What is reciprocity?
What is reciprocity? A definition in the dictionary states, “Reciprocity is the practice of exchanging things with others for mutual benefit.”
In the words of our beloved, Chico-born singers and songwriters of MaMuse, “It is time now! It is time now that we thrive! In this Great Turning we shall learn to lead in Love. In this Great Turning we shall learn to lead in Love!”
I had been feeling anxious about the coming summer and the dry season. Here in California, our droughts and chemtrails brought on by geo-engineering have been wreaking the effects of fires, and all its related stressors.
It was Saturday, May 9th 2020. Mother’s Day was approaching. I was being guided internally to have a fire ceremony in my duni, the sacred fire pit in the earth that I had made of clay and cow dung. It had lain dormant for too long and had not held a sacred fire in many seasons.
I went out into the backyard, unwrapped the cover over my fire pit, and got set to work. Into the wheelbarrow went sifted dried horse manure, cow dung harvested from Table Mountain years before, sifted soil, water. and dried clay powder.
The clay was an added gift. I didn’t think I had any, and when I awoke the morning of my duni make-over, I knew exactly where in the garage was lying a bag of powdered clay that my husband had used in a clay-based paint! YES! I had exactly what I needed.
My hands mixed and stirred, and added as my adobe mixture was perfected. The sides of my duni were restored and a new beautiful layer of this earthly mix was freshly prepared and layered over the top of my duni. It was beautiful! I felt like I had done this many times before in another life, another land…. My hands and heart knew exactly what to do!
What is a fire ceremony?
A fire ceremony is a way of giving back, a way of making reciprocity with nature; a way of thanking, honoring, and appreciating the seen and unseen subtle forces and energies of nature.
Fire ceremonies or hawans as they are also called, have been done in India by sages since very ancient pre-Vedic times. These sacred fire ceremonies were done daily and kept burning constantly. When the Herakhan Babaji (who was referred to as the “Immortal Yogi” in Yoganada’s book, Autobiography of a Yogi), appeared in physical form in 1970, he started performing hawans wherever he went and he spoke of the importance of “doing yagna,” as it is called. At Herakhan where he lived, he performed hawan every morning at dawn.
Babaji said that the origin of creation stems from the hawan. He said that it is the hawan that brings rain, and the rain brings grain. Whatever is offered to the hawan goes directly to the nature elementals and beings of Light who are being called upon. It is believed that whatever you offer to the fire, you receive back in ten-fold.
Babaji said that “by doing hawan,” people can gain happiness and all the pleasures of life. He said that by doing hawan, “People will have good thoughts and love for each other.” The smoke of the hawan is considered to be extremely purifying and increases the plenty and prosperity in the world.
During the fire ceremony offering of grains, flowers, and seeds are offered to the fire. A participant can also offer their hopes, fears, challenges, etc., and aspire to purify one’s consciousness with the aid of the fire and the elementals and beings of Light that are sought to assist. I suggest that a person approach the fire ceremony with the desire for a pure heart.
Ho’oponopono:
In 2008, I heard Joseph Tajalle, a native American elder at the Oregon Country Fair, speak about an ancient Hawaiian healing process called Ho’oponopono. I had heard about Ho’oponopono earlier through an internet article written by Dr. Joe Vitale, about a clinical psychologist in Hawaii named Dr. Len, who completely cured a ward of criminally dangerous insane patients without ever seeing any of the patients, simply by working on himself. When asked to clarify, Dr. Len said, “I was simply healing the part of me that created them.”
Dr. Len further explained that “total responsibility for your life means that everything in your life, simply because it is in your life, is your responsibility. In a literal sense, the entire world is your creation.”
That thought can be difficult to follow. I understand that I am responsible for what I say and do, but how can I be responsible for everything that happens to me? In his writings about Dr. Len, Mr. Vitale said that the truth is this: “If you take complete responsibility for your life, then everything that you see, hear, taste, touch, or in any way experience is your responsibility because it is in your life.”
This is where quantum physics comes in. It has been determined through quantum physics that the consciousness of the observer changes that which is being observed. By doing so, the observer creates reality. That is, how we think about something does affect the outcome. In the bottom line of quantum physics, we are responsible for what we create in our lives and in our environment. Steven Hawkins said, “Human consciousness is changing the blue print.” That is huge! Science of mind teaches, “As we think, so it is.” Joseph Tajalle, a native American Indian elder said that “Quantum physics is giving the mathematic formulas to perceive what the mystics have been saying all along.”
