We are currently undergoing a major revolution.  I’m not only talking about the elections and politics of this country; I am talking about planetary changes.  No doubt if you are a healer, you’ve heard over and over again about the “big” transformation awaiting us all.  There are those who say that as we approach 2012, we are evolving into homo luminous.  Perhaps those of us who are taking and risking a journey into another stage, another level, are actually evolutionary mystics.

When I see workshops advertised to help find your “purpose in life,” or to answer the question “why are we here”, I always turn to the words of Andrew Harvey:  “We are here to embody the transcendent.”

These are powerful words.  We are here not to only “know” about our life.  Not to only align with our life’s purpose.  Not to only experience life in small pieces.  We are here for the simple purpose of allowing our soul to embody the transcendent.

Ahhhh, but what does that mean?  The word “Embody” means to bring the light down to us, down to our body.  And yet, most spiritual teachers talk about going UP to the light and losing one’s body in the light.  Perhaps if we really explore the concept of embodying transcendence, we would realize that we need to bring the light down to us.  We need to bring the laws and the radiance and the brilliance of the transcendent down to our emotions and our thoughts.  And as we bring the transcendent down to us, we do so not just to light our heart and our soul, but to actually bring it into the very fiber of our being, to live with the transcendent in every single cell of our body.

In that way, we become a living instrument of the transcendent.

Have you ever had the gift of being in the presence of the Dalai Lama? His aura is huge, his presence can be felt way before he actually even enters a room!  If you watch the Dalai Lama, he lives and embodies the essential life of the awakened human being.  At every single moment, whether talking with someone or addressing a crowd, he is wholly and completely present.  His attention is directed at the person with whom he is talking, to the total exclusion of everything else around him.  He has surrendered to the moment and so time and space disappear as he enraptures us with his presence.

Once one has allowed the transcendent to be in one’s physical being, one is ready to become its ACTION in the world. It is impossible to mindful of the transcendent and not wish to become a voice for its consciousness.  There is a Sufi prayer that suggests that the “journey to God was over.  The journey with God was now.”

The enlightenment field is a quantum field that is ever growing.  Are you ready to become a rebel of Divine Love?  Are you ready to become a spiritual activist, embracing not knowledge nor illumined knowledge, but the transcendent?

I find the current election fascinating in terms of the picture it provides of where we, as a country, are headed.  Let me digress for a moment and talk a little about those of us who are in the healing profession.  This is a huge container, for one may be a massage therapist, a counselor, an equine therapist, an herbalist.  The list is endless.  So if you fall into that container of being a “healer,” you’ll understand what I’m about to say.

We all know that our energy lately has been extremely harried, discombobulated, dispersed, and accelerating faster than we can manage it.  We are hurtling towards 2012 with ferocious speed and there are times when it feels that we need to ratchet down our brain or it will fly away with all the information that is being downloaded into it constantly.

My business partner Katina and I were sharing some thoughts about consciousness recently and we both agreed that each day we are learning about consciousness in exponential ways.  By next week the process of what we know and how we know will be different from this week.

Consciousness??  What does this have to do with politics? Well, let’s start with the candidates.  If you listen to Obama talk, there is candor and freshness to his speeches that comes from having spent time thinking about things — really thinking about things.  And not just thinking, but thinking in new ways, opening up to the higher consciousness becoming available to us all.

I lived in Arizona for 11 years, land of McCain,  and I can honestly say that McCain hasn’t said a new word in all that time. It’s couched in different terms, but it is still the same ole, same ole.

That which is hurtling us through time and space is also affecting how we gather and process information.  And it is that same opening to higher consciousness that I fervently believe was a part of what the founding fathers had access to when they created this incredible political system that we call democracy.  They saw with new eyes, heard with different ears, thought with a open mind and so brought forth a vision of equality and elegance still unrivaled in this world.

And we too must approach this election with open mind, different ears, new eyes.  What is the legacy we wish to leave our children and their children?  We can’t make changes with the same mindset that created the problem.  Increasingly our children and their children are either Indigo children or Rainbow children, and each generation gets more and more connected to the wisdom of Source, of higher consciousness, of All That Is. How will they look back at us if we continue to play ostrich and bury our heads in the sand? When do we stand up and acknowledge how we are growing and thus invite in a new way of governing, of being, of thinking, of sensing?

I don’t believe that it is an accident that Barack Obama has declared his candidacy now.  When we tap into higher consciousness, we see a bigger picture.  I urge you to do the same.

Have you ever had one of those moments where you throw your hands up in despair because nothing is working? Your brain is so addled that you can’t even remember what to do next.

That just happened to me. I had been amassing information for a protracted court case, which, when the day finally arrived, I was sure would turn out my way. Ha! The universe had other plans. Though things didn’t turn out as badly as they might have, I still was quite shocked at the end of the day.

I was in despair, my body quite numb, what shaman’s would call a "dark night of the soul." My brain was so out of tune with my body that I couldn’t even think to conjure up any of my shamanic tricks to make myself feel better.

Feeling hopeless about my plight, and engaging in a pity party of massive proportions, I decided to do something, anything, that would change the energy and dynamics of what I was feeling.

When I feel despondent, I always go sit on Mother Earth. This certainly felt much more serious, so I took my mesa , my medicine bundle, out with me and decided I would do a healing body mandala.

After calling in the directions and creating sacred space, I created a form of mandala large enough to hold my body. In creating the mandala, I used elements from nature such as twigs, stones, flowers, whatever I could find on the ground.

Inside the mandala I lay out some of my medicine kuyas (stones that have been initiated in the Inka path) with my powerful mountain stones where my head would lie, and the earth stones at my feet. I placed river stones on my right side and fire stones on my left.

I stepped into the mandala and lay down. Almost immediately I could feel the energy shift. Though my eyes were closed, I could sense that animals were nearby. I peeked open one eye, and right above, less than eight feet away and about eight feet up in the air, was a beautiful Cooper’s Hawk, just hovering right above me, creating an ever-so-soft breeze with the fluttering of his wings. Nothing about his being there frightened me. On the contrary, there was a strong sense of his watching me, willing me to make energetic shifts in my luminous body.

I closed my eyes again and felt a fierce need to lay on my stomach. Turning over, hands splayed out in front of me, I lay on the Mother, feeling her cool earth sending waves of energy through my body. With no sense of time nor space, I lay there, feeling the hawk’s protection, and Mother Earth’s cleansing. The tears I was shedding felt as though they were going down into the Mother, and coming back up as replenishing water to cleanse my despondent spirit.

I must have been out there quite some time, because it began to feel quite cold, and as I opened my eyes I realized it was getting very dark. I sat up, did a quick chakra check, and spent a few minutes saying prayers of gratitude to Mother Nature who had so lovingly looked after me.

Contact with Mother Nature is something we’ve lost in our society. It’s not just that we don’t go out into nature, or know about it, we do not ENGAGE with it, we don’t listen to the messages and lessons being given to us every day.

I learned an important lesson that day. In my own way, I had become complacent and neglectful of the wisdom I had been given from the universe. It took a crisis to remind me to go seek the one source that would heal me. And working with Mother Earth and nature always creates a shift and a healing.

That is the Art of Shamanism!