PART OF THE WIND AND STARS, BLOOD AND BONE SERIES: DIVERSE ONLINE OFFERINGS HIGHLIGHTING INSPIRITED RELATIONSHIP, THE SOUL AS ARTIST, EARTH EROS, AND THE MYSTERIOUS BEAUTY OF BODY WISDOm.
Purpose:
My wish in calling this gathering forth is that this 6 month journey of walking some of the Raven’s songlines of our lives will help bring forward tender, primal and communal ways of encountering loss, death and grief in oneself, in families, organizations and greater Earth community, and will especially help us in reseeding the illuminating, transformative value of grief in our lives as a way to be more fully inspirited and compassionately participant, as one multi-voice of an infinitely varied world. Our relationship to loss, death and grief will also be lightly touched by recognizing the nature of Time Spirits and the Ancestral Weave for this is the pulsating ground and animating force of much we believe and enact in approaching or avoiding our experiences of loss, death, impermanence, strong rejected emotions….. of grief.
Many people have a limited perspective of grief, thinking it is only sadness/despair over a specific event., and most avoid this like the plague. But grief is a sine wave of awareness, an expression of the earth; it keeps us connected to the nature of existence which is that we will all lose everyone and everything that we love in life; no exceptions. Life is constantly in flow and impermanence is its fundamental language. To come into sound relationship with this continual change, with Life itself, is to befriend grief, which comes with a variety of sensations and emotions, some of which can even come forward as joy, wonder, curiosity, pleasure, playfulness, as peace; it is not all the often avoided full blown weeping, sense of helplessness, isolation and disorientation; although that, too, surely comes into the mix. Grief is not opinionated, it rejects nothing; it embraces paradox. Grief opens portals to great Beauty, to Mystery, to connection and to a sense of deep belonging here on Earth.
There was a time when cultures very naturally acknowledged death, loss and impermanence as the natural aspects of existence they are…. (was there? Was there really a time such as this? How do we truly know? has it been spoken by the wind? hidden in the stones? poured forth from the trees? from stories passed down through family lines? well…..)
Within this acknowledgement was the experiential recognition that there are fundamental and universal responses to these states that are helpful to groups of people for how they dynamically move through and affect both psyche and soma and communal well-being. These responses are all the different voices of grief that we still see arise; however we now meet these responses as if they are failures of some sort. And when viewed as failures, if indeed these expressions ever come to light at all, we tend to insist that they need to be encountered quickly, quietly and in restrictive isolation, hiding the shame, indulgence, vulnerability and weakness our culture considers implicit and protecting all others from the discomfort or terror of facing their own unexpressed sorrows and fears. The dominant Time Spirits involved have a tight, relentless grip, even among those dedicated to living with awareness.
At a time in history when the sense of uncontrollable loss and suffering is occurring exponentially throughout the world—to people, animals, plant and other life and the very skin of the Earth herself—and there are few acceptable, natural and ritualized ways to meet our innate, affirming grief responses to life as it comes, it is critically important to our sanity(and the life of the earth), and to our very destinies(and the life of the earth) that we learn how to soften, slow down and accept our beautifully evolved nature, which includes the need to acknowledge, witness and grieve change, pain and loss in primal ways, especially including in a caring space with others, and learn to recognize that these are powerful fundamentals for being an intelligently adaptive, loving, humble and creative species in a world which is inviting our fullest and most compassionate humanity.
We will explore our biases and intuitions, our questions, understandings and misunderstandings, of the different expressions of grief in varied ways: somatic response, dreamwork, story telling, (oral, written, artistic), journeying/inspirited meditation, music/sound/song, movement/dance, prayer, ceremony and in other earth-based practices in company with each other, the other than human realm, with our Ancestor spirits and other compassionate spirits who especially support our journey through the challenging thresholds of life and who will provide necessary illuminating rites of passage that will feed some of the ancient raw beauty in the songlines and help us plant anew.
