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A NatureSkills.com exclusive from VitalArts.net
I trust that if you’re reading this, you love Nature. Throughout human history, people have been making altars and shrines in places in nature where they feel the presence of the Sacred most profoundly.
It can be a profound statement of humility and deep thanksgiving to do so. If you have a “sit spot” such as the one recommended by the Kamana Program, in a very short time, you come to recognize this spot as magical. You fall in love with it. I know I did.
My love for my small habitat remains quite profound. When I feel this kind of connection and love, I always want to honor it and give thanks. The act of creating a shrine in a scared place feels as intimate as making love to the Beloved. It will bring you fully into the Sacred Present. It is a holy act. Literally, you will be made more whole.
Building an altar or shrine from the natural elements that I find in the vicinity comes naturally to me. I think it comes naturally to children, too. It did for my daughters. I use materials such as pinecones, fallen willow twigs, yellow and shinny, and of course, rocks and feathers.
My free e-manual, Altar Making – A Spiritual Practice to Deepen Your Connection to the Sacred, can give you more explanations as to how you can benefit from altar making. It also provides ideas on the construction.
Altars of the outdoors variety will change with the seasons and the seasons will work upon them. Some will last only until the next tide comes in. Others may make it half the way through a cold winter when they finally fall apart.
I love this impermanence and these transitions. If you’re like me, the poignancy and power of these transitions feeds your soul in ways the commercial world fails to do.
Certainly, download the book and enjoy the aspects that obviously deepen your connection to the Sacred, skip the rest.
Go for it, it’s free => Altar Making
Here’s an example of how my friend and colleague, Kamana graduate, Bob Wise, uses altar making to support himself and family in a troubled time...
Altar Work
This is the story of how altar work has been used to help a family in crisis. There are details that apply to altar work in general because they show how this altar is linked to the situation, how it was effective, and how our choices create the threads of life that weave into this kind of work.
Our family has unsuccessfully struggled with a problem that’s grown steadily worse for about the last ten years. Shortly before the latest peak in this slow crisis, I followed up on a suggestion made by my Life Coach William Wittmann and created an altar for all involved.
A short time afterwards, direct and effective change began for all involved, with positive, focused help arriving in a big way. No, the problem isn’t totally resolved. There is relief though, because for the first time it seems there is a resolution in sight.
The Story
I can track the series of events that led to the altar five years back to one specific, and cold, mid-December day. Wandering on a local ridge for the first time, I thought I was just on a trip to explore new territory along the edges of a favorite valley.
After wandering the ridge a while, I was walking down a small slope, across frozen stony soil covered with loose pebbles. When I slipped, it was so fast I can't describe the events sequentially. I was walking, the next moment I was on the ground, my right leg bent outwards in a way I don't usually sit. A few moments later, the meaning of the soft crack I heard as I went down was made clear by the pain in my leg when I stood.
No, this isn't an intense survival story. My leg was broken, but it was only a crack in the small bone of my lower leg. I was totally able to make it to the jeep, drive home, even switch out of my woods clothes and drive myself to the Dr.'s office. The break wasn't a big challenge. What’s important is that the time off from work gave me space to make choices that led to a series of positive, and significant, changes.
My stepdaughter was about seven, and I had been looking for a way to role model how I handle class work. Just days before the injury, Wilderness Awareness School was mentioned in an email. Following another quiet inner urge, I used the time to begin their home study course. An early result of the injury is that this became a successful way to role model class work while doing something I loved.
The Kamana Program is designed to help one become a more complete naturalist, and continue on into tracking if desired. Through that connection came an email mentioning William Wittmann. In a session with him, not long after he agreed to work with me as Life Coach, I mentioned being unable to find a specific kind of book on tracking, and that I kept seeing it in my Minds Eye. I think he saw the significance of that right away.
Following his encouragement, I began to write the book. Eventually I retired from my full-time job, and shifted into full-time work on the book. That has now blossomed into my greatest passions, telling track stories and writing. Please be patient, this all ties in!
The latest tracking for The Book of Track Stories had drawn me back to the ridge before the family problem blossomed into another crisis. The day after William and I discussed it in a session, I was wandering the ridge with the altar idea in the back of my mind, but not yet committed to it.
As I crossed the ridge, I took a turn I usually avoid. It leads to deep, soft, snow that’s hard to travel through. Climbing down an outcrop of rounded boulders I noticed one with green and fresh-looking Kinnikinnick rising out of the snow near its base, and felt a sense of rightness there.
I trust the wisdom of gut-feelings, and I think I decided to go with the altar process as that “Yes” feeling came soft and clear. The choice made, I said a simple prayer at the spot to explain my intentions and ask permission.
