Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day!

 

I will not be posting the conclusion to “From Resentment to Forgiveness” this week, but instead encourage you to please read and enjoy the May edition of Parvati Magazine that is now live. It is created and sustained with love by volunteers who care about you and our Earth.

 

Please take a moment on Monday, Earth Day 2013, to consider your relationship with the planet. Not only in terms of the little things you can do to support its health, such as recycling, buying local, organic produce, and reducing your carbon footprint.

 

Think too of your personal relationship with the planet. Go deeper into how you feel on this Earth, like how you would consider a friendship and your role in it. See if you can tap into the biological sense of interconnection with all that is. You literally are the very same stuff – the same carbon molecules – that makes up all of nature. There is not one thought, breath, action that you do that does not affect the whole, precisely because you are part of the whole and the whole is you.

 

So when you allow yourself to buy into negative voices in your head that say you are not good enough in some way or another, you also allow that vibration to grow on the planet. When you choose to love yourself, you come closer to finding the joy you have always wanted. And you are closer to serving all beings and feeling a vibrant part of life.

 

So today, Earth Day, consider what your relationship is with the Earth, how you can love it better, like a living organism, and in so doing, love yourself and all beings.

Let a healthy earth relationship become the foundation of a healthy, happy and prosperous tomorrow, since you are a vital member of this one earth family.

 

Jai Ma,

Parvati

Ask Parvati Finale: The Miracle of Nature's Healing - Part 6: Nature's Perfect Love

(Continued from “Everything Must Die to Be Reborn”)

 

We are the planet. When the Earth cries, so do we. When she moves, so do we. We are carried by an inexplicable force that moves through our cells, that animates our souls, that literally keeps us alive.

 

Nature loves us in a way we cannot comprehend. We cannot comprehend it because it is not of our ego-mind, which knows only to divide and separate. By surrendering to Nature’s intelligence, I was called on the North Pole journey. By surrendering to Nature, I was also healed and experienced what doctors call “a miracle”.

 

To walk: we take it for granted. But it is a miracle. Through the injury, I saw how even the impulse to move is grace, a force beyond our ego. We think we are the doers, but the “me” does nothing. Grace always is, moving through us, even when we don’t see it. We think ourselves as divided, but we are literally one.

 

Healing only happens in the state of absolute surrender. When we think “we” are healing, we interfere. There is no doing. Because of the grace of free will, we can be amplifiers or sludge in Nature’s communication pathways. Nature will keep on singing, creating and evolving with or without us. It does not need our “help”. It needs our respect and service. We must reverentially get out of Nature’s way in order to fully thrive as a spiritual being in this material world.

 

There is no doubt in my mind that the body is a miracle. Life is a miracle. The very fact that we breathe – really think about it! It is miraculous.

 

I completely agree with the question sent this week that the body is designed to be healthy. But we must remember that it is not up to us to “make it” that way. We do our best. We show up and tend to its needs then get out of the way. The showing up is like going the gym and eating healthy. The getting out of the way is remaining in balance at the gym and not overdoing it, and not being attached to looking a certain way, but trusting that feeling of wholeness that is unique to each one of us.

 

What I have understood through my studies in sound healing is that the universe is fundamentally resonant and moves towards harmony. It does not move towards dissonance. (Refer to The World is Sound: Nada Brahma: Music and the Landscape of Consciousness, by Joachim Ernst Berendt). Just as the universe seeks harmony, so does the micro-universe of the body. The body is in a perpetual state of seeking homeostasis, a form of balance in this moment, as it is. Balance may not be to us what it is to Nature. Nature holds the bigger picture. We think healing may look one way, when Nature has another plan. We do not know Nature’s plan. Perhaps what we perceive as illness is a gift. We are subject to force so much greater than our will. We cannot see the whole picture, which is why the best attitude is surrender and reverence.

 

People get sick, but it is not necessarily a “bad” thing. In a product-driven society, sickness is seen as a weakness. But I was technically sick through most of last year, yet was contributing socially and went through profound growth at all levels. I was not really “unwell”. In some ways, I was never better. Yes, I experienced immense pain and was not mobile. But my body/spirit alignment needed to be re-patterned into a new relationship. Something had to change in order for that to happen.

 

We must let go of the old to make way for the new. Death is the beginning of life, just as life ends with death. My injury was the breaking point of one way of being and the birth of a new way. At a micro level, that happens all the time in our body, cells dying, new ones being born. We are constantly shifting and evolving.

 

In a healing state, there is no judgment about what is good or bad or right or wrong. It all just is. As the bio-dynamic osteopath would say, we are being held perfectly within the whole. The illness is being held within the whole. Remain there. If we get into thinking this illness is good or bad, a punishment, a burden that we must move, change, shift… then we are playing God, thinking we can see the whole picture and becoming divided once again. We see so little. We know so little. It is not up to us to know these things. We show up and get out of the way.

 

Through my recovery, I continually returned to a knowing that to heal, “I” don't do the healing. Nor do others do the healing. Healing happens through grace and grace alone. I, or a healer I am working with, may be a vehicle for grace, but healing does not come from “me” or any person.

I also knew through my entire recovery, with absolute certainty, that reality is plastic and therefore malleable. Physical form would change if it was divine will for that to happen and if I were to get out of the way. The universe moves towards harmony and wholeness, and so does the very force of life, so why not now and in this body?

I stayed with that image of plasticity constantly. I did several focused meditations and visualizations daily, knowing that physical form is just a conglomerate of dancing molecules, held together by specific thought forms, “my” thought forms, attachments that “I” have that make up “my” karma. So physical form is not solid or fixed. If I could rest in that field of possibility, then matter could change shape and flow into fuller wholeness – however that would look.

Though the process of healing is about me being present for it, to witness its grace, it is simultaneously about getting out of the way. And beyond whatever ability “I” may have to show up or get out of the way, ultimately the Divine holds the trump card. It was all about Divine Will, what grace had in store for me.

I had to find a place in my heart and soul that knew that whatever would happen would be in my highest good - whatever. If I were meant to be the performer in a wheelchair (I told the universe that there was no way I would give up singing and performing) then so it would be. I had to be equally ok with it all, while holding the possibility, without attachment, that I would walk again.

