Showing posts with label Rob and Trish Macgregor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rob and Trish Macgregor. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 6, 2020

"Catriona MacGregor: The Wild Path" - Interview on The Mystical Underground


The Mystical Underground is a series of podcast interviews conducted by writers Rob and Trish MacGregor on their Synchronicity Blog........their Blog is always fascinating, and their interviews equally so.  I felt like sharing a recent interview here that touches deeply on Gaianism and communing with the living Earth.   Thanks again for your continuing inspiration, Trish and Rob!

 https://soundcloud.com/themysticalunderground/tmu-0036-catriona-macgregor-the-wild-path

https://themysticalunderground.com/

Join Trish and Rob for a conversation with…

Catriona MacGregor has over thirty years experience in education and environmental leadership. She is a visionary bridge builder between nature and humankind – and an intuitive mystic.

Catriona oversaw one of the largest coastal sanctuaries in the United States stretching over 600 miles with wintering grounds & stop over sites for 98% of the long-distance migratory bird species in N. America.

Her conservation program led, in part, to the comeback of an endangered species for which she received a blue ribbon award from the Governor.

She has extensive experience in habitat management and species conservation and is leading a resilient forests initiative to apply innovative and bold solutions to forest & species management.

She’s an expert on environmental trends, she has advised scientists, government officials, non-governmental organization leaders, and the public on environmental topics.
Catriona was the Director of EarthScope’s Academy of Science and Communications for 15 years and she founded the International Bering Sea Forum, a public-private partnership and a diverse international coalition with representatives from 5 countries seeking protection of marine species and promoting the sustainable livelihood of coastal communities, indigenous communities.

After a mystical experience with a tree which brought her back to her ancestral Celtic roots, Catriona founded Nature Quest and has led Vision Quests and spiritual retreats for two decades.

She is the author of Partnering with Nature: The Wild Path to Reconnecting with the Earth, which won a gold medal from the Nautilus Book Awards, which recognizes world-changing books that promote positive social change. Previous winners include His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Deepak Chopra, and the Tibetan author Thich Nhat Hanh.
Catriona has a Masters of Science in Resource Management & Administration and a Juris Doctorate. She was admitted to practice law in New York and Pennsylvania. She specialized in environmental law for seven years. Catriona wrote a Supreme Court brief on issues of environmental and constitutional law.

She also has a new book coming out called Secrets of a Celtic Mystic: Sacred Earth Prophecy.

Thursday, August 1, 2013

Syncronicities,and Touchstones............

 
To me, synchronicities are touchstones, they point the way in the forest, usually indicating that I’m on the right path. I’ve never “followed” a synchronicity and ended up bored or in unfortunate circumstances. Instead they seem to reveal or emphasize what is most beautiful, meaningful, or helpful. I was honored when writers Trish and Rob MacGregor shared this story below on their wonderful Blog about Synchronicity a few days ago, and take the liberty of re-printing it below. 
 
ImageI began this summer's long wandering back to the East Coast, and re-visiting places and people that have been very important to me, as a kind of "soul retrieval", asking all along the highway "what should I be doing now, at this phase of my life?".  I've been richly, richly answered even as I continue to wind up and down the asphalt (currently enroute to Shutesbury, Mass. to visit a  shamanic healer, and old friend, Jewel at The Source , her Center for Earth based spirituality and healing.....in many ways I feel I'm driving "full circle" indeed. Ironic that I should read the article below just as I finish my coffee at a hotel, and prepare to visit another Shaman, one who has been very important to me, and who I haven't seen in 17 years......more on this later.  This is a summer of synchronicity, ever since I got on the road, and it's a pleasure to share here the MacGregor's insights.

********************

 When Arizona sculptor and artist Lauren Raines was going through a divorce, she heard about a shamanic practitioner in Crownsville, Maryland, who had studied with Sandra Ingerman and was also an energy healer and herbalist. She was at a point in her life when she was “very open to anything,” and went to him for a soul retrieval.

This shamanic practice helps regain a soul that has become trapped, disconnected, or lost through some sort of trauma. Depending on the circumstances, a divorce can certainly qualify as a trauma.

“He was very business-like,  and without knowing anything about me, put on his drums tape and headset, had me lie down next to him, and we tranced together. At the end of the session he blew soul fragments back into my body, and we talked about what he ‘saw.’ We talked about cutting the cords from my ex-husband and my former community (I had moved away). He concluded the session by telling me: You’ll know it’s all over when you see a magenta flower that looks like a cosmos, and a terra cotta angel.

 Eight months later, Lauren crossed the country with her cat and all her possessions loaded into her van. She was determined to move back to Berkeley, California, and start a new life. She had decided she would sleep in her van if necessary until she found somewhere to live. “I began my adventure as soon as I arrived with a visit to a coffee house I last visited 20 years earlier. Almost immediately I was greeted by a long ago friend, Joji Yokoi, who recognized me, and bought me a cup of coffee, and offered me a place to stay. I didn’t have to spend a single night in my van. When I walked into his living room, there was a huge photograph of a magenta cosmos flower hanging above his fireplace!”

