Come, gather in the tent together…

Welcome to our latest newsletter in which we focus on Soulful Healing. In addition to our regular articles from Pam, Kris and Ingeborg, we are privileged to reprint an article by William Meader on the American Solar Eclipse, soon to be changing the energies for all of us on this planet Earth. We also have an interesting piece from Jen about her recent adventures in a very hot Andalucia following in the steps of Rumi with Andrew Harvey and others.

If you have not yet booked for the retreat at Charney Manor please look on the website for all the information and get your booking form off to Jen today!

In this issue:

• Soulful Healing Pam Douglas-Smith• Soul Healing Kris Misselbrook• Soul Practice Ingeborg Borst• The American Solar Eclipse William Meader• Mystical Andalucía: Garden amidst the Flames Jen Kershaw• Whats new on the website

Soul Voyagers Network August 2017

SOULFUL HEALING PAM DOUGLAS-SMITH

We live in an amazing world full of infinite forms of potential creation. Nature itself is constantly creating and recreating itself through the seasonal changes we can observe. We see the seed planted deep within the earth that in due course emerges as a tiny green sprout, growing until it comes into full flowering and fruit bearing. There are times of cold and times of heat along with rainy nights and lengthening days. All part of the great cycle of creation.

At a more personal level, our bodies are intricately woven together from two cells into a complex and sophisticated form through which we experience this world around us. We are born and continue to grow and change throughout the duration of our lives. This earth and human body become the places the soul abides in during its sojourn through the world. Beneath all these forms in nature and humanity lies the creative, sustaining energy of the cosmos. All is Spirit enfleshed into visible being from the great matrix of life from which it emerges.

Lynne McTaggart in The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe, shares the five essential truths about healing she has discovered in her research:

1. Healing comes through intention and that is available to all beings. 2. Most healers put out an intention then surrender to greater cosmic force. 3. Any healing method can be used as long as the intention is faithfully held. 4. Intention creates healing that is available to individuals and also to the

collective. 5. The most important thing that can be offered is a conscious hope for health.

This all reminds us that healing is not a “how to” practice but rather a consciousness that involves bringing health into all the levels of our being . . . body, mind, heart and soul. It reminds us of the interconnectedness of all of life. The intention sets the energy forward, but it is truly compassion and love that empowers it at an even deeper and more effective level. The intention is the vision and the love is the power that manifests that vision. Mind and heart uniting in body with the wisdom of soul.

It’s all about energy and consciousness. Healing is instantaneous in Spirit, but progressive in consciousness.

We are each truly a mystery at our deepest core and that mystery needs to be honored. One of the greatest challenges in soulful healing comes when we are attached to exactly how that healing should look and when it should occur. When we judge the need for healing as punishment or negative, we are dishonoring the process of constantly emerging life energies. We are looking at just the outer appearances of something far deeper. We can instead remember to honor the soul secrets within ourselves and others. There is soul work to be done and grace to be experienced. Healing opportunities are actually the growth edges of our souls. They are moments in which we can consciously connect to something greater than ourselves by whatever name each may call it. Opening to healing is responding to life itself.

Dawna Markova in her classic I Will Not Die An Unlived Life shares that our wounds can be our greatest teachers. One of her favorite ways to connect more deeply with others recovering from cancer was to ask what their favorite scar was. She reflects that scars actually become the strongest tissue that comes from a healing after an injury. That place on one’s body becomes a marker not just of the wound itself but even more so of the grace of healing that comes as it emerges as a scar. A place of new strength and soul memory. She then asks an insightful question . . . “What if the moments of the greatest wounding in your life were also the places the Divine crossed your path and the unquenchable dream of your life was born?”