 

(Continued tomorrow with “Nature’s Masterful Healing”)

Ask Parvati Finale: The Miracle of Nature's Healing - Part 4: My Own Personal Tsunami

(Continued from Prayers Are Always Answered (Just Not The Way We May Think))

 

When the tsunami devastated Japan on March 11, 2011, I was severely hit in my own way. When the earthquake actually shook on the other side of the world, I was sound asleep. However, I woke up that morning having had a turbulent night riddled with nightmares and feeling shaken to my core, yet unsure why I felt this way. I got up to walk down the stairs to my meditation room, to find that my legs were not fully responsive and felt numb. The bones in my pelvis, too, felt thrown out of balance. I was in physical pain, and felt like a mess in my head. Out of nowhere, I felt broken and ill.

 

Through that morning blur, I pushed into my day to make it to the meetings I had with music executives, as I was in the middle of promoting my music and shows at an international music conference. I went to my appointments, getting in and out of cars by lifting my legs with my hands because for some reason they would not quite work. I figured the strangeness would suddenly pass, just as it had suddenly arrived.

 

Later that day, a friend of mine told me that the tsunami had hit Japan. Being so involved in the conference, I had not heard. The news echoed through my soul. I immediately felt that the pain I was experiencing in my pelvis and legs was connected to the shift in the planet’s tectonic plates in Japan. I felt that this was part of what the whale was teaching me.

 

As the topic of the tsunami inevitably arose at the music conference, I would spontaneously burst into tears with a sense of timeless interconnection. I had little control over my spine, my legs and my tear ducts. I was a mess.

 

This strange numbness increased over the next couple of days as I moved through to the end of the conference. Then suddenly – out of nowhere, just after I returned home - mind-altering pain shot through my spine. My mind went blank from sheer trauma. I could not move my spine or my legs at all.

 

When one is assaulted by overwhelming pain, the conscious mind dissolves. I do not fully remember the details that followed. What I do remember is that a blood-curdling scream caused my partner to come running.

 

My partner took me by my arms and tried to carry me, while I was screaming in excruciating pain, to my bed. I would remain there for nearly three months, unable to get up even for the most basic things. Doctors gave a medical diagnosis and asked if I had been in a car accident. I said I had not experienced any actual physical impact. I was given a 50-50 chance of walking again, and spinal surgery was recommended for the immense trauma in my lower spine.

 

In my core, I did not believe that was the way for my healing. So I dove deeply into myself and surrendered to life force (God, Spirit, whatever you want to call it) as I had never done before. Other than a couple of friends who carried me weekly on a spine board for healing visits with a gifted biodynamic osteopath, I told no one. Deep inside my inner healing cave I went.

 

(Continued tomorrow with “Everything Must Die to Be Reborn”)

Ask Parvati Finale: The Miracle of Nature's Healing - Part 3: Prayers Are Always Answered (Just Not The Way We May Think)

(Continued from “Following The Call to Nature Co-Creation”)

 

When I was at the top of the world, I did some shamanic healing work on the planet, while the sacred Hindu 1000 names of the Goddess were being chanted – all as a gratitude offering for the benefic bounty of our Mother Earth. Then I quietly prayed with all my heart and said to the planet herself something like, “Mother, I know you are suffering. If there is any way I can help, if I can help alleviate your burden in some way, let me know.” And that was that.

 

A shamanic ritual can be likened to a portal being opened, a window into larger sight that provides an ability to see beyond the lens of our habitual self. And seeing something larger is what I did.

 

In the months that followed the ritual, I had a very intense time trying to integrate the immensity of suffering I saw in our world: the way we resist the exquisite joy of being here; the way we hold onto pain and make it “mine”; the way millions all over the world suffer from not having very basic needs met; the way those with so much squander their gifts and take for granted the bounty. I cried for weeks, not because I was particularly “sad”. I was in shock from what I saw and felt, and I was grieving. My heart was breaking open to a whole new reality.

 

A couple of months after I returned from the Arctic, that phase of grief started to subside. I felt more integrated so I thought that my life was going to return to normal and I could resume the musical tour I had put aside for the North Pole journey. But the emotional shift I was experiencing was just the tip of a huge iceberg I had hit up against. The crack in my heart and soul and the fissure that was bringing in new information into my consciousness was just beginning to open. The whale had not completed its teachings and my prayers to help alleviate the planet’s suffering were still floating in the ethers. What happened next I would never have imagined possible.

 

(Continued tomorrow with “My Own Personal Tsunami”)

Ask Parvati Finale: The Miracle of Nature's Healing - Part 2: Following The Call to Nature Co-Creation

(Continued from “The Secret”)

If you have been following my blog entries, you will know that I have always had a natural, strong connection to the planet Earth, to Nature as a whole and to unseen energies that are always with us – the spiritual forces that have a lot more to do with our day to day living than most people care to realize. I am by far not alone in being sensitive to such. Many people are, and are acutely aware that our planet, a living organism, is going through a healing, a shedding, a purification that is affecting us all, because we are also literally part of the planet.

During the summer of 2010, I felt I had to do more to help raise awareness of our planetary interconnection, our need for conscious awakening and our ecological responsibility. So by the fall, I was on my way to the North Pole to help raise awareness of the melting polar ice. I do not feel I so much wanted to go, as I was inwardly called to go. A voice within spoke so clearly. This is what I was meant to do. Some inner voices come from the voice of our soul, while others from spiritual guides that help mark our way. Perhaps, at some level, there is no need to distinguish between the two. Except here, I could say that I felt neither. I felt the call from the planet herself.

Without knowing, without desire and without seeking, I now understand and can admit to myself that I have walked, as a contemporary woman, the classical path of the traditional shaman, who through his own inner healing, awakens to a much larger picture of our human experience and our place within the cosmos. It is a path that rests in a co-creative relationship with a powerful force that creates all we see in Nature, of which we are an integral part. Through this journey, one that I never consciously sought, I have been guided both in the seen realm by synchronous meetings and guides appearing in many forms, and by teachings appearing in my dream space and through the unseen. Animals, dolphins and whales in particular, have also appeared, carrying teachings that I needed to learn.

