This recipe is sensual, easy and fast. It is good for pittas, pitta-vattas, pitta-kapha, kaphas, kapha-vattas, and kapha-pittas. Enjoy it !
Ingredients:
2 eggplants
¼ cup coconut milk
½ tsp roasted fennel seeds
½ tsp roasted corianders seeds.
½ cup chopped parsley.
1 tsp olive oil
pinch of salt.
Cut the eggplants into flat slices length wise and roost in the olive oil until tender. Roll them to form a ball. In a separate bowl roast the spices until golden, add the coconut milk and salt.
Put in the blender - the coconut mix with the parsley and ½ of the eggplant. The consistency should be mildly dense. Add the mix to the roasted eggplant. Let it simmer for 3 minutes. Serve warm as a side dish. Lovely with basmati cinnamon rice.
Your mind enters into a state of hypnotic trance that binds you into a chain of thoughts.
Our conceptions, images and expectations can generate a
tide of energy that cuts creativity and freedom.
This meditation breaks this self imposed trance.
Posture: Sit in a comfortable pose, close legs if you can.
Hands Position: (mudra) bring your hands into a fist with the thumb over the middle finger; place them in front of the chest about six inches apart. Point your Jupiter finger (index) up to the sky.
1.- Begin moving the hands alternately, in a precise way, forward and back, in a mechanical, slow, almost jerky motion-with a steady even cadence. Do it in full awareness. 6 minutes.
2.- Continue the hands movement and move your attention to the tip of the nose. 3 minutes.
3.- continue the movement of the hand and begin to chant “thou” with each movement of the hands. 4 minutes.
4.- Close your eyes. Still the hands and relax them down. Come into absolute silence and stillness. Practice nonexistence, for a moment forget who you are. 6 minutes.
To end: Inhale deeply and stretch the hands up. Exhale. Inhale deep and twist to the left. Stretch. Exhale in the center. Inhale deep and twist to the right. Stretch. Exhale in the center and relax.
As Matthew goes into the woods and taps the maple trees to get from them the sap, the most pure essence of the earth, I am traveling to Halifax to give a workshop. In my packing I included a jar of this vital sap with the intention to sip it during my work hours to maintain the level of minerals in my body. I knew little as yet about the energetic impact that this sap would have on me and the real nature of the goddess behind it.
As I began to sip it my body began to experience a particular high, not very familiar to me. I felt in my central channel a rush of joy and agony.
As I tune in deeply with it, I can reach an understanding of purity. That liquid had never been in contact with the light, it had been dwelling in the core of earth for a period of time, and in this particular time of the year was coming violently to the surface looking for life, looking to finish it’s stage of stagnation, looking to mate, looking to unite and originate life.
That purity makes the sap very receptive to the energies of the first person or element that makes contact with it, and I was recognizing the energy of Matthew in it. I observed how the hand of my lover loves me, and naturally my body responded by preparing a receptiveness towards a primal force of union.
It was only a few days later, after my return from Halifax,
that I started to have the real call from the goddess, OSTARA. As I continued taking the sap and the already boiled syrup, a more concrete form of the energy started taking place. It is this series of events that started to contribute to this awareness and ritual. I was carrying on conversations with the beings that live in the water, preparing me for the retreat of the fluids and emotions. I am praying to them to give the information I need to mature our physical and energetic structure for ascension. Also, I was teaching in the online course the need to avoid sexual fantasies to prevent misplacements of the earth bodies, as well as maintaining the integrity of our nature as a way to be protected.
As I meditate in sadhana with these elements and keep drinking the sap, a strong pull to do a puja (devotional ceremony)came into my awareness. It was a ceremony to be performed on March 21 at sunrise. It is a ceremony to mark the passage of time as well as call for new life and fertility. It is a ceremony to celebrate OSTARA the goddess that awakes at this time of the year. It is that natural force to unite and give an opportunity for our creative forces to be manifested.
She comes as fertility, receptive to any thing that she encounters, She comes in a shape of an egg, luminous, magnetic and attractive. She is clear and pure, young and old at the same time, she is celebratory and adventurous.
She comes at night when her strongest emanations are.
She resides in the womb of the devotional one, she looks for a space that is available for growth, she fulfills, and she is unapologetic in taking the whole being into her life inductive spell of sensuality. She plays in the small streams and in the running waters, she dresses in blue and silver and decorates herself with a fragrance of earthly blossoms.