Remember when you were a child and skinned your knee learning to ride a bike or to roller skate? Hopefully a loved one gathered you up in arms of comfort and put on some healing cream and a colorful bandaid. Then you had your badge of courage to share with your friends the next day along with an exciting story about how brave you were when it happened. You then checked it each day, knowing that soon the bandaid could come off. There’s a lot of wisdom in children. They believe in the intention to heal, accept the love that encircles them and then go forward in their purpose to ride that bike or skate faster than ever. The famous poem around which Dawna Markova wrote her book is an inspiring one. It reminds us that life is not just about what happens to us and our bodies, hearts, minds and souls. It’s about what happens to us in communion with life in an ongoing, unending process of creation. When one seeks healing, it’s a moment to remember that the power of life is ever present at every level of being in every situation. It’s a reminder to live with awareness, passion, and hope. And best of all, we get to do it among those who share this journey of life with us. Healing and inspiration lived at depth and breadth every day.

I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear

of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days,

to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid,

more accessible; to loosen my heart

until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise.

I choose to risk my significance, to live so that which came to me as seed

goes to the next as blossom, and that which came to me as blossom,

goes on as fruit.

Soul Healing Kris Misselbrook

So often, as we learned in Past Life work, and as Ingeborg beautifully demonstrates, our souls are only partly here and now, not completely alive and awake in our bodies. Parts have been lost, left behind, bound up in past stories. And sometimes too, parts of other souls are preying on our own. These ‘lost’ parts, these ingrown dreams, have their own sphere of existence, they form a grey psychic cloud around our planet, one of many rings, and this one close to earth life - yet its inhabitants find themselves separate and alone. The discordant resonance of this level of lost souls and soul parts greatly adds to the dumbing down of our species, whether we be incarnate or not, holding us down, each in our own way with our own stories, and preying on places and perceptions. The grey cloud fades and filters the brightness that should be our realised life on earth, feeding fears and mis-perceptions. It clouds our dreams and imaginations hiding the clearer spheres above it where we can find learning, exchange and union.

Soul healing, untangling ourselves from these separating and obsessive pasts, becoming whole, is much the need of the day. “Pull yourself together” is an advice to be taken with inner meanings. Our soul is multi-layered, how much of it are we living with, how much greater understanding are we bringing into our everyday world? Ancestors and old friends appear as guides in spirit to us, but more often a ‘guardian angel’ can be simply the fuller part of our own soul. As we work on this quest of fulfilment, as we find our own healing, we become healers in our communities (both here and in the hereafter), and lead out of their closed spaces these ‘damned’ self-deluded ghost parts. Robert Munroe shares a bright vision of our planet and its joyful, playful life forms some thousands of years hence when we have learned to dissolve these lower imprisoning spheres, reuniting with our full being and creativity. This is our quest, to grow into our own whole soul, our own fullness, our higher self, so that the soul inhabits fully the body inhabiting this world, but inhabits fully also all the spirit realms up into the highest enlightenment, where we are one.

Our work of healing brings voyages in both inner and outer planes, and in both is the same intent : re-finding our soul’s harmony and wholeness, being ‘consouled’ (rather like the Cathar ‘Consolomentum’), re-united, re-connected into spirit, freeing any clinging old ghosts and notions, and so radiating joy and hope to other souls. The eternal life of the soul is realised within the incarnation when the ego dies to separate grasping and opens into the loving acceptance of its highest self and all self, allowing loving, creative energies to flow into the human sphere.

Giving, is the wellspring of soul healing; or as St Francis prayed it :

“May I not so much seek to be consoled as to console; not so much seek to be understood as to understand; less seek to be loved as to love; For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; it is in dying that we are born again to eternal life.”

Soul Practice Ingeborg Borst

The tree which represents this month, August, in the Celtic Tree Alphabet, is the Vine, (Lt. Vitis Vinifera), (Celtic Muin). In Latin it means Vitis = Power of life, Vinifera = out of the wine.

During my education as a herbalist I made a special study of the Vine and its wonderful characteristics and balancing influence upon our health, spiritually, mentally as well as physically. It gives us vitality, transformation and strengthens the blood. The Vine is one of the oldest recorded plants. Like the Olive it must have survived the Great Flood for we are told Noah planted a vineyard. Throughout the Bible the work of growing and dressing vines is used to illustrate the life circumstances of people. The Vine needs careful tending and if wrongly selected may bear bitter and unpalatable fruit. So it came to represent an allegory for the life of the soul.

