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I write this after I just officialy sent out my request for donations to private donors to raise a whopping $5,000 for my airfare and lodging as I take my Masters in Expressive Arts in Conflict Transformation and Peace building in Switzerland this July. I can only be grateful for the full tuition scholarship they have given me.
I know I could have acted on it two weeks earlier when I got my formal letter of acceptance to have a good lead for preparations prior to my Shengen visa interview this June but it was just too hard. I was crippled in fear, self doubt, feelings of unworthiness of this beautiful gift. I took time to reflect and process. What is my true value? Why am I given these gifts?
I was given two other beautiful gifts recently too: an invitation to be part of BuildaBridge’s International Advisory Council and an invitation to work for an international organization that could allow me to work directly with communities I wish to work with around Asia and the Pacific.
I was stunned. I just stared at my computer reading emails from these wonderful people providing me beautiful opportunities.
It was scary.
I was scared of receiving gifts! How terrible is that?!
So I had to really wait it out, release, and ask for guidance.
Before, I used to rush and panic and purge out all the possibilities to manifest something. And boy did I get to... but sometimes at the cost of something - perhaps a missed deadline or a stressed out immune system. I get an overall high wide awake and not able to channel my energy of the AT LAST! Mode, then plunge down off the cliff once I can't keep up with the adrenalin rush.
Now I consciously try to manifest in a new way. I am learning the feminine power of co-creating with the sacred and letting the universe unfold through me.
Of course, I'm still learning.
But I know this now, I will no longer do anything if my energy is not aligned with it.... if the spirit doesn't move me to do it.
During my waiting out period, I was inspired to write to the people who inspire me to do my work. I shared my thoughts and dreams to Leah Tolentino, a sacred dancer and ritualist with whom I am staying with. She heads a non-profit called GINHAWA (Growth in Wholeness and Well-being Associates) and is teaching Creation Spirituality at for the Phd Program of Applied Cosmic Anthropology at the Asian Social Institute.
When I see him online, I chat with my very good friend Karie Garnier, a Canadian artist and photographer who teaches vision questing and water cure. He is the founder of Our Elders Speak Wisdom Society, which promotes the wisdom and heritage of Native Americans. (Both Leah and Karie are like my parents from another life. (I secretly wish they would come together :-) )
I wrote to Vijali of the World Wheel Project as I have been wanting to connect with her for years. I wrote to Dominique Mazeaud who is a ceremonialist and ritualist. She added me as a friend and gave me encouragement on my work through an arts network site before. Lastly, I wrote to Dr. Elizabeth Lindsey of theMapping the Human Story project. I blogged about watching her talk online before and I felt it wouldn’t hurt to connect and just share presence.
Sharing presence. That’s it. I just wanted to share presence with these people I greatly admire.
I didn’t write to ask for anything but I wrote to tell them my current life intention.
My current intention is to work with local wisdom and culture bearers of communities around Asia and develop with them modules and artworks for interfaith/ intercultural dialogue and ecological healing based on their sacred and traditional art forms.
I shared my intention and asked for guidance and to share presence with them for they are the earth’s dreamweavers helping to nurture, preserve, and embody the rich heritage and wisdom of humanity and the earth’s ancestral and presently evolving consciousness.
It is so beautiful to exchange words and presence with them. I felt enriched. I felt that I was not alone.
So I waited it out still.
Until one day I realized that if I have to fundraise, should I do self-marketing? But how do I “brand” sacred work? I am still learning so I am not an expert too. So I brought it out to the universe before I went to sleep.
In my sleep, I had a very vivid dream.
I was flying to Hawaii with a Swiss friend and my sister. I was to do an art workshop there. And then I was suddenly Hawaiian. My father, my sister and I lived in a house. Suddenly an old indigenous woman elder came in. She had white hair and was wearing an indigenous red garb. When I looked closely at her she looked like the women from the Cordilleras up north. My father let her use the computer. She was doing some sort of genealogy mapping online. I asked her, “How come you look like the elders of my country?” She did not answer me directly but said, “Well, we had different colonizers.” I asked her again, “How come you look the same? Could it be that the world was once whole?” She was already standing across me now smiling in silence with her wise smile. Between us my sister was having a fight with my Father. When I realized this, I now know why we are no longer a whole earth. We caused this division even we were once were a family.
