"July 8: New Moon is at 1:16 AM Mountain Daylight Time. A great day to revisit and renegotiate your intentions...this is also a time when acceptance of instead of resistance to whatever is occurring in your life is helpful as a point of reference. Take responsibility and ask spirit for some magic on this day as a sign of being on the right track." www.thepowerpath.com
"There's a quiet resolve here," I told her, as we steadfastly plod our way north, the engine of her white Bronco loud and steady. However, I'm not quite sure what it is that I am feeling. "How are you?" sistar M. and many others asked on Saturday night. "I am happy and living each moment as it comes," I say. Yet, there's this conditioning that wants to arise and bubble forth - all of the words that are tell-tale signatures of success and achievement. "I see you are up to many things," a dance brother, whom I had not seen in awhile said. "It's the same old tune," I assured him. Or, is it? Because certainly the MAGIC that has always danced in my life is louder and crying out for greater expression in our world.
"I want to feel it all," I tell her, "and as deeply as I can, because there remains things I want to shift." Still, I can not quite put my finger on what that is exactly. At [Dance] Church, beeutiful you bring me a gift - it's a blue flag with three bees and a hive of honey on it. "BEE HAPPY," it proclaims from the southwest corner of our studio, as you lift me, swinging me from your right side to your left and then back again. In the process, my spine releases a past week of holding on - to moments, to people, place, desires and wants. And I re~member that the more I envelop myself within the nourishing bonds of community, the more my diversity of needs are met.
At the park, a community member's 4' Red-Tailed Boa Constrictor slithers through the grass. Initially, I feel and allow my fear and then I ask that it bee placed around my neck. It is sweet and settles into comfort on top of me - content to rest its head, with no need to lick at the air in order to sense any oncoming vibrations. It's a moment of repose - a mirror of the human bee-ing standing just beelow it. "It's about POWER," I say into brother B's eyes, as we continue to wrestle with our "should we, or shouldn't we" dance.
I return hOMe, to my newest, favored LOVER ~ a mentee of Joseph Campbell, Phil Cousineau and his book, "Once and Future Myths: The Power of Stories in our Lives." Naturally, I discover what is on the tip of my tongue:
(page 144 from The Mythic Power of Mentorship chapter) "..While we in Western culture generally talk about individual gifts or talent, individual gold, orenda is the group flame. When you are working on the self you're also working on enflaming the village, the tribe, the clan. This is accomplished by "walking the red road," a spiritual path you walk down with your relatives, in harsh contrast to "walking the black road," which they regard as the path of selfishness.
...Michael Meade has recently reviewed a word from Africa called litima. This sacred word in tribal traditions refers to the inner heat, the inner flame. The inner heat is what inspires, it's what draws people to each other, but if that heat hasn't tempered, it can burst out in violence, tremendous violence.
Mythically speaking, the function of a well-balanced society is to recognize this heat or this flame inside of ourselves and inside the young people in our community and not be afraid of it. Instead, the hope is that its young learn to recognize and work with the heat, and as we grow older to recognize the flame in each other. The recognition of this quality of fire in a young person is the function of the elder and the mentor.
The mentor, as opposed to the guru, is the one who is there to help you make up your own mind, light your own fire, unfold your own myth."
