Whilst on the subject of the Sun, it has been heartening to see a large turnout for local Bellingen events hosted by John Seed and including screenings of Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth.

Not so heartening was this perspective which was recently recounted on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald.

"The US government wants the world's scientists to develop technology to block sunlight as a last-ditch way to halt global warming, the Guardian has learned. It says research into techniques such as giant mirrors in space or reflective dust pumped into the atmosphere would be "important insurance" against rising emissions, and has lobbied for such a strategy to be recommended by a major UN report on climate change, the first part of which will be published on Friday.



The US has also attempted to steer the UN report, prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), away from conclusions that would support a new worldwide climate treaty based on binding targets to reduce emissions - as sought by Tony Blair. It has demanded a draft of the report be changed to emphasise the benefits of voluntary agreements and to include criticisms of the Kyoto Protocol, the existing treaty which the US administration opposes."

When will we have the courage collectively and culturally to say what we know to be true in our hearts. This is madness!

Simon

Technorati Tags: Climate Change, consciousness

The sun is currently giving mixed signals to scientists. From NASA's website

Solar cycle 24, due to peak in 2010 or 2011 "looks like its going to be one of the most intense cycles since record-keeping began almost 400 years ago," says solar physicist David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center. He and colleague Robert Wilson presented this conclusion last week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

Yet another perspective unravelled verbally by three remarkable men, Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham and Rupert Sheldrake.

From Matrixmasters.com

Trialogues at the Edge of the West

"Entities"

1989-1990 Tape 6 Side A

Trialogues at the Edge of the West

"Entities"

1989-1990 Tape 6 Side B

“Our science should be based upon a perception of the truth and not on mere belief or opinion. Information received from men can only assist us in forming opinions, but it constitutes no knowledge. True knowledge consists in a direct recognition of the truth and is taught by Nature herself.” Paracelsus (1493-1541)

"In capitalism, "science" must serve the objectives of elites" The Canadian

David Abram in his book The Spell of the Sensuous says;

"Any healer who was not simultaneously attending to the intertwined relation between the human community and the larger, more-than-human field, would likely dispel an illness from one person only to have the same problem arise (perhaps in a new guise) somewhere else in the community. Hence the traditional magician or medicine person functions primarily as an intermediary between human and non human worlds, and only secondarily as a healer"

The healing that I am endeavouring to embody is predicated on such a notion of community, and such a community made manifest in language and deed. For true healing to occur, i feel, relationships must be known and felt, such that the breakdowns in those relationships may be addressed clearly and decisively when they arise (thus limiting dis-ease). In today's culture of global exchange, relationships are often transitory, shallow and disposable. Relationship as utility. All too often relationships are based upon an arbitrary and abstracted economic exchange. In many instances throughout our day, relationships are conducted through the exchange of small pieces of plastic which have scant relation to the nature of our embodied presence in the world, and the impact such transactions have upon our world. Our culture defines itself by the exchange of money for things, and the imbalance of this situation is demonstrable in the breakdown of human to human relationship and the relationships of humans to the broader world that they inhabit, the "more-than-human field".

Martin Prechtel explains this breakdown of the relationship of humans to the realm of spirits thus;

"You see, the spirits are not being fed properly and are being forgotten, but still life continues and the still make the fields fertile. So they are forced to make raids and they are seen as forces of nature. And if you see an AIDS epidemic or a big boat sinking, that is the spirits having to take what they need. The energy transfer. So when they are forgotten they have to come and take what they need or else they will die. The spirits feed us through the natural world all around us. We feed the spirits by offering them gifts, human artifacts, which the spirits are unable to create themselves. We need what the spirits give and the spirits in turn want what we have.When the spirits are forgotten this reciprocal relationship goes out of balance and the spirits become malevolent forces rather than benevolent forces in human life"

These notions are perhaps difficult to assimilate for a mind conditioned by a modern, industrial society, but the notion that we humans are the sole agents of sentinece in the cosmos seems to me to be the height of hubris, certainly as illogical as any tales of other dimensional beings which the European and Christian empires have tried to brutally suppress in indigenous peoples around the world. From the very realm of science comes an example which highlights this most poignantly here;

Despite our great technological advancements (which allow me in part to communicate this now) there is so very much that we do not know, but we do know in our hearts, that the way that we are currently conducting ourselves is not serving us well.