Equally, as a provider of both food and drink, the Vine has had a long and unique association with mankind. In the Bach remedies the Vine qualities stand for leadership, but can be very dominant too. The Vine is a climber that is extremely strong and uses his tendrils to bind himself around the host plant pulling himself up by using others as support. When we become conscious again that we are all of divine origin and that there is divinity in all of us, the dominant become supportive, the assertive become receptive and the demanding become generous. Then we become like the Vine itself, which provides great riches for mankind in its fruit, the grape.

Soul Loss and Soul retrieval.

What is the Soul? There are many sayings about it.

“There was not a living Soul”. “Sell your Soul to the devil”. (Faust)

“He was a lost Soul.” “There was no Soul in it.”

“Poor Soul!” One thing is clear, we all know what it is and have never seen it. Science has proven that when a creature or person, dies, the body looses about 100 gr. Life or spirit has gone. The word Soul has taken on many meanings. The way I use it is simply to mean our vital essence, or as the Oxford English Dictionary says, “the principle of life, commonly regarded as an entity distinct from the body; the spiritual parts in contrast to the purely physical.” According to this authority, our language also regards the soul as the seat of the emotions, feelings and sentiments.

Keeping this image of soul in mind, we can ask what causes the loss of this vital essence. In ancient times loss of this kind was attributed to the soul being frightened away, or straying or being stolen. Today we often find soul loss is a result of such traumas as incest, abuse, loss of a loved one, surgery, accidents, illness, miscarriage, abortion, war and the stress of combat, or addiction.

The basic premise is, that whenever we experience trauma, a part of our vital essence separates from us in order to survive the experience by escaping the full impact of the pain. We dissociate. What constitutes trauma varies from one individual to another. Soul loss can be caused by whatever a person experiences as traumatic, even if another person would not experience it as such.

In modern time, psychology has provided our primary model for addressing the painful sense of incompleteness and disconnection that many of us experience. Many spend years in therapy or self-help groups trying to uncover traumas and heal the inner child to become whole again. However despite my degree as a hypno-psychotherapist and NLP trainer/coach, my experience was that therapy only works on the parts of the soul that were still there. There was always a point that I used all the techniques available and there was still something missing. It frustrated me that psychotherapy is limited too.

Then I learned that the old spiritual path of shamanism was the answer to this question. The shaman has powerful techniques for bringing back parts of the life-energy that might otherwise remain out of reach for years. Soul retrieval can bring back the lost parts of essential life-energy and heal the Soul.

Why is shamanism or Soul retrieval becoming so popular? This healing tool is as old as mankind, and yet has remained unrecognised by mainstream society in most cultures. At the moment the Earth is changing and the world is in chaos. Mother Earth is out of balance and she is now doing a great deal to shift and come back to her own centre. This includes the many earthquakes and floods, the strange shifting weather patterns, plaques and general “shake up”that will continue for at least another 20 years. Those who are in harmony with themselves have automatic protection. One does not get sick if one is in balance with ones self.

When your pieces have returned and your Soul is healed you can be in the Cosmic Flow of this Earth shift and be able to meet the forthcoming challenges with balance and harmony. Bringing back Soul pieces is a healing tool, an answer to surviving with harmony during this time of chaos in our lives.

The Soul survives all the lives we live. It remembers all the lessons we learned in the different lives. It remembers our divine origin and divinity. How it feels to be whole. It is the journey of our Soul that guides us through the life we live to reach that state of divine being and come “home” again.

Mi Takuaway OYasin (we are all related)

Wakinyan Hotun

• Source; Soul Retrieval, Sandra Ingerman (Harper San Francisco) • Healing Herbs of Edward Bach, Julian and Martine Barnard, (Bach Educational Programme)

The American Solar Eclipse

~ A Signpost of Spiritual Importance ~

As many of you know, on August 21, 2017, a solar eclipse will take place and be visible to most people living in North America. It is a rather rare event. The last time such a heavenly display occurred in the United States was in the year 1918. When looked at with historical eyes, solar eclipses have traditionally been viewed as harbingers of doom. Indeed, throughout the centuries it was believed that they portend war, famine, national decline, or the death of a king. Given what has been occurring in the United States over the last several months, it would seem that there may be merit in this ancient view.

