So grateful and feel so much joy right now for being in community and having this opportunity to celebrate this holiday. I really think it’s super fun. Halloween’s always been one that I like the idea of getting together and acting silly for a little while…it just feels really good. So we’ll open it up here with a smudge blessing. You guys could bless yourself and then we’ll do our call to the directions.
Drum Circle Blessing
Creators… thank you for the opportunity to be in this fun place of merriment, laughter, and joy. I thank you for my relatives here that are gathered to draw them to have fun and to enjoy themselves. I pray that you bless us in a good way, let our hearts be open to each other, let our minds be open to the good music today, and fill in our space with goodness. I pray that you would use us today to fill this whole park and fill our city with Good Vibrations, Creator. Fill it with good thoughts, good energy, all those good things that you give to us when we come together as a community. I’m just ready to move now and then all the the sacred places of our hearts, our minds, everything like that. Bless our animals, bless our home place Creator. Bless our lives like that in a good way. Thank you for the opportunity to be here to celebrate and to celebrate our good blessings together as a community.
So let’s turn over here to the east. The East is a reminder of our relationship to newness… giving ourselves permission to be new. Giving people in our lives permission to be new. Sometimes we think about people and we think, “oh they’re always…or they’re never…” But yet, the East reminds us to let go of those old behaviors and to renew ourselves. Just like we could renew ourselves every day with the rising of the sun. Monica said this morning… she said the sky looks like pink cotton candy. How beautiful the sunrise was…Aho, Grandmother East. And here we turn to the South.
And as we turn to the South, we’re reminded of our family relationships. Those that we hold in the space of our family… our moms, dads, grandma’s, grandpas, aunties, uncles, cousins, sons, daughters all our relations like that. Family relationships and we sometimes feel like it’s challenging for us to be ourselves around our family. Sometimes we feel at home with our family, but there’s always good emotions that come forward when we’re with our family place to grow and all these good things…Aho, Grandmother South. And here we turn again to the west.
And as we turn to the West we come into a place of understanding our community and this is the place that we choose to be. This is where we hold space for our government getting it together… for the religious institutions getting it together…for all the schools getting it together. For us living in a place where we can imagine a world where all people get to come together in a good way. Soldiers put down their guns and pick up drums, and we live in a peaceful place of unity around the world and that’s something that is not strange for us to believe. It’s not strange for us to Vision World Peace. but we can Envision that here as we come together in a good way…Aho! And here we turn again to the north.
And as we turn to the North we’re reminded of our relationship with spirit and this comes in many forms… the air, the water, the fire, the Earth, gravity, time and, of course, the Holy Spirit working in our hearts. And as we give over to this relationship of spirit we’re reminded of the Eternal place. The place of Eternal Vibration. As we play our drums we send it off to that infinite place of intelligence. That infinite place of love and good thoughts. Aho, grandfather North. And here we come again back to the center.
We lift our hands to the above place… this is the place of the masculine energy. This is a place in which we go into the linear. The night sky reminds us of the individual…
yet the day sky reminds us of the unity. The same energy that creates the stars is what creates our sun and how beautiful it is to be reminded that we can be individual but yet together. Aho, father sky!
And those of you that can touch the Earth to remind yourself of the below Direction. The feminine energy beautiful mother earth. And as we come to this place of recognizing this below place… we’re reminded of the seed that sometimes has
to go into the darkness. It’s the seed that goes into the Earth that then transforms into the tree. And so it is that some of us living in that place of darkness…we’re waiting to become the tree and some of us are the tree waiting to send the seed back into the Earth. What an infinite cycle of beauty…Aho, mother earth!
And here we come again to touch that part of us… that inside part to remind ourselves the child within us. And the child within us is the one that has the place and the ability to come out and play. To have faith… to grow in a good way and to most importantly trust again. As you trust each other enough to create a judgment-free zone… to sing… to dance and to make music… so it is that we can trust the world. This is a practice place for our inner child right here… a playground and so we say, “Aho inside Place.” And then if you could say this with me:
Beauty above
Beauty below
Beauty beside
Beauty in front
Beauty behind
And resting your hand on your heart…
Beauty within
I am
We Are
Made Beautiful again
Blessings everybody! It’s so great to see all these festive costumes.
This drum circle right here is really a place where we can create what we like to call a Sacred Space. So how do we create a Sacred Space? It’s pretty easy all we need to do is this… so everybody put your hand in front of your mouth and now saying to that hand the word judgment.
Take your judgment in your hand…hold it in front of you and throw it out. So now we have a judgment-free Zone which sure makes it a lot easier to have fun! So if you feel like you’re doing something wrong most likely that’s your self-judgment. This is about us exploring the fun of making music together and really coming together as a community. If you look around the circle here there’s all kinds of people here. This is something that really doesn’t exist very often in our contemporary culture, but yet we make it exist because this is our design.