A dream the night before I left for the North Pole adventure (not uncommon, but notable), was of a great blue whale below the ice at the top of the world. The whale knew I was coming. It also completely understood the message I was to carry and the work I would do there. Though I did not know it then, I could say now that it was that whale that guided my journey to the Arctic and my healing that would follow.

The Bering Strait Inuit myths say that the spirit and life force of the whale is that of a young woman. "Her home is the inside of the whale, her burning lamp its heart. As the young woman moves in and out of the house doorway, so the giant creature breathes." (History of Tattooing in the Arctic by Lars Krutak). That is how I felt: a whale inside my true nature was being born, giving voice and taking me over.

(Continued tomorrow with “Prayers Are Always Answered (Just Not The Way We May Think)”)

North Pole Retrospective - Part 1

Dear Friends,
One year ago today, my living room was strewn with backpacks, performance costumes and Arctic gear. I was preparing to head to the North Pole where I was to perform my songs dressed as my character Natamba to help raise awareness of the melting polar ice. It was a huge trip for me both personally, in the inner transformation it inspired, and socially, through the people I met along the way and the bonds that were formed. Please join me through the coming week as I contemplate and review this very important time in my life and the amazing things that flowered from this journey.

A year ago tonight was the night before we left:

How do you pack for a journey you have never taken, to a landscape that is dangerous, inhospitable and very, very cold? Thankfully, many people have come together to donate warm woolies, down sleeping bags, snowsuits and technical gear.Value Village had some used snowmobile boots that fit. Luckily we were able to get some expert advice from videographers who have shot in the kind of conditions we are expecting, anywhere between -15C to -25C. We need to be prepared for things like battery life depleting very quickly in the cold and gear freezing. Even our video camera needs a special Arctic snowsuit...

Ask Parvati 19: What Is Home? Part 3, Inner and Outer Home

 

WHAT IS HOME? PART 3: INNER AND OUTER HOME

(Continued from What Is Home? Part 2: Home In Meditation and Music)

 

 

If April is the cruelest month, then July is the most gracious. Out in my back garden, I look up to the canopy of leaves of a large maple tree that stands guardian at the back of my house. The sky that peeks through is cloudless and as blue and open as the sea. (Maybe this world is upside down and the ocean is really up there and the sky bordered with sand.)

 

The golden sunlight that shimmers through the fluttering leaves feels like the passing thoughts that trickle through my mind. The scent of the juniper bushes near my resting place is sweet, rich and moist. Water in the fountain splashes into the pond. The water flows like the continual, rhythmic flow of my breath. Birds and baby squirrels keep stopping by to check me out. We connect for a moment until they flutter off. Children’s voices, chirping birds, distant whizzing cars and my neighbour’s murmuring music create a symphony of sounds. This moment feels immense, vast and perfectly home.

 

When I was a child, I felt an inner restlessness. The voice within spoke of something more than what I saw brought others temporary happiness. I found joy in singing, through writing music and creating art. I felt alive in connecting with nature and communing with what I now simply call “the unseen”. I always had a sense that there was more than the material. I wanted to touch it, rest into it and be it – whatever that “it” was.

 

The church I went to called “it” God. To me “it” was everywhere, in the very fabric of life. I feel like it touched “it” and found in it a tremendous sense of home when I was recently in the Arctic traveling a few months ago to the North Pole. I went to sing at the top of the world to help raise awareness of the melting polar ice caps. There I also offered healing and prayers to the planet, our mother Earth, the vibrant living being that sustains us all, that is our home.

 

The feeling of singing at the top of the world remains impressed in me, like a tattoo on my soul. In the midst of the infinitely still desert of crystalline snow dusted over the icy ocean I stood upon, I felt as though the whole world was my home and an attentive audience, quietly listening. As I opened my arms, heart and throat to sing, I felt the world was in my body and I was the world. There was immense quiet, a profound presence and aliveness. The Inuit people I met en route seemed to embody that Arctic quiet wisdom. Being with them and traveling there ignited the spark of a baby Inuit in me. In the Arctic desert, I felt home.

 

I have been quite nomadic for most of my adult life - traveled a lot, seen the world, and enjoyed many varied cultures. As I have learned to “think turtle”, as my last blog discussed, I have learned how to find home wherever I may be, inspired by the turtle that carries its home on its back.

 

At first, home was literally my backpack in which I carried my necessities. But I have learned to put my pack down now and lessen the load I carry. Who is “doing” anyway? As my teacher says, when on a traveling train, why still hold onto your luggage? The train is my life, and I am carried by Life, supported by all that is. I let go.

 

We are in constant motion both metaphorically and literally as vibrant beings. I also move a lot as I travel to tour my music. Being so mobile, I learn to surrender to what is and to serve what is right in front of me. My sense of home now comes from my state of internal being. Not as attached to what is happening on the outside, I see life as receiving me. This moment, like a mother, is waiting at the family home door with open arms.

 

I have traveled outwardly through our colourful world. I have also traveled inwardly through my mind, heart and soul as I explore art and music, and as I develop through my spiritual practices. In some ways I could say that I have traveled both internal and external landscapes searching for a deeper meaning of home. Through loving, sharing, expressing and meditating, I have found a deeper, spiritual meaning of home, one that transcends geography and taps into the transpersonal and timeless, one that exists in the “vertical hour”.

 

(Continues tomorrow with What Is Home? Part 4: Home In The Vertical Hour)

 

Ask Parvati 17: Standing Your Ground, Part 4: Yoga, Ground, Rebound

PART FOUR: Yoga, Ground, Rebound

 

(Continued from: Witness, Release)

 

The practice of yoga has been one of my great teachers. Through various yogic techniques, I have been shown how to be more comfortable within my body, more present in the moment and more aware of how this sense of individual self is one within a greater whole.

 

Each yoga asana (pose) offers a precise and unique way to learn how energy flows through our body/being. Specifically designed to encourage the flow of vital, life-force energy in certain directions, yoga asana can teach us how to live rooted, vital and expansive, meeting what is with grace and ease.

 

As we allow ourselves to relax, our body settles into the ground and our vital energy naturally moves downward toward the Earth. If we are quietly watching at that time, we begin to realize that there is an equally strong presence that meets and supports us, rising up under our feet, moving energy upward and into our body. It is as if when we ground, there is an energy rebound. I first came into contact with this concept thanks to wonderful yoga teaching of the late Esther Myers and her teacher Vanda Scaravelli. The insights they shared pointed to elements in what would later become my yogic expression, YEM: Yoga as Energy Medicine.

 

For me, there are two zero points in yoga, one horizontal, one vertical. They are the foundations upon which other poses are build, points of reference we can consider as we move through more complex physical sequences. The horizontal zero point is called in Sanskrit savasana or corpse pose. It consists of lying on your back, feet about one foot apart and arms alongside the body.

 

The vertical zero point is called tadasana or the mountain pose. Let’s give it a try. Standing erect, feet hip width apart, which means you have the distance of one of your feet between your feet. Your knees are neither locked nor bent, simply relaxed. Let your navel move gently back towards the spine. The tailbone tilts slightly inward towards the front of your body so that it releases like a plumb line towards the Earth. Your eyes are fixed on a point in front of you, as the crown of the head broadens and floats gently upward towards the sky. Shoulders are relaxed.

 

Breathe in. Breathe out. Allow your awareness of your breath to deepen, allowing your breath to be natural, not forced. Notice what you feel in your body. Imagine that your spine is the central channel of energy that runs through your body/being. It connects the sky and the earth through you.

 

Scan your body. Where do you hold tension in your body? Where do you feel relaxed? Can you allow yourself to continue to open, to release, to feel a flow within a whole? Let your feet root and settle into the ground. Feel the energy move downward, towards the core of the Earth. Feel your feet.

 

Notice the crown of your head. Let it float, effortlessly, upward. Feel your connection to the cosmos, the whole. As your feet release into the ground, the Earth meets you and a wave of energy flows up through your body towards the crown of your head.

 

Allow the connection between your feet and your head become a whole, so that you are rooted in the awareness of your physical sensations, the energy the flows through your body and you are aware more globally of you sense of place within the whole. Feel within. Feel without. Feel the flow between the inner and the outer and let these become one.

 

Practice this when you are standing in line at the supermarket, at the bus stop. Whenever you are standing, you can practice finding your sacred ground. That way, the next time you feel you have to stand your ground, you will be rooted both within yourself and within the whole. You will feel your own sense of worth from your connection to the eternal cosmos, rather than willfully from your finite ego. You will see the temptation to react as a teaching from the divine, offering you lessons to deepen your awareness as the infinite being that you are.

 

May you dance in the infinite upon sacred ground.

Parvati

Ask Parvati 17: Standing Your Ground, Part 2: Standing Sacred Ground

PART TWO: STANDING SACRED GROUND

(Continued from: Fathers Lead Us Into The World)

Fathers teach us how to make the lives we want. Our mothers teach us how to feel. The feminine principle teaches us surrendered receptivity, learning to flow within the whole. Cradled within the big picture and the spiritual presence of the cosmos, we learn that our own voice is a valuable and integral part of the whole.

The male principle teaches us surrendered action, learning the whole within the flow. Rooted in a healthy sense self, our fathers must teach us about the whole, the way we fit into the universe. But what is that whole? From a worldly perspective, it is institutions, organized religions, big business, government and corporations. From a spiritual perspective, it is the notion that we are not temporal beings, but one with eternal consciousness temporarily living within finite form.

When we feel attacked, we tend to defend, because we feel attached to the idea of mine. Yet, the idea of mine only exists when we feel separate from the whole. I am not suggesting that healthy boundaries should not exist. On the contrary, it is only from the vantage point of a healthy sense of self that we can begin to feel the confidence to let go of the grip of our ego, the tendency of our mind to divide. Healthy self-esteem, self-love and self-confidence are not born out of feeling separate, but from a sense of our sacred place within the whole.

When we stand our ground, we are not asked to defend our sense of attacked self. In truth, there is no-thing to defend. When we truly stand our ground, we are rooted in the sacred. We are aware of the flow within the whole and the whole within the flow. We are rooted in our truth. We see our truth within the context of the situation. We are open to the wisdom of the whole that arises from within our gut, in our hearts, in our being in each moment.

Let’s look again at the relationship between our feet and the ground. If we were asked how we walk, we would say, likely that we don’t know and give a quick answer that we just put one foot in front of the other. We again, could all agree that is how walking happens. Or is it? What is it that walks? What is it that creates the impulse to move? What force moves through us to walk, to stand, to breathe, to speak, to think, to be?

All that is exists because of grace. All that transpires and continues on does so because of grace. Our job is to stop trying to control, to distort things to suit our ego and get out of the way so that we may witness our interconnection within the divine play. In this, profound joy arises and we experience freedom beyond anything we could possible conjure or buy.

We are attached to “mine” at the expense of our fuller, truer self. We are attached to feeling attacked at the expense of what is. I learned from experience, with a little help years ago from the Opossum card I kept pulling from David Carson’s medicine deck, that sometimes the best defense is no defense. In this way, we avoid getting caught up in the drama of life and learn to deepen our practice witnessing, in non-resistance, what is.

When you next feel that you need to stand your ground, see if you can remain open, relaxed, rooted and expansive. From this vantage point, remember that things are not “happening to you”. You are no victim but are perfectly supported and are given all you need in each moment to perfectly learn. From this vantage point, watch your reactions rise and fall away.

If you feel confronted by someone, watch what that person is doing, as though you were watching a cloud move through the sky. “Yes. There it is. So it is.” See that person as he or she is. How is he tense, scared, honest, loving, brave? Can you feel the goodness within the other in this moment, speaking through him to you? Is he really against you or is he offering you an opportunity to see a much bigger picture and live rooted in that reality?

