How we can Listen to the Earth

Listening to the Earth is not something most people think of doing. However there are many people around the world who do. Who are these people? They are those who have not lost their Earth-based ways, such as Indigeonous people, and those who are seeking a revived spirit of connection with her. They walk out in the morning sun, wach it come up, pray to the life force that lives all things, they offer their love, a song, a small offering such as a flower, corn, rice or tobacco.

How did we get so far from this simple practice? We have to look at Western History and how there has been a co-opting of Earth-based, and love-based ceremonies by various power-based relgious organizations. These religions were mostly interested in power over the masses. There has been a lot written about this by various authors such as Maria Gambutis, Matt Fox, Joseph Campbell, Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy (Jesus and the lost Goddess) Hyman Maccoby, and many others. What they show is that a gentler, more loving and grateful relationship with the Earth and all her mysteries once existed. That fear was installed (800 years of persecution of Women in power such as the witch burnings documented by the Vatican) and that the love of the Earth was replaced by fear, terror and power-over.
Power-with, and love based is where we are going. If fact recently on 11/11 there will be a group of women meeting in Peru to re-establish love as the primary focus of our Earth. We can all join in and shift our attention to love as a key to unlocking our long ignored relationship to her.
It is that simple. It is that important, as we can enjoy a new birth if we do.

Walking For the Earth

Last weekend 10 souls walked around Mt. Diablo in Northern California over 5 days. Walkers carried prayer bundles they had made for the world, the earth, families and ancestors, and for ourselves up the mountain. The walk was created and initiated by Daniel Foor (www.AncestralMedicine.org). Ginny Anderson was co-leader, and I had the privledge of pouring lodges front and back of the event, and cooking!
It was so fun to be a part of it. The first day, after a lodge at the base of the Mountain, the hikers were dropped off at the foot of the Mountain and hiked 5 miles up to Juniper Camp the first day. The second day, began a series of 7 mile loops each day for 3 days. The last day 3 loops were done closer to the top as well as a hike up from Juniper Camp to the summit before dawn in 30 degree tempuratures as well as high winds. In the last hours of the retreat, there were three small loops at the very top in the observatory. This culminated nine loops around the mountain. The days on the mountain also included 5 days of ceremonies offered for healing our relationship to the Mother Earth and our relationship of humans to humans. One prayer bundle was to honor those who lost their lives on the mountain, including the Native people who lived there before the rest of us, and for those who had died by their own hand or at the hand of others. We also prayed for the teens who are hurting and killing themselves. This was especially important due to the fact of the recent gang rape of the young girl in Richmond the same weekend.
This is only the beginning of what is necessary for the next few years to help us into 2012 and beyond. It is the way we need to be relating to the spirits of the Earth for the good of all.
I keep thinking of how we can make more of a difference on this planet. One way is to pray, another is to do walks such as these, as well as ceremony for the Earth and LISTEN to what she is saying to us through journeys and intentional work such as this prayer walk.
We need to create new ceremonies, and use the old ones to help us strengthen our relationships with all relatives, including with the plants and the animals on this planet.
This ceremony was a completion of a dream I have had for over 20 years. The question I have been living is: How do we create ceremonies so we a) intiate our youth, b) support the Earth relatives with new communion c) help the Earth through her transition in the next several years.
I have gotten the answer through a workshop I was given by my spiritual guides called Opening the Stargate, (see my website: http://www.thecenterforthesoul.com/). The answer has also come through my work and collaboration with Daniel Foor and his Earth Medicine Workshops and groups.
It has been a dream, not to do this alone, as for years I have written books, and made my way with what I could do in Native American Ceremonies. Now with the groups Daniel is running. I am excited to be creating Earthbased Rituals with other shaman's who know how, and also who have the intention of loving this Earth, even when the culture at large is not yet tuned into the Earth as mother, as sacred, as our heart, as our own selves.
It is time we begin to wake up and pay attention. Would you like to join us? I hope so, it will help us all.