I recently had the great pleasure to meet with Kulavadhuta Satpurananda and when I discussed with him notions of spirits he suggested that we need to understand that what we call spirits are simply the projections of our minds upon Spanda, the subtle creative pulse of the universe as it manifests into the dynamism of living form. I have an intuitive understanding of this fact, and am at heart, and in essence a non-dualist. Until, however, I attain and exist in that ultimate attainment, I am, in part a member of the human community, and as such have a relationship to all the myriad other manifestations of Spanda in the worlds, human, spirits, deities and demons. All such manifestations are ultimately of the same source, and we are all amongst it trying to find our own way home.

How we see the world is how we intend to see it.

We see it when we believe it.

We become what we see.

Belief schools perception, and perception affects

material reality. The shamanic and the quantum

worlds are almost identical. Hugh Milne, The Heart of Listening

One of the most difficult aspects of my work to articulate from within our current cultural world view is the notion of non corporeal consciousness' which interact very tangibly with the human realm. This is partly and obviously due to the current climate of scientism built upon a cultural framework of aristotelian logic and judeo-christian moral values, but also due to what I perceive as a kind of intellectual non-dualism popularised by a superficial reading of Eastern thought. In these cases notions of "spirits" are often met with expressions of "that's just ridiculous superstition" from the former perspective and "that's merely a projection of your mind" from the latter.

I do not purport to know ultimate truths, I simply recount my observations, and these observations seem to often make a good deal of sense in the moments in which they are articulated. The 'making of sense' seems also to have a profound follow on effect in terms of change manifest in the individual, which is to say some manner of healing.

Although I seek always to extend my knowing, and indeed my ways of knowing, I need little more than that. The immediate quality of felt experience in the world is, for me, 'where it's at.

At this stage of my evolution, it feels to me that something is rather systemically and generally awry with the way we are conducting ourselves collectively on this beautiful planet. Something is fundamentally wrong with the way I am culturally conditioned to think about the world around me, and I see the evidence of of such poor conditioning in the relationships which others about me have with their worlds. Much of this, I feel, arises from a fundamental incompatibility between the materialist and reductionist mechanisms of our culture and the quality of our felt experiences. All too often the words of the mind drown out the song of the heart and, as far as I have seen, that hurts!

In my experience over the last years, I have met with progressively more and more people who are experiencing an inarticulable, yet steadily growing feeling of grief. This grief, I have noticed, often feels so overwhelming and so much bigger than an individual that individuals can make 'no sense' of it, and so set about contorting themselves into strange intellectual positions in order to allow them to continue their daily lives.

I don't feel that ignoring the grief will make it go away!

My proposition is that the nature of this grief is not simply that of the individual, and I feel that the intuiting of this is what stimulates the strong control mechanism of the culturally conditioned mind. My feeling is that this grief is collective, and that more and more people are, despite their strongly conditioned minds, opening to the feeling of this. Now the notion of a collective human consciousness of a Jungian nature is not particularly threatening to the modern cultural mind, but I am speaking of a broader collective. I am speaking of the consciousness of all the beings with which we share this Earth (and indeed this Universe), corporeal or otherwise.

I'm speaking of the consciousness of the trees, and the rocks, the oceans, the mammals, the crustaceans, the insects, the birds. I'm speaking of the Ancestor spirits, the Spirits of the Sacred Medicines, the Wind spirits, the Water spirits, the Earth Spirits and the Fire spirits and, i feel, they are speaking to you...

why do I articulate this?

read on.........

Technorati Tags: deep ecology, Earth Healing, evolution, healing, Peace, Sacred Medicine, shamanism, spirits

2006 was a long and challenging year for me and, despite a desire to share, I had little impetus to write. I hope that 2007 changes that, as any increase in transmission of constructive information, and means of self, collective and plantetary empowerment must surely be preferred to the ocean of fear, violence and banality which has become the diet of the majority of modern media consumers.

What does 2007 hold for Quantum LIfe Bodyworks as an organisation and myself as an individual? Well that remains to be told, but some things which are more manifest than others include.

Mystical Journey to Africa with Liz Watters and Simon Green. We depart Sydney on March 9, and although flights are booked I am sure we could squeeze a few more people on board! If you do have a sudden and burning desire to join us in Africa, act on it forthwith by contacting Liz or myself. For those of you who are joining us, I will say that the energy for the event is very present and building, and I will be very pleased to meet with all of you for our departure at Sydney airport on March 9.