(Continues tomorrow: Witness, Release)

Ask Parvati 17: Standing Your Ground, Part 1: Fathers Lead Us Into The World

Ask Parvati 17: STANDING YOUR GROUND

Dear Parvati,

Lately the term “standing your ground” has been sounding in my ears a lot. I am trying to make sense of this, as I feel that it can connote a sort of defiance, which does not resonate with what I am discovering for myself in my yoga practice. What do you think when you hear the term “standing your ground”?

PART ONE: FATHERS LEAD US INTO THE WORLD

Happy Father’s Day! Today I celebrate the inner male within all, whether you are a man or a woman, whether you have children or not.

Our fathers teach us how to go out in the world, equipped with the sense of capability to make the lives we want. Their strength and confidence in us inspires us to believe that we can achieve what we put our minds to accomplish. If mothers teach us about our inner world, showing us how to feel safe and loved as we are, fathers lead us into the outer world, with the confidence and ability to flourish within society. Whether or not we had the parents we wanted, as we evolve, we learn to internalize the positive attributes of both the male and female energies so that we may live in fulfilled balance.

Commonly we see our ability to act in the world as a reflection of a strong sense of personal identity. We are encouraged to believe that we are capable, so that we can accomplish what we set out to do. We are told that if we are fixed strongly enough in our sense of self, like a mini Fort Knox, we are able to stay intact in the face of all external adversity. The notion of capability is essential for living a healthy, fulfilled life. But happiness rests on more than the sense that we can do what we want to do.

THE GROUND BENEATH OUR FEET

We stand on solid earth. The ground beneath us feels thick, deep and strong. We speak of standing our ground when we feel shaken by adversity or attack. We stand our ground to defend what feels like our own, to lay claim to territory and our sense of propriety.

Most of us take millions of steps every day. One foot goes automatically in front of the other as we go from point A to point B. Yet we tend to take each step for granted. Each step is a relationship between our body and our planet. If we paused for a moment and asked ourselves, we might describe that relationship as a force we apply into the ground so that we can stand.

When we go deeper and explore the relationship between our feet and the Earth, we see that there is a co-creative relationship at play. Go ahead. Give it a try. Leave your computer now and go for a slow walk around your room. See what you notice between your body, your feet and the ground. How do your feet contact the floor? What dynamic is at play? What is the relationship between your feet and the ground?

Did you do it? If yes, we likely could all agree that as you place your feet on the ground, there is a force that presses from the weight of your body into the ground.

Now give the exercise another go. This time, go deeper. What else is going on?

If you become quiet, you will see that there is also a force that arises from the ground to perfectly meet the weight you apply. It is like the force of the planet knows with calculated anticipation where you will step and what you need for each step to feel solid and complete. It is like there is a safety net under each step, rebounding your weight right back up through your legs, through your spine and up and out the crown of your head.

See if you can sense that perfection in each step. Go ahead. Give it another try. Slow down your walking and see what you feel. Do you feel the unconditional, loving embrace of the world in each step, offering perfect support? Breathe it in and know you are perfectly loved. You are love.

(Continues tomorrow: Standing Sacred Ground)

North Pole Journey: Epilogue

A week after my return: Friday, October 7, 2010



COMING TO OUR SENSES



It has been about a week since I have been back from the North Pole. Though I’ve slept well these past days, I feel very tired and strangely, I think I feel something like culture shock. My heart is heavy having seen even more clearly and palpably the effect of human ignorance. Yet there is new life being born in me beneath the undeniable process of grieving I am experiencing. Perhaps that baby Inuit I felt wiggling in my soul while in the Arctic is shape-shifting into a wiser, more compassionate self. Though my eyes these days are continual fountains that do not run dry, my chest feels like a chrysalis bursting into freedom. The force moving through me feels like the power of Life itself. As I evolve, I am charged with an even stronger pull to wake up and inspire positive growth for all.



I know that when my heart breaks, I have a choice. It can either break to close down or it can break open. I feel my heart is breaking open after seeing a much bigger picture of the ecological crisis than I previously knew existed. This week doing the media circuit, people seem interested in the problem, but also bound by the perception of helplessness and disconnect. I know my tears are my own, yet I feel acutely aware of the pain of the planet. This may sound grandiose, but it is true: the pain I feel feels like the pain of the world. There I was at the North Pole, praying to be a vehicle for transformative healing for the living Earth and for all beings, offering myself completely to Her. I understand that the spiritual purge I am going through now is the result of the prayers I did from the bottom of my heart at the top of the world asking that our world may be free from all interference. I am part of the world, literally. Resistance to life in the form of fear, judgment, anger, shame…all those painful emotions that disconnect me from my truest beauty, adds weight to my health and well being and also to that of the Earth.



We use this expression commonly: to feel the pain of the world. But when we say that, we mean the pain of the people on the Earth, but not the pain of the planet itself. Yet, the people who live on it are also made of it. I understand now within my very cells that there is no pain in the world that Nature itself does not feel. We speak about being one people, interconnected. Yet we are also intricately connected and interdependent with the living earth as a conscious being.



I knew before going that the planet is in trouble. What I saw at the North Pole makes me even more aware of how big the problem is. Unanimously, elders, healers, politicians, hunters, pilots, environmental activists, scientists shared the same message: the ice is melting very quickly, the animals are dying and people must stop polluting. The winds carry our pollution to the Arctic. People there are experiencing what we will see soon. This is serious and we must take action now.



What my heart is teaching me is that the environmental crisis is a gift to learn to connect more deeply. It is like the call from the planet, our mother, teaching us, yet again (as a mother would), how we must grow up and become wiser and more compassionate beings. She shows us that we are all connected because when we act in a disconnected manner, life dies and so do we. What I do affects you. What you do affects me. What we all do affects the planet. We are not isolated islands but one Earth family.



