the meaning of the hummingbird..

The hummingbird is a messenger, a messenger of love.
The hummingbird told us to be messengers and the bridge makers between the linear, technological world of the North and the cyclical, natural world of the South.
We are here to help bind the mind and the heart, the physical and spiritual, so that the eagle and the condor may fly together once again.

one of us, jack, julie or i wrote the above on the picaflor blog while in peru.. i'm not sure which of us..but

our picaflor productions logo is the hummingbird for this reason.. and every day of my life this is truly my goal.. and yet

i woke up this morning tangled in feelings that i find unpleasant.. feelings of really not liking another human.. and always when i feel this way it seems the first place i have to look and prod is within myself... was i feeling this way because i wanted to control another's behavior? what kind of mirror is this person for me? blah.. yuck.. is that really a mirror for myself? ..ugh... i don't want to do this.. pout. the only word that kept appearing to me was EGO... arrgh.. it was not a pretty way to wake up and start the day!

i couldn't find a hummingbird anywhere ethereally or otherwise.

so to clarify and get those feelings right up into my head.. ha ha..

i had to look up the word ego .. and there in the oxford english dictionary i found the answer to something that i often get tangled up..

ego is :that part of the mind which has a sense of individuality and is most consious of self.

so this is a good thing, really, it's how i get a camera in my hand or my feet up a mountain with Lorenzo, and all sorts of things in life... this is how i am appearing on the planet.. a thread in a larger fabric which makes a whole beautiful crazy wild amazing quilt. my ego is what helps me navigate being in form and i really don't have to take it seriously or believe it beyond that. and when i remember that other people's behavior is nothing to do with me i can let go of fussing over it. and if their behavior is actually threatening my ego helps ward off the blows of someone coming at me from an entirely egocentric: centred in the ego;self centered, egotisitcal... perspective..with no thought of how others might feel or how you might affect others.

the difference between the two, i realize now, is what trips me up, and perplexes me... we don't need egocentricty really. i think surely in this time of tremendous change that is becoming more and more evident. if we all had egos and believed there was enough for us all to be gloriously joyful, then egocentricity could just fall into oblivion ...

but it seems we forget that there is enough for us all. we somehow don't really believe that we are all so important. we often still feel it is imperative to express our self importance and flash it around. and also, it's hard to imagine when you are being threatened to still view us all as one.. to remember that there is abundance. how do we do that in the face of adversity? dropping heavy energy what does that mean really? and then i found myself in peru with our little production company , who also happens to be my son and his wife, traveling along the sacred valley with lorenzo and his family.. and really, witnessed people walking their talk.. dropping grievances as fast as they could be accrued. always generous.. never ever operating from an egotistical place. and they face adversity.. never enough money. never enough food.. and in his own village in Q'ero, lorenzo is a very important person and people are jealous of him.. let his llamas go to be eaten by pumas.. etc.. not nice..

yet, never once while with lorenzo and juliana, did they ever utter even the smallest complaint, express anger, or frustration.. his biggest expletive was WOW. and it was real and genuine. if the bus was late. we waited. if it rained we got wet and then we dried off. if we lost something we were sad for a minute and then shrugged it off. while in Machu Picchu, their baby, only three months old, became very sick.. juliana looked worried, but she never once showed any sign of freaking out when their healing methods did not work, she simply took care of her baby until we could get back and get him to a doctor.