Our soft footfalls into the nature of both cultural and personal Time Spirits and how they affect our ancestral patterns and personal beliefs, cosmologies, behaviors and experiences as well as mass beliefs about death, loss and grief will provide more opportunities to come into aware relationship with what we consider our strengths and also what we perceive as our limitations; both these aspects have voices to be listened to.
Zoom Meetings:
On one Sunday each month we will have a 3 hour session of insights, information sharing and practice, 10am-1pm ET. All sessions recorded for later use.
Every Wednesday for 6 months:
I will hold a circle open for you on Wednesday mornings from 9-10:30am ET or on Wednesday or other TBD evenings from 7:00-8:30pm ET, alternating weeks beginning March 22nd, morning time, on Zoom to come and just be with whatever is rising for you that resonates somehow with this gathering. This is to help grow a circle of welcome, safety, slowing down, personal authority, consistency, vulnerability, reliability, trust and intimacy. A place to breathe and dwell with the unknowable, unbearable, unspeakable or unsharable. Also a circle in which to bring your bright shining wild eye of delight or amazement; of longing, curiosity or epiphany. All….all at once. You can come and be completely silent, darken your screen, read a poem, recipe, a letter you were especially moved by, your last will and testament, etc., ask a question, chant your song line, ask for support, sing, dance, speak your dream, share a memory, event or understanding that has come to you that is related to why we are together, be held and seen; all with the understanding that I am not a therapist (my experience and training is what is commonly called shamanic but which I have repurposed more appropriately for me as Earth/Spirit Tending) and this time together is not for the kind of sharing typical within personal therapy.
No notice need be given to attend these Wednesday circles. . Drop in and leave when you wish.
7 Sunday Session dates: 10Am-1PM ET
March 19….. April 16….. May 21…… June 25…… July 23……. August 20
11 Wednesday Grief Circle Dates: Mornings 9:00-10:30 AM ET
March 22 ….. April 5, 19,…… May 3, 17, 31...…… June 14, 28. ….. July 12, 26…. August 9
11 changeable Grief Circle Dates: Evenings 7:30-9 PM ET
March 29,…. April 12, 26….. May 10, …. June 7, 21….. July 5, 19…. August 2, 16
Private Mentoring:
I am offering 4 hours of private one on ones with me during the 6 month period. They can be scheduled at any time between March 12 and August 26 and in any configuration of time. They can be used for mentoring in the practice I share, integration of course material, application of an inspired Earth/Spirit perspective to your life or for a healing session. This is to help more fully and discretely resource you in the dynamics of this gathering so they remain truly enlivened within you down the road; so that you walk away with more than yet another “workshop experience.” For more info. about healing sessions go to https://www.damarischrystal.com/faq-1
Independent Study:
Inquiries/explorations/ceremonies/artistic expressions will be formatted and offered for you to do yourself and with cohorts each month. As in all the Wind and Stars online series, every participant will be warmly invited to translate their inquiries, knowing, desires, intuitions, resistances, curiosity, grief—their experiences—into whatever shape of art expression they are moved by and to share this within our community. I will sometimes share written material and audio files with you as well.
Documentation:
There will be a shared Google Drive access where each of you will have your own open “journal” for what you’d like to more fully share with others.
Cost:
$150 registration fee made on my website at https://www.damarischrystal.com/payments-1 or via Zelle no later than March 16. Total course cost including registration is $960.
May be paid in full upon registration or, after registration, may use monthly payment plan of $135 per month paid via Zelle or on my website by the 5th of each month or in the case of March, by March 18.
If you get a friend to join, then the monthly payment you each make will drop to $110 per month as long as you both remain in the course. I encourage you to find a friend who will also join. The experience of any kind of grief is too often held in isolation. We need community and compassionate forms of consensus for this. I ask you to begin creating some community for this now, however imperfect you feel it might be, and to take whatever you experience of value here back to your greater community. This is not meant to be a singular 6 month “event”. This is meant to be momentum/change. If you do try and create a welcome for the sharing of grief in your community, if you ask, I will find ways I can volunteer to support that transition with you.
Prerequisites:
None. Kindness and curiosity cherished.