Balance with the Earth

When you think of health, think of balance. Balancing our health means reducing stress, eating right, being active enough to stay in shape, and enjoying our lives while we live them, taking time to be with family and friends.
In the same way we need to balance our relationship with the Earth. How do we do this? We pay attention to that relationship. We stay in contact with the Earth and listen to what is needed. Our bodies are the Earth, so if we are putting junk into our bodies we get unhealthy from it. If we are putting trash on the Earth, dumping toxic waste, then we are polluting the Earth. What goes in to ourselves and on to the Earth are the same body. It is the same Earthbody.
Excuse me if I sound elementary, but so many people have not made this connection. That the Earth and our bodies are one body. On a spiritual level, we are connected with the Earth as well as the Sky. Spirit lives everything not just what is above us. When we connect with the Earth we connect more deeply with ourselves.
Often I think about the plastic waste island circling out in the Pacific Ocean. How that island is clogging up our ocean. If we think of the elements, earth, air, fire and water as aspects of our own being, literal parts of our body and essential to the functioning of our selves, then the waters of the Earth are our own waters. Emotions in dreams and in psychology represent emotions. So what does it mean to have this plastic island out there?
For me this island of plastic represents our inauthentic emotional response to the Earth. We are not really feeling what is going on. There is some sort of plastic, canned response system that is not working here in response to our Mother Ocean, to our grief. In african spiritual traditions, the oceans are the mother ocean, mammy water, Yemanja. She takes our grief and takes the dead and does not return them. So if floating out there in the middle is a big island of plastic, just think of this for a moment. What part of ourselves is frozen, plastic in our response to the decimation of the Oceans, of the Earth and the world? It is just a thought.

The Earth is Calling

It seems that the Earth is calling on those of us that have been in Earth-based traditions
to rise up, give the people images of Earth-based realities. I am here to do images of spirit Guides and those of the spirits of the Earth. My friend Jeanie was Sundancing and got images from the grandmothers. She stayed out all night and danced and prayed for the people during the time that she danced for four days with no food and no water.
The grandmothers hold the power and the medicine for the people. They are the keepers of basket and staff with mirror, wing and jug, rattle, medicine bag, prayer ties, hoop with web. Each of these are brought by a different grandmother. Each has a healing property for the people. Each gives and instruction with the object; Snake brings medicine bag, grandmother cayote brings the staff with a mirror, grandmother rabbit brings blanket, grandmother turtle brings a rattle, grandmother spider brings a hoop with a web, the owl grandmother brings a wing, and grandmother fish brings a jug.
Why is this significant?
Pray, carry, take hold of your power, bring staff and listen to the Earth, bring blanket and keep warm, bring rattle sing, bring hoop and dream, being wing and clear energy complete things, and jug to hold feelings, drink water and pour them out, release them.

These are the tools of the medicine they brought to us. So the medicine is being given, and these tools of Shamanism are given to gather them, to use them to call on them, to hold them. These grandmothers bring these gifts, and we can carry these gifts to the people.
Spider Grandmother is the most resourceful and the oldest. She comes to be with recreating the new world. These gifts they bring help us to live.
Perhaps we will wash away our old lives and all we will have we will carry, the blanket, the staff, the wing, the jug, the mended hoop for dreaming and catching the images we need.
Grandmother is waiting, and she is watching, and she is with us.
I am grateful for these images. It affirms what I know. We need to lighten up, release the things that are no longer useful. Take charge of the new ways of holding these objects so that we are being granted the dreams visions and knowing of moving towards our new lives.
I am so grateful for the shifting. Grateful for the new ways. It seems we are entering the new era. Let the Grandmothers teach us, they will hold of us what we cannot yet carry, and when we carry them as part of our power, we become stronger, and stand as divine.
IT is time to claim our power, our spiritual power, so that we can make new the life we are here to live.