From an esoteric perspective, both the sun and the moon are believed to be the energetic sources that animate the livingness of the soul and personality within every human being. The consciousness of the soul has sometimes been called the solarized mind, while the personality is said to be part of one’s lunar nature. With this in mind, it is important that we view this upcoming solar eclipse as an outer symbol of an inner event that has both individual and collective implications.

When the sun’s light is obscured by the moon, it symbolizes that the light of the soul is being blotted out by the lunar-self, the personality. From the standpoint of an individual person, it suggests that he or she has entered into a dark night of the soul phase of life. It is a signpost indicating that the personality has temporarily reasserted its authority over the soul and the loving wisdom it conveys. Anyone who is on the Path knows well this experience, for it is a phenomenon built into the spiritual journey itself. Viewed astrologically, the probability of this is heightened if the eclipse happens to occur at a sensitive location in one’s natal chart.

The influence of a solar eclipse pertains, not just to individuals, but also to society as a whole. Given this, it is not difficult to see that the collective consciousness of American society has entered into a dark night of the soul phase in its evolutionary journey. As this eclipse travels across the breadth of the nation, it highlights and amplifies the crisis emerging within America and, by extension, the whole of humanity.

Beyond this, it is important to mention that a solar eclipse is a symbol of redemption as well. As the moon’s shadowy influence gives way, the sun’s light is resurrected from its darkened tomb. New light begins to shines forth, and a fresh cycle of illumined living can then commence. In truth, a solar eclipse is emblematic of both death and resurrection. It represents death to previous ways of being, followed by a resurrection into a wiser more soulful way of living. Will humanity rise to the potential that this resurrected light may indicate? The answer is unknown, though the next few months should be quite telling. We shall see.

By: William Meader

https://meader.org/

!

Mystical Andalusia : Garden Amidst the Flames Ibn Arabi, Rumi and the Dance of Oneness

With Andrew Harvey, Jim Garrison and Banafsheh Sayyad

An invitation to join this study group reached me in January. I found it irresistible and immediately booked. Rarely have I made a more life-enhancing or inspirational decision.

The setting for this heart and mind opening experience of the two greatest Sufi mystics was Andalusia in Southern Spain where, from the 9th to the 12th centuries, Islam established a garden of tolerance and peace between Judaism, Christianity and Islam that enabled a flowering of civilisation in that region that inspired the world with its poetry, architecture, education, music, law, writing and inclusive spirituality, leading directly to the Renaissance. Most particularly, it provided a model of mutual respect and civility by the cultivation of ‘Adab’, an Arabic word meaning ‘Soul Courtesy’ – essential good manners at the level of Soul, incorporating a gracious capacity to listen and to be interested in learning, even in the face of difference.

The aim of the week was to understand and replicate this ‘Andalusian Moment’ with a view to inspiring the spread of Adab everywhere so that its benefits might increasingly be felt in the world of today – an aim, I would suggest, that is highly congruent with the aims of the Soul-voyagers Network!

It was a week of nourishment for mind, body and spirit, as the Wisdom Teachings of Andrew Harvey – a world authority on Rumi – were supplemented by those from several gifted teachers from the University of Fez, notably Faouzi Skali on Ibn Arabi. Paths of Gnosis and Love were inspiringly illuminated, with mind and heart both being thoroughly engaged.

As indeed was the body as all the teaching was interwoven with dance. Born in Iran, Banafsheh’s electrifying and wholly original dance style fuses together Flamenco, Tai Chi, Gurdjieff Movements and the sensuous ecstasy of Persian Dance with the austere rigour of Dervish Whirling. As Andrew has said of her – ‘As an embodied mystic of the divine feminine, her presentations are not performances but transmissions, which transform your vision of dance forever. Dancer and dance become one initiatory flame of grace’.