The only choice we have in front of her emanations is to take her energy and transmute it to the highest frequency possible. You can choose to use it just to dwell in sensual fantasies and create a spinning of desires. You will then open a dating list within your mind and enter a cycle of powerful desires that eventually will make you move out of your neutral and centered space. You also can be constructive and direct it towards selfless prayer and service. You can chant, you can dance, you can create and gain a perspective of self- renewal.
You can also consciously create a sacred space to honor such forces by creating a ceremony where you acknowledge her power, her desires and her sacred medicine. Then you will receive her gift, a tender awakening to the most soft and tender aspects of creation.
It is in here where I get speechless, it is here where the mind can not describe this part of the divine, it is here where I stop and let a tear of love roll down to an intimate smile of silent meditation.
Ceremony to OSTARA
Choose a place outside or in your prayer room to be dedicated to this energy. Decorate it with spring blossoms and flowers.
You need the following symbols:
Representations of the phases of the moon, (you can draw them or make them in silver paper, make sure you have the representation of the waxing crescent moon, the first quarter, the full moon, the last quarter and the waxing crescent)
Two raw eggs.
Color, paint and decorate the eggs. (If you want to get pregnant use only red color on the eggs.)
Marker pen in case you want to put a yatra (a balanced symbol) in the egg.
A branch of spring blossoms in a vase.
One bowl.
A pasta plate and a egg holder inside of it.
Cinnamon stick.
A white candle.
2 tsp of maple syrup.
A tsp of yogurt and a pinch of chilly pepper.
How to perform your ceremony:
1.- Decorate your altar with spring blossoms, the moon cycles. Place your intention. Light the candle.
2.- Decorate one of the eggs, and place it in the egg holder inside the pasta plate.
3.- Break the raw egg into a small bowl, add the maple syrup, the yogurt, and chilly peppers and stir it with the cinnamon stick as you chant 3 times OM.(this mix is the food for the spirit of OSTARA)
4. Think of a stream of pure water, connecting with it’s flow, agility and adventurous nature. Make it personal by establishing a parallel with your present situation in life.
5.-Take the mix , and with a little spoon offer some each time you chant this prayer. “ I surrender to you divine grace of Ostara, life and love you are. I am one with you, I am you and you are one with me. I am a humble cell of your grace, health and wealth”.
6.- When you have finished the entire mix, wash the egg and place back to the altar. Take the bowl outside and pour into the earth with reverence and with the intention to encourage fertility.
7. Keep the branches as fresh as you can as long as you can. One moon cycle is good.
After the ceremony we left the site and fell sleep. That evening I was granted to see the gifts and problems that the underwater world, in this moment, are experiencing. I saw how a simple ceremony can impact the nature of the unseen, and how an attitude of gratitude can be regarded with awareness, creativity and beauty.
Sit with spine straight
Recollect the unsupportive thoughts your mind has being entertaining itself with.
Place hands in cup position at the level of the heart center.
(Hands are together with the palms facing up and slightly curved)
Visualize the central channel.
Breathe from the earth all the way to the nose.
Exhale through the rounded lips into the palms (feel the air touching the center of your hands).
Visualize you are happily releasing all of the negative thoughts.
Continue for 11 or 31 minutes.
Finish by breathing deeply, holding the breath for 10 seconds, exhale and repeat 3 more times.
Hands up above head and shake. Relax.
I just returned from PEI where I was giving the course of Practical Awakenings to a lovely group of 15 women and one young man.
It was my interest to notice this time how the process of transmutation happens as we performed the fire ceremony of the 1000 names of the divine mother.
The group was sitting in circle around the ceremonial fire pit and I was conducting the recitations as they responded with the surrendering mantra. Each participant had 3 obsolete personal topics to offer to the sacred fire as well as an innocent and devotional disposition to support letting go and being renewed.
As we started the fire, my body became very centered and increased in temperature. I was especially aware this time of the flow of thoughts passing through my mind. As I witnessed them with sharp concentration I realized the type of thoughts in my head where not mine, the images where not mine, and the experiences and sensations where also not mine.
In the moment I increased the witness within myself, the fire began to increase in fullness and the flow of thoughts were distinctly recognizable from their source.
