Spring next year I'm starting an incredibly exciting journey and I'm spending a lot of time reflecting, contemplating, praying and gathering to bring this into reality. I'm leading Spirit Lodge Academy, a three year intensive apprenticeship and training in native European Sweat Lodge Leadership with the first circle of students in Scotland.
It is the culmination of years of study, practice and ripening to bring this into form. It's rather huge and intimidating and at the same time it's perfectly aligned with my purpose and where Spirit has been leading me in life.
Today however, was one of those days when everything feels out of reach, unattainable, just too darn big.
Who do I think I am to do this... It will never work... What can I possibly offer people... How on earth am I going to do this...
We're all familiar with that kind of rap. Blah, blah blah... The mind doing its thing; the cookie dough thing. So I decided to shift my perception and experience by changing into another modality: from the head into the body. I went out for a brief walk and visited a friend. My body started to change its chemistry and with that my thoughts and feelings changed as well.
I drove back home up-beat again and remembered.
I remembered what happens when I make myself available to serve the people with these healing ceremonies. I remembered their faces glowing afterwards. I remembered the unity and connection it fosters. I remembered all those feelings of love, alignment, compassion and oneness. And then I started remembering what people have sometimes shared with me after ceremonies.
Their gratitude for the experience of being so intimately close to themselves and their creator made me realize that all my hardships are worth it. That I have a role to play in the dance of life and this is it. What else to do than to stay aligned with my purpose and to keep this particular doorway open for people!?
Over the years I have learned that one of the reasons why only a few (spiritual) teachers are truly effective on a soul level is because they lack any personal agenda. That does not in the least mean that they lack in direction or intent. Their intent and direction is stronger than anything on a personality level. They've been able to extinguish the dynamic of fulfilling their own needs and desires by reaching outward and have mastered to generate their own light and love so it can influence a greater reality.
What I have learned from them is the more I get out of the way and delete my own agenda of expectations, hopes and beliefs, extinguish my dynamic of fulfilling my needs with a source outside myself, the better vehicle I become for serving the people and the greater good.
And that's THE THING. The BIG THING in transferring ceremonial leadership to others.
It's leadership with no personal agenda. It's how to create a strong and solid vessel; how to create a structure so that our direction and focus is and stays crystal clear throughout the ritual, and yet keep it open and expanded so that the infinite can freely move and do its work.
How do I transfer THIS to my students? Can it be done? Or is it life that teaches us that we are only one little breath of the big sigh of the universe. Integral part of it, unique and connected, different but yet one expression.
I don't know how to do it but for dipping into that experience with them over and over again until it 'sticks'. However, I do know one thing:
In the end it's not me that's doing anything. With grace it may happen through me, as long as I'm able to get out of the way.
Like I said: it's going to be an incredible and exciting journey. I'll keep you posted!
