The desert shaman - el curandero and the dreaming body

Thank you for replying to the google ad.  Our website www.12consciousdreamers.com is presently changing server and domain so for between 3 and 20 days it will be offline.  In the meantime, you have been sent here to this blog where the full information for the retreat is given.  All the other information the Centre of the Conscious Dream can be obtained by writing to zcrystalhead@hotmail.com   

The desert shaman - el curandero and the dreaming body.  

From April 12 or 16 till April 30th.

In Mexico, the shaman is usually called el curandero/a.  The curandero/a is literally 'the healer'.  Healing is understood to involve all aspects of the medicine wheel.  Air - mind, fire - spirit, earth - body, and water - emotion.  The healing is in the balancing of mind, body, spirit and emotion.  In this practical intuitive shamanic traning, clear healing practises are given which can be used on yourself or on others.  The curandero/a is also aware of the human in relation to the planet Earth, and other planets and stars.  The curandero sees the human in the context of the whole universal dream.  We will be opening spaces for you to explore your dreaming body. 


“Our intent for this event is to create spaces through practises and ceremony which open the doors to the great shamanic teachers – the earth and the skies.  A gradual course of opening to the dreaming body has been designed to prepare the physical, mental and emotional  bodies to receive the frequencies of other bodies and spaces.  It is our precept that only when the physical body through the dreaming body is put in touch with these wider spaces can real deep healing and change take place.  This is a path of transformation.  The human is no longer isolated, he/she can see more clearly and can experience the relation with other energies not only on and in the earth but in the universe.  Our intent is to put you more deeply in touch with your own shaman, priest, wise councillor and healer, to activate your own genie waiting to be released from the bottle.”  Daniel Stone and Arbolita Pashak. 

 Dreaming, the dreaming body, and the conscious dreamers.

 The word 'dreaming' when used here refers to the 24-hour intuitive information which is permanently available.  We relate the dream of the night to the dream of the day.  We open to life as dream and our task to become conscious of the way we are being dreamed and the way that we dream.  We meet our own dreamer who dreams us, and this enables us to become conscious co-creators of our own dream of our own life.

 

The ‘dreaming body’ is the means through which we extend from the physical body to relate to other dreams in the universe.  The dreaming body does not need to obey the same laws as the physical body, and so can enter extreme elemental dream spaces such as suns and seas and can merge with other vibrational dream frequencies such as colours, trees and rocks.

 A conscious dreamer is literally someone who is conscious in their own dream.  They would be aware of how the dream of the human relates to other dreams in the universe and so would be in a position to perceive the greater cosmic vision.

Centre of the Conscious Dream

The Wirrikuta is the ancient pilgrimage route of the Huichol tribes to the sacred mountain in the semi-desert area of San Luis Potosi.  The Centre of the Conscious Dream is situated under the view of this powerful ancestral presence.  We will be listening to the mountains, the desert, and the stars that speak so clearly in the night sky. 

The Centre of the Conscious Dream is literally in the middle of nowhere, with the nearest neighbour an hours walk.  The site has been developed deliberately to be simple but sufficient, so that you can have a direct experience of the elements but not be found wanting on essential living conditions.  The site consists of a medicine wheel made of four round houses, two of which are the temple and studio spaces.  There is also a large dining area, two kitchens, a building for bathing and toilet, and  six adobe sleeping domes.  Food is brought by our vehicle from the village or cooked on site.  The most important physical aspect of the site is space – you can walk as far as you like in any direction. 

   Course description (two week event starting Apr 16th). 

Day one.  journey to the desert.

Day two.  Meditation.  Breath awareness is the foundation of understanding the truth of our present moment.  It will help us to connect with out present condition, and also the condition of others.  Before any diagnosis is possible, we need a sense of the quiet mind, and an opening of the 'eyes'.  We give techniques of opening, of seeing, and of focusing intent. 

Day three.  The Medicine Wheel.  The Medicine Wheel is an inter-dimensional interface through which the dreaming body extends from the physical body, and then safely returns.  Each participant establishes their orientation to the four directions and the four elements as a strong and secure base for their ongoing dreaming and healing.  A technique is given that teaches the individual their strong and weak elements and how to balance them.  The medicine in this wheel is balance. This exercise will help in diagnosis both for yourself and for others.  When you know which element you are working with you will have a lot of information already. 