Returning to Ceremony

This last week I was once again at Sundance. This is a ceremony to honor men's rites of passage, however at the one I attend, there is an exquisit balance of masculine and feminine energies. While it is not my intention to share the ceremony with you, as that would violate an agreement I have with all Native American Ceremonies that I and any one might attend.
What I want to do today is to describe what the ceremony does for the people that attend.
Imagine for a moment a place where you go once a year, to touch into the way it could be on Mother Earth. Where all people help eachother, there are three pairs of hands for every task, where everyone, even the young 8-10 year old boys have something they can contribute for the good of the people. Imagine all colors, all races coming together to dance in peace. Where everyone is acknowledged and gratitude is heaped on people for the tasks they offer the community. Most people do not what the praise, they just are glad to help.
One such of the tasks that was needed were runners for the communication between camps, since some of us were camped up to two weeks like this for young boys is as a runner. Since we did not have use of cell phones, computers or other electronic divises, and were asked to unhook, and not use them during the dance, we needed young boys to run around and deliver messages. These boys were wonderful, responsible kids, who brought us what we needed to be communicated. It gave them a sense of purpose, and gave them something to do besides. They carried a painted stick, that told everyone they were the official runner, and so we all paid them a great deal of attention when they came to our camps, offering them water, or food, or something else to drink.
We also had free medical help, several of us volunteered for the work to keep people up right, dancing and praying for the dancers who were out there for 4 days with no food or water, voluntarily dancing and praying for the people. They were not just praying for this set of people (400-500 strong) that attended the dance. They prayed for all the people, all over the world, in addition, they prayed for the animals and plants and for Mother Gaia. They prayed for their children, and what a wonderful thing to see, people, 500 strong, who were in prayer for the Mother Earth and her children for 4 days.
When that many get together with the intention to ease the pain of life through prayer, you can feel the prayer, it is palapable, and it works to heal, and maintain life for the good of all.
In addition, each service provided (garbage pickup, or water deivery where each camp had a barrel of water they could use - yes this is a highly organized dance) the money we paid for these
services, went to the collective good of the people. Over the years, a non-profit had been set up to spread the word of how we can live together on Mother Earth.
Now bringing what I learned over the years at Sundance back to the people at large, it is a different world than the one we live in, or is it? When we celebrate life with regards to the Earth, including her and the whole cosmos into the equation of our lives, we find a paradise that is possible to achieve. It is a good way to live, and whether people are black, white, red or yellow, we can achieve this, as every year thousands of people all over the world dance in this way for the good of the Earth.
It makes all of our lives better, greeting the Sun every dawn, seeing the stars flooding the night sky, feeling the integrity and love of the Earth. This is the best thing we can do, the best way to live. It just takes a change of heart. It takes an awareness that the Earth is alive and willing to relate to us as a loving mother that she is. The spirits of our grandmothers and grandfathers are with us to help, love and be with us. To guide us.
This is the grace that prayer brings. With All My Relations, Robin White Turtle.

Did you know the Universe Loves us?

If you are a skeptic this may seem to be an obserd statement. But in truth, it is a real one.
How do I know? I feel it. Once when I was dancing in a Native American spiritual dance which honored the Spirits of the Earth, I was surprised by a spirit named StarWoman. She is known by the native people as the Great Mother, the darkness behind the stars. The Substance of the Universe.
She is the great void that scientists are discovering is not empty at all. This void is full of life and activity. When I met her, she appeared very large, taller than the pine trees and she told me to watch her as she lit a starstreak across the sky after she left. This was my experience.
While she was there, I felt this incredible unconditional love pouring over me. Since then, I have felt that loving presence all around me. This, I know now, is the reality of the Universe, Earth, Sun andMoon included. There is more about this experience in my book Heart Path, Learning to Love Yourself and Listening to the Guides.
If you think about it, the Earth and the Universe are nothing but love. They give us beauty, food shelter, abundance, clothing, and all we need. How amazing that we are living in a bath of love, and only our minds that think we don't deserve it, or those messages we got from former generations that didn't know any better or heard it from someone in authority, believe otherwise.
We deserve love, every last person on this planet. Each and every homeless person, corporate executive, theif and child. The Universe, the Great Mother/Father/Sky/Earth all love us. Try this, some morning as the Sun comes up, stand outside, and percieve the love of the Sun as it comes up. Just perceive it. Do not try anything just be with it. Sing a song about love if you want to, or sing your favorite hymn. Amazing Grace, perhaps, just substitute the word "Soul" for "Wretch." See they just didn't know better, our ancestors.
So not we can shift.

