jesus in the original Greek New Testament has a numerical value of "888." It was a truly amazing evening of singing, chanting, meditation, dance, poetry, drumming, Tibetan bowls, sacred flutes, rituals, blessings, prayer and connection. It was one of the best nights of my life, and I know that many who were there mirror that sentiment.

Aside from the Renewal Ritual I was a part of that evening, I know that there were also several very important rituals going on at different places around the planet that also contributed to the sacred energy of the evening. There were the opening ceremonies for the Olympic Games, which are very metaphysical in many aspects. Also the 8th of 12 Ascension Grid Activations was happening that evening at Queen Wilhemina State Park in Arkansas.

I was honored to be asked to participate in the ritual as one of 8 "Goddesses" who helped with the evening in facilitation and leading of song, ritual, and blessings. The 8 of us Goddesses, all dressed in white with baby's breath in our hair, gathered before the doors opened in a secluded spot to meditate together before the event. Then we all sat up on the balcony of the sanctuary of the Center for Spiritual Living, where the event would be held to watch people arrive and hold the energy of the space.

There were people receiving chair massage, and people from the DFW Oneness Blessing present to offer blessings to all who wanted it. Us Goddesses, of course, went downstairs and received our blessings with gratitude. As I waited for my turn to receive, I felt my heart start to flutter. As I kneeled down in from of the woman that was to bless me I breathed deeply and opened my heart to receive. She placed her hands on my head and I felt washed in love and peace and excited by the energy flowing through me. My heart was fluttering more as were the hands of the person blessing me. After a few moments she removed her hands and we bowed to honor one another. I headed back up stars to join the rest of the Goddesses.

I sat in mindfulness and felt an overwhelming compulsion to offer short EDINA healing sessions to each of the 7 other Goddesses. One-by-one, I asked each for their permission and connected myself in to the EDINA energy. With each Goddess, worked on them in a sitting position, sitting on the floor behind them. I felt compelled (as I often to when working with EDINA) to channel the energy into the Heart Chakra first. I placed my hands over the back of the Heart Chakra and let the energy flow through the top of my head, bifurcating at my heart and traveling down through my arms and out of my hands. With each of the 7 I felt several surges of heat energy, each stronger than the last, before I felt "complete." Then I felt moved to place one hand over the Solar Plexus Chakra while the other was over the Throat Chakra. Here I felt the same surges of heat before feeling compelled to move on to the 3rd Eye and Sacral Chakras and finally completing with the Root and Crown Chakras. As I moved from woman to woman, the sessions got faster and faster and I was filled with a sense that these beautiful beings from Sirius that are bringing the EDINA energy to the planet had a major role to play in the rituals of the evening, and would remain to do their multi-dimensional work whether I was directly connected to them or not.

As the event began we were greeted with the beautiful sounds of Tibetan Bowls played by the lovely and talented Jodi Roberts. There was also sacred Native American flute music played by John Sullivan, and drumming by Michael Kenny and friends. Michael Gott provided piano music as well. The Dreamsicles sang a duet, and as their song came to a conclusion, Br. ChiSing welcomed everyone and explained some of the chants and dances we would be doing. Following 8 bells and the sounding of a conch shell, the Taiko Drumming began. Jen and Jeremy Wanamaker, along with Lainey Bernstein played some amazing beats that got my heart pounding and the energy of the space moving as the Goddesses lined up on the stairs. As we processed in behind Br. ChiSing, holding candles and spiraling in through the standing-room-only crowd, we chanted, in three-part harmony:

"Om Amitabha Hri
Om Amitabha Hri
Om Amitabha Hri
Om Ah Hum"

Finally, we circled around the table at the center of the room and, after some ritual dancing and chanting, we placed our candles down. I really got into a trance sort of state from all of the chanting and dancing. We next each picked up a bowl of water and a sprig of baby's breath to dip in it, and wove through the crowd sprinkling each person with blessings of water as we chanted. The flow of voices and drumming lifted my spirit up as I smiled and connected with each person I blessed, heart wide open.

As the chanting ended and the drumming continued, Br. ChiSing then led everyone in the room through a Spiral Dance (<---cool animation of the dance on that link!) where everyone held hands in a circle and Br. ChiSIng led the line inward on itself like a spiral, then back out through the spiral. We chanted again during this dance, but this time our chant was:

"We are a circle
within a circle
with no beginning
and never-ending"

Spiral Dancing is a really heart-opening experience. There were probably somewhere around 180 people all doing this dance, so we were all very close to one another throughout the dance because of the size of the space we were in. Because of the way you face each other at each point in the dance, you are looking directly into the eyes of every single other person in the room as you pass them. After all of the chanting, singing and dancing we had already been doing, along with the primal and spiritual rhythms of the drums, flutes, and bowls....it was really as though all of us breathing, singing, moving, dancing, chanting bodies were all ONE. I am that I AM. We were all just one big smile of love radiating inward and outward in all directions. Flowing, singing, dancing, smiling, loving, breathing, BEING!

