Working With Community in Ceremony

Many of today’s most popular shamanic practitioner teachers and authors such as Sandra Ingerman and Michael Stone have been talking about this subject recently on their websites and even holding internet workshops and webinars on the subject. Why is it a hot topic lately? Simply put, it’s the times. And the time is ripe. We have never been more on the brink of changing the status quo of the old paradigm than we are now.  We saw recently what grassroots movement can accomplish with Bernie Sanders’ run for Democratic nominee last year. Even though he didn’t win, the power of the people that came together to support him was palpable. It was not the same old power-over that has been in charge for millennia, it was power-with. It was power together, and it was empowerment.

Many of us shamanic practitioners and light-workers have been starting to come together in groups for about the past ten years. We are aware of the way our intentions are strengthened when we are in community together, and have sensed and felt the vibrational ripples flowing out from our gathered energies. Add the sacred intention of ceremony to the power of community and you have a force that changes reality.  Ceremony causes a shift in perception, and in the morphic field we call reality.  This is how we get things done. This is the reason many of us incarnated here together on the planet at this time.

Corvallis is blessed to have many groups that come together in community to do the good work, whether it’s meditation, metaphysical science, activism, satsang, Reiki or shamanic practice. Some of these are on Meetup.com, or in the local paper community calendar, or just slightly under the public radar by word of mouth.

We are blessed to have at least one regular shamanic journey group that meets once a month here in Corvallis. It’s hosted by a beautiful couple who have a sweet little place out in the country outside of town. Each month someone from the group volunteers an intention for the circle and we bring altar items and journey together on the intention if we feel called.  This past May the intention was brought to the group to journey for our town;  the land, the community, the spirit. What do we need to know about Corvallis and its spirit helpers, now, or in the past or future? Then we all journeyed about that. Some got glimpses of the future or the past, and some met the spirits who watch over the town. Several of us were drawn to the Willamette River that runs through the town. It’s a very sensitive river, feeling the thoughts and attitudes of the people who live with it and get their drinking water from it. It wanted us to know that, and that it feels when we send our gratitude and when we send our angst about the water being polluted. It is important for all of us to be aware about what we are putting in the water, and how we are using it, but seeing it as polluted isn’t helping it. The gratitude is what it needs to keep its vibration high.

After this journey, the idea came up for a blessing ceremony for the river for our next journey group in June, which coincided with the summer solstice.  We decided on a prayer raft of all organic material that we could put our prayers and blessings in and offer to the river. I volunteered to find the raft, as I knew of a tree that had fallen and splintered and was slowly peeling off its layers as it started decomposing. My friend and I went out to that deadfall and she found the perfect piece. When I told Lyn, the facilitator of the circle, that we found the raft, she asked if I would lead the ceremony. I told her that I would be honored.  I brought in elements of a despacho to the ceremony because I felt this ceremony was to keep us in right relationship with the river and its spirit helpers. Everyone was asked to bring a couple flowers or offerings to hold their prayers. 

Whenever we work with someone, human or spirit, we must always work from a place of permission. I did a journey to the spirit of the river and asked it if it was okay that we did this, and how did they feel about it. We had a great chat about its helpers and which of them would help guide the raft. The main thing that the river wanted in the prayer blessings was love and respect.  After we blew those prayers into the offerings and assembled the raft, we journeyed for any other prayers, messages, or gifts to add energetically. After opening the circle, we all went down to the river and offered it to the spirits. One of the women brought rose petals from her garden which we sprinkled along with the current.  Watching the raft float downriver with its little beeswax candle twinkling as dusk fell was a moment of beauty and power than none of us will soon forget.  I think of the river spirit whenever I turn my faucet on, and send it love and gratitude.

Our journey group is planning to add more ceremony to our gatherings, to shift our senses into sacred work that creates the world we want to live in together. What are you doing in your community? How can we link up our communities into a movement for anchoring the new paradigm, where nature has a voice that is listened to and respected, where the Divine Feminine is honored and in balance with the Divine Masculine?