what we did do every step of the way was a despacho, a ceremony, where we asked permission of the mountain spirits and expressed GRATITUDE GRATITUDE GRATITUDE. we learned, for real, that if people were horrible to you, it was sad, perplexing, but not something you attached to. being hungry is a genuine problem and so when there is food. you thank mama pacha for it.. being with our Q'ero family for a month was one of the greastest lessons in letting go of attachment to control.. letting go of FEAR. that is letting go of heavy energy... they not only shared themselves, their lineage and ancient knowledge, but a beautiful, simple peaceful way through the world. lorenzo and juliana are absolutely secure in their egos and absolutely without egocentricity.. and never lose, even in the face of real adversity, their ability to express joy. people often ask me well how does one do this if you aren't in peru with these magical people how does one let go of "heavy energy"? for me the answer is .. wake up..look inside myself..go ughto i don't like this.. rush to the dictionary..ha ha.. and then let it go...stop taking it all so seriously.. really. simply let it go.. it's not mine .. what is mine is a HUGE GIANT LOVE and JOY.. and if others try to take that from me..well let them try.. it's none of my business.. my business is to be the hummingbird ... fly with my heart right on out there!!! whooo eee.. thank you my dear Q'ero family.. gracias gracias gracias.. munay. so a nice little north american ceremony is to breathe and remember that.. we are all the humminbird for real!!

Munay munay munay and muchas gracias xxx

ok and just a btw.. now i get to really see if i can walk my talk because sitting here minding my own business i was just stung by a bee. i am ALLERGIC to bees. hmm. so while i'm waiting to see if i have to stab myself with an epi pen.. i get to say.. yes sometimes people and things are dangerous.. they still cannot take away your inner being of joy..

and it is the fall equinox.. time for going within... i seem to still be breathing so phew. deep breath...

i'm letting it go!!!

iva

road to Q'ero

i have been away from this blog for months. busy working on two movies!! Dreaming heaven is up and out in the world. for updates check out http://www.dreamingheaventhemovie.com/

and now we are hard at work on a movie about the Q'ero people in Peru and a message they have for the world.

the time has come to ask for support to help us get this finished so check it out below and if you'd like to pitch in a dollar or two that would be amazing and if not that's fine too.. we would love it if you shared this around and around and around... thank you!!!

check out the link below !

mucho gracias!!!

note from costa rica

brimming brimming brimming with emotion. sitting on porch with no walls. houses don't need walls. just roofs and floors and netting to shield from rain. the ocean is crashing down below and a gentle breeze caresses me... for three weeks now have been woken each morning at 430 by the strange loud roar of the howler monkeys. or monos congos. and just now having the great privilege of watching the troupe making their trek across the treetops. they are completely silent except for the occasional chitter of a baby who finds a leap too hard. . they eat leaves. move in groups. are completely passive.. the loud strange roar a bluster and bravado show of defense made by the males first thing in the morning and last thing at night and rarely in between unless they are alarmed. after watching them day after day their personalities begin to emerge. some are more timid about which branch to go to next and some without hesitation leap, like flying trapeze performers, with great panache onto a tiny branch and hold on as it swings and sways under their weight. the babies' leap and then scamper chattering loudly after their mothers. some cling hard to their mother's backs and ride this way across the tree tops. every time i am reminded of the story of zephyr from the Babar stories.

this place. this costa rica really exists still... macaws caw like absurdly colored crows. they mate for life so are most often in pairs as they fly to the almond trees that line the beach. bright green parakeets dart out of the forest. an anteater stood in the road watching me make photos. a puma was seen crossing this same road the day after. and a few weeks ago a man opened his kitchen door to a jaguar hanging out . monkeys and snakes and anteaters and pelicans and big cats and gekkos and great blue butterflies. whales, dolphins and flying fish. so many species of trees in the forest they can't all be named. water springs from the ground clean enough to drink unfiltered. fruit and vegetables , too many to name, grow in abundance... i think we had a place named eden that we felt we were expelled from and yet, really, here it is...

i stood at the foot of a great matapalo tree. my hands on it's trunk, eyes closed. the energy of our earth surged so strongly up my feet and into my heart and out my head i gasped. this is life. this staggering beauty. this is life and we belong to it. how have we forgotten that? i am overcome with the staggering privilege of being here.

mucho mucho mucho gracias for this time in costa rica..

pura vida. this is what they say here. pure life. that is the spirit here. life is a privilege and it is beautiful. live it and be tranquillo. pura vida and tranquillo.

yes. tranquillo... for the very first time, it seems, since i was a child i am truly tranquillo. it is easy to be so.
may this spread out to all beings...
te amo
xxxx

Returning to the Mother...