Once we had finished this dance and re-situated ourselves back to sitting either in chairs or on meditation cushions, Michael Gott sang and played piano to ease our minds back towards stillness. Then John Sullivan on the Native American Flute and Jodi Roberts on the Tibetan Bowls played for us to deepen the silence as we all went within for a 20 minute group meditation. It was during this sit I had some of the most profound experience of the evening.

In learning to practice EDINA, we learn several meditations and techniques for preparing ourselves and a space for healing. One such tool is the use of the Violet Flame as a containment field for a healing or sacred space. The method is simply to visualize and intend violet flames filling the given space or in a cone shape if outdoors, there are also chants that can be used to invoke the Violet Flame (see link for more info). The purpose is to take any lower-vibration energy in yourself or the space and transmute it into pure Light or pure Spirit energy. It is then returned to the person or space in a beneficial way.

Normally when I visualize this in a space, it happens slowly, in a step-by-step kind of way. First the the floor is covered with flames, then it creeps up higher and higher until it fills the space. Well, not this time. I went to visualize the flames and BOOM the whole space was full with raging, spiraling violet fire. It kept growing in strength and getting bigger and bigger. Suddenly my point of view changed from being inside my body, observing the scene, to floating high above the building, looking down upon and through the building. The Violet Flame just kept growing in size until it had spread out for a mile radius around the building. Once I could clearly see this flame anchored and radiating for a mile around the Center for Spiritual Living, my point of view returned again to my body.

As the violet flames spiraled upward like an inverted tornado, I noticed a vortex of energy forming like a downward-spiraling tornado below, mirroring, the flames. It began along the plane of the earth from which the flames were rising and penetrated down, down, down. But it did not go into the earth as I would have expected it to, instead it was silvery-dark and transparent. Through it I peered down into a starry cosmos. Not only was the floor of the building gone, but so was the Earth! I felt as though I was sitting on the edge of a double whirlpool in space, with violet flames rising and spinning upwards, and anything that did not need to be there flowing down and out into the cosmos through this spiraling vorex. I just sat there and marveled at it for a timeless time.

Slowly, piano, flute and bowls nudged us gently out of our deep state and back into normal consciousness. We then watched and listened as Monica LeCrone spirit-danced to a song played by Michael Gott, and then reveled in the vocal rhythms of spoken word expressed through Veronica Valles' poetry and Spiritual Mind Treatment. Brother ChiSing also read some of his poetry and delivered and impassioned message about conscious creation of a New Earth, right here, right now, and the importance of mindfulness and community, especially over the next few years in our rapidly-changing world. Together we all sang the song "Love, Serve and Remember" and then chanted "Amithabha" which means "Infinite Light" as the Goddesses gathered once again around the table for a candlelit prayer ritual.

Everyone was encouraged to call out the names of people, places, events, situations in their lives or the lives of others for whom they would like to offer blessings, light, and love. As we heard these called out, the Goddesses would light one of the many candles covering the table. Being in the center of concentric circles of such amazing energy was quickly overwhelming for me, and many others there. As the prayers were called out I was filled with a myriad of many emotions, all swirling around inside and my tears just started to flow. I think by the end of it, none of the 8 Goddesses nor Br. ChiSing had a dry eye. It was beautiful and powerful, and I have since heard several stories of spontaneous healings that came out of the prayers sent out that evening.

As the Prayer Ritual came to a close, we gathered again in a circle, only this time we were in several concentric circles as we danced together one of the Dances of Universal Peace. As we sang and did the movements to "The Ocean Refuses No River," drummers were drumming and music was playing and we danced and sang together, in alternating directions, and in rounds, faster and faster and faster until were were all ecstatic with the cumulative power of the evening. When we finally stopped, panting, and glistening with Spirit in Expression, it seemed like no one wanted to leave, to break the magic spell of the evening. We all placed one hand on our hearts and walked around greeting others but touching together the palms of the other hands. Many hands and hugs were shared as people mingled, shared Love and Light, and slowly began to leave and we ended the night.

It was, by far, one of the best nights of my life...and it's just the first of 12 such rituals that Br. ChiSing will lead! I have also heard of several other "events" in the works that might have been possibly inspired by this event. The energy from that group that evening was, and still is, radiating out in all directions infinitely and exponentially affecting and changing the world as it spreads out in waves and ripples of Love and Light around this plants we call home.

And I am filled with gratitude!

Namaste!