Through this process of potential awakening, I see that there are two levels of change we are being called to implement. One is external and one is internal. They inform each other. Externally, we must reduce CO2 emissions. This is not new. We have known that for some time now. But it is more urgent than ever. There is a saying that what we resist persists. Similarly what we avoid gets bigger until we must give it due attention. It is like life drops a tiny feather on our shoulder to remind us to wake up, then a pebble, then a stone. Finally a huge grand piano comes crashing down on our head to help us wake up. I see the natural disasters like the ice caps melting, the Tsunamis, what happened in Haiti and Pakistan as the grand piano. We can be easily complacent in Canada and other developed countries because we have not yet personally experienced these horrors where we live. It is happening “over there”. It may well take people turning on their taps and seeing purple water before everyone understands that there is a global ecological crisis and we must change. I do hope not.



Yes, we must plant trees, turn off lights and electrical devices when not in use, conserve water and take shorter showers; look for alternative transportation to cars, such as car pooling or taking the public transport. Beyond these external things, I believe we are spiritually called to awaken to realize we are part of a much bigger whole. When we begin to see that each decision we make, we don’t make for ourselves alone but that we affect everyone on the planet, we naturally begin to act with more compassion. When we have more compassion, turning off the lights when not in use, or riding a bike becomes more natural. We realize the full impact of our actions.



The realization of our interconnection inspires personal responsibility and transformation. That in turn creates global change. We must realize that we are connected and what one person does affects everyone and the planet. We all breathe the same air and live on the same living organism. Varied in race and creed, we are one Earth family, children of the same mother, our planet. On this Earth, there are wonderfully rich cultures, races, creeds that are like a beautiful tapestry window dressing. Let’s look through the window and welcome the light of possibility, of interconnection into our lives.



I wrote on Satish’s fabric, “we are wealthy when our world is healthy”. I believe the ecological crisis is happening now as a call to change, not because we can’t, but because we can. We can meet this as a powerful opportunity for tremendous personal and global transformation.



I am so grateful to all who have supported this North Pole journey. It has been so very graced. May we continue to wake up, connect to ourselves and to each other and realize our true nature. Mall beings be free of suffering.

With Grace, may it be so.



Parvati

North Pole Journey - Day Seven

Day Seven: Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Performance at Inuksuk High School IQALUIT

We fly back to Toronto today, but first, we have one last stop. I am scheduled to perform and Satish will present his fabric at Iqaluit's Inuksuk High School at 11am. It is already 8am. We must check out of the hotel and head up the hill for my sound check, costume change and walk through the show in a space I have not yet seen. Satish has a few personal pieces to tend to and encourages us to go ahead. He knows it takes me an hour and a half just to get into costume.

Our taxi pulls up to a large, electric blue building that looks like a large block of Lego, marked only by a few small, circular windows. The day has already begun for students. The halls are empty as we walk towards the administration offices to check in. I feel a sense of familiarity here. I remember this, the feeling of hormones and agitation in the air, the tension between the students feeling “I really don’t care but I have to be here” and “this is where my best friends hang” – and the teachers doing the best they can in jobs that are not easy.

Sunanda and I are shown into my makeshift dressing room, a small office that appears to be the guidance counselor’s office. The bookshelves are lined with information about birth control methods and tools for teenage pregnancy and parenting techniques. Here Sunanda begins to unpack the costume elements as I join Rishi for sound check.

Rishi is in the auditorium with two drama students. They are doing their best to tweak the sound system so that my music fills the space and feels juicy. I walk over to sing into the mic. There I tweak some knobs and bring to life a mixer covered in dust, with hidden magic elements these students knew nothing about. We are in better technical shape than I had thought. This will go over well. The sound is good.

I head back to the dressing room where Sunanda and I launch into transforming me into the mythic creature Natamba. The drama teacher has told us that her students are really excited about the show, since she told them I am a cross between Lady Gaga and Madonna.

The school bell rings and triggers a Pavlovian response in me. A feeling of excitement and freedom surges through my body. The halls fill with noisy, boisterous, vibrantly alive students who emerge from small rooms. Soon the auditorium is flooded with dynamic bodies full of the very hormones I felt pulsating through the halls when I first walked in. I peek out of my dressing room door and see a room agitated and full of energy. This is fabulous. I am ready.

The lights go out and Rishi walks on. He announces my presence and shares a brief introduction to the meaning of my trip. I walk through the cheer and break into song. The crowd is generous, palpable and vital.

After my four songs, I call over the mic for Satish, who I had not seen since morning. In the dark room, he had been patiently waiting through my performance in the front row of the auditorium. He walks onto the stage and together we unveil his fabric, explaining his mission. The auditorium is silent as the students are glued to his presentation.

Then we open a dialogue and welcome questions. The one I get the most is about the wig and costume. This is never dull, especially now with this spontaneous wig creation on my head made of recycled mayonnaise lids! It’s a great green promo piece, I joke. Satish is asked about the breadth of his travels and where he goes next. The kids are clearly inspired by our presence and shout out “great work!” and “keep going!”. This is why we have come: to touch, to inspire, to heal, and to transform. Another success as we come to the end of our North Pole journey.

As I walk off stage, CBC TV is waiting. A producer had come to televise the show and now wants to ask questions. I love the feeling of being able to reach and touch many people through the media. We live in a blessed age where distance does not matter.

Rishi is busy redirecting various teenagers that surround us. As I leave the CBC interview, students ask for my autograph. The many faces show differing stories but all have the light of hope in their eyes.

I peel myself away from the group and slip back into the dressing room. Our flight leaves in just over an hour. Sunanda helps me get out of costume as quickly as possible and we hastily make our way into a cab.

HOMEWARD BOUND

This time however, we are not all going the same direction. Just as we came separately to Resolute Bay, now we go our separate ways. Satish is on his way to Ottawa while we go home to Toronto. After this adventure of a lifetime and working in such close camaraderie, sharing the common vision to serve our planet, leaving Satish is hard. We make sure he is safely on his flight and then run to ours.

Just as our trip started barely making it to our flight Northbound, we now return home barely making it onto this flight. When we left home, our delay getting to the plane was due to the amount of tasks we had to prepare for a completely unknown experience in a very short time. Perhaps too, it was an expression of some fear of the possibility of death we could meet in the journey. Now, the tight timeline to get to our flight feels like a result of us trying to savour every last morsel of this adventure of a lifetime.

