I fell behind on this blog because we held the Dance of the Cosmic Dreamer this past weekend. This is a ceremony that envisions humanity's eventual peaceful return to the stars. It's good to look for signs in the days before ceremony and with the recent passing of Dolly Parton, I came across this recording of a Neil Young song that was done by Dolly, Emmy Lou Harris and Linda Ronstadt.
It's a beautiful song, with the moving line, "Look at Mother Nature on the Run". It has an apocalyptic story line and a final verse where humans are being taken up in a spaceship - "Flying Mother Nature's silver seed to a new home in the sun."
The Dance of the Cosmic Dreamer is about manifesting a different sort of destiny for humanity. Not one of ecological disaster followed by being saved by a messianic spaceship captain. We are dancing and calling in the moment when humanity clearly sees choices, makes a spiritual leap in consciousness and enters the Fifth World guided by love and unitive consciousness.
A group of eight of us gathered on the land to reflect on teachings about humanity's origins from the stars and to dance under the vast Milky Way on display in this remote area of northern New Mexico. The sky is big, the stars bright and we were each ready to take a giant leap beyond whatever we perceived as the boundaries of our personal and collective limitations.
During talking circles, we reflected on Indigenous teachings about how humanity "came from the stars". A couple of days before the dance, one of the dancers sent a video of a respected elder talking about this topic. His point was that when his elders talked about coming from the stars, they were not suggesting that humanity is somehow descendants of extraterrestrials who are now orbiting the earth in flying saucers. It is about something more subtle than that.
The Dance of the Cosmic Dreamer is about manifesting a different sort of destiny for humanity. Not one of ecological disaster followed by being saved by a messianic spaceship captain. We are dancing and calling in the moment when humanity clearly sees choices, makes a spiritual leap in consciousness and enters the Fifth World guided by love and unitive consciousness.
A group of eight of us gathered on the land to reflect on teachings about humanity's origins from the stars and to dance under the vast Milky Way on display in this remote area of northern New Mexico. The sky is big, the stars bright and we were each ready to take a giant leap beyond whatever we perceived as the boundaries of our personal and collective limitations.
During talking circles, we reflected on Indigenous teachings about how humanity "came from the stars". A couple of days before the dance, one of the dancers sent a video of a respected elder talking about this topic. His point was that when his elders talked about coming from the stars, they were not suggesting that humanity is somehow descendants of extraterrestrials who are now orbiting the earth in flying saucers. It is about something more subtle than that.
This chorus of this beautiful Joni Mitchell songs says:
We are stardust.
We are Golden.
And we've got to get ourselves
back to the garden.
Scientists now say that we are made of atoms that were forged inside ancient stars. The elements of life - carbon, oxygen, iron - evolved from an ancient star soup that boiled over and splattered across space and time.
Is this how we are to understand the ancient teaching that we are from the stars? That the matter of our body is made up of atoms and elements that were dispersed by exploring stars?
If we believe that we are our physical bodies, this could be a meaningful answer. But isn't life about that force which enlivens matter, not matter itself? Matter itself does not equal life.
Perhaps we are to understand that perceptual reality - our bodies, the physical world that we can see and hear and touch - is only possible because of the vast consciousness that is beyond time and beyond space.
The Upanishads say:
There, in the inner-most golden sheath,
the sun shines not,
Neither moon nor stars.
Lightning shines not there
much less earthly fire.
This shines and everything shines after it.
Perhaps the sun and stars are the closest reflection of our own inner consciousness and to say we come from the stars it to say that we come from the inner light of consciousness. From the vast self, beyond the beyond. Beyond conception, beyond form, beyond thought.
Joseph said that to build a house is to build a moment in time. And in that moment, we leave the vastness of the vast self and enter perceptual reality.
So, here we are in the vast desert of northern New Mexico, and we are building this little house, this moment in time, making this dream something that can be experienced.
And yes, this is a blog about the construction of this building, this moment in time.
So, this is where we are at the end of the day on Monday, September 14th. On Friday, September 10th, we made the crew lunch. The gable ends have been covered with plywood. On late Sunday, the September monsoon rains arrived. Monday morning, the building was covered in plastic, and the crew began installing the tongue and groove pine wood ceiling. They finished the west side of the ceiling. Things are moving forward. There are details to attend to: the color of the metal roof, deciding the best order for installing the windows, doors and finishing the floor. Praying that by September 23rd, we will be ready to close up this building and head back to New York. We'll see...
We are stardust.
We are Golden.
And we've got to get ourselves
back to the garden.
Scientists now say that we are made of atoms that were forged inside ancient stars. The elements of life - carbon, oxygen, iron - evolved from an ancient star soup that boiled over and splattered across space and time.
Is this how we are to understand the ancient teaching that we are from the stars? That the matter of our body is made up of atoms and elements that were dispersed by exploring stars?
If we believe that we are our physical bodies, this could be a meaningful answer. But isn't life about that force which enlivens matter, not matter itself? Matter itself does not equal life.
Perhaps we are to understand that perceptual reality - our bodies, the physical world that we can see and hear and touch - is only possible because of the vast consciousness that is beyond time and beyond space.
The Upanishads say:
There, in the inner-most golden sheath,
the sun shines not,
Neither moon nor stars.
Lightning shines not there
much less earthly fire.
This shines and everything shines after it.
Perhaps the sun and stars are the closest reflection of our own inner consciousness and to say we come from the stars it to say that we come from the inner light of consciousness. From the vast self, beyond the beyond. Beyond conception, beyond form, beyond thought.
Joseph said that to build a house is to build a moment in time. And in that moment, we leave the vastness of the vast self and enter perceptual reality.
So, here we are in the vast desert of northern New Mexico, and we are building this little house, this moment in time, making this dream something that can be experienced.
And yes, this is a blog about the construction of this building, this moment in time.
So, this is where we are at the end of the day on Monday, September 14th. On Friday, September 10th, we made the crew lunch. The gable ends have been covered with plywood. On late Sunday, the September monsoon rains arrived. Monday morning, the building was covered in plastic, and the crew began installing the tongue and groove pine wood ceiling. They finished the west side of the ceiling. Things are moving forward. There are details to attend to: the color of the metal roof, deciding the best order for installing the windows, doors and finishing the floor. Praying that by September 23rd, we will be ready to close up this building and head back to New York. We'll see...
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