 Day four.  Deep diagnosis.  Rocks.  ‘Stone people’ hold memory.  We learn how to read the memory held in stones.  This will help us to read the memory held in our bones.  Deep history.  you will learn how to journey through the help of stones into your cellular memory, so that you can 'read' your own body.  You  pracitise first on yourself and then on others.  You are identifying memories held – time traps.

Day five.   Trees. The chance to breath.  Trees can teach us how to clear the spaces so that the memories held in the body have somewhere to go.  By opening the dreaming body to the tree, the breath can extend the physical body into the earth and into the sky.  This opens the doors of percieption.  You are able to open to the wisdom of the tree and release the holding. 

Learning to extend energy from the human body to another energy body.  Learning how to receive information from another energy body.  The wisdom of the breath.  The expanding lungs.  The breath of the human and the breath of the tree.  Extending breath into the earth, into the sky.  The breath of the universe.  The big self and the little self.

Day six.  Mexican healing plants.  The curandero always works with plants for healing.  You will be taught how to open to the spirit of a plant, how to intuitively feel the right plant for a particular diagnosis.  You will learn how the plants work on all levels - physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.  You will also be taught how to apply the plants, how to make teas, oils, creams and ointments.  

Day seven.  Animal guides.  Animals as guides into different parts of the human body.  By identifying your helper and then developing dialogue with this animal, you will receive very useful information.  This is something that can be done for yourself and also for another person.  For many people, connecting with animal guides teaches how to be in a body.  They are also Ttachers of the movement between dimensions and guides of death (transformation from one dream state to another dream state). 

 Day eight.  Human teachers of the dream have different information than the animal guides.  We open to human spirit teachers who are either still in body or no longer in body as teachers of our dreaming.  Family, friend teachers.  Archetypal teachers – Buddha, North American Indian, shaman, priest, Jesus, Allah, Shiva, Shakti, Earth Mother, Isis etc.  Spirit guides.  We learn how to Develop and maintiain our connection with spirit teachers.

Day nine.  Deepening the work with plant spirit and their practical application.  The mayan Calendar (seminar).

Day ten.  Dreams.  We are looking at the relation between the dream of the night and the dream of the day.  We are looking at how to make the links.  Our 24 hour dreaming gives us constant information about all aspects of our life in luding our own healking and the healing of others.  How do we receive and how  do we read this information?    How can we develop contact with our dreaming so that we receive  more clearly this informaiton? 

Days eleven and twelve (walks may not be on consecutive days).  Walking meditations.  The walk of power.  The walk of intent.  These walks will help you to strengthern your intent.  The walk to Vernalejo is to an ancient Huichol site which represents and embodies the death aspect of the pilgrimage.  This is a walk of death, of letting go.  Pilgrims pass through their death before climbing the mythical mountain where the sun was born – the place of the pilgrims re-birth.  

 Day thirteen.  Crystalline intellgence.  You learn how to journey into the cellular history of the planet and how memory can be release from the earth.  Earth space clearing.  Freeing the body to dance.  We open to the healing properties of crystal.  The inner crystal skull.  you connect with your crystalline DNA and to the crystalline grid in the planet.  We travel to the star, the place of your first intent which will give you the the connection with your vital life force essential for any self healing and for healing others.   We open to the planet Earth as a conscious being. to  te deep past and the deep future.  We open to the human role in the universe. 

Day fourteen.  Grounding the dream.  We use this day to begin to ground the information we have received through creative writing, painting, music, movement, or simply reflecting in silence.  This practise of grounding the dream is encouraged as a daily practise throughout the retreat.  There tends to be time most days devoted to this practise.

Day fifteen (30th April).  Return to mexico City.  

Please note that the timing of this programme is subject to change. 

Teotihuacan option (starts 12 april)

Day one.  The Zocolo, city of Mexico.  The Zocalo is the point of power where the Aztecs saw the vision of the eagle eating a snake whilst perched on a cactus.  This central image in Mexican mythology signifies the ascension from the Earth to the skies: the Earth energy of the snake will rise with the eagle into the celestial flight.  Aztec dancers still call in the four elements outside the cathedral and celebrate the dance of Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent.  On this day is the first ‘walk of power’ in order to open to this earth vortex point.