Seeing the Earth as she is

What if we could all see the energy of the planet? This would look more glowing than we see with our normal vision. In order to see the energy of Gaia, we need to tune into her. Take a tree that we are viewing. What if we just looked at a tree with soft eyes. It is as though we are relaxing into viewing. Then we notice that each and every living thing has an aura around it. Try this when the sky is bright and the sun is behind you.
As a medium and psychic, I see auras. I do not think I see anything that others cannot perceive, I just think I have practiced more. Also born with a gift that runs in the family, I do perceive the energy of living things.
So I know this is possible. Imagine then that you can feel or perceive the aura of the Earth. We know that scientifically we have an noosphere that goes around the Earth that contains the various layers of the Earth's atmosphere. This is the aura of the Earth the way scientists see it.
The Earth has an aura. She is has a lightbody that her physical body of rock and trees and rivers are all a part. Beautiful being, she eminates love to us unconditionally all the time. She provides for us all the time, and gives us what we need. This is the way she loves us. There is light that comes from the trees and flowers if you slow down enough to perceive it.
Practice, and soon you will see her too.

It is time to make things happen.

When we are in crisis, it is hard to see a future. When we are looking forward we are not in the present moment. Yet, being in the moment sometimes comes with a deep desire to make a difference. When one burns with a fever that has to do with saving our beloved Mother Earth home, there is a need to go into the future with insight of how will we live in 200 years?
The truth is we do not know. But we can imagine it, we can dream it, and this is where I come in. Writers have always been visionaries. This writer is going to write her vision. Just saying so is a relief.
So what is happening on Mother Earth can be turned around. We can do it, and in 200 years, we will have a better place to live, I know it, feel it in my bones. Even though my bones will be long gone, we need to heal this planet through our loving acts and kindness to one another, not through another arms struggle or more violence. It simply is not sustainable to live this way. And besides, we are better than that. We are better than we can know. Always when there is crisis, economically, enviornmentally, there are those who scoot through the crack of the crisis to another world of something greater.
We can do it. We can have sustainable cities and towns, where people love their communities and work to produce the best we have to offer. We can live in harmony, setting aside and dealing with conflict resolutions and working out the challenges of this world.
This can happen. We can grow biologically diverse produce, we can produce seeds to be generated from those plants, to produce the best crops, at the same time, not altar their genetic code so that we are damaging the very fiber of foods for the health of all.
We can transcend the damage we have produced in the enviornment to restablish the Earth as sacred so that people are not wanting to hurt what they love.
It is time. We can do it. Where ever someone may be looking for something to do, jump right in, it is time to do it. It is time to work hard and make things happen.
There are enough organizations, enough charities, enough containers for the work to begin. Perhaps you are wanting to build a fish ladder, or a place for salmon to spawn in a river that is full of dams. There are organizations working on it. Perhaps you want to be fully healthy, and your struggles are with health. Perhaps you just want to develop a cure for this or that. Jump in. There are ways for you to do that too.
So whatever your heart desires, there is a way. Get yourself moving into that way for the good of everyone. Jump in. But don't be jumped into violence, don't buy it that this is the way the world is. That is a lie. People create those worlds and they can be uncreated. They can be dissasembled.
Time to recreate. Go for it, build something for the good of all the children.
Love your kids enough not to make this a way to live.

