Returning to our process under the bower, we start sharing the stories of our encounters in non-ordinary reality. Quickly, we realize that we are truly setting out on an unknown journey – our ceremony will be peopled by mythic beings. I hesitate to use that word, peopled…it’s just sooooo two-legged, meaning human in this instance.
Maybe inhabited would be better.
No.
Most trance dances of this kind are populated. . .mmmm…according to the dictionary, populated usually references humans and sometimes data.
Our mythic beings are neither …
In most ceremonies of this kind, humans experience the world from the perspective of another familiar life form – be it salmon, river, ant, kangaroo or meadow. This time we are not encountering an ordinary extra-ordinary other. Instead of meeting a bear, there is a bear butterfly which morphs into a rainbow bird.
There’s no ordinary fox but a mythic fox/mouse/mole/rat being who tunnels underground and is comfortable seeing – or not – in the dark.
Not an ordinary crow but a hawk/eagle/raven/condor who quickly morphs into a bird of prey, a bird of pray, a bird of play. Play, prey, pray becomes caw, caw, caw, caw, caw. But when the costume is finished, this being is all of that AND an uncommon warrior.
S first sees a gossamer dragon fish, but becomes a dancing deer. She’s startled when a day later someone notices she’s wearing a tee shirt which carries the image of the dancing deer shaman from LascauxCave. All along she’s related to that mythical creature without being aware of it.
Then there’s the sun. Three of us bring back the sun in different forms:
D as a yellow/golden/orange/red shimmering light filled dragon bird being who champions our freedom.
C as a sun with both light and dark aspects. Two of us know the Japanese myth about the Sun Goddess Amaterasu and recognize that C has brought its themes through to us without conscious knowledge. That connection with ancient lore gives greater significance to the storylines that come through us a day later. Indigo and yellow/orange dominate.
V as solar dieties from many traditions, including Egyptian, Tibetan and South American. She carries the energy of Amun-Ra, considered both light and dark, masculine and feminine, revealed divinity and champion of the poor. This sun speaks for the voiceless.
I’ve already mentioned in the prior post that I am to dance for the drum, for the ecosystem, but as I work on my mask, I become the entire planet.
I hope the images give you an idea of the creativity that comes forth as we develop our expanded sense of self. Generosity of spirit abounds. Materials are shared, we help each other, mistakes become new directions, questions are asked and answers pour forth in myriad ways. We collaborate in the kitchen and bring each other snacks in perfect timing with growling bellies.
Sometimes the other beings around us join the gaialogue and give an exclamation point to something that’s been said. An unseen hawk keening at the precise moment of a human’s insight is always a good marker of significance! A horse whinnying, the wind picking up for just a few seconds, a bee buzzing past one’s ear, a leaf falling in your lap at the precise moment you were talking about letting go…we notice all that and choose to give it import.
If you haven’t recently experienced the responsiveness of the world around us, you may have forgotten what good medicine it is for our urban loneliness.
The living myth emerges next time.
The Wisdom of Not Knowing Everything 
Hello All,
I’ve returned after being away for over two weeks and have just now had time to catch up on all the great blogging. Deborah, your piece on the “Mythic Beings Arrive” is spectacular….the pictures make me homesick for my tribe. I can tell you that the gossamer fish/dancing deer is still at work in my life; Recently, in the course of a conversation, my ecstatic postures weekend became one of the topics. One of the women there is currently battling cancer for the second time. She is a psychiatrist and very good at finding a logical course of action to problems but it is not helping her during this crisis. The following day she called me to ask if I would help her process something from a transpersonal perspective. Of course, I agreed, and am happy to say it proved to be quite fruitful. I felt my deer dance to her story and my gossamer fish helped me find comfort in unknown territory and swim deeply, leading us both to the source. Just now, it occurs to me that the tiny sea-fish is indeed comfortable being pulled and pushed by tidal currents. In fact, tell me if I’m wrong, but it seems all of our creatures that arrived during our long weekend have that morphic quality, that ability to flow.
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“…that tiny sea-fish is indeed comfortable being pulled and pushed by tidal currents…it seems all of our creatures that arrived during our long weekend have that morphic quality, that ability to flow…” Oh my yes. Thank you, Shannon, for articulating that so perfectly. Old paradigms for understanding our human place in the scheme of things need to shift, are shifting and the more quickly we can comfortably let go of hanging onto the old shores, the more we’ll enjoy riding those currents…mmmmm I feel a new post coming on!!! Thanks for inspiration.
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“let go of hanging onto the old shores”, old boundaries, old fences; “Hello, what are you doing in there?” “James, Sage is loose!!”….Anybody seeing a pattern here?
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Hello, my tribe of Mystical Beings, Yes, Shannon I do see a pattern and excitement ingnites me when I remember what a pivotal role the spirits played. Deborah I love the whole blog – I use to wonder how I could be in two ‘worlds’ at once. I came to realize for myself that the ‘other world’ was like a sense – how can I talk, smell, hear all at the same time? Postures rewire the brain so our awareness is sharper and preserving becomes a way of life…
The Myth we enacted was magical…..I don’t think we are done..There are more stories coming. I image a Myth Tree and all the branches and roots are stories…..Our stories of the bigger Myth and other stories of personal growth, challenges, insights………..caw…caw…caw…caw..
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Cinda, I adore that concept: The “other world” is a sense. Yes yes yes. We can’t see smell. We can’t touch hearing, unless of course our hand rests on a vibrating drum, hee hee., we can’t capture seeing…oh my golly gee whiz, your conclusion brilliantly illuminates my day and the rest of my life! YES. And yes about rewiring the brain. Belinda and I chatted yesterday and that’s really what it comes down to, what the Cuyamungue Institute means by calling our work the Cuyamungue Method. It’s different from shamanism. Ecstatic Postures are a method of integrating our hemispheres and the neurology of our body/mind. More YESES!!! Thank you for responding!
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I find myself wondering if Cinda’s insight about realizing that “the other world is like a sense” is breaking the boundaries of our understanding of the “Sixth Sense” in that Cinda’s concept pushes those boundaries to include a larger meaning. Somehow in the same way the Cuyamungue Method (going beyond the confines of shamanism) is building a larger, broader bridge between the hemisperes, more neurological synaptic connections. Example: A Chiropractor friend said that part of his training included placing a single thread between the pages of a phone book and locating it with his fingers, adding more pages between his fingers and the thread as he was able to correctly locate the thread. This ability enabled him to locate the tiniest tendon beneath the skin of his patients to determine needed corrections. I would imagine that training technique created new neuro-synaptic pathways, heightening his sense of touch perhaps in the same way Cinda is suggesting the Ecstatic Postures heightens, broadens our sixth sense. Am I understanding you correctly, Cinda?
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Thank you for letting me think on paper. What paper ?– never mind. I think the perception of all realities is a scene. I am in this reality perceiving, another reality is possible because it works like our scenes. How can I hear, taste, smell all at the same time? How can I perceive the ’other world’ and this world at the same time? Cinda
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