Day 2-4.  Teotihuacan is the pre-Aztec ceremonial city about 30 miles from Mexico City.  It is the most important pyramid site in Mexico linked to Giza in Egypt, and covers over two square miles.  The dreaming of the ancient Toltecs was to understand the connection between the Earth and the other planets in our solar system, and the sun, our star.  Through this knowledge their dreaming was to find the connection of the Earth with the whole universe.  At Teotihuacan we can touch again this dream of unity.  We will be staying in the traditional pre-Aztec calpulli (school) within the Ancient Teotihuacan site. We will be learning the meanings of the ancient dances and taking part in the Dance of the universe.  We will be learning the theory and practise of the temazcal (Mexican  sweat  lodge),  limpia  (energy  cleansing), and learning about the curative plants and stones of the traditional mexica to aid the movement and transformation of our dreaming bodies.  There will also be a seminar on the significance of the  different Toltec Calendar.

We will be taking part in cave meditations underneath the sacred site before we are taught how to enter through the natural energetic doorways on the land to the site itself. 

Costs and details. 

The desert shaman.  Two weeks  Apr 16-30.  29-Nov 12 £950  (US$1425) hotel in mexico city and desert camping.  £1030 (US1545) with your own adobe dome. (there are five adobe domes available). 

Teotihuacan option.  Apr 12-30.  £1200  (US$1845).  hotel in mexico city, dormitory at Teotihuacan, camping in the desert.  £1280 (US1965) fwith your own adobe dome in the desert. 

15 places available on this retreat.

Formal practical intuitive shamanic training.  This training starts with this retreat  and has a one or two year option (for which a certificate is given).   It involves internet supervision as well as personal individual sessions and further course participation in the country where you live.  The cost of this course is as above and £65 US$95) per month payable on a monthly basis.  Please contact us for a full leaflet.

Prices includes all meals (except for two meals in Mexico City) and all accommodation including the hotel booked in Mexico city the night before the start date, all entrance fees, seminars, ceremonies,  and all internal travel.  It does not include the cost of your flight or your ongoing transport or accomodation from the desert site. 

Accomodation is in a hotel in Mexico city, shared rooms within a dormitory with a camping option in Teotihuacan, and camping or adobe dome (5 available) in the Centre of the Conscious Dream.  The camping option includes the facility to sleep in a shared adobe space (used during the day), if necessary.  Food is through restaurants in Mexico City, in-house Mexican food in Teotihuacan, and a varied diet (organic when possible) at the desert site where thre is also a shared kitchen for your use.  Bottles water is available always, and there are showers at Teotihuacan and water to heat in the desert.  Toilets are dry ecological in the desert.  

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Daniel Stone has been developing shamanic dreaming circles for eleven years in Britain, the U.S. and Mexico.  He founded the Shamanic School of dreaming in 1996 and the Centre of the Conscious Dream in 2000.  He is author of 'The dreamer who dreams you'  is an international exhibiting artist and performing musician. 

 Arbolita Pashak learnt through her native Mexican blood line the shamanic arts and intuitive healing.  She has worked with many indigenous communitites with projects of sustainable development.  She makes organic healing products, and teaches the ceremonial and healing use of Mexican plants and also the practical uses of the  Mayan calender.

 

Tecpaltecuhtli (Teotihuacan) is a sacred dancer, teacher, and ceremonial leader in the Anahuac tradition. He has devoted his life to the understanding of the traditional teachings in Teotihuacan and is the author of ´El Despertar Tolteca`  (The awakening Toltec).

Other native teachers are involved at Teotihuacan. 

 For booking information, or to talk to one of the facilitators, please email zcrystalhead@hotmail.com  

please note that our websites www.12consciousdreamers.com  and www.paintingthefuture.com are changing server and so they will not be online for between 3 and 20 days.  All further information can be obtained by writing to zcrystalhead@hotmail.com

'Meditation' and 'the journey'

This painting is a meditation.  The dots break the canvas down into 'atomic' spaces, and this is a metaphor for the vibrational movement which is behind every fixed appearance.  There is a level of meditation, in Zen, Buddhism and shamanism where one is able to see through the 'fixed attention' which makes objects appear solid.  however, as every physicist will tell you, behind the solid mask is a permanent moving vibration. 