Gaiamedicine

Hi, Today I want to talk about the Earth, Gaia, and how we need to shift our perspective of her. Right now, most people feel a wee bit helpless around Gaia, how do we help her? How do we save ourselves. This is what I know. We just have to do something, anything, recycle, do your part help us clean up the Gutalupe River or any River. Start to see the Earth as a living being that is worth relating to, because she is the bank, she is the resource of resources. She is the one we all survive with inspite of ourselves.
So it is time that we begin to relate to her as sacred mother. As lover. Take this mountain I live under. Mt. Diablo, ineptly named. This beautiful love emitting mountain is nothing but healing. Yet, because of the power of it, because of the wildness of it, because the Spanish were afraid of the energy coming from it, and did not and could not control those who were trying to kill them, this mountain got this name. It has other names but this one stuck. It is symbolic of the old ways that must die for us to survive. We must see our old patriarchal attitudes die. This is a good thing. We can embrace the Earth without creating an opposite poll of feminine control too. Instead, embrace, love the Earth, embrace balance, embrace the good heart in another, work on managing that which puts you down or builds you up. Just love yourself unconditionally. Because your self-love has everything to do with your love of the Earth. Your death wish, our collective death wish has everything to do with the state of the world right now. Lets change this.
Love yourself, love the Earth and pick up after yourself.
That is all for now,
Robin White Turtle Woman

What is Gaia Medicine

Hi! Welcome to my blog. This blog is dedicated to assisting this amazing planet and her people into the next stage of evolution. What's that you say? Is there something bigger than the enviornmental and economic crisis going on? You bet there is.

What all of the chaos points to is an underlying need for change on a spiritual level. We can no longer ignore the Earth and her inhabitants as separate. We can no longer ignore that we are in a suicidal slide with the Earth.

How might I know this? Look around. We are consistantly having to choose the higher road in our togetherness and unity with the Earth. Just look at how people the planet over are responding to signs of unity rather than discord. You can see this diplomatically, politically, and just today, the priminister of Israel said he wanted to make peace.

Signs of global warming are really signs of our greed and imbalance in relationship with the Earth. When do we ever say thank you for all that we take from her? Imagine a fisherman saying a big thank you to the fish as he hauls in the nets. Imagine the miner saying thank you to the coal. What would happen if we just said thank you before meals?

Here is a true story. I recently moved into a place that had TONS of ants. Now to have tons of ants you have to have a lot of them. That is how many there were. So I made a deal with those pesky critters, and said, "Look, I know you are good for the Earth, and I acknowledge that you lived here first. However, I am here now, and I will give you some food, if you will agree to move out of this space, and eat outside." So, I started doing a small food offering, just a little, everyday.

Within a week the ants are gone, I mean not one ant. They are not in my house. Sometimes there are some in my bathroom when they need water, but not one in the kitchen, not one ever since.

We cannot continue to take, take, take without a thought about what we are doing. If everyone who took a natural resource tuned into the Earth and said a sincere thank you, this would go far in helping to heal the rift we have right now with the great Mother.

Let me back up a bit. We are living on a living planet, not on a dead one. How do I know this you ask? Just feel her. Lay out on the grass somewhere, or in the forrest if you can find one, and feel the peace. Then open yourself to the fundemental beauty all around you. How nature takes care of you, she provides food, clothing, shelter and whats more, comfort.

I know for myself I have always looke towards Gaia for inspiration, solice and connection. She is what we need, not more stuff. We need planetary diversity for a healthy planet. WE need it! Our minds and hearts are so connected to Mother Gaia, that we need all that lives on her.

Yesterday a group of people in the San Francisco Bay Area gathered at the Marin Headlands to honor the Salmon. We went deep into ourselves and listened, through ceremony, to what the Salmon wanted to tell us.

It was beautiful. They need us. The Salmon are going extinct. They feed everyone, over 144 species all over the world. They feed us, whales, and bears. They feed eagles, and numerous others species. We, as humans need the salmon. But we are killing them through unecessary dams on rivers, through pesticides, through fertilizers that do not help them, through our toxic waste.

But mostly, we have stopped relating to them as part of sacred food. Our Native people know about this. It is time we learned about it. So here is what you can do. Offer thanks, give a little food back to the Earth. Give a little love to her. Support an enviornmental group. Get out and hike and communicate with her. Give some tobacco, some water, some wine, anything you value to her.

Then watch how your relationship changes to her.