TavBlog Mentors Summer 2021

The natural timing of the Summer 2021 Cycle of Our Raw Material (a natural thought practice that repeats its pattern 4 times each year, at the Solstice and the Equinox) has converged with the inaugural year of a federally-recognized Juneteenth, as well as the customary celebration of Father’s Day (first organized observance was June 19, 1910). Each of those three ‘holidays’ is dripping in the stuff of Mentors Week all on its own, but when all three events are combined in the same weekend, that equates to some deep and powerful energy resonating throughout humanity. A lot of that energy is produced by raw emotion that is not being harnessed into any direct intention or purpose as a result of the very fact that it is, at the root, being led by emotion. The natural power that exists within our thoughts and feelings becomes clouded by the things we have been taught to use in effort to hide or mask them while we attempt to protect our vulnerabilities from being revealed or exploited.

The feelings that can be evoked from each of these ‘honor-styled’ days can range from the depths of sadness, grief and pain to a beautiful and overwhelming sense of awe and wonder at what is truly possible in our universe. Depending on our own experiences, memories and knowledge set, we each have a uniquely individual response to the meaning of equality, the effects of not being equal, and how we might go about repairing the damage created by the lack of it in our communities. We each hold a picture of what a Father’s influence looks and feels like. Even if we didn’t have a father present in our lives, we have conjured an Ideal of that person for our heart and/or found another human being to fill that role on occasion. Additionally, we have each developed a distinctive view regarding our personal relationship to the mysteries of nature’s cycles, and to what degree we believe that they are related to each other. Just these simple but vast differences in how we experience the world will cause us to each hold different, and often Conflicting, Values, Ideals and Intentions, which are ultimately and deeply rooted in the influences of our Mentors, starting from our earliest childhood memories and continuing through this very moment.

Even if we (ORM) weren’t calling the first week after each Solstice or Equinox Mentor’s Week, some of us would remain, collectively, engaged in evaluating the roots of our current perspectives and how they have been shaped by the world we personally know to be ‘true’, because these ‘holidays’ are designed to support those considerations. If we could/would approach these moments with the focused energy of specifically curated Intentions stemming from awareness of both our personal needs and our collective needs; and if we were to place soul-based energy toward those things as a group; I believe the powers of our abilities to manifest are limitless. I say that with a growing confidence because the magic the universe puts in front of me every single day for support and objective evaluation appears to be infinite and easily sustainable. These weekly focuses seem to be supported naturally, so adding Intentional energy toward them will only increase their force and permeation. (100th Monkey-Style since I was born in 1968 ;)

I am writing this blog with the added Intention (and pressure) of posting it to Facebook. I have spent very little time learning much about the nuances and etiquette of using Facebook, which seems complicated according to the conversations I hear about Facebook (surprisingly, the topic comes up a lot). I have possessed a FB page for years thanks to my sister-in-law who signed me up when she first began, but I’ve never engaged. Every time I have logged on, my emotions have become challenged in one way or another. I feel guilty that I’ve missed an invitation, or someone I really like has reached out and I have essentially ignored them, or some other perceived faux pas that has left me feeling uncomfortable. In addition, I’ve always felt that my sarcasm and humor can be difficult to read for the people who know me well, which has made me reluctant to put myself out there in a way that invites judgment. I have never enjoyed offending people, even though it has happened more times than I know, and I’m sure it will continue to happen, because, well, Emotions.

The universe, with its wicked sense of humor, was angling for me to come up against some harsh judgment regardless, so even though I didn’t jump into the FB pond, my path to energy work itself had begun to make me say and/or do some things that make some other people say “Huh, What?!” Trust me when I say, there was a time when discussing Soul/Ego Balance was the last place I ever wanted to be in my life. Growing up, my mother talked about the world in many of the ways I talk about it now, but I hated it. I didn’t want to be weird like she was, even though some of her words struck a chord and planted seeds that I would later begin to nourish and grow. I wanted us all to share the same concept of common sense and ‘just be normal’. (As if that’s humanly possible!) I spent my teen years in the trenches of an ego/soul battle where my ego was desperately trying to look like I fit in, but my soul was holding space and trying in not-so-subtle ways to pull my attention to a larger, more collective, perspective. I denied that part of myself so strongly that for a stretch, I completely forgot that I was connected to everything through nature. During that time, I refused to see myself as the kind of person who could look for any truth beyond straight logic.

At 52, I’ve finally grown accustomed to balancing the perceptions of others within my own stable structure, and I am fully aware that the more solid I feel, the less another person’s ego-heavy impact can affect the way I perceive myself or the world. The universe has - straight up - shown me too many ‘miracles’ for me to ignore the power and support it’s currently asking me to present by publicly promoting the practice of Our Raw Material as a bonafide, natural and free tool for navigating the business of being human, whatever form and structure we have assumed for that purpose. Our Raw Material, as a thought practice, is available to each of us equally. It seems simple, yes, but the complexities of our own piece of the collective material is endlessly fascinating as we activate a personal energetic ‘safety net’ that is kinetic and available. Once you feel the depth of that support within your body, life becomes more joyful, with resonating permanence. This cycle of thinking adds depth to the things that support you and clears your mind and body of the things that keep you tangled.

Approaching my 50s, I began to notice things were shifting inside me, physically and mentally, and it was playing out energetically in my healing practice at a rapid rate. The work itself became more meaningful (who knew that was possible!) and my clients were coming with chronic mental and physical issues that lacked clear scientific or medical solutions. I began to see that there were two forces at work as I watched myself, my clients, and several patients who visited Results Chiropractic present with complaints that seemed physical at the outset, but on further investigation, stemmed straight from the emotions that were easily triggered and still lingered under the surface of awareness from childhood experiences and the significant moments in our lives.

The working title of Our Raw Material was Common Sense up until this time last year. I had three separate dreams about Thomas Paine before I finally looked him up and read his thought-provoking essays. I knew he had written the 1776 pamphlet “Common Sense”, but I did not know what it was really about or what he was trying to persuade. He, like me, was pushing to inject a specifically soul-based perspective into modern behavior. I should give an honorable mention to Cicero, who also showed up in my dreams in the subsequent years, offering a more ancient version of a similar story-- espousing a soul-driven spirit into an already ego-saturated Roman Empire, prepared to suffer ridicule and judgment because at its core, the force of these combines energies is so powerful. Soul/Ego Balance.

It’s been nice to write about each subject in relative obscurity while my thoughts settled around the viability of this system and whether it really contained the power it appeared to possess. Could anything really be this simple? My guidance said yes, and at the risk of seeming like I might have a screw loose (I’m still not fully convinced I don’t), I embarked on trying the practice as it presented itself to me and seeing what happened. The results have drawn me further into the practice, to the point of being willing to post the theory that Our Raw Material will change the perception of each practitioner in ways that are more aligned with their true intentions, whatever those intentions may be.

The fourth week of ORM explores the concept of Ignorance, asking the question, ‘How much of everything there is to know do you personally know?’ The more you ask yourself that question, the smaller the number becomes. And once you have tried to imagine everything there is to know, it’s practically impossible to pull that abstraction from your thought patterns. I am wholly ignorant about how this blog might be received from my friends and Mentors on Facebook, but I feel confident that I am prepared to handle reactions, whatever they may be.