Nunavut, we will greatly miss you. Your story moved us to come to the top of the world. Now, your story is part of our own personal story. Each one of us carries within us new-found love for the Inuit, deeper love for our planet, our Mother Earth and growing gratitude for the power of friendship. Individually we are strong. But together we are One Earth family.

North Pole Journey, Day Six

Day Six: Tuesday, September 28, 2010

BACK TO IQALUIT

Satish, Sunanda, Rishi and I greet this, our last day in Resolute Bay, before sunrise. Out the breakfast room window, the wind blows powdered snow across the rocky ground and out over the frozen Arctic Ocean where yesterday we walked on icebergs. Today the sky is cloudy, still darkened by the remains of the night. Our bags are packed, awaiting us at the front door of the inn so that we may catch an early flight to Iqaluit today, en route back to Toronto. Tonight we will rest in Iqaluit, Nunavut territory’s capital city and largest community located on the south coast of Baffin Island at the head of Frobisher Bay.

We say our goodbyes to Chris at the inn, then Meghan at the airport who drives us to our departure. There is no doubt we are sad to leave. This has been an enormously important trip for each one of us, the likes of which seems still masked by a cloudy feeling that draws across my inner sight. I cannot quite see the magnitude of what this all means. All I know for sure is, like a child who marks their growth with lines on the inside of a doorjamb, the growth of my Self is marked on the doorjamb of my life by this trip to the North Pole.

The flight, which left the ground at 6:30am, is relatively uneventful. It retraces our Northbound steps, now moving back over land that we saw just a short time ago with the miracle of virgin eyes. Today’s clouds partially masks the view of the geographic magnitude we were privy to witness on the way up. Despite the cloud, I can still very much feel the expansive, harsh rock and ice that rolls out in broad, carved strokes below me. This is the land of the Inuit people where humans have survived for thousands of years. Like a child that intuitively knows its mother, I feel a connection to this part of the world, our Mother Earth, as though within me a baby Inuit soul is being born. I understand fully how I heard Her call that drew me on this journey. I am connected to the planet, to these people, to all people through my humanity, through my reliance on this majestic planet’s selfless generosity for my very survival.

The 6000-plus populated Iqaluit, by comparison to the Resolute Bay community of 200, seems like a booming metropolis. But still, the modern buildings are laid out over rough roads and sidewalks, which lend some insight into what perhaps most cities were like in early inception. Founded in 1942 as an American airbase, Iqaluit, meaning "place of many fish" in Inuktitut, is a young city.

As we arrive at the new Nova Inn, we are told that there are no rooms left to accommodate our needs. Somehow Sunanda creates magic and soon we are up in our room. The day is yet young, so we head out for a planned meeting at the Elder Centre. It is I in particular who wants to visit with the Inuit elders to hear what they have witnessed in environmental changes, to learn from their insights, to see if there is a way we can serve them and in so doing, serve the Earth.

WISDOM FROM THE ELDERS

A bilingual, middle-aged Inuit woman greets the four of us at the Center. She is our translator. Most of the elders speak only Inuktitut. Some of these people are over 100 years old.

The large, bright room with a bay window at one end is filled with perhaps people, mostly women, who sit at tables and chairs playing cards, conversing and sharing time. Rishi asks if he is allowed to videotape our visit. We are given permission.

Two women, perhaps eighty or so, become spokes people for the group. They share stories about the enormous changes they have seen over the course of their lifetime, illustrating how snow used to be pure white but is now dark, dirty and yellowed. They speak of life living off the land and how they now no longer live in igloos but in built houses. They share stories from their grandfathers, how their elders saw the coming of the white people and how they would bring this environmental change.

These elders say they have hope, that is, hope for their children. They see the Inuit children now more educated and as such, with more ability to deal with the environmental problems. For them, the future depends on the health and strength of the children.

Satish reaches into his jute bag to pull out his eco-silk fabric message, dedicated to children. Sunanda and I help open it up and walk around the edges of the room so that the elders can see the many signatures from around the world it showcases. We talk about Satish’s work and share the reasons we have come to the North Pole. I share how my music is dedicated to helping people remember the good of life, awakening to who we are, how we are all interconnected as one human family. I am asked to sing, so I spontaneously choose “You Gotta Believe”, a song I wrote on 9-11 and had the privilege to sing in New York City at the world famous Madison Square Garden. As the sound pours out of my mouth, I feel my whole body shiver with waves of energy moving through. I am reminded and humbled yet again that there is a force here that is so much greater than our limited selves can see.

SPEAKING AT THE CITY COUNCIL MEETING

The next meeting that Sunanda organized for us is with City Councilor Simon Nattaq. We make our way over to the government building. Shaking Simon’s hand is like touching the strength of the Earth. Like Sam the hunter who brought us yesterday out to the ocean icebergs, Simon feels made of the land itself. This is not a feeling I have had shaking any other politicians hand. I soon find out that Simon is not only a politician, but a respected elder in the community. A government employee translates Simon’s native tongue Inuktitut into English and our words into Inuktitut.

Satish and I speak of our mission to help awaken people to the necessity of understanding our interconnection, how we are all children of the same Mother, the planet Earth. Simon is open to this message and warm to our communication. We spend a generous half hour together. He signs Satish’s fabric in traditional Inuktitut geometric writing. His penmanship stands unique among other signatures in various languages on the electric-green silk.

We are offered a place to speak at the City Council Meeting today. At the meeting, Satish and I individually step to the microphone and each share the call of our parallel missions. As I speak, I watch the Inuit women on the board resonate with my words:

I am not a scientist who works in external laboratories. I have no clinical evidence to prove the agitation that is in Nature at this time. I am an artist. My laboratory is within. Through my inner, quiet, contemplative practice and meditation, I have felt called from within from the Earth herself to make this journey. We are one Earth family, all inter-connected through Nature, our Mother Earth.

