So we have some time on our hands, eh? I love the notion of "time on my hands," as if it was a creature or being I am holding, carefully, lest it slip off like mist.
These two shell rattles made for a shamanic journey to the middle world are the result of holding several years of time on my hands. Only now has there been enough time to take the time to finish them.
A middle world journey is a trance journey into this earth reality, with the veils removed so the plants, birds, animals, stones and forces of nature bring answers to our questions.
Made of oyster shell, salmon skin, glass beads, freshwater snail and abalone shell strung on smoke-tanned leather, these rattles layer a complexity of sound for trance work. You can hear them played, and listen to my way of creating a middle world journey, by clicking on this youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMYOJMBf4yc
But wait. What was that about journeying to Universal Consciousness? Right now seems like a particularly potent time on the planet to understand these thoughts from Ayya Khema. Within universal consciousness, everything that consciousness can produce exists. If we--one, two, ten, or a hundred of us--have inner peace and are able to sustain it for some length of time and so change the quality of our own lives, then that enters into universal consciousness and will always be accessible, always available. Also, what we produce in our own consciousness returns to us from universal consciousness, like an echo. We can only latch onto what we have already produced within. There is no way in which universal consciousness will give us peacefulness, if we do not have the inner experience that can be touched.
Shamanic journey work teaches the skill of absorbed concentration. When one is completely attentive--in the silence at the centre of a rattle journey--to the feel of spider feet walking up one's arm, the faint breath of wind, the warm and cool of dappled sun and shadow, one is necessarily in deep inner peace and calm.
This inner calm opens to the realization that we are not separate from each other. We are all participating in consciousness, each in the unique ways of our particular forms.
Especially in this time of uncertainty, we realize there is no "me" and "other," there is only loving kindness and compassion for what we share.
You can see more images of these rattles in my Etsy webstore .