The mind, according to Dr. Bruce Lipton, also controls our biology. In our bodies, we have minute, nano-sized nerve receptors in the connective tissues of our body that pick up sensory information from our environment. We feel hot, cold, pain, pleasure, through these nerves that send this information to the highest centers of the brain where we process that information and decide how to respond to it. Every cell of our body is aware of that response. How we respond to that environmental information will affect the health of our cells. We can literally scare ourselves to death by how we perceive something in our mind.
Dr. Bruce Lipton describes the mind as having two aspects; that is the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. He said that the conscious mind is creative and connected to our wishes and desires. The subconscious mind is a playback device of programs that it has downloaded. Dr. Lipton said that the primary programs in our subconscious mind were not put there by ourselves. They were downloaded into us up to the time we were six years old while our brain waves were operating out of theta and delta states, which are highly programmable. After the age of six, a person becomes more conscious and can choose responses with awareness.
Dr. Lipton said that the subconscious mind is filled with beliefs and patterns. It is operating in present tense at every moment and is one million times stronger than the conscious mind. He said that many people are run by the programs and belief systems of their subconscious mind 95% of their day and are living their lives from a conscious place only 5 % of the time.
If this information is true, we as a culture, as a people, have some clean up work to do! We need to get back to mindfulness. We need to get back to thought that is aware of itself, that is watching itself and responding to our environment through intentional choices. Dr. Lipton said, “The character of a civilization is determined by its belief systems.” Carl Hammerschlag, another man of wisdom, said, “The quality of a culture is based on the awareness, connections and intentions of its people.” That is why the idea of “Be Here Now, is so important; so that we can choose our responses rather than be at the affect of our programming.
New neurological brain science and organizational research shows that the emotional part of the brain, the amygdala, the reptilian brain that operates out of primal emotions, needs the balance of the sophisticated prefrontal cortex to bring wisdom to it; so that we can make choices with intentional wisdom instead of knee-jerk reactions; so that we can take action after all things have been considered. It just so happens that the prefrontal cortex is stimulated in meditation. Meditation is a key to the refinement of one’s being.
Back to Ho’oponopono:
If we are all personally responsible for everything that comes into our lives, we are also equally creative in our potential. Dr. Len helped heal the criminally insane people by simply saying the words, “I love you, I am sorry.” He said those words to that place in himself that somehow helped create the pain and imbalance of the person whom he was putting his attention on.
Dr. Vitale said that “Suffice it to say, that whenever you want to improve anything in your life, there’s only one place to look; inside of you. There is no out there.” Problems don’t exist except as projections from inside of ourselves. The problem isn’t with them, it’s within ourselves and to change them, we have to change ourselves. If you want to heal anything, you do it by healing you. In regards to the miraculous healing of the criminally insane patients, Dr. Len said, “I was simply healing the part of me that created them.”
“If you want to heal anything or anyone, you do it by healing yourself. And when you look, you do it with love,” Dr. Len said . “You do this by holding the image of the person in your mind and just say over and over again, I am sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you! I love you. ” And that’s it!
We can also do this for the elements of earth, water, fire and air. The five-element theory of Chinese medicine says that we are made of those elements. They are in our being. We are them. They are within us. The phrase of a song drops in… “Earth our body, water our blood, air our breath and fire our spirit!”
The Fire Ceremony is a place of transformation:
Let’s look inside ourselves. Let’s see that which is within us that needs healing in relation to these elements; these basic powerful forces that are within and without our beings.
Within the fire ceremony we can embrace all of our feelings about these elements and their affects in our lives, especially with the fires that have raged through our communities and states. We can embrace the light, the shadow. We can expand our bandwidth and embrace all of it.
The fire ceremony is a place of transformation. We can take the base, the lower form, and alchemically change it into gold. It is a process of purification and WE are the process. We can burn our fears, and resentments. We can bring in the new energy that we want to create and become the phoenix and rise again.