A few months after that, Lauren answered an ad for a roommate. “I walked into a house with an altar – and in the center was a terra cotta angel. Judy Foster was one of the founding members of Reclaiming and a colleague of my heroine, Starhawk, whose writings were the foundation of my MFA thesis more than a decade earlier. Needless to say, just like that, my new life began and I ended up working with the very people I most wanted to work with, never having had to even try! The shaman was right in his prediction.”
The shaman gave Lauren two very specific bits of information about markers that would signal her transition period was finished – the magenta cosmos flower and the terra cotta angel. How was he able to see something so precise, for a woman he had just met?

“Shamans are inspired visionaries who are able to access information through their invisible allies for the benefit of  themselves, their families, and their communities. This process is known as divination, and it is usually accomplished through ceremony and ritual,” wrote Sandra Ingerman and Hank Wesselman in Awakening to the Spirit World.  “Through their relationship with these transpersonal forces, shamans are able to retrieve lost power and restore it to its original owners…”  So through the trance state that the shaman and Lauren entered together, he was able to retrieve power that Lauren had lost and was allowed to see the most probable path her future would take.


Wednesday, November 14, 2012

More "Numina" Masks..........


 SPIDER WOMAN

I’ve had a lot of names.  It doesn’t matter what you call me.
Call me Tse-Che-Nako,  "the One who makes the world"
with the stories I spin.  Call me  Spider Woman, the Weaver.

Listen, I’ll tell you something.
 Because you came  to the red desert
empty, listening to the wind.

When the Third World ended, I wove  a long thread
And led the people through the Kiva to a new world.
A new world is being born again.

 It’s time to weave a new story.

Walk out into the desert and sit beneath a cholla.
Listen to the ones that live here.
Stories like threads woven into the land.
Stories that wrap themselves around old bones and pottery shards,
that fly, or run on four legs.
Stories written in the rock.
And cracks in the land like a spider web,

full of light.
Once, you could see the Web
as plain as day.  Each shining thread 
touching each thread.

You say you can't see it.
Well, take a look around!
You don't need to climb a mountain to get the big picture.

All of its snaking rivers and twining roots
Are inside of you.  All those threads
come right out of your hands
and  your hearts
and go on forever

into the Earth,
and into each other,
and into all your stories,
into everyone you'll ever know,
into all those who came before you,
and all those who will come after you.
(1998)
Desert Spring:  "Our Lady of the Arroyo"
I keep making "Numina" masks, because they keep suggesting themselves to my heart.   I don't know what to do with them.........they have no "voices" yet, or people who want to use them. I'm left with hoping that they will suggest their own use .........that they'll have an impulse within them to lead me somewhere else. Now doesn't that sound strange.......but I think that's a bit how Spider Woman works.

In a recent post, while asking this question about this weird collection of masks I seem to be making, I found a comment about a story written by Rob MacGregor (I often visit their fascinating blog on Synchronicity):
"Lenore is an artist.  She sees faces and people in trees, rocks, water, etc.  She draws what she sees, then painstakingly removes whatever traps the faces / people and frees them to move on to whatever is next."
I think that's a pretty elequent way of talking about art, and a good bit of advice for me!

Giving Birth to Spring

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Honor and Carolyn Myss


"We seem to be having a crisis of honor............Lying and deceit dominate public politics and public life, business, academics, and even the arts.  As a result our children have virtually no valid role models on which to model their own sense of honor."

Carolyn Myss, Why People Don't Heal And How They Can (1997)

I read this morning an article in one of my favorite blogs, that of Rob and Trish Macgregor ("Haunting Synchronicity", dated 1-22) in which they talk about Newt Gingrich, who just might become the next Presidential candidate.  They note that:
"Gingrich’s achilles’ heel is his legacy of three wives and the sordid way he left the first two. He was in the midst of an extra-marital affair with future wife three when he was leading the  attack on President Clinton for his affair with M.L. This past week, wife two in a tell-all interview with ABC exposed Newt’s request for an open marriage while he was acting outraged about Clinton’s tryst."
I well remember the viciousness of that attack on Clinton, led by Gingrich, which among other things cost tax payers some 40 million dollars as conservatives tried to impeach the President for his affair with Monica Lewinsky.  I can't help but equate Gingrich with the loss of honor in government, because he has consistently shown himself hypocritical as well as mean spirited. 