I woke up and realized that that was a message.
Strangely, that very same day, Vijali and Dr. Elizabeth Lindsey replied to my emails.
There are no accidents. Only same vibration.
Talking about vibration, the universe is helping out in this department as well.
Last April and earlier this month, I brought my spirit signing for the first time to the world.
I was asked by my Baybayin artist and indigenous wisdom teacher friend Mini Gavino, organizer of the the Babaylan Lecture Ritual series to sing a meditative song and a ritual song together with my anthropologist friend Nota Magno. The songs were written by Leah and melody developed by Yeyette San Luis.
The activity was also a chance for me to connect to the sacred feminine through the Babaylan. But the night before that I was feeling that my spirit singing was too haunting to go with the melody. I felt melancholic. I had just tried to end a relationship with someone I deeply cared for two days before that. So I didn't feel up for singing. So I asked to be guided.
Around midnight, I got an email that led me to the website of Lisa Rafel. And lo and behold! she was a chantress and spirit singer! And a beautiful singer too who was rooted in shamanic practice as a healer and sound therapist. I listened to her songs and was transported to the original intention of the singing. Through her story, I realized that before there was singer, there was the song, before the song, there was the sound, before the sound, there was breath, before there was breath, there was spirit.. All these together, is the spirit singing and the spirit as song.
Again there are no accidents, only same vibration.
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| Me and Nota (photo by Mini Gavino) |
The songs we sang were about breath as life and about being a sacred channel. The experience was scary beautiful. A surge of breath and voice just flowed through me.
And because I was on a healing journey and tapping into the sacred feminine. I asked my mother to be present during this event. And we had a beautiful moment of forgiveness before I sang the ritual song. It wouldn’t have been so special if I only connected to my ancestral roots but not to my umbilical cord.
Interesting to note too that Lisa Rafel talked about using white stones for healing people. Leah the ritualist during the event also used white stones for people to exchange with others to symbolically share their important learnings from the journey of life.
Last May was my first public chanting performance. But when I say “my” I feel its not appropriate. For something magical is blended here in the process. I am not the only one singing.
My friend Leo Castro of SangHabi, a non-profit promoting indigenous Filipino music asked me to do a prayer and affirmation chant with the public for an event.
With confidence gained from the lecture ritual series, I went to the event. I didn’t bring anything with me. Just my voice and willingness to be a chanel. Leo made a beautiful prayer to the Diwata ng Ulan (Goddess of Rain) that I was to sing and chant.
You have to understand that I have only been doing my spirit singing in my room, heck, in the shower, and when I mop the kitchen. Ok, sometimes during our small closing rituals here at GINHAWA.
But to chant at a public space with a big crowd intimidated me. I mean, I have no formal training in chanting. My only experience in chanting was singing bhajans and kirtans during satsangs with meditation groups. I have a classical voice training background and my voice is really high, a challenge for earthen tones for chanting. Even as I was practicing with a drum that helped, I still couldnt go lower, go earthier, or more solid and whole.
But never mind. "Bahala na" ( Bathala na = I leave it to God), I thought to myself.
So I wandered around the park waiting for a space to practice and draw out a melody.
And just like they have done before, the elders are showing up in the most wonderful of ways. I ended up in a space where large blown up portraits of tatooed Kalinga women from the north and the Reyna ng Sinulog (Sinulog Queens) from my hometown Cebu. Sinulog is a local fiesta to celebrate Sto. Nino, the little Christ. The fiesta was local traditional to Filipinos and the Spanish colonizers integrated their belief systems into the local spiritual traditions and this gave birth to the Sinulog.
And so there was no need to make formal requests, I sat at the edge of a playground, took my sandals off, placed my bare feet on the ground full of sprouts and asked for a melody.
I ended up singing with the deepest, whole-st voice I could. Leo, others, and I were suprised for I haven't sung with that kind of depth before.
I just believe it wasn't just me.
So I take these inspirations to heart as I sing with the universe to let abundance flow for this coming adventure in my life. I am co-creator with the divine and the magical twists of fate. I know things will manifest at their divine sacred timing and I am now dreamweaving with the song of my spirit... and the spirit of the elders and the guides present...and with inner knowing and trust, things will turn out just beautiful.