In native teachings, all parts of the creation are our relations. Each of us is deeply connected with everything that exists. “You are a tool of life, guided by the Creator that is in you and around you,” said Sun Bear, a native elder. “Ceremonies are a way that humans can give back to the creations, some of the energy that we are always receiving. The mother earth gives us a surface to place our feet on. The sun warms us. Grandmother moon brings us our dreams. The element of earth gives us the ability to grow food, make homes and tools. Water keeps us alive. Fire warms our homes and cooks our food. Air gives us the sacred breath of life. Each part of life is constantly giving to humans.”
In the fire ceremony, we can give back by offering grains, flowers, and seeds into the fire. The smoke from the fire will quickly journey from the physical realm to the spirit plane. Your prayers will be released through the smoke as it curls upwards to Great Spirit.
In our fire ceremony, we began by honoring our Great Relations that we invited there. We touched the Earth. We felt the support of our Great Mother. We spoke our words of love and appreciation for Her. We said, Mother, I love you! We looked up to Father Sky and sensed His vast presence. We felt our gratefulness to the Great Father. We felt that place inside of ourselves where we were sorry for the imbalances that we humans have wreaked over the great creation. We said to the great creation, “I am sorry.” We felt the element of water. We thought about how water sustains us. We told the element of water that we loved it, and that we were sorry for the impurities it has suffered. We felt the aspect of air, and wind. We appreciated what the wind does for us. The wind brings our rain that brings the grain and food. We let the wind know that we appreciated it and loved it. We told the air that we were sorry for its impurities. And then we felt the fire. We felt the fire of the sun. We felt the fire in our cores that turn the food we eat into life that sustains us. We told the fire element that we loved it. We asked the fire to burn away any of our impurities.
When we did this fire ceremony on Mother’s Day, May 10th, 2020, the grasses were already going dry in the fields. There was no rain in the forecast. It could be a very long summer. One or two days later, with no radar of it in sight, the rain returned, and we have had a gentle, glorious wet spring. I am grateful!
“We pray that we may be aligned with you, our Mother the Earth, our Father the Sky and all the elements of earth, water, air and fire. We ask that your powers fly through us and be expressed by us for the greatest good of this planet Earth and all the living beings on it.”
Right now in these times that we live, we are inspired as Nature Evolutionaries, to look to the medicine that is needed for all life to thrive. In a Nature Evolutionaries newsletter it states, “We look to Earth, to Nature, to the Universe for this medicine so that we can reflect it, amplify it, and help bring it to the places we live – to uplift our communities of people and nourish the land where we live. The ways that we do this are varied; some efforts are big and visible while others are subtle, and yet each open-hearted, connected effort is a drop of nourishment for this big Earth family that we are. Building a relationship of reciprocity with the natural community that holds us is essential in dreaming forth a good future for all life.”
“Remember, we are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. Our actions and states of mind matter, because we’re so deeply interconnected with one another. Working on our own consciousness is the most important thing that we are doing at any moment.”
RAM DASS
Earth Writes, Giving Voice To Nature:
“Every moment we are touched by nature and have experiences of earth, air, fire and water. As the natural forces move in and around us we express these relationships through our thoughts, feelings and actions. When we live in kinship with nature, we take up our rightful place as a part of Nature Consciousness and see that Earth and all her beings have an equal right to thrive. In this place of equality, a profound understanding emerges and we are able to hear the voice of Nature. This voice comes to us through the wind in the trees, the constant babble of a mountain stream, the early morning bird song and the gentle musings that uplift our hearts. Earth Writes brings an inspirational reminder of our kinship with Nature and highlights how we can give voice to the vast web of Nature Consciousness.” Earth Writes Articles:
“Sacred Water, Precious Water”
https://www.natureevolutionaries.com/ne/2018/4/29/sacred-water-precious-water
“Weather Magic”
https://www.natureevolutionaries.com/ne/2018/8/28/16iyystbc36zxmwo1g7p9yx4i1i4qn
To be connected with the Organization of Nature Evolutionaries, (O.N.E.), and their trainings, teachings, writings, and offerings, see: https://www.naturevolutionaries.com. Their support page is: https://www.natureevolutionaries.com/donations. Their membership page is: https://www.natureevolutionaries.com/membership.
Om and Blessings BE~ Jean Louise Green