by Fu-Ding Cheng: Hello Everyone, I trust the “shamanic fast” had served you well (see Blog #3). It ends on Easter Sunday, but end it well. Don’t shock your purified body and nervous system by gorging indiscriminately on fats, sugar and alcohol.Easter is a time of rebirth and resurrection. It comes from an old pagan festival, 
Eostre to celebrate the resurrection of new life, from which the Christian’s adapted for their own festival of Easter. It’s no accident that it comes at the beginning of Spring when Mother Earth herself undergoes a period of rebirth with new plants, flowers and perfumes.
Easter, Spring, New Cycle, New Beginnings––these apply not only to outward manifestations, but also inner attitudes. It is a good time to practice what the Buddhists termed “beginner’s mind.” This calls for new eyes with no assumptions and no judgments. With no assumptions, everything is a wonder, fresh and new. That’s why so many of us love traveling. The new views, food, and habits of the place we’re visiting make us feel alive.
But, ultimately, it’s about consciousness, attitudes and outlooks. With beginner’s mind, we’d be able to bring this fresh awareness to our daily life like when we were young children. The world was a giant Adventure Land filled with thrills, chills and spills. We can still make choices, of course, to select the thrills and avoid the spills.
With no judgment, we can experience life without proclaiming “good” or “bad.” Instead, we would move through the world seen as a universe of overlapping “dreams.” In the shamanic tradition, the world is a dream consisting of countless smaller dreams. As individuals, we are each a “dream.” Our families another one (consisting of a number of individual dreams), and society and governments yet bigger ones. Each of these “dreams” appear, has its moment of existence, and disappears back into the primal matter from which it came. Everything comes and goes, appears and disappears just like a dream, so how can we judge anything if it keeps changing endlessly?
With no judgment, we move through this universe of overlapping dreams and instead of wasting our chi condemning the ills of society, we simply move through looking for what fits our heart’s desires. Sometimes we find what we seek almost immediately, and other times we must search through a city of ten million to find the seven friends we need. It’s all part of the adventure.
Refraining from judgment doesn’t mean we don’t have powers of choice. We can still wield the sword of discernment and make meaningful assessments, but they won’t be about good or bad (for who are we to judge, anyway), but rather what is true and what is illusion. Or what we like and don’t like. Or what is a fit and what is not. This applies to all decisions from business demands to love partners, from what movies to see to how to spend the day.
A significant choice during times of rebirth is to ask, “Does what I desire serve my ego or my heart?” Just to ask this question can lead you on a path that changes your life and accelerate your way towards personal freedom. With beginner’s mind, you’ll find the journey a fresh adventure all along the way.
Bon voyage,
Fu-Ding