This is the first little tug on what feels like a long piece of thread…about living on the planet and our relationship to the feminine…its a big subject... and i apologize if the writing here is a little disjointed... i'm sharing ideas as they are forming... so here goes…

In my house I have a wall dedicated to Tonantzin… the mother… the savior of the Mexican people…while studying for my aromatherapy certification I wrote a paper about the essence Palo Santo and it came to me during the musing time before writing words that Palo Santo is the essence of the Mother… Palo Santo has all of the healing properties of frankincense but she is feminine not masculine. She comes from the Americas not the Middle East… she “told “ me that she is in fact the big healer for us who live in the Americas. She comes from the holy wood of Ecuador and Peru… and she is here for us … for healing… she is the Mother. She is one aspect of Tonantzin and She is inviting us home and the invitation is urgent…

Lately the question that has come to me over and over is why are so many women getting breast cancer?… why is it the women who are getting sick over and over? I kept saying to my husband… "we are the canaries in the mine… we are the canaries in the mine… " and then another piece trickled in…. we call our earth our mother… our earth is feminine. But look how the feminine is treated in most cultures of the world… how can we change how we treat our environment when we call our environment our mother if in fact we don’t really, not really, have regard for the mother? …How can the feminine aspect of the cosmos, the planet earth reside in our consciousness in a place of great reverence if that is not how we act towards the feminine off our species.?…

My husband recently returned from a trip to Nashville. He went to check on his cows and to see our friends the McCormick’s, to attend the Christmas party at the ranch, and to pick up the newest member of herondale farm, Reba, the great Pyrenees guarder of sheep. A huge white fluffy puppy! …I guess he listened to the radio a lot on the long drive home because he stood at the kitchen counter and explained to me what causes breast cancer according to a breast oncologist who herself has recovered from this disease… he said it is directly caused by the poisons in the environment… round up on the weeds…the pesticides on the corn. The hormones in the cow milk. The breast is the most sensitive organ in any human body… it is most sensitive from puberty until the woman’s first child… and during this time if it is filled with toxins these toxins help to form the aberrant cells… so we are poisoning the source of mother's milk... on every level ...

He actually thanked me, for being the crazy that I am, and sticking to my guns and driving around and around, insisting that my children eat organic food in the eighties in London. " I am so lucky to be married to you," he said… and in the quiet moment standing in our kitchen in semi darkness a profound healing went down. A shift occured from the teasing me and resisting my efforts to this simple acknowledgement of how I’ve tried to nurture our family and how possibly it could turn out to be exactly the right thing all along...

He and I got to talking about this concept of the feminine… how much regard he has for all of the aspects of this. From the Divine Mother to his gratitude to his own mother and then for me, his wife, and for his daughter… to the land he is steward of…. and it came to me how simple it is really… how quiet and gentle it can be …How if we change our thinking… our feelings about this how naturally without even thinking about it we will begin to change how we live on the earth… we wont’ have to march and protest and be angry etc… we will come from a place of genuine love and respect and naturally care and nurturing will follow.. And in the meantime I feel it is a good idea to pay close attention to the female humans of the species… our bodies are reflecting the body of the Mother… we are calling out …

These photos were taken a while ago when I first began taking pinhole photos… I had this feeling of Eden… a place of freedom and beauty…. It is the place our Mother provided… it is the place in my visions while studying with Palo Santo… this place is the place I feel also while reading The Ringing Cedar Series by Vladimir Megre.

The invitation has been issued… She is urging us to return before it’s too late… And it is up to us...


The photos are mine... the photo of the painting of Tonantzin is of the painting by Emily Grieves at the dreaming house in Teotihuacan, Mexico.