I began to experience, in humble sweetness, the pure role of my presence in the ceremony. I was “collecting” the impurities and negativity, passing them through my body and making a direct offering to the divine mother. She in return received the offering and amazed us with a golden light over the fire pit.
It was clear to me that the ceremony was linked to a certain frequency that the participants needed in order to release. In return, this frequency allowed for the display of the richness of the divine spirit in giving back a full and alive flower of vitality and new opportunities for the participants.
It was transcendental for me to unlock the part of me that performed the ceremony from the part of me that witnessed the ceremony as well as the part of me that transmuted in the ceremony. There were 3 distinctive currents interacting and giving a clear quality of sacredness and reverence to the moment. The 3 distinctive roles needed to be; impeccable and still, centered and friendly, as well as light and empty.
I was also aware that after the ceremony I needed to relax and go into deep meditation; remaining undisturbed and contained in the penetrating embrace of the smoke.
After my return to Ottawa I perceived an increment in my subtle perception and a natural detachment to what is not important. I moved to a deeper place of stillness and silence.
I bow to the power of the recitations and the willingness of the participants to facilitate within me an opportunity to be the facilitator of the subtle forces of the love, care and compassion of the Divine Mother.
This meditation will help to dispel all of the old wounds, fears and anger from the past, especially your childhood, usually stored in your first chackra. it will change you from the inside out, and will assist you to be grounded and present.
1-Reteat 3 times the mantra Ong namo gurudev namo.
2.- Sit with legs cross or comfortably in a chair.
3.-Extend both arms to the sides parallel to the ground, and keep them strait. Use your thumbs to lock down the pinkie and ring finger and extend the index and middle finger. The palms are facing forward and the fingers pointing out to the side.
4.- Inhale deeply by sucking air through your closed teeth and exhale through your nose. keep your jaw relaxed.
5.- Continue for 3 to 11 minutes.
end by inhaling deeply, hold your breath for 10 to 20 seconds, exhale. Repeat 3 times and relax.
Take a 40 days journey with this meditation and free yourself from resentments.
Dear One;
Surely the divine knows how to fulfill our sacred intentions with delightfull events, bittersweet surprises and spontaneous synchronicity.
I have just finished our annual retreat in Costa Rica.
I consciously chose a place on earth that has the most dynamic bio activity on the planet with the intention of experiencing, collecting and aligning with the vibration of unity that such a virgin place can offer. We were in peninsula Osa, dwelling in simple wood cabins with no walls, no electricity and with a lovely pure running water. The cabins are surrounded by exotic gardens, they face the ocean and are backed by a primary rain forest (never being cut) which was displaying a potent, fragrant and pungent life.
Our setting was surely offering what I was looking for, however, as a facilitator of the retreat, I never know the shape my intentions will take and what really the lessons will be about it.
We were a group of 10 people, all of us experienced meditators with a high spirit of adventure, openness and desire to know the Self.
It is in this place, with these people, that I got exposed to and tasted what a perfect balance of life is, and what is required for that to happen.
Each day we started at 4 am and received the dawn in meditation and with ‘agni hotra” (fire ceremony).
Each day our senses where invaded by mysterious sounds and smells that distinctly announced the arrival of the day.
From a place of stillness our humanness was reduced to a vulnerable existence. What I witnessed was an avalanche of different insects, birds, and monkeys pushing away the energies of the night and declaring their territory in the new day. Each animal community contributed to the creation of an intense vibration of OM. They where loud and completely un-apologetic about their role. This same exact phenomenon happened in the evening, with the appearance of completely different types of insects, birds and mammals.
I was an observer, watching the delicate forces of destruction and creation at work.
I was just in the middle of this constant dance, witnessing and realizing that this can only happen when all the ants are together just being ants, when all the thousands of crickets got together and agreed to sing at the same time, when all the bats resounded the same tone , when all the trees opened or closed their flowers at the same time.
They all play their parts with a precise synchronicity ,and with a total embracing of their community.
It was all about them being together, it was all about them being who they were and doing their best in being what they were. That was their strength and their contribution to make the forest a place of perfect balance, a place of vibrant unity.
This unity (absence of duality) that I experienced was achieved by witnessing and embracing this dynamic with affection, gratitude and friendliness . It was subtlely (and some times violently) installed in my body every time I sat in still contemplation.
I realized then that our whole human role in this dance is simply to witness and to allow it to happened as part of the life we had chosen to experience.