That night I wrote my prayer as a poem, and returning the next day, I waded through the soft snow to the boulder. I sat on another dry boulder for a while, using Owl Eyes to center as I soaked in awareness of the area. When I do that my body sometimes just knows it’s time to do things, so after a while I found myself getting up and beginning to set up the altar.
The set up was simple. A request to the community for permission to use the space, a pinch of tobacco to say thanks, then I read my prayer aloud so the intent could soak in as much as possible, and left it there.
I believe that prayer is much about how solutions come as a flow through the connections we all share. I wasn’t expecting an instant response; I try to leave room in my hopes for the results to be whatever they need to.
In this case the events that led to the altar work had begun at least years before, and the results began to surface about a month after. Now it’s five years later and larger significances of the choice made during the time of that injury are still appearing.
Threads
In hindsight I can see I was at the crest of a wave of life-events that goes back more than twenty years (hmm, a ridge has similar qualities!). My heart has always been drawn to Nature; it’s a major thread. Twenty years ago I was faced with a hard choice when I came to the most significant step I could have taken towards involvement with the natural world. The quiet inner voice was saying I needed to do other work first.
That was no easy time. I felt that level of involvement with the natural world was all about listening to the inner voice. But my inner voice was telling me I had to delay, complete a different path first, and I had no idea how long it would take, or if I’d ever complete it. It truly seemed I stood a fair chance of giving up what I longed for most.
I followed that small voice, and twenty years along that thread, not long before this injury, the realization came that I had completed the work that required the delay.
I was surprised when I realized my inner voice was saying it was finally time to make that long desired choice. The rightness of that twenty year old choice was affirmed by the synchronicity of the space in my life to choose, just as freedom to move towards that long desired goal had come.
More threads were weaving together even before that space came. I’d already discovered Wilderness Awareness School, already had decided to role model which led to choosing their program. This class work brought the thread that led to the altar work, and five years in the future this would link to a source of help when family problems reached the latest crisis.
Connections
The way change flowed through and around that injury, ultimately leading to the altar work illustrates that using an altar is no vague mystical ceremony, isolated from the rest of creation. Rather it’s a practical process of working with and through the threads we all share.
Past and present choices, events, place, intent, and community all link together and are the work. They interact to create change that shows up in the appropriate time as new choices, directions, and even more threads.
Location
I think location made a difference in this case. I’ve come to believe that particular ridge is a place that facilitates positive change. I’ve been convinced by a series of significant changes in my life, each involving that area….and then there’s also a gut feeling about it. The effect or energy of this ridge isn’t clearly apparent to my senses. I don’t know why, or how this works, so I can’t explain it.
You know how the newness of some changes can feel slightly uncomfortable? There’s a bit of that feeling there. Overall, the area feels neutral to me, not so overwhelmingly positive that I want to stay and soak the energy in, and it’s definitely not one of the places in the woods I avoid. Those have an energy that feels very uncomfortable and raises hairs on the back of my neck.
The Time for Change
What happened around that injury is relevant here because it was a thread to significant change. It created a break from the usual routines (pun not exactly unintended), and that time was a clear space I used to make choices that had a number of later effects. Among them perfect timing for the choice that sent my life in the direction my heart had always longed to follow.
Choices – Who is really making them?
I’ve wondered about these choices, and how they circle back. I firmly believe we all act in a connected way, that all parts of creation make choices, and have needs, not just us humans. So, I sometimes wonder if it was a combination of my choices, and a need of the community on the ridge, that brought me back there.
Problem Solving
I’ve described several aspects of the events that came together and led to this latest altar work. I haven’t mentioned stillness yet, and it may have been one of the most important. By “stillness”, I mean that it may be enough to just stay present and aware, both externally and internally in situations where immediate action is not necessary, or is impossible.
Sometimes this inner stillness, just observing and embracing the situation without striving for an answer, allows solutions to arise that I’d never have considered otherwise.
Best of All?
Change has come as serious help, and it’s arisen naturally; I didn’t do anything to make it happen. I left “easy” out of the prayer, and now that the effortless solution has arrived, I’m working my tail off! The situation is still difficult but I can see movement that seems to be narrowing towards a bottom to the crisis. Allies have come who can see more deeply into the situation than I.
If you would like to know more about Bob Wise’s The Book of Track Stories, you can send him your email address and he’ll send you information as the book unfolds.
Obviously, you can download the free e-book here => Altar Making
Notes:
You can walk the labyrinth in the photo at the top of this article at Mt. Calvary Monastery in Santa Barbara, CA.
Photo at the top right, as well as this article, © William Wittmann.
William Wittmann is a Kamana Graduate, Life Coach, author, and Therapist in Seattle. Visit www.VitalArts.net for fantastic, life changing information.
Obviously, you can work with William long distance by phone and email, or you can work with him in person if you live in the Seattle area. You can reach him at this web site above.
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