The Raven Family Sweat Lodge

Caw-Cawesome!!!

Last month, we put up a sweat lodge.  During another blog, I will explain what they're about.  I encourage you to do a little research, and experience one for yourself!  For now, check out our "spirit sauna".

The frame of bent cane.  The pit in the middle is where the lava rocks go, after they've been heated all day in the firepit, outside the sweat lodge.  Water is poured on the rocks, and the steam fills the lodge!

I make it a point to look insane in most of my photographs, for the benefit of my bewildered descendants.  If you're going to be anything.....make it interesting!!!

 

Cover frame with blankets, and add one beauteous creature.

Since this photo, I've made the firepit much larger and added a tarp to the sweat lodge.  Notice the solar shower in the background.

On the night Tonyana and I christened this sweat lodge, it hadn't rained in weeks and weeks.  It rained the very next day (which was about a month ago) and has rained so much, the ground hasn't been dry enough to do another one, since.  Huh.....magic!

If you have any opinions on the subject,

feel free to leave a comment below!

Stay loose, and check out my humor blog
11 Days in a Dumpster!

Karma.......One of the easiest ways to get something is to give it to another.  Well, if you'd like to make money doing what you love, then here's your chance to help another (me).

If you benefit from Vibration Creation,

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Osho: Dynamic Meditation, Tarot and Freedom

Oh, sho me!

 The first time I heard of him was in 1996, while I was living in a community house in Venice Beach, California.  It was called "The YESSS Center".  This multi-cultured, symphony of chaos was orchestrated by a six-foot something, wild-haired, Osho prodigy named "Arhata".  Forty to sixty of us, from all walks of life, were nestled into two skinny houses, a couple doors down from Dennis Hopper. 

Every Thursday, we had what was referred to as a "Let Go!"  What I recall best about those sessions, besides the exotic fruit platters or guacamole dips afterward, were the dynamic meditations.  Arhata was a big fan of Osho.  Osho had taught that the most effective way he had found to enter deep meditation was to push physical activity to the limit.  Therefore, at each of these sessions we would jump, dance and convulse with complete abandonment and freedom.  This became a sacred, open space, where any pent up energies and psychological residue gathered throughout the week could be released.  Finally, when you found yourself at the brink of ecstatic exhaustion, you would make your way to the floor and relax totally, as if in a very conscious, deep sleep.  It is likened to relieving oneself after holding it in for quite a long time.

My next encounter with Osho was a few years later.  In 1999, I was attending quite a few Rainbow Gatherings.  These are hippie happenings in the forest.  For weeks on end, mini-communities are set up with sterile kitchens, a daycare, trading circles, entertainment  and  much more.  Everyone eats together, as family, when sunset arrives.  All natural, of course.  I had been into the tarot for a few years, and had made a new friend, Adrienne, at one of these gatherings.  She was a thin, black woman in her late-thirties with an open mind.  When I first took a look at her Osho deck of cards, I fell in love with them, immediately!  Each card cut to the very center of whatever archetype it represents.  I highly suggest these cards to anyone, from beginner to expert.  Those, and the Universal-Waite deck, are my favorites.

After discovering these cards, I began to read Osho with a passion.  His writings contained a penetrating wisdom that left me swimming in epiphanies, time after time.  Osho refused to mince words.  He casually laughed in the face of all forms of structure applied toward the art of awakening to the fact that one is already awakened.  He touched many hot buttons.  Sex is holy, and meant to be enjoyed to its fullest height of pleasure and bliss.  Abundance is your birthright!  These two truths became his downfall.

During his last years, he became known for his extravagant indulgence and rumors of exploitation.  Many people, mostly the Christian right, joined in efforts to discredit him.  He was gaining in popularity, and they were afraid he would infiltrate Western culture with his message of freedom.

I cannot attest to whether Osho was living an extremely lavish lifestyle as a way to teach that it’s okay to enjoy the abundance life has to offer, or if he had become another pious victim of the self-destructive, “spiritual ego syndrome”.  Maybe, both.  What I do know, is that his meditative practices, the tarot deck based upon his teachings, and his teachings themselves, are without a doubt, some of the greatest works on freedom I have ever read.

 If you have any opinions on the subject,

feel free to leave a comment below!

Stay loose, and check out my humor blog
11 Days in a Dumpster!

Karma.......One of the easiest ways to get something is to give it to another.  Well, if you'd like to make money doing what you love, then here's your chance to help another (me).

If you benefit from Vibration Creation,

you can do three things:

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Bob Proctor (From "The Secret") Reveals "The 11 Forgotten Laws" That Make The Law of Attraction An Unbreakable Force 

CLICK HERE!

Meditation: "The Art of Allowing" for Beginners

  

Do you mind?

Throughout the ages, the mind has been compared to a knife.  The mind has two parts - conscious and subconscious.  These are like the two sides of a blade.  A knife penetrates.  It even cuts through the air, as do brainwaves.  If it is wielded carelessly, used constantly and never sharpened, it will become dull (Alzheimers).

Meditation is the perfect exercise for strengthening the mind and gaining a connection to the Creative Source.

Where to begin?

Beginning meditators often find it very powerful to simply place the attention on one's breath.  Follow it, as it flows effortlessly, in and out of your being.  This exercise calls forth images of ocean waves beckoning us with the soothing ebb and flow of Life.