Sacred Medicine Seminars. I had planned to make myself available for a group to journey to Venezuela immediately after the African safari for work with Sr. Valentin Hampejs and the Sacred Medicines but have decided to postpone that event until June or July. The demands of these journeys are high, and in order to provide my fullest of attention and clearest service, I need to ensure that I am not depleted either energetically, physically or financially. To those of you who had hoped to join me in Venezuela, rest assured that I intend to offer that possibility, but a new timing now needs to be negotiated. I will offer further news in that regard when I have it, but would recommend that those who have a definitive desire to share the experience let me know their intentions at their earliest convenience so that the needs of the group can be clearly gauged.

Ordinary Graces. A work in progress. Many of you have read Lakshmi's Story. Lakshmi has kindly agreed to contribute said story to a project which has been in development for the last 14 months or so. Ordinary Graces will be a collection of individuals tales of the manner in which grace has unfolded in their lives, allowing them access to realms of spiritual growth of which they had previously not conceived.

As the edifices of the major religions become increasingly irrelevant, or unable to adequately contain the spiritual experiences of many modern lives, new forms of the expression of the sacred in human lives are being born. Although I am no proponent of the "pick and choose spiritual supermarket" of the worst of "New Age" excesses, it is very clear to me that each individual must make their own point of connection with the myriad manifestations of the Divine. The work of Arjuna Ardagh amongst others, points to a feeling which pervades many of our lives. That a shift is occurring in human consciousness, and that the pace of that shift is increasing. Ardagh coined the word "translucents" to describe the nature of individuals..

"have undergone a spiritual awakening deeply enough that it has permanently transformed their relationship to themselves and to reality while allowing them to remain involved in ordinary life."

Often the stories told of these transformations are told of "remarkable people". Teachers, poets, movie stars and other public figures. As a result of the poor conditioning effected by many of our cultural mechanisms there can be a habituated response of seeing these people as somehow "special" and "different" to "me". Ordinary Graces seeks to tell the everyday transformations of individuals who go about their business outside of the realm of that which is considered culturally noteworthy. Ordinary Graces seeks to share stories of those who transform their relationship to themselves and to the world, and thus transform the world.

We welcome submissions of those who wish to share their stories, and hope to have the book in print by the close of 2007.

Telephone Consultations. As a result of an ever expanding client base, there is sometimes a considerable wait before people are able to see me personally. In instances where a physical appointment is unavailable, often a telephone consultation can be extremely useful. I have been making more and more such consultations and many are surprised by the depth of the process. If you are in need of assistance, and unable to see me personally in either Bellingen or Avalon, please consider that as an option. Appointments for telephone consultations can be made by telephone or email, and payments can be made online via Paypal or credit card.

Incorporation. Because of the nature of economies and their current models of operation, progressively more of my time is taken up by administrative processes. Those of you who have worked with me will see that my personal association with the realm of business takes a certain amount of energy which could be more healthily utilised elsewhere. As such I hope to incorporate Quantum Life Bodyworks as a separate body at some stage during 2007. I hope that this will take the form of a Non Profit Organisation, but details are yet to be confirmed. I welcome advice from anyone with expertise in these realms who feels to share it. I trust that this process will free more of my energy to best serve the process of unfolding, and allow Quantum Life Bodyworks to fulfill a broader role in education and dissemination of information. Part of that process will be the provision of workshops and seminars by myself and others, and more details will be provided throughout the year.

There will be various changes to the structure of the website throughout the year, so bookmark both this weblog and the Quantum Life Bodyworks site to be aware of further changes. At this juncture the best way to keep informed of regularly updatedinformation provided in this weblog is is to use the Feedburner subscription link at the bottom right hand side of the Home Page at Quantum Life Bodyworks.

I wish you all blessings for the coming year and pray that it presents to you the fruits of your hearts desires, the strengthening of your relationship to yourselves and the direct experience of the Love of the Divine.

With Love

Simon

Technorati Tags: Africa, Ayahuasca, Bellingen, consciousness, Credo Mutwa, Earth Healing, healing, health, Liz Watters, Sacred Medicine, safari, San Pedro, Simon Green, story, training, Valentin Hampejs, workshop

More information about the journey available here. Please use the email me link to the left to contact me should you wish to participate in this remarkable opportunity.

Technorati Tags: Africa, Credo Mutwa, healing, Liz Watters, safari, sangoma, shamanism, Simon Green