Things to be curious about:
As you consider what being in this gathering for 6 months might be about, I’m including some points simply for reflection and to act as a fine tuning of the song lines of the psyche. Please don’t read the following list as if every point is an item you must pick up at the store after learning all of its nutritional value or else someone will starve. This is simply to plant some seeds to see what grows in the soil of us and to what purpose, so we can co-create our time together with intention as we navigate so much that is truly unknowable and hence unpredictable. Our time focused this way will be like most everything else in life if we’re honest; a mystery. Who will we be in that feral embrace?
Some of what might be, could be, influential in our wanderings is:
what grief really is and its many languages; how to notice when it’s first arising and early and late ways of addressing it
being curious about our beliefs regarding time, identity and control
sensing what comes up for us when we truly become aware of the impermanence of everyone and thing we love
how and where grief lives in our personal bodies, in communal bodies, in the Earth’s body
our personal vs “transpersonal” loves and losses; the notion transpersonal always makes me laugh…… but, it’s a lens
allowing broken-heartedness
discerning the difference between ensouled beings and thought forms: what the hell is a Time Spirit anyway?.
our relationship to power and its corruptions; <can only be truly touched in the Dreamtime
our reflections and recognitions that “MY” grief (my rage, my hatred, my doubt, alienation, loss, fear, resentment, anxiety, contempt, pain, confusion, shame, etc.) is not solely mine but includes currents of sensation; visceral, psychic, biological, ancestral threads experienced by all humanity; that when we feel these, we are sensing through the collective as well as the personal and how this acknowledgement can help create more spaciousness and tenderness for ourselves and others
how to be with ourselves with some stability if needed when we are in different expressions of grief
how to be with people we know when we are in different expressions of grief or when they are
how to be with different expressions of grief in ourselves when around strangers and how to be around strangers who are presenting different expressions of grief
how to come together as a group to explore ways of making death, loss and grief our allies no matter how undesired
leaning into the sense that grief is not simply an expression of sadness over an event but is an embodied, psychic and sensual acknowledgement of the impermanence of everyone and thing you love; that grief is a dynamic waveform. a stance of humility that no one can control life; that this relationship to grief not only embraces sadness but opens portals to and enhances inclinations for playfulness and recognition of something called joy as well
how the earth and elements receive, ground and transmute varied aspects of grief; coming into direct relationship with earth consciousness as an elder who holds, supports and nourishes us and who asks to be fed
encountering the rapidly growing phenomena of ecological grief; cultivating deep listening to this voice and ways to slowly and sincerely respond without spiritual bypassing, capitulating to voices of self-righteousness or shame, or feeding despair
examining what grief looks like, feels like in the land; what is needed to transmute the grief seemingly held in the land and address how other species might be experiencing/expressing grief; owning the challenges and unanswered questions incurred and the effects on other species from our unexpressed grief and cultivating basic care in response to ourselves, other beings and elemental life
what is ancestral grief; what is needed to recognize and encounter it in ourselves and turn to our ancestors in an honoring and healing way; for their sake, our own, and to not pass along unresolved grief to our descendants
what kind of spirit allies might be helpful when relating to grief and why this might be important.
how to create space that invites people to dare and meet their own grief and express it, and support others in doing so as well. how to establish the physical and energetic space
what Time Spirits most affect you personally, their origin point in your lineage and ways to honor the needs and consequences discovered
what is the Ancestral Weave?
what does it mean to address our dead and heal our ancestral lineages?
how personal after-life cosmologies/religious dogmas influence our relationships with the dead, theirs with us
aligning with the needed spirits/resources for ancestral encounter; gaining clarity and experience in working more effectively and responsibly
exploring beliefs, feelings and behaviors related to many kinds of death.
cultivating Death as a benevolent ally.
exploring our covenants with Life and with Death; witnessing in part what your own death might be like; experiencing what the death of another species might be like
meeting and relating to your fully transitioned ancestors.
relating to ancestors who are ready to fully transition into true ancestral spirit helpers.
relaxing the grip of duality.
the signs of initiation; learning dependable rites of passage
the role of the true Psychopomp
how the untransitioned dead can affect land and spaces; learning ways to recognize and honor land devitalized due to ancestral trauma
creating protocols of beauty and resonance to re-inspirit the land; walking/feeding song lines
discovering with your ancestors what blessings are needed by you at this time and what blessings you're being asked to give to the Earth and all your relatives. Sharing prayers for Mother Earth through the art of daily living.
