Esoterica

Lunar trifecta: Rare 'super blue blood moon' will light the sky this week

Set your alarms, space fans -- if you can drag yourself out of bed on Wednesday, you're in for a treat.

The pre-dawn hours of January 31 will play host to an incredibly rare celestial convergence -- a "super blue blood moon."

. . .

So, a "supermoon" is when a full moon occurs at the same time as its perigee, the closest point of the moon's orbit with Earth. The result: the moon appears larger than normal and NASA is predicting this one will be 14% brighter than usual.

Chances are you have used the phrase "once in a blue moon" -- but have you ever wondered where it came from? The well-known idiom actually refers to the rare instance when there is a second full moon in a calendar month. The first supermoon of 2018 -- which took place on New Year's Day -- was previously described by NASA as the "biggest and brightest" one expected for the entire year.

Then completing this "lunar trifecta" is the "blood" element. Although it does not have a scientific definition, a "blood moon" occurs during a lunar eclipse when faint red sunbeams peek out around the edges of the Earth, giving it a reddish, copper color.

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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Igniting the Ecstatic Heart: Shamanic Practice Two

A spiritual life is nothing but dogma and deception without the heart's active presence. The heart's active presence will soon wander, bored to death with you, if you refuse to engage regularly and intimately with ecstasy. Ecstasy, the falling into the fire naked losing yourself to One surrender ecstasy that comes in union with your helping spirits is one of the great gifts of spiritual life in a shamanic practice. So then why are our shamanic practices so stodgy, precious, (frankly) boring, and ineffective in creating large-scale life change? Join us for part two of a series on creating an effective shamanic practice in your day-to-day life. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the necessary terror in igniting the ecstatic heart and how to keep the fire of true love burning at the core of your shamanic practice while you passionately engage the world.

**This show originally aired on September 16, 2014**

Tuesday, January 30, 2018 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Creating a Foundation for Wellness: Shamanic Practice One

Knowing where you stand in life-and how to truly stand there-is essential if you want to live a spiritual or enlightened life. This is one of the many paradoxes of living life where the real energy that drives things exists under what is apparent. Those who cannot ground their visions will not live them. Those who invest too much in the physical world and cannot let their visions soar will never know why they are here. Join us for part one of a series on creating a shamanic practice in your day-to-day life. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the cornerstones needed to create a foundation that will not crumble under the weight of the real life challenges life throws at you or collapse when you need it the most because your denial, like so many termites, has eaten through the beliefs you think support you.

**This show originally aired on September 9, 2014**

Tuesday, January 23, 2018 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Your Soul's Purpose and Transformation: Part Two

The most direct path to living your soul's true purpose is both individual and communal. As individuals, people often feel lost, fragmented, or unknown to themselves. Others may feel whole, but have lost the simple art of connecting deeply in inner dialogue with their soul. Living in this way, at a distance from one's self, creates anxiety daily and the life path that unfolds leads further and further away from the True Self. Individually we must relearn the skills of deep inner communication. Communally, we must come together to tend the critical gates in life: birth, adulthood, and death. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, shares her experience teaching communities to tend the gates for each other and individuals to engage in meaningful inner dialogue with heart and soul. Join members from the Last Mask Center Community as they interview Christina, asking what soul healing Last Mask Center offers for individuals and communities, why these teachings work, and how our passionate expression of our soul's purpose is exactly the medicine the world needs at this time.

**This show originally aired on May 14, 2013**

Tuesday, January 16, 2018 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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Esoterica

Why psychedelics like magic mushrooms kill the ego and fundamentally transform the brain

For so long, psychedelics like magic mushrooms and LSD were the domain of hippies of the 60s and 70s, and all the culture that surrounds that demographic: freedom, open-mindedness, willingness to try new things, a friendly and relaxed nature that transcends their own communities.

For decades, this baffled neuroscientists and researchers; they wanted to figure out the scientific basis behind the personality shifts and “spiritual experiences” associated with psychedelic trips.

In one study, researchers found that patients of chronic depression who had been taking antidepressants for years (with little to no improvement in their mental health) reportedly experienced significant decreases of depressive symptoms just one week after taking psilocybin.

Even several months later, they found that these patients still experienced the same improvements.

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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Your Soul's Purpose and Transformation: Part One

When we are not aware of our soul's true purpose or simply not aligned in our actions, contemporary life can fill quickly with dis-eases of the soul. People, high and low functioning alike, feel a sense of alienation and betrayal that runs deep while the source of those feelings remains a mystery. Many are so depressed or fatigued that they don't have the energy to care about what is authentic or what aligns with their heart. Many others find that, though they are doing all the right things, that passionate sense of meaning and purpose just isn't happening. "Contemporary life is filled with so much promise of happiness and fulfillment, but to access what life promises, we all need skills, healing, and support in our transformation," explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. Many are betