Dear friends and family,
I want that to include the whole world, all of humanity—a world where there is nothing but friends and family. I want that from the bottom of my heart, and that is a very big heart at this point, with lots of room.
I want that even though it’s not happening right now, and I believe that it is possible someday.
It is joy and laughter, pain and suffering, and every possible feeling in between that has allowed my heart to grow. At this time in this letter, I want to share some ways of seeing that have helped my heart remain open even as outer circumstances have not yet aligned to love.
From ritual to ceremony
Writing a letter every Holiday season has shifted from being a ritual, to being a ceremony, because I am aware of the presence of the holy as I write. I often have to wait, slow my pace down enough to feel the Mystery, that aspect of life that reveals God’s masterwork in the most unexpected and utterly sacred ways.
The difference between a ritual and a ceremony is that a ceremony is a special kind of ritual done while having a felt experience of the sacred—as if holy beings, or God and Goddess themselves are bearing witness.
We engage in rituals all the time, from brushing our teeth to rushing around and getting caught in the stress, scatter, and excessive spending of the holidays. Drinking spiked eggnog with friends may be a ritual, and collective rituals become traditions—things done over and over again, often with little awareness.
Ceremony, on the other hand, though deliberate, is not rigid, and pays attention to the necessity of the time and place, attending fully to what is being asked. There is intention involved, which aligns more and more of life into its field.
Intention aligns life into its field
To write the holiday letter, my intention was to share one thing that has made a really big difference in my life during this past year in a way that serves others. Years ago, I wrote about my children, adventures I had been on, and other such stuff of life which is so awesome to share.
I confused a friend once by getting too philosophical, and some years I wrote the letter through tears.
As I have aged I have changed, and the purpose of the letter has as well. There is less self to consider, and more of the world that matters to me, from my grandson to the great moral and spiritual divide I find the country experiencing. My place in all of it is less central, and yet essential in some way, which is again, part of the Mystery.
This year I waited until 2 days before Christmas to write, as I could not focus while my wise and wonderful 89-year-old mother has been in the hospital, and I felt a great weight on my heart, not knowing if I needed to fly back east. She has turned the corner, and I feel unburdened again, more able to be fully present here in Portland, Oregon, with my daughter Antje, and grandson Jack, who is nearly 4 and over the top excited about the magic of Christmas.
I woke up early to write, not knowing what I wanted to say, and set my intention. I asked to be inspired, by simply looking at my life, free from judgment, and waited. I wanted to be able to sift through a year of living and distill the elixir that seems to have made a difference.
There is often waiting as the Mystery unfolds organically. In the past few days, I remembered another time when I waited with a heavy heart, not knowing what to do. It was in 2005, when I lived in the Andes, and I learned so much about intention and ceremony from my friend Nazario, a Quechua pacu (shaman priest), who performed ancient ceremonies called despachos.
During a despacho ceremony, participants momentarily return to the essential unity with the living energy (Kawsay Pacha) of the Universe. The power behind despachos and the most important ingredient is intent. It may be to express gratitude, to help someone heal, to receive more money, to build a house or to have a child. The intentions are infinite and unique to the person making the offering.
Intending to share, I have been transported to that time when I had sold my house and closed my practice to live high in the Andes, longing for a new perspective. I had been living in an apartment very high up over the town of Cusco for 3 months when my father suddenly underwent heart surgery in Massachusetts, and had slipped into a coma for days. It felt as if an elephant was sitting on my heart, and I simply didn't know what to do. I was bereft not being in Massachusetts with my family, not knowing if I should return to the States, or really what to pray for.
I walked the nearly vertical staircase up to the ruins over Cusco where the statue of Christ called Cristo Blanco stands, and screamed out to my dad in a big prayer to connect to his spirit. I asked him what he wanted, and I heard a raspy voice say “I still have so much to live for. Get me out of here.” That is something my dad would say, for sure. Did I actually hear that, or was that my wish? It is all part of the Mystery for me.
While waiting, I knew I needed to connect to the Mystery, rather than the suffering of my fearful ego attempting to manage emotions that were beyond my control. By that time, I had experienced enough despachos to know that the items in a despacho offering are relevant in a symbolic way based on the intention of the person offering this concrete prayer. I could be my own shaman.