I invite you to come up with your own to share when we begin.
Through long and diligently assessed experience I’ve discovered that our ancestral connections are a prime key to understanding both the wild and holy beauty of our species as well as to addressing our suffering and the cascading destructive consequences of our beliefs and behavior..
We all carry some degree of these strengths as well as ancestral suffering; some limiting beliefs and behaviors. This is evident and easy for most to accept even though it is apparent from the state of the world that we are greatly missing workable resolutions. In addition to our stories of personal trauma continually recounted in cascading words without hoped for resolution and the collective consequences of this, all around us are someone’s ancestors who did not have a good death and who possibly haven’t fully shifted focus from their most recent embodied life. Their presence in this way can hinder our own abilities to live in right relationship with our world.
In some circumstances these ancestors, their imprints and other suffering beings press upon the earth. At times I will walk into a human dominated area, like a town square, where I sense I’m in a fogged-in bog with feet that can barely move and lungs that can barely breathe and I feel wildly desperate to rip up the layers of concrete and asphalt covering the ground. Other times when traveling in my car I’ve felt like I’ve hit a concrete wall that is just so real I’ve even stopped my car to get out and look for damage. But these are energetic occurrences, not physical, except for how my body/mind picks up on them. And whenever this has happened I’ve discovered later that these areas have been places of deep trespass against the living with large loss of life through battle/genocide/starvation/toxicity, etc. Areas where the land has been devastated so that the spirits of land have shrunk their confines, become dormant or have had to leave and the dead have not been sufficiently witnessed and grieved into Beauty.
This ancestral grief is our grief; their needs our needs. Their misunderstandings, ours. Their painful attachments similarly expressed through us as well. Their healing can be our healing and a great sigh of relief for all of the earth. And we have such multitudes of great, sometimes ancient, ancestors already available; those who can nourish and uplift our families, especially when we recognize and lovingly attend to them. They are all waiting for us and are our beautiful gift of relationship.
Whatever your other interests or callings are for living as a sane, life honoring human in this complex, uncertain world, turning and facing both your uplifted as well as wandering dead and encountering your unexpressed and often unknown grief is essential as a fundamental working basis for nurturing any kind of engaging earth-loving stewardship practice; for inhabiting psychological well-being; for creating equitable social/regenerative communities; for knowing what beauty and liveliness is ours to create that the earth can support, and how to do so.
I invite you to enter this community and together we can bring more awareness and loving connection to our ancestral lines; more easily recognize and know how to stop the passage of toxic thought forms between the generations; understand what it means and takes to tend someone in a good death; allow and inhabit the grief of our experiences and those of others with conscious grace; witness and tend to our incompletely transitioned dead for their transformation into true ancestral spirits if ready; and form active loving relationships with the realm of our fully seated ancestors and other compassionate spirit beings to guide us as we re-envision ourselves and align our life practices for what is being called for now by the planetary intelligence of the Earth and her greater body the Cosmos. We just need the greater organism of who we are with each other to ignite and live all this. So please come and share who you are……
Testamonials:
“Damaris is the kind of teacher who works and moves beyond any kind of standard or traditional criteria. It’s not enough to say that you, as a student, will do a great deal of learning. It’s more accurate to say that you will change the way you think, feel and move in the universe. It’s like that. It’s that level of teaching. I am profoundly grateful for what I have received through her guidance, wisdom, and friendship. In short, if you want to understand something better, read a book. If. you want to set your reality ablaze, I present Damaris.” Kate K. Director, Local Government and Community Relations at Case Western Reserve Univ. Cleveland, OH