Drum Medicine
We’re designing this as we go. We’re practicing coming together in a good way and utilizing this Ancient Medicine of the drum.
So in music one of the most important things that we can explore is the place of agreement because the place of agreement is the place of power. If we’re all playing on the drum and just hitting the drum and we’re not agreeing… there’s no power in
that. In fact, we’re just reflecting our own needs, and maybe we don’t even know what we need. But we’re just reflecting. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to come together in this place of agreement and it’s a pretty simple place of agreement actually. It’s just a very simple call and response. Okay, so I’m going to play a sound on the bell and I want you to play it back to me on your drum so if I go like this.
With you right now in your hands is a tool that harnesses the power of the Eternal Vibration. You know how cool is that? Right now when we play this right that’s me touching you! Communities all over the world have realized that when you have that… you have power! So this rhythm is one Rhythm that we can explore today and have a little fun playing it! And you know maybe someday we’ll get to realize a culture where people are playing you know for a week straight during some time of the year because it all starts right here. We’re the ones that make the culture… we’re the ones that take responsibility for it. I’m so grateful that all of us are here…all the witches, the Star Wars people, there’s lots of Wookies here…it’s just great!
Functional Communication
I really didn’t know how to celebrate.
For instance…
I really didn’t know how to create an environment of Celebration. I would experience Joy, I would experience happiness, and then I would be left with this need to celebrate, but I really didn’t know how to bring you into that celebration. For instance, Monica and I would get a new client in our business because this is what we do professionally is drum circle facilitation and recently we got Wells Fargo. I don’t know if any of you seen that post, but we did a corporate team building with Wells Fargo and that was really big for me. When I experienced this feeling of Joy from that like, “wow we’re able to do a team building with this major brand.” I know that I have a need to celebrate and I want to bring Monica along with that celebration. Monica’s celebration sometimes is like, “Oh that’s great.” That’s where Monica’s celebration ends right there. What would happen is I would walk away from that and I would go, “Oh man, she just doesn’t care… she’s never celebrates all this hard work… she just said she’s ungrateful.” All of these things, but yet that’s her celebration.
I learned to bring her along to the Celebration I want to create so this is the way it sounds.
“Oh, we just got Wells Fargo and inside of me I’m experiencing Joy and then what happens the feminine side of myself.
Everybody, hold up your left arm…your left side… many earth-based communities around the world they say that this is your feminine side. Here your feminine side. And hold up your right side… this is your masculine side. So what does that leave inside of you? Both and also a child.
A child that sometimes is just experiencing an emotion. So the child inside me is like, “Wells Fargo… yippee… yay! And that’s what I want everybody just to do that, but what happens in celebration calibration is that some people’s calibration is totally different than yours. So in order to bring them to the
Celebration we in functional communication and in functional relationships say what we need. So the feminine side of me… the child is experiencing Joy is experiencing emotions…right the feminine side says,
“I need”…
the child says,
“I am feeling”…
the feminine side says,
“I need”…
So the child says,
“I am feeling joy.”
Everybody say that I am feeling Joy.
The feminine says,
“I need celebration.”
Say,
“I need celebration.”
And now here’s the tricky part and that’s coming up with a support system for your
needs. That’s where many of us fall into the place of resentment because if we are unable to articulate our support system for our need then what happens is we think that the people around us don’t care enough to meet our needs. But in this is where we get into this hyper idea that somehow they know what we need. So I walk away from the experience thinking,
“Oh, she doesn’t care about me…she doesn’t care about our business… she doesn’t care that we’re doing good.” When in all actuality, her calibration of Celebration is,
“That’s great.” And she’s feeling all kinds of things from that.
So, I’m way up here and in order for me to bring her to my celebration…I say to her,
“Wow, I’m feeling Joy.. I need to celebrate. Will you look at me and tell me that I’m the best businessman in the world, and I’m always getting great clients, and I’m amazingly beautiful?”
Now instinctually over years of doing this practice she now comes along with me and now I don’t have to say I need you to tell me that I’m the greatest businessman because she says that. But before she knows that she doesn’t know to say that.
See… so why am I in my expectation putting it on her that she needs to tell me the things that I’m wanting to hear? Is that really loving her building up a resentment about that?
That she’s not meeting my need when she doesn’t even know my need. See how dysfunctional disillusionary idea of what we call Common Sense and all of these Illusions.
So in our lives I know that I grew up in a family where celebration was a case of beer and a pile of some kind of white substance. Literally that’s what celebration was and what’s happened is that we as a people that want to thrive for a successful life… we need to design and redesign our celebration and open ourselves up to a calibration of Celebration that serves our optimal state of living. And really what that is more than anything is integration.
Integration is really what we need and how do we integrate with people if they don’t know how to integrate with us.
Drumming Tip
Relax your shoulders while playing and fall into your breath. Fall into the meditation of the rythm.