Dots have long been important in these paintings.  I was very moved by Aboriginal art, when in Australia, and i remember clearly, the first time i saw authentic Aboriginal Art in the Aboriginal Museum in Darwin.  There was one painting there which was all dots with no form or structure.  I remember the feeling i had when looking at this big painting.  I felt like i was looking at the universe.


Now i live in the desert, and at night i lay on the hammock and look up at the sky.  The stars shine in front of other stars which shine in front of other stars.  There is no depth to this sight, it is all depth. 


I find that for my mind, when i am painting this type of painting, i find space.  The preocupations or continuing dramas that are like a rather insistent and not that interesting radio drama, dissolve into these atomic spaces of thought forms.  This really is a meditative form of painting, obviously, one has to be very patient with the dots painted so carefully and insensely, and there is a sense of letting go of holding on to thought. 


The circles in this painting relate to time.  Time circles.  There is also in this painting an invisible time spiral which links these time circles.  A time circle is really a moment in the time space continuum which holds itself.  This blog is a kind of time circle.  If you read it again you would repeat the circle, but you would find that the experience of reading it the second time was different than reading it the first time.  This is the influence of the spiral, known worldwide from the rainbow serpent of the Australian Aboriginals to the Mayan Hunab Ku as a symbol of time. 

This painting is really to be viewed over time.  Then the dots start to move, and the the illusion of the canvas opens to a deeper level of reality.


This painting is 60cm squared and is acrylic on canvas.  It costs 475 pounds or US$700 and the postage cost depends on your country.  It is presently in Mexico. 

This painting is one of two.  This one is the larger of the two, at 1.8 by 1.7 metres.  There is another similar one which is one metre squared.

These paintings are journeys.  They are journeys through attentions, or journeys into types of perception.  Again, when one meditates deeply, or journeys with the drum, the perception changes, and it feels like the eyes are journeying through space.  The eyes, like arrows, pierce through the illusion of the fixed attention and are able to sustain themselves in a more deeper sense of the truth of reality which is not fixed, but vibrational and fluid.  In order to get to this level of attention, one has to open to the nature of change which is continuous in the cosmic dance, and let go of the false security of the known fixed boundaries which are expressed in our material world as well as through our work, money, relationships.  We tend to want to fix out of a need for security, but the journey through attention shows that the security has false pretexes, and therefore is no security at all!

So what is security?  Allowing time to look at the paintings, the dots begin to move, there is a changing relation between the viewer and the viewed, between subject and object, between seer and seen.  The more one looks, the more one 'becomes' the painting, and one senses a disolution of the physical body.  The sensation is of floating in a sea of space.  To get to this sublime state, one has to open ones heart.  This is not easy.  To really open one's heart to love requires one to pass through all the wounds that prevents one opening ones heart to love.

People often say that retreating to the solitary meditation is an easy way out.  The people who say this of course have never tried it.  To really face oneself, to be naked to who one really is, requires a tenacity that most can not bare.  Most would not be able to see their naked selves, it would shock them.  But the other side of the journey, the other side of the resistance to our nothingness, is the bliss.  The we.  The connection.  The interconnection.  I am a human, i am a tree, i am a rock.  I am vibration. 

The smaller painting is acrylic on canvas, and one metre squred.  It costs 800 pounds or US$1200 dollars.  it si presently in England, and can easily be sent on the existing frame which is of very good quality.   

The larger painting 1.8m by 1.7m costs 1900 pounds or US$2925 dollars.  It is presently in Mexico.   It can be sent rolled up, which would be a lot cheaper than sending it on the frame. 



I believe in making these paintings available to all.  Some paintings are in Galleries in Santa Fe, England and Mexico, where the price is double at least, and then they are only available to a certain economic group of people.  I want these paintings to be available to all, and so i offer that even if people do not have the money to pay all now, they can pay  over time, and we can make an arrangement that is agreeable to both parties.

To purchase these or any other paintings on the website, please email galeriaconciente@hotmail.com   

For more information about Daniel Stone, his biography, more paintings and  and more background information about the paintings, please go to the website WWW.paintingthefuture.com  For information about events and courses at the Centre of the Conscious dream, the website is www.12consciousdreamers.com. 

Thank you.  Daniel Stone.