F I O N N T Á I N

I wrote a few posts in the Earthsong camp but I couldn’t publish them there as i was in a no-electronic zone. I have decided to collect them all together and publish them in this post.

EARTHSONG 1. mon 9 jul 12
I’m writing this post from a tent in the middle of the Tipperary country side. Earthsong Ireland, an annual camp where people take time out to live, play, sing and dance together. This playfulness with life manifests as approx 500 people gathered together in circles of 12 tents. In the middle of this circle is an open fire, the heart of the circle where you cook, eat, relax and chat. From this foundation you turn to experience a huge variety of workshops, funshops and playshops. The underlining principle as i experience it, is to offer a place where people can live life to the full, without fear, open to the full potential of who they are. The full list of events can be found at http://www.earthsong.ie , but to really feel the vibrations one must come and personally experience them. For me, it is a key moment in the expansion of my heart. There are at anyone time approx.10 workshops happening at the same time, catering for all age groups, but by far the greatest energy generated for me was at the morning and evening communal gatherings. The organization of the camp is very impressive running smoothly along progressive lines of communication and leadership but it is the love more than anything else that i feel in every bone and cell of my body. So strong and vibrant is this love that it carries a boundarylessness and expansion, total forgiveness and support. Eckhart Tolle speaks about the first steps to happiness begin with the awareness of the ego and its need to avoid the present moment. Ego is very simply identified as those times when you feel inferior or superior to others. In the past for me that has been most of the time!!!. All that is required to come into the present moment, heal the hurt in your heart and open to the magnificence of who you really are, is awareness, a brilliant summary I feel of all spiritual teachings. If you come with an open mind to Earthsong, aware of the ego and participate in the workshops and communal gatherings, you will find a space here for you to practice this awareness, to tune yourself to the rhythms of your heart. The morning communal gathering is called heartsong and here the power of awareness with a simple yet elegantly effortless chant, sung in four part harmony bringing together beautifully the feminine and male energies, all earthly energies from the north, south, east and west, is a wonderful present moment of love, you cannot be but touched, its a natural thing. Each person needs to make this energy their own, and can’t rely solely on the support given at such ‘elevated’ events as heartsong for them to get in touch with who they really are….herein lies the challenge….more on this subject in the following entries

EARTHSONG 2. wed 11 July 12
The Earth song experience continues to open my heart, slowly moment by moment. The circle of tents has become a very significant place of emotional healing. Just like in the ordinary tasks of everyday living, the cleaning, cooking and household tasks act as an emotional gauge, so to it is with the camp circle. What a wonderful opportunity to establish new ways of relating together, of organizing society and of playfully exploring new paradigms to replace the old very out dated, very male, law and order model. The healing sounds of the dance, drum and chant are used to wonderful effect in these camps in very well-organized workshops. It is now time to enhance this healing and create the space in each circle where the difficulties experienced between circle members can be healed in a safe protected environment. ‘Clearing’, an energetic healing practice developed by Eric Dowsett, which I have practiced for 7 years, is a very beautiful, non judgemental, gentle but powerful way to get in touch with your thoughts and feelings, not take them seriously, and thus begin to experience the power to heal or ‘clear’ the hurts within oneself before we start blaming others for them. It is a practice that helps shifts blocked energies within ones own heart and the heart of communities, thus resolving difficulties effortlessly.

EARTHSONG 3. thurs 12 july 12
I have walked barefoot in mud and bathed my body in beauty, toned to the presence of plain chant and danced to the expansive one beat of my heart, in touch, we touch this evolving now.

EARTHSONG 4. thurs 19 july 12. THE AFTERS
A video on dmt, the psychedelic drug, titled ‘the spirit molecule’, was recommended. I watched it and below is the comment I made afterwards. The comment is relevant to the key lesson, I’ve learnt from my Earthsong experience: spiritual highs are questionable if not related to the everyday ordinary experience

My comment was as follows:
Many times I’ve used alcohol to switch out of the reality I find myself in, to give me a break from the heavy energies i experience from time to time. I find that these realities or heavy energies don’t go away and call on deeper resources to face and heal them. So consciousness and openness, wanting freedom, peace and happiness has lead me to ‘religious’ experience, cooked in the hot fires of life and transformed to personal spiritual experience where the heavy energies continue to arise until such time as you can sit with them, accept them and smile at them.

I give my time to the exploration of and experience of life in all its fullness and for me the development of human consciousness lies within the realm of boundarylessness, floating on a ball in a vast multilayered emptiness, so vast its endless, yet so mysterious it can be encapsulated in the tiniest subatomic particle in the human body

There are many ways, it seems, to introduce oneself to this field of endless potential that is our true nature: sound healing, chanting, dance, drumming, guided meditation, group healing are all ways I’ve used. I have read about the use of psychedelic drugs as another gateway and this film has being very informative on this subject. I have just returned from a wonderful week of chanting, where through the power of the collective voice people rose above their thoughts emotions and sensations (their bodies) and rested vulnerably in the spirit state which is their true nature. Without a context within which these spiritually high moments are received, when one returns back to the physical plane, the bliss will slowly dissipate, and the possibility for the development of human consciousness lost, leading to possible irritability and confusion. I have asked the question just like Rick asked at the end of the film ….’well what next? …..’why do these experiments again?

No matter what the dmt volunteers experiences were, fundamentally it seems to me that they point to the simple clear reality that we are spirit beings in a physical body. The challenge for us…..well maybe its not a challenge its only thinking makes it so…. so I’ll say that another way…my focus is constantly, moment by moment, to rise above the thoughts, emotions and sensations, ie those things that identify us as bodies, so that when we have more and more of these spiritually revealing insights, events, sensations and so on, we can integrate them into the physical reality thus transforming this reality and allowing it to merge effortlessly with our true spirit nature

This clarifies for me that when one brings people to spiritually high experiences there must be first the right ‘set and setting’ as they call it in the film. This set and setting is not the exterior form of the room, its furniture and fittings, but ones inner state of being, ones state of readiness, of openness to the transformative information that abound in ‘spiritually high’ moments. I have found this set and setting through practicing ‘clearing’. This practice forms the basis of the the talk I give at the moment. My next talk will be at An Sanctóir in Ballydehob, County Cork, August Bank Holiday weekend. Get in touch if you require more info. Thanks for reading