Be the witness.

Whatever dreams may come through the depths of silence - BE THE WITNESS!  An incredibly effective way to let go of thought, is to step outside of it.  Here is where beginning meditators tend to get stuck and give up.  They feel it is too difficult to stop the mind.  Fortunately, once you gain a few deeply effective meditation experiences, you may feel it is too difficult to live with a mind that WON'T stop!  The solution to overcoming this illusionary hurdle?

Let go of the struggle!

Allow everything!  If your mind insists on going over a list of the bills you owe, just allow it.  The trick is to identify these self-defeating thoughts and to "tag" them as quickly as possible.  Then, as the Beatles would say, "Let it be."

Rooty McCall

Two methods:

1. Some people find it helpful to have a "trigger" word.  The moment you identify an unwanted thought, you can replace that thought with the word "peace" or any trigger word that makes you feel centered. With practice, you will be able to instantly dissolve the unwanted thought and return to the silence.  Another thought enters? "Peace" and return. Eventually, the space between thoughts will widen.  You will go deeper and deeper into the silence, the field of pure potentiality, where all creation takes place.

2. Place any thoughts that enter your head into an imaginary bubble and send them on their way.

No rules.......

Most of us have heard at least a few of the "rules" for meditating: Assume a triangular Tantric pose in a magnetically-energized, crystal pyramid facing Northeast, palms upward in a traditional mudra position, breathing circular breaths through your left nostril for three and a half hours, while envisioning a sparkling indigo unicorn on Uranus. Oops! Forgot the nag champa incense? Now, you'll never be at peace with the Universe!

The Truth I've come to know, is that we are each at one with the Creative Source.  Therefore, we ARE the Creative Source.  Meditation cleanses our consciousness, so that we may come to know our personal Truth.  From this perspective, it appears quite pretentious to teach that the only way to attain the wisdom of our limitless creative potential is by following a strict set of rules.

My point - there are no rules!  Do it at the laundromat, on a bus, at the edge of a stream. Do it at a funeral, on the roof, in the middle of a dream.  Do it in a box, with a fox.  Even if you don't do it at all, that's fine, because.......

All is perfect!

It is my deepest understanding that ALL IS PERFECT.  So, your meditation can be ANYTHING you want.  I have only given suggestions.  It's okay if your meditation "practice" is serious and ritualistic, light and playful, or anything in-between.  For me, it is a fun part of the game we have come to enjoy!

One temporarily final note - Do this long enough and you will react to life as a living, breathing, waking meditation.

Let it be!

Stay loose, and check out my humor blog
11 Days in a Dumpster!

Karma.......One of the easiest ways to get something is to give it to another.  Well, if you'd like to make money doing what you love, then here's your chance to help another (me).

If you benefit from Vibration Creation,

you can do three things:

1. Spread the word!
2. Click the ads!
3. Subscribe!

Bob Proctor (From "The Secret") Reveals "The 11 Forgotten Laws" That Make The Law of Attraction An Unbreakable Force 

CLICK HERE!

Trees are Enlightened

.....and that's heavy, man!

It's Fall again, yet with an Autumny aftertaste.

Is there any other season that goes by two names?

Rooty and Me

Two years ago, as the leaves were falling, here in southern Ohio, my family and I found ourselves at the spring ("spring water" that is.....clear gold.....Ohio tea!).  A rather majestic elm tree was shedding its Summer foliage of yellow into our waiting hands.  As humans do, we made a contest of it.  All we can remember, now, is that Tonyana beat me and Rooty by catching 75 leaves.  Seems like a surprisingly round number to me!  In retrospect, that was a very picturesque, zen, snapshot of a moment.  One of those moments of which you hope your life has many.

From one of our trips to Red River Gorge, Kentucky

Yesterday, we were at the spring, again.  With the "glug-glug" of a filling jug in the cool air, my mind lazily wafted among the beech and elm branches above us.  I returned to a thought that has nested in my brain since childhood - TREES ARE ENLIGHTENED!  I grabbed my notebook from the car and jotted down:

10 Reasons Why Trees are Enlightened

1. They are in a constant state of meditation.
2. Each branch stretches out and divides into two, according to the needs of the tree to strike balance.
3. The blood in their "veins" is sweeter than honey.
4. In forests, they strive for sunlight, but do not fight for it.
5. A tree's root system is the same size as its network of branches.  (As above, so below.)
6. A tree lives, dies and is buried at its place of birth.
7. Trees give and receive, freely.  Much more could be stated about this fact!
8. A branch hundreds of feet in the air can drop a seed, smaller than a dime, containing enough life force to produce branches reaching hundreds of feet in the air.
9. They have no sense of time, yet allow the rhythms of each season.
10. On occasion, the way a certain tree clots with sap and forms a knot makes it look like it has a butthole.

 This was directly in the path!

Red River Gorge, Kentucky

Stay loose, and check out my new humor blog
11 Days in a Dumpster!

Karma.......One of the easiest ways to get something is to give it to another.  Well, if you'd like to make money doing what you love, then here's your chance to help another (me).

If you benefit from Vibration Creation,
you can do three things:

1. Spread the word!
2. Click the ads!
3. Subscribe!

Bob Proctor (From "The Secret") Reveals "The 11 Forgotten Laws" That Make The Law of Attraction An Unbreakable Force

CLICK HERE!