Medical intuitive Carolyn Myss is one of the new paradigm's most articulate healers.  She has commented that we are becoming a culture without honor, which she likens to spiritual "back bone",  what we need to support us, to hold us up.  Without a personal and social sense of honor, we are like people without a foundation, without the strength to be sustainable.   I'm taking the liberty of copying below from an article Carolyn wrote about honor shortly after the Tsunami struck Japan last year.  I think what she has to say is important.  And I hope Newt never becomes President.

by Caroline Myss on Thursday, March 17, 2011

An inspirational story from Japan is being shared,  from a sister in Sendai:

"If someone has water running in their home, they put out a sign so people can come fill up their jugs. I come back to my shack and I find food and water left in my entrance. There has been no looting, no pushing in lines. People leave their front door open. People say, "Oh, this is how it used to be in the old days when everyone helped one another."

This small story is touching the hearts of thousands of people. Today on a conference call, someone read this story to an entire group of people, then added, "What an example of love and compassion."  She was mistaken. Such actions are not just motivated by love and compassion. The absence of looting is not the result of love and compassion. Nor is the choice to stand in line patiently, waiting your turn. This is the result of having a deeply rooted sense of honor. The choice to not steal from a person who has already lost nearly everything in a catastrophe comes from realizing that such an act is the ultimate dishonorable choice.  The Japanese come from a society rooted in a long running code of honor, of not losing face.  Nothing would be more dishonorable to a Japanese person than to steal from another person who has lost home, business, or family, much less much of the nation they share.
An honor code is power - period. And we are witnessing that power holding the social fabric of Japan together.

In schools in the United States, words such as "morality" and "ethics", much less "honor" are practically banned. Fundamentalists and other such lunatic extremists consider those subjects "religious".  The result of listening to what in fact are the politics of these people has been, ironically, morally devastating to the generations that have since followed the ruling that banned the use of these words or courses involving discussions of that subject matter. Who now can speak about the importance of refining a personal honor code or the importance of studying ethics or learning how to navigate one's way through a moral crisis?

The lack of instruction of such essential soul knowledge is now evident in that we rely upon law suits to fill in the absence of honor. We just assume the lack of honor in another person, considering it foolish to do business without a contract or a lawyer. Even if we know them, when it comes to business - well, you just can't be sure honor stretches into that area of a person's character. Right? I mean, come on. Why? Because the other person might just lack a sense of honor - you just can't be sure these days. Why take a chance?Never mind refining our personal sense of honor. We would rather have our sights locked onto to the other person's lack of honor and that's that.

 The truth is we have become an obsessively litigious society precisely because we are no longer an honorable one. Or, as Benjamin Franklin would say, we are people without virtue. Trusting another, doing business with a handshake, honoring one's word - why, that's just considered old world. Who keeps their word these days?

We don't respect this entire spiritual wisdom to either demand it be taught in our schools - and NOT as a religious topic but as a HUMAN ESSENTIAL - or to insure that such sacred knowledge is passed within the home.  The handing down of a personal honor code is not a weekend course. It is taught through the example of an elder, a parent. Children inherently look for that instruction. They have a yearning to be schooled in honor because it requires something of them. It demands that they rise up to a certain standard of self-respect and from this standard, self-esteem awakens.

As I write this, memories of the disaster of Hurricane Katrina are flowing through my mind. Vividly I recall that the National Guard was called out immediately due to looting while streets were still soaked with water.  Rescue teams poured into the sea of confusion (no pun intended) while the chaos grew exponentially by the hour. Unlike Japan, panic, anger, and outrage soon followed.  FEMA was more than disorganized and unprepared, as people were ushered into a stadium. But my purpose is not to recall those familiar details. Rather, details of how we responded under crisis versus how the Japanese are now responding strike me as worthy of note......

......The people of New Orleans were told that the levees would hold back the water. As a result the much needed funds to repair them were denied. Structural engineers warned authorities that the walls were in desperate need of repair but would we consider our politicians honorable individuals? Do we really believe they are even capable of telling the truth?  We now assume we are lied to in this country far more than we assume we are spoken to with respect, which is to say, told the truth.

 We are treated with dishonor and we accept it as normal. How incredible is that?  Is it any wonder then that the Earth is so dishonored or nature or that endless policy decisions are made that lack any sense of honor or evidence of human dignity?
 
Living an honorable life comes at a cost. You have to be willing to stand for something, for values that mean something to people other than yourself. Your values have to make a difference in the world. They have to count, especially in a crisis or when the outcome of your choices - your word - matters to the lives of others.

Dishonorable people could care less about whether safety standards are actually met in nuclear plants or coal mines or in air traffic control towers.  Their interest is the corporate bottom line - profits. Never mind if the "losses" are human beings.  But the power of honorable people committed to making a difference in the world actually have the power to make a difference.

Consider that one paragraph from the woman from Sendai, writing about how the people of Japan are sharing everything in this time of crisis. Her words are piercing the hearts of thousands because they are true. They make each of us want to share, to keep our doors open, to be gracious, generous - to be honorable down to our souls.  That's the power of one person. I look at the people of Japan with prayers in my heart and gratitude for the example of an extraordinary people who have entered into the beginning of their dark night. I know ours is coming. I pray we learn from their example.

Love,
Caroline