Let’s say together…
I feel
I need
I could be supported by.I feel
I need
I could be supported by.I feel
I need
I could be supported by.
Drum Prayer Meditation
Feel the Earth underneath you and remind yourself you’re supported if it’s available for you.
I invite you to close your eyes.
Let’s all take a deep breath in the nose.
Extend the exhale.
I want you to think about someone you love and are grateful for. And as you rest into this moment of creating this beautiful energy of love and gratitude in your body your body becomes light… your breath becomes easy. And your mind is simply able to create letting the body respond to the presence of the person in your life that you’ve called forward allowing them to be here in this moment close to you. It’s as if you could even feel their presence here in this circle.
There you go and now let’s magnify this beautiful vibration by sending this purposeful prayer onto the drums!
If you have never in your life experienced domestic violence raise your hand. Wow, okay now there’s about four people in this entire circle that have never experienced domestic violence…
four people in about 40 people.
So it’s pretty obvious to say that the majority of us did not have a lot of people in our lives showing us functional communication. We didn’t have a lot of examples… so what do we do when we don’t have examples? We outsource.
This one right here…
I feel
I need
I can be supported by
That’s a functional form of communication that you can apply to your life. There are a lot of great teachers out there, but when you listen to this and you understand it you’ll be able to apply it to listening to people too. You can say,
“Oh you know what they’re feeling… they’re feeling this… I bet they need this… and I bet I can support them this way because it’s not just about you. It’s also about others. So we put on these amazing ears by simply learning how to communicate because communication is not just speaking it’s also listening. And if we can do that then we can come up to people and we can maybe say to them,
“How can I support you in your recovery today? How can I support you in this? What do you need?” Because sometimes people are just like this.
How many of you have ever seen a little baby come up and they’re just screaming and yelling? And then you say to them, “Where’s the boo-boo?”
And they still are screaming right and then miraculously they they finally go,
“Oh, it’s my finger and then you know exactly what it is… you know that the boo-boo is on their finger and you kiss the finger and then they run off fine.
Sometimes adults are like this. They’re just screaming and they don’t know where the Booboo is. They don’t know what they need yet. So, if we can say,
“Oh, you know I think what I’m experiencing right now from you you know…
Are you feeling?
Do you need?
Here’s a way that I can support you.
Isn’t that a compassionate way of living? What would happen if our elected officials did this? What if they met with each other and they said,
“You know what I think you’re feeling. You know what I think we need. You know what we think we could do to support this.”
I think we would get stuff done. How about our families… our communities? It all starts with us! We really can’t blame anybody because ultimately it’s our responsibility!
I’m so grateful for all of you here taking responsibility for Community. Just take a moment and look around…
what a great celebration! How rad is this?
I just wanted to share that much about celebration because today is a festive day… it’s a day of Celebration. And I also wanted to share that sometimes celebrating can be going and giving yourself permission to just sit by the river…by the lake…you know that sometimes that’s a great celebration.
I’m going to celebrate Wells Fargo… I’m going to go outside and look at the sunset. I’m gonna celebrate this opportunity. I’m gonna celebrate today’s drum circle. I’m just gonna sit in silence and just feel into that. I’m gonna give myself permission to feel into that. These are calibrations of Celebration that can optimize our experience.
You know we live in a culture where celebration has been distorted into all kinds of different things but yet if we get back to the practice of relational spirituality being in relationship to your celebration being in relationship to your community being in relationship to yourself and your family then what we can do is we can come up with a process that really serves us and that’s the hope that I have in my heart is that we all open ourselves up to processes that serve us and meet our needs… amen!
When we play the drum with purpose we can make a difference in the world that’s what communities all over our great state have known since the dawn of cultural identity!
Andrew Ecker
Goodness Message
Hi, I’m Deborah Allen and I’m from Mesa Arizona. My positive message for the day is to learn how to love yourself, have boundaries, make peace with your inner child, be kind to her, and just heal!
Thank you so much have a beautiful day.
Deborah Allen
Life is a co creation and this page thanks all the co-creators who were part of this pages creation.
Andrew Ecker and Monica Patton of Drumming Sounds for putting on Drum Church for drumming, community fun every Sunday at 11 o’clock at Road RunnerPark in Phoenix, Arizona.
Goodness Messages
Deborah Allen
Video Footage
Artem Podrez, Martina Tomšič, RODNAE Productions, ROMAN ODINTSOV, Olia danilevich, Nicole Michalou, Ryan Fatalla, Miguel Á. Padriñán, Luis Quintero, Diva Plavalaguna, Anastasia Shuraeva, Yaroslav Shuraev, Peter Fowler, Fauxels, Diva Plavalaguna, and Tima Miroshnichenk.
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Author: Bliss
Dedicated to making a positive difference for people, animals, and this beautiful planet!
