Ancient Echoes Blog
Calling all Explorers, Artists and Healers, Scientists and Seekers, the Curious and Courageous, and all those who seek inner wisdom for the path forward in these uncertain times…On the first new moon of 2017 we stand at this portal, one that offers us an opportunity to meet the Ancient Wild and Wise One Within us through the age-old practice of ecstatic trance ritual.
This is my sacred work, my vocation, my Soul’s calling…to explore my inner realms and express that experience through my creativity, my art, my words..and then to lead others into the Mysteries of their Inner Worlds…for exploring our healthiest possibilities, our creative potentials, our most profound expressions…and for reconnecting us, from within ourselves, to the treasures that lie within us all and within the natural world.
What am I speaking of when I express this idea of ritual ecstasy? It is the ancient practices of human beings that serve to expose us to the Divine Unknown. The ancient practices of ecstatic trance ritual body poses and sacred ceremonies are and have been used for altering our state of consciousness, shifting us from the mundane to the arcane. The ritual body poses and ceremonies are doorways, portals, granting us entry into the territory of our inner worlds, our imaginations that lead us to what is possible and our deepest intuitive wisdom that illuminates the answers that lie within us.
For over 35,000 years, humans have been practicing one form or another of ecstasy driven experiences. These are the turning points, the signposts and the guiding forces that connect us with something beyond words…an experience of ecstasy, of the Divine, from within ourselves, instead of from something outside of our being that is fed by ego and desire alone.
Humans are hard-wired for the ecstatic experience. Our nervous systems are the conduits for receiving the ecstatic energies that put us in touch with that which has no words…an experience that directly plugs us into the Mysteries of life, death and the cycles of the universe. We are ecstasy-deprived in our modern lives, which is proving to be the undoing of our societies, our cultures and our belonging in the world.
How do we, as a species, survive the coming challenges, I wonder? How will we evolve, if we cannot connect with the bigger picture of who we are? These are existential questions that bring forth the hope for our world that we can and will evolve into something more. Something that offers us a way to maintain a balance between the inner and outer worlds of our experience, create healthier relationships, help us integrate our spiritual and mundane lives. Experiences of ecstasy, ritual and sacred ceremony enrich our lives in surprising and profound ways if we allow it.
As we gather together and stand alone in our lives and our work, the lessons, gifts, and blessings of the past serve to remind us of who we are and what we are capable of.
The sacred tools of ecstatic ritual from the ancestors are their legacy. They left clues along the way, in the form of statues, pictures, and images, that have been hidden in plain sight all along. Can we learn from the past? I have.
