Earth teach me to forget myself as melted snow forgets its life. Earth teach me resignation as the leaves which die in the fall. Earth teach me courage as the tree which stands all alone. Earth teach me regeneration as the seed which rises in the spring.
When I consider the great turning of the wheel of the year at the truly ecstatic pivot from Winter into Spring in this most extraordinary year of 2013, I am instantly struck with the clarion call of one word: regeneration. Let’s dive into the energetic signature of this magical vibrational spell (i.e. word) and look at its etymology:
Regeneration
c.1300, from Late Latin regenerationem (nominative regeneratio) "a being born again," noun of action from pp. stem of Latin regenerare "make over, generate again," from re- "again" (see re-) + generare "to produce" (see generation). Specifically of animal tissue, 1540s; of forests, 1888.
It is no mystery to me that this empowering incantation of transformation would come to me as the immediate frequency identity of Spring in 2013 because we as a species are undergoing a tremendous collective regeneration. It has been a trying last 100 years or so and we’ve actually tickled the prospect of world and species destruction a number of times, which has happily inspired the best of us to come forth, take account for the direness of our situation and surge forward with ever-positive solutions. The 21st century has offered its own gauntlet of dizzying initiations: conflicts the world over, the fragility of economic systems and the ever-present spectre of environmental catastrophe (highlighted by the Fukushima incident which occurred some two Springs ago and is perhaps one of the most devastating environmental wounds we have ever administered to the planet and ourselves).
In response, there has been a continual rousing of human spirit. There is the Occupy movement and uprisings for democracy in the Arab world that both still persevere, though in new evolutions. There’s a growing resistance to GMO foods and innovations in new energy ideas. And on the sheerest grassroots levels, there’s a rising in community activities, ecstatic dance parties, creative healing endeavouring and an all-round more pervasive expression of warmth, love and empathy. Perhaps the Mayan calendar was correct and we have stepped into a new world, though, as one of my masterful teacher’s told me, it’s so subtle that we don’t apprehend it yet on the material plane, but on the more ethereal planes of thought and feeling it’s all too obvious. When one considers the tantamount explorations, discoveries, pioneering and the like that are occurring globally in human knowledge and wisdom, one engages a tsunami of explosive consciousness, teeming with activation and increasingly fervent activity that actually affirms my teacher’s sentiment. It’s so massive in fact that it requires a politics of ecstasy to engage, which is being served in the uprisings of free movement, shamanic practices and sacralising musical offerings that are welcoming the bombast of spiritual dimensions to find integration in the wasting lives of our former materialist culture. We are being born again, just as Stanley Kubrick prophesized in his final poignant image of 2001: A Space Odyssey with the fetal Starchild, returning to Earth to signal rebirth into some kind of cosmic consciousness.
Behold, my friends, the spring is come; the earth has gladly received the embraces of the sun, and we shall soon see the results of their love!
Sitting Bull
One of the most profound things about regeneration is it’s a fundamental rhythm of nature. In the realm of natural healing, we witness this illustrated lucidly: when in a state of disease, the pathway of healing is to return the body to its natural state where it ceaselessly restores and regenerates itself. The challenge is that many of us do not allow the body proper rest and self-care to enter into restoration cycles. We live in a culture of over-stimulation to the point that even our sleep doesn’t boot our parasympathetic nervous system enough to repair us fully. The ancient Chinese and their primordial medicines were keen to this aeons ago and symbolized the great power of regeneration in the yin-yang symbol called the Taiji or Supreme Ultimate. This symbol depicts the essential energetic state of nature when it rests in itself. The Taoists central tenet of living skillfully is the concept of wu-wei or not-doing—when we allow nature to be, beautiful and powerful integration happens. We are drawn to unified state. We are brought to wholeness, that being that state that nature essentially occupies. Harmony appears to be a universal habit.
When we create times in our lives to simply be, whether in conscious rest, meditation or practices of living mindfully in presence, we entrain to this natural force of unification, blending all schism within, holding to the ‘chaotic unity’ that relentlessly whirls in our central energetic core (the sushumna channel according to the Indian yogis or the chong mai for the Chinese, of which the spinal column is the grossest fruition of and works as material conductor for this ‘whirling abyss’). For regeneration to take place as a perpetual and significant ally in our lives, we need to honour and revere the inherent power of nature to restore us. This is why there is also great hope in the rising of the Idle No More movement as it signals a call to reconnect with indigenous identity, of which all cultures are sourced. Indigenous culture is fundamentally Earth-based and deeply reverent and understanding of nature. In our age of hyper-stimulation, alienating intellectualism and all-around scattering of being, grounding practices that connect us to the Earth are life-saving.
You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming.
Pablo Neruda
Regeneration is not the endgame. There is no end, in fact. What regeneration represents is an integral step of maturation on the evolutionary path because when we have respect the power of nature and harmonize our relationship with nature within and outside of ourselves, we begin to consolidate ourselves into wholeness rather than vitiating in fragmentary selfhood. Instead of constantly depleting ourselves with over-stimulation and excessive yang of fire energy, we strike a balance by honouring the long-forgotten and trampled yin/water/feminine energy, realizing in the highest that the masculine and feminine can never truly come to healing unless supported by one another. This is such a beautiful remedy for it is through communing with one another that we provide the deepest medicine to ourselves and each other. It’s no trifle of paradox that our hyper-individualistic culture has brought us to a new harmonic realization that we also need radical new community spheres.
Once we are conserving more energy than we are using (a truly empowering paradigm that we can see have cross-over potential in so many realms, such as economics), we begin to take on new levels of inner-power that may not have even been able to be imagined previous. Literally, humanity has perhaps never experienced this potential as it was long the path only of ascetic mystics who realized the inherent power of holding to nature’s flow. As more power is stored and integrated into our being, regeneration paves way for transformation on the great continuum of conscious evolution. Here, the yogis tell us that the newly taken on energy potential of the body begins to activate long-latent channels and energy centres in the body that can only be roused when the energy within reaches a certain strength. As these centres and channels are powered up (i.e. the chakra system), humanity begins to be born again into a whole new potential that is as yet undefined. It’s an adventure for us all to take and one compelling and unparalleled in its joy. It’s still challenging to describe this to people because our cultures have been so attached to conditioning us into personas of deeply wounded self-worth. And yet, when I discuss the idea of regenerating; of rebirthing our lives from stagnation into new empowering potentials, there’s perpetually a recognition deep in our being that this is exactly what is possible because our nature is just that incredible.
This Spring, whatever our endeavours may be to connect to and express the ecstatic growth of this season, I invite you to hold it all in the context of regeneration, like a mantra performed daily to keep pointing and aiming toward a magnificent possibility that with some commitment will indeed start to take hold in reality. We owe it to ourselves and to all life on this planet to take advantage of these incredible times and the profound privileges afforded to us here in the West. We have so many potentials to activate in the wealth of knowledge converging and the freedom to explore consciousness like never before.
Ultimately, when we regenerate ourselves, we become greater forces of creativity, powerful love and inspiration in the world; we begin to regenerate the world around us; raise and rouse it into new expansive and vivacious vibration. There is nothing more magnificent than to be so aimed in life—to serve the evolution of consciousness and the upliftment of self and world. By doing so, we set foot on a path of true power and wonder, and begin to realize what a marvel it is to be human; to be life; relentlessly so…
“You came into this world as a radiant bundle of exuberant riddles. You slipped into this dimension as a shimmering burst of spiral hallelujahs. You blasted into this realm as a lush explosion of ecstatic gratitude. And it is our birthright to fulfill those promises.” Rob Brezny