"The best questions to ask are ones that you care about. There has to be something in it, some jewel for you."
"Your intention is what carries you into the other worlds. The more you care about it, the more your heart is in it, the better."
"We find that doing work that involves caring for others can have a significant, powerful impact on healing work."
Pretty awesome stuff. Caring may help some participants cross barriers into other worlds they might never be able to cross. It focuses their experience of Non Ordinary Reality (NOR) in ways they've never felt. It can turn them into a vessel of healing power like nothing else.
Something Elizabeth Kubler-Ross said about caring has always stuck with me. She was lecturing a group of nurses, talking about her work with infants born of HIV+ drug addicted mothers, back before there were any real medical remedies for such infants. Her therapy was to hold and care for the infants constantly, never letting them cry without being held, always letting them know they were loved. The health improvements were remarkable, in some instances the young immune systems were able to re-write themselves as if they'd never been exposed to HIV.
"Each one of you that sits here today," she told her audience, "is alive because someone, at some moment loved you unconditionally. It is that spark that makes all of our lives possible." In a word: caring.
I've come to think of caring as embodying your own soul. When your spirit is flowing forth, present in your life and this world, your heart swells with caring. Caring is a sign you're filled with your own spirit.I wrote the night after teaching the workshop: "I'm full, full up with the good stuff. I want for nothing, but can always receive more." When we talk about power in shamanism, we're talking about spirit, energy, knowledge and wisdom. That kind of power feels like deep, poignant caring. It fills you up.
The day after the workshop was my 47th birthday. The number of well-wishes I got through Facebook, and the quality of caring was astounding. I've developed the habit of not picking up the phone on my birthday, so loved ones must record their birthday songs and I can play them over and over again. I am awash in the good stuff.
Caring has taken a bit of a beating the last few decades. Our crass jaded, commercialized iLife has crept into places where the authentic presence of our collective soul once prevailed. Thats changing now, I can feel it like a warm tide, washing in gently.
Photo pep sala:fes-me un lloc al teu costat by by Lali Masriera
From Flickr, used under
a Creative Commons license
