Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Juice from the orange grove workshop

This Active Dreaming workshop I am leading is really bearing fruit!
    I go out in the walled garden where many people have gathered on the grass. They are excited. Happy energy is rippling through the whole group.
    I give them some words to repeat, as an initial meditation to shift their sense of identity and prepare them to make journeys beyond the body and brain.

    "I am a spirit that has a body."
    As they repeat this line, their bodies - now mostly stretched out full-length on the grass - roll as if in a gentle surf.
    I shift the emphasis, and they follow suit.
    "I am a SPIRIT that has a BODY."
    "I am a spirit that has a BODY."
    "I AM a spirit that has a body."
   As we go on playing with the words and the emphasis, the energy of the group in the garden grows and grows. We are ready for a great group journey.
   I take up my drum, getting ready to supply extra fuel and focus for the first of our group expeditions. I look up and see that we are in a grove of orange trees. The tree above me is bursting into fruit.


I was leading the workshop in the orange grove in a very joyful dream last night, whose juice is still with me. I have used the same meditation, with the word play, in workshops in ordinary reality (though there is nothing very ordinary about our group adventures in Active Dreaming). It was inspired by my reflections on a Mohawk term for "alive". Kia:tonte literally means "I have a body", implying that I am a spirit that has a body.

No comments:

Post a Comment