And the extraordinary thing was that, so loving and encouragingly gracious was she, that even those of us who had little experience of such dancing, like myself, were emboldened just to join in as we could and didn’t feel at all embarrassed at the aesthetic gulf between her achievements and our own! The experience was totally joyous. Here are some of us dancing........

And having had a little coaching in Flamenco so that we were aware of how hard it is, we could be extra-appreciative when we went to watch authentic Gypsy Flamenco, as we did in both Granada, at the Sacramonte Caves, and in Seville. A different flavour of the Sacred Feminine was on display – an impressively feisty one!

There were also ample opportunities to appreciate the fruits of so much spiritual and artistic creativity during visits to the splendid gardens and architecture of the Alhambra, the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba and the Cathedral and Alcazar in Seville. Here are a few images to give you a sense of the beauty we enjoyed there.

The weather was very hot throughout the week, and while we were in Granada, actually reached a record temperature for July of 47 degrees! So a private group visit we had to the Hammam Al Andalus – the beautiful and harmonious 13th century Arab Baths – was particularly refreshing and delightful.

Tragically, the fruitfulness and harmony of the ‘Andalusian Moment’ ended abruptly – as did the comparable Cathar flowering with which some of us have been more familiar. With the eruption of the Inquisition, Jews and Moslems were thrown out of Spain, in spite of the clear benefits the Christians had enjoyed from their mutual dealings for very many years. For a time, the ‘Andalusian Moment’ was extinguished.

In terms of historical context, and in the light of the work I have been developing in relation to Ancestral Healing, I was especially fascinated to discover remarkable parallels between Seville and Liverpool – where I took forward some of this work.

Seville, though seemingly quite far inland, is actually on Spain’s main navigable river, the Guadalquivir, and it was the main launching-off place for the New World of the Americas. Indeed, it had a monopoly on all such traffic for many years, and became very rich in the process.

1492 was not only the dread year when Jews and Moslems were definitively excluded by the Inquisition from living in ‘Christian’ Spain (inverted commas

because Christ would have been considerably exercised to recognise any of his teaching I feel!), but also it was from where Christopher Columbus set off Eastwards in an attempt to reach India.

But does he now represent hero or villain? – or both? I think it would depend on who you ask – right-wing Republican American or indigenous tribes-person……. I think the jury is still out – and the world is still struggling with the consequences.

I have said nothing so far about the wonderful group of people brought together on this pilgrimage – a very sensitive and aware group that it was a huge pleasure to be with and to get to know. There were about 35 of us in all, about half from different parts of North America and the rest from many different places in Europe or the Middle East. Very different ancestral histories were represented and they were very receptive to subtle energies – so it was especially interesting to me to observe and hear about the wide range of reactions generated, indeed sometimes powerfully triggered, by the huge militaristic monument to Christopher Columbus dominant in the Cathedral in Seville.............

I’m hoping that the Ancestral Healing website, on which I have been working in recent months, and which I hope to launch on time for our retreat this October, will provide some constructive ways in which, if we wish, we can all

respond to any such triggering – and possibly even contribute, ultimately, to replicating another ‘Andalusian Moment’ in the contemporary world..........

But I’ll say more about that in next month’s Newsletter.........

To conclude – the phrase ‘Garden Amidst the Flames’ comes from a short poem by Ibn Arabi. Here it is:-

O Marvel! A garden amidst the flames.My heart has become capable of every form:

it is a pasture for gazelles and a convent for Christian monks,a temple for idols and the pilgrim’s Kaa’ba,

the tables of the Torah and the book of the Quran. I follow the religion of Love: whatever way Love’s camels take me,

that is my religion and my faith.

Jen Kershaw

New on the Website

• Nick Nicholls has completed his trilogy of personal revelations with “Reflections on Truth”. He has kindly allowed us to put the whole book up on the website for people to read. Please follow the link under Books

• Bryan Stevenson: “We need to talk about an injustice.” Inspiring TED talk about standing up for your ideals and practising your humanity. Follow the link under Videos.

• This Life, Next Life. A 54 minute documentary by Keith Parsons in which he presents reputable scientific evidence giving clues to a reality beyond this physical expression.