Moving Beyond Mind

Reminder from Mano: When you drink a glass of water, say thank you to the water elemental.

Each January Nevada City/Grass Valley hosts the Wild & Scenic Film Festival, with a rich offering of movies about the natural world, about people engaging in environmental and cultural innovation and preservation, about finding honorable ways of existing in this most interesting time. I have launched my own search, in these days, for people whose authenticity makes me feel alive and awake, who are unapologetic about their spiritual explorations, who can see and work and research different viewpoints and look for the underlying connections, who can say no without scorning and vilifying.

The prizewinner for me at this year’s festival was not a movie—though I saw plenty of inspiring ones—but a free event at a coffee house early one morning. A couple, Mark and Clare Dubois, led a session called “Moving Beyond Mind”, in which, separately and together, and with us attendees, they called into being a flow state of energy that was palpable and elevating and lasted for a long time. It was an exciting experiment.

Mark, a long-time river activist, set the tone of “learning through experimenting” with stories of his early days of river running and how he learned not to break paddles by resisting with strength and force but rather came to dance with the currents, to breathe with the river, to find the “through line” when faced with rapids and walls of water. “This is an incredibly sacred time we’re in,” he said; our collective wisdom is needed, and we’re all in the same boat.

Clare, who created treesisters.org, stated the challenge: “We’re in a colossal inherited momentum and need to understand how we got here on an energetic level. It involves shaming of the feminine, having intuition hammered out of our wild natures, being taught not to honor the sacred but to be consumers, and not learning to deal with pain. Trying to become sane can feel insane.” She also emphasized, however, that “the feminine side is not just woman; it’s the receptive side, attuned to listening, sitting in humility and receiving. This side is starting to receive a different intelligence. The doing side can then help figure out the solutions.”

The Dubois’ morning experiment involved contemplating with a partner the question “How can I find the through line?”—first from a purely intellectual mind space, and then from the heart. The meditation that followed focused on the heart space, and just as I began feeling a great tingling on my skin, and then an expansion first of my head and then the rest of my body, Clare verified the energy shift and then tracked it for the remainder of the gathering. I was gratified to feel myself as a data point in this exploration of awakening consciousness.

“We can create a much greater continuum,” Clare encouraged. “Our souls can be woven into a greater intelligence, to which we have access. We have no idea what we’re capable of.” In the face of fear, the safest response is to become “logged into infinite power” and to begin learning how to stay connected. “Fear, scarcity, and separation are the old; love and connection are the new.”

We must have both our masculine and feminine sides actively engaged, it’s clear to me, even if our personalities and our innate inclinations lean more to one side than the other. That balance is the experiment, the work. Barbara’s “Healing Burned Woman” story, dvd, and workshops all aim toward this, and she has been receiving and presenting it for many years. Now, with the great stirring from lethargy this presidential election has stimulated, with women (and many sympathetic, attuned men) meeting and marching en masse all over the world, perhaps the realization of balanced matriarchy and patriarchy is closer at hand, or at least ready for a renaissance. This awakening, this moving beyond mind, must be embued with Spirit if it is to stay true and avoid being entrapped by ego, by mere power. We know so well that revolutions are always tempted to become that which they’re striving to replace. To this end of maintaining balance and staying attuned to Spirit guidance, I would like, now, to turn to some of the practices and practical advice the nature spirits have given Barbara.

In the Council of Gnomes Barbara hears:
“We are here to ever remind you, as we promised we would—to assist in your waking up. We remain faithful to our commitment; you are now awake. The next step is for you to ‘get out of bed’ and move into life, the great work. Everything is in place. We would like you to be diligent about your agreements with your body elemental regarding keeping your body, mind, and spirit in alignment. Your ego is infiltrating. You can feel it by your thoughts of concern for your family. Be true to your own self and those you love will have the energy to be true to themselves and to ask for what they want.”

“Keeping each day clear and complete in itself, so you don’t have clean-up from yesterday waiting to be done today, will be of enormous help. We have given you companions to assist you in all you have to do. If your house is in order, there will be little to distract you. Putting things back where they belong, even if you are going to use them again soon, is the best plan.”

 “We have always appreciated working with you from the standpoint of your wanting to be healthy, and yet we realize how much time you have spent in the past protecting your body from fatigue, or fear of fatigue. This is no longer the way for you to work. ‘Ask and you shall receive.’ Ask when you go to bed at night for your body to wake invigorated and strong. Ask to be alert, alive, and radiant with life force. It is all a matter of Spirit, of how much Spirit is available and being fed to the body cells, to the elementals in the body, to the light sparks within the light body.”

 “When humans stopped taking responsibility for their life force functioning at 100%, the elementals of the earth had to give their life force to keep humans alive. This is no longer necessary as you move into increased consciousness. Start thinking in terms of the life force that comes through your body in movement. Your lungs breathe air, you drink water, you think. Each body, each element, has its ‘right of exchange’. As you breathe in the life force, you breathe out blessings of a human to nature. You give love and appreciation. This reciprocity enriches the elementals and you as well. It increases your life force and it expands their consciousness, because they now have received a conscious element from a human being. As a human, you are very important to the elementals.”

 “The key is always for you to be open and willing and to take the unfolding process one step at a time. There is a deeper unfolding beginning to occur now; we can only tell you that it has to do with the learning you are doing in the various mystery schools. We have brought you more than one path, more than one way to learn, so that you would not get stuck in one method but be open to the flow of ideas that come from without and from within. We bring you many facets to feed your many-faceted mind. The goal is to integrate and unite the different facets into a whole.”