I rushed down to the huge San Pedro market where I knew the shamans bought their ceremonial objects. My intention began to form more clearly as I selected deliberately from the abundance of symbolic items including llama fat and candies, flowers, candy sprinkles, and little replicas of people representing my family, a miniature house representing my parents’ home, candy hearts, and shells representing the ocean where my parents lived.
Though the contents may vary in their symbolic significance, when you perform a despacho ceremony with the correct intent, you enter a space that transcends literal and symbolic domains and directly connects with the energetic realms, always available to us.
With my sack of tiny packages and wrapping paper and ribbon, I climbed back up to the ruins over Cusco, called Saqsaywaman where I entered one of the caves. The elephant on my chest now felt more like a boulder, as I prepared an altar to create a despacho offering for my father's well being. I could feel my love for him as I did this, sending it across the continents to his heart. The boulder was lifting.
The llama fat was to make sure the items burned, so that the smoke would carry my prayers and intentions to Spirit. As I immersed myself more fully in the ceremony, surrendering all else to the intention of the moment, the weight was lifted off my heart and all I could feel was love. I created a beautiful sacred mandala, praying as I placed each item with focus, then wrapped my bundle and lit it on fire.
Simultaneously I was aware that I was in a public place, and I hoped that no one would notice the smoke billowing out from the ruins, but I frankly didn’t care. I just knew I needed to perform this ceremony, like a blind priestess with a broken heart, and I did.
And no one bothered me, and the bundle burned, and I connected to my family in the love we shared for my feisty father, and he came out of the coma and lived in Nahant for many more years, across from the ocean he loved. This is again, all part of the Mystery.
It would be 3 more years before I would be ordained a shamanic priestess, but the intention to perform ceremony had already begun to align my life into its powerful and beautiful field.
The one thing that has made a really big difference
Fast forward to now, the holidays of 2019, and I am here to share with you the one thing that has made a really big difference in this past tumultuous year. Here is what comes to mind:
The human mind is not a camera, but a projector, that creates its own reality all the time. We are constantly seeing either through the filter of the mind, or with the eyes of the heart, which is the difference between making judgments and perceiving the sacred in all things.
When I live more and more often aware of the infinite seed of love within my being—my loveseed—-I have enough space inside to receive life rather than project onto it.
I am able to step back and see the handiwork of the divine in even the most challenging of times, and in the most annoying of people. This allows me to stop judging my experience, however difficult that may appear to the mind.
As I receive life, I become pregnant with what is actually happening, rather than caught up in my mind and projecting fears and judgments.
The one thing that has made a really big difference has been to keep remembering that I AM part of a much bigger Mystery than I will ever fully know, and that as I keep surrendering to it, I become the Mystery.
I have known this for very many years, but the mind seems to cling to knowledge at the expense of direct experience until we are given some big opportunities to surrender. Then we feel the shift and the softening as our ego relaxes and we remember that we are not separate from anything.
This holiday season
I was given a big opportunity to surrender this year, and, quite frankly, it has not been easy. A very important friendship was lost, and a deep sense of darkness came over me for many months, as an old dream unraveled.
Now, on the other side of the unraveling, I feel so very grateful to be tangled in such Mystery.
To celebrate the Mystery allows the holidays to become the holy days, giving gifts an act of deep appreciation, and eating a meal the celebration of a true feast.
May this holiday season be ripe with moments of presence where you receive life fully. May you celebrate with ceremony and a deep awareness of the sacred in all things.
I leave you all with this gift of poem that dropped in on Thanksgiving day.
Tangled In The Mystery
By Kathleen Hanagan
Pray to wake up
all tangled in the Mystery.
It will clear out the cobwebs
of broken dreams
and show you a new way
you have never seen before.
The Mystery is like that.
It is old and new at the same time.
You never know it with your mind
but rather
you remember it with your heart.
To wake up all tangled in the Mystery
is a gift
if you let it be.
Pray to wake up there
in the seed of love.
November 28, 2019
With deep love and gratitude,
