Threemile Idaho

I have many rituals in my practice, but the most powerful healing ritual for me is what I call a "three-mile Idaho." I live about 1¼ miles from the Idaho border just east of Palouse, WA, in a very lovely setting along the North Fork of the Palouse River. A gravel road heads east from here along the river, and over the years of living here I have discovered how transformative that walk can be. If I go another ¼ mile past the border, the river valley opens up to an expansive plain where Palootspu and Nez Perce would camp in summer before Europeans came to this country, and right at that point is a portal of sorts with Ponderosa pines on either side of the road, framing the view of the valley. Walking to that point and back is almost precisely three miles.

When I have been miserable, stressed-out, unable to see how to go forward from an impossible situation, I have found that I can hold my crisis in my heart-mind and walk out the door, down that road. The walk is long enough that I can go through every voice inside me, and I begin to sort through them, watching the unconstructive voices fall away as I become invigorated with the exercise, breathing deep into my center. The unresolvable struggles transform somehow to become understandable, manageable. Often there are moments of absolute clarity. Over the years, various "stations" along the walk have become associated in my mind with particular transcendent insights, and if I linger at those points I seem to be able to draw on those experiences in addressing whatever I am carrying at the moment. When I reach the portal, I greet the trees on either side and step through. If the moon is out, or the Milky Way, I align somehow with them, breathing and stretching. I offer whatever I have to the spirit of that place.

Then I turn towards home, and every time it feels as though a huge weight has been lifted from my being. The return trip integrates the transformation into the world I left at home, with everything in perspective.

Of course, I also go on three-miles to entertain my dog and collect native plant seeds, but the ceremonial three-mile Idaho is in an entirely different league. I believe it has saved my sanity on several occasions.

Paul Ely Smith
www.palouserivermusic.com

Tossing Snowballs into the River - Winter Solstice Ritual

I walk through snowy woods to a bend in the river, hidden from view by the trees and a small slope. The short day's light is beginning to fade, but a nearly full moon hangs above the naked trees upriver. I've followed a deer path and now stand at river's edge in two feet of snow. I have found a sacred place to savor and celebrate winter's solstice.

Breathing, listening to the joyful sound of shallow water rushing over riverstone. I hear my heart beating and soften into a quiet stance. Who am I?, I ask the river. Who do you want me to be? The sound of my beating heart is a solid rhythm for the river's bright melody of gentle waves and currents. The wonder held in this space suddenly shocks time into hibernation and I stand dissolved and free of name and contraction.

Moonlight pours from my face and the low hanging branches and round river stone. Our bones reach deep into the snowy bank, absent of leaf and bird. The river whispers our true name, speaking her fluid language of source intelligence, a universe of bubbling life. This, this again, she sings, now and now, this unending flow. We float upon gravity's grace in an effortless flow of being, tumbling as beauty's truth, rising as creative essence serving love's expansive reach.

My cold toes bring me back to the riverbank, Thomas shivering in the near darkness. I make snowballs and toss my dissolving fears into the rapids. Obstacles of arrogance and laziness and judgments and worries and clutchings are tossed one by one into the river until the sharp pain of my frozen fingers says Enough! I stand silent in the polar essence of the solstice and devote my fullest energy and awareness to being an embodied action of presence expressing the unity of planet, sun, life, motion and soul to all resonant beings sharing this evolving field of emergent life.

december 21, 2007
5:55 pm

Thomas Arthur
awakeningspace.net


Ripples photo by brentdanley
Moonrise photo by James Jordan

I Have Rituals and They Change in the Details of How They Unfold

I have rituals and they change in the details of how they unfold.

I have a morning practice that I do at least 5 or 6 days a week. The goal of the practice is to have some time for moving my body, some time for meditation and some time for written reflection. Having said that, the details depend on the time available. Some mornings I have only 30 minutes and then it gets pretty compressed. Mostly, I like to have an hour. An hour and a half is delightful (although more and more rare). My morning movement varies – mostly yoga stretches. I try to do at least a few minutes of some kind of stretching.

Recently, I was doing the Presence Process by Michael Brown. Doing that work, my meditation takes 30 minutes to an hour which pretty much squeezes out the other aspects. It also has added an evening meditation.

Other rituals – I call my Uncle Walt weekly. He is 91 and living alone in his own house. Actually, I have a ritual about calling all of my family – so I am in touch at least every couple of weeks.

I do intensive exercise – preferably NIA or yoga 2-3 times a week and try to do some exercise daily. Lots of walking.

I now have a ritual of taking an extensive set of supplements in the morning – but that is new in the last six months.

I mix my Alexander restorative rest and a series of healing visualizations.

So, as you can surmise, this all rises and falls depending on the time available. Some days it is very compressed and not all of it happens and occasionally I actually do it all!

Karma Ruder
kruder@ethicalleadership.org

photo source