Being a singer, songwriter and performer, what I can offer is my voice. I am here to help give voice to the environment and bring with me a message from the North. Being in the media, I am in a position to help raise awareness of the melting polar ice in people all around the world, many of whom are disconnected from Nature and are unaware of the role we each play as Earth Walkers. I am here to be present with you, to connect, to listen, to honour your ways, to respect those that are acutely aware of our interconnection with Nature. The reason we have come is to build a community of mutual trust and support. We know that only when we listen and work together can we bring about the change that is so urgently needed. I would like to hear from you if there is any way you feel we may serve you and our shared Earth.

The message from the council members echoes what we have heard unsolicited from the elders, hunters, healers, environmentalists and politicians: tell the south to stop polluting. The world’s pollution ends up in the North, at the top of our world. Nature is dying; the animals are leaving; and as such, we are suffering.

After our City Council talk, several young adults at the meeting who are part of Katimavik, an organization that educates Canadian youth through community involvement, come up to us to share how touched they are by our North Pole mission. Yes, hope is in the children. And this environmental crisis calls each one of us to make positive change in our own lives, in what we think, in how we treat ourselves, in how we listen to each other and in how we respect our planet. Yes, now more than ever, hope is born from awakened consciousness in all we do.

North Pole Journey: Day Four, Part Five - Healing at the Top of the Earth

 

Day Four: Sunday September 26, 2010

Part Five

HEALING HAPPENS IN THE UNSEEN

Healing work happens in the unseen. It is a process of becoming still and surrendered, enough so that we align with a much greater truth, beyond our limited ego or will. In that state, we move from a monochrome, black and white reality to what I call ‘hyper-real’, a tapestry of technicolour possibilities and infinite, co-creative abundance.

I have been privy to extraordinary and exceptional grace over the years, witnessing profound beauty emerge and be born from this state. It seems that the breadth of our human potential goes largely untouched. In the compressed, me-me-me centered rush of our busy, self-absorbed lives, we unconsciously play out old stories we developed as children and from times now long gone.

Here, in this place of vast Arctic immensity, surrounded in all directions by kilometers of pristine, crisp, absolute white snow and ice, I am acutely aware of what most of us, as a human species, are missing: the magnitude and magnificence of this moment. Everything lies there within, a place of infinite potentiality, void of all wants, the fulfillment of our deepest longings, loves and desires.

Faced with this expanse, there is nothing I can do now but bow to the Supreme Consciousness that is beyond comprehension, that defies understanding. It is this compassionate and wise life force that permeates and pulsates through all living things – the force of our universe and beyond - that of which I am made.

The technicalities of our video shoot seem far in the past. As we return to our airplane, our pilots share good news. We do not need to pitch a tent on this frigid ice. While we were shooting the performance footage, they located a wind shelter, courtesy of Parks Canada, that we can use.

We move through the snow that lay between the plane and shelter with single-minded focus. We enter a small cabin that is surprisingly sound. Equipped with a butane stove to cut through the fierce chill, it is has solid flooring, walls and a roof. It seems that the angels continue to grace our mission to serve all beings and our planet Earth at the North Pole.

HEALING THE EARTH AT THE TOP OF THE WORLD

In monk-like quiet, Sunanda pulls out from beneath her Arctic wear a book that she, Rishi and I very much respect. It contains the Lalita Sahasranama, Sanskrit prayers to the Divine Mother. We have traveled over 3000 miles (5000 kilometres) to chant these ancient prayers and make this offering to the Earth at the top of the world. The Earth is our Mother. She provides us with life and sustains us. But now, due to human ignorance, she is in distress. May our offerings serve in some way to alleviate suffering for all.

Sunanda turns on a recording of a monk chanting these sacred words. She attentively joins in. Rishi and I enter deeply into a meditative state. This is a setting I can use, a gift I have had since I was a child. As one Vedic astrologer said to me, I have a very strong relationship with the unseen. With my eyes closed, and with no attachment or agenda other than to serve the highest good, I begin non-verbal communication with unseen presences, energies as alive as that which are in flesh. In this, a transformative process begins to unfold.

Feeling cradled by the penetrative sound of the Sanskrit chanting, I let go and expand. In this field of possibility, I become witness to a rearranging and clearing that takes place all around us that we cannot see. We are far from alone.

Just as the North Pole is a dumping ground for our world’s physical pollution, I now see that it is also a dumping ground for the psychic pollution in the thoughts of humanity. I watch as energies shift, move, clear, reveal and disappear. All of life is unfolding, arising and falling - first in the unseen, then in the seen.

As I allow my body to be a physical conduit for the Earth (matter from which this body is made) to the unseen (source from which I am), an alchemical process unfolds within the next two hours. As witness, I see first a clearing of the space, which include evicting a variety of energies, then opening a gateway for benevolent Cosmic Intelligence energies so they may provide healing support for the living organism, the Planet Earth.

From deep within this meditative state, I am shaken. The pilots summon my attention. We have at most 20 minutes until we must be on the plane to make it back safely.

Sunanda concludes her second round of the Lalita Sahasranama, the thousand names of the Divine Mother, as I begin to bring my full awareness back to the physical reality of this Earthly shelter. As I open my eyes, I see that my breath still creates frost, despite our little heater hard at work. My body is dusted with black soot from the camphor we have been burning continuously.

The pilots encourage us to the cabin door. It opens and reveals dusk light. We must make our way back to the plane and begin our journey across the British Empire mountain range over Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, heading southbound back to Resolute Bay. We still have a four-hour flight until we are back to safety.

Once on board our tiny sea otter plane, I feel elation. Surprisingly not exhausted by the already twelve-hour day in extreme conditions, all I see outside the plane window is Nature shining. It seems She is very pleased. I sense all of creation singing joyfully.

Though the sun was almost gone from view, hidden behind the Earth’s surface, the world, the universe, feels lighter, bright and more expansive. In the sky, on the journey here, a strange, sharp, sparkling, golden light seemed to follow us. When I looked at it then, all I could think was that it was angel Ariel supporting us, with us, present.

Now en route back, a similar otherworldly light fills the sky, this time surrounded by rainbow colours of the setting sun. It is clear to me that we have succeeded in this mission to support healing the planet. It is clear to me that this trip, from beginning to end, is Grace, orchestrated from far beyond, and so much bigger than us all.