Journey to Q'ueros

There are a few places left on earth it seems that are truly original. Where no cars, or machines, or electricity, or gasoline have ever been. Where the language of the people is shaped by the land and sounds like the whisper of the wind or the gurgle of a brook over stones. Where there is little shouting, when a whistle will do.

Q’ueros, high in the Andes mountains in Peru is this place. After a day of riding on dusty buses and minivans from Cusco and then two days of walking/riding horses over two 17,000 feet, perilous, mountain passes you arrive in a place where the water still runs so clear and clean you can drink from the streams, the silence is profound and the sun falls down in clear cascades of light.

You sit in a valley as the sun is setting. Off in the distance two children are herding the llamas back to their corral. There is no sound. No sound at all. You are cocooned in a silence so still it seems this must be where possibility begins. One of the children begins to sing and dance alone on the hillside with her llamas. The Q'ueros song. And in one clear stroke of feeling you absolutely understand in your very cells that we are The Children of the Sun. That it isn’t just a story, a myth, that there is an Inner sun within us, an Outer sun that we see in the sky, and The Sun behind the Sun, the Creator of it all, but that this is fact. And that we always have been the Children of the Sun. Some of us have just forgotten. We have forgotten the song. But In Q’ueros you remember.

for dylana.

i had no idea you were gone. i had no idea of course that you would go so quickly. you were wonderful. young, vibrant, an incredible healer.

as i was leaving your office one day i saw that you had always been an acupuncturist. i saw you as a chinese man. right there in the flesh. i hesitated and then shyly told you as i hovered in the doorway ready to flee lest you thought i was completely crazy. you smiled and asked if the veil was always that thin for me. apparently today it is i replied. and you said, yes, all of us who have been chinese doctors before learn really quickly.

yes i said. i understand.

but really it seems that i understand nothing. it seems really that nobody knows anything, not priests or psychics or doctors or spiritual leaders. maybe we all get little glimpses of it. and some think they know but for me all of it is a tremendous perplexing, sometimes painful, alot of really wonderful, huge mystery. and the only thing we can do is live. and live right now. in peru i could actually see how heavy energy affects our bodies. almost instantaneously. so part of living for me is to work on that. really open my heart. really love. really identify and drop the heavy energy so there is more room for the refined. i was hoping to get to tell you that in person. instead i'm telling you here, perhaps, through the veil you will see.

today, i wish the veil was thinner so that i could see you once more and whisper good bye and say thank you for all that you did for jerry in his healing process and for me. i can't fathom why your time this go around was so short but i imagine that you know and it's all for some reason or another. and in the meantime i learn once again that i must treat each encounter with the understanding that life is really and truly only happening right now. there is no past. there is no future. dylana you were an absolute wizard . you still are a wizard. we will miss you so!

love

iva

finding my voice on this journey

usually i feel i have to write my own words here. but today is mary oliver's birthday and this poem about, the journey, finding your voice, your own unique life, is one of my favorite ever poems. some how my whole life seems bound in these words. today i am in peru and i have lost my voice. in the beginning of this journey i dreamt that to find the light really we would have to clean ourselves thoroughly, drop heavy energy, go through the obstacles, and so the obstacles are presenting themselves and all i feel is a huge SOARING joy.

losing my voice today must have some wondrous significance and so along we go with our amigos and teachers. Lorenzo and Don Martine . and every time we do a ceremony. receive a karpai, we are able to release more heavy energy and let more light in. yesterday we learned that from the Q'uero perspective this is the key . that if all humans work on themselves alone and in ceremony and in gatherings of any kind then when they gather in larger groups the light can really burst through and shine. this is our journey on earth.

if we save ourselves we save each other.

so here is Mary Oliver's poem.

i'd love for you to follow the blog of our filming journey with the Q'uero if it interests you. www.picaflorproductions.blogspot.com

ayanchaykil/sulpayki (thank you in quechua. from one dove's heart to another. is literal translation)

xxxxx

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

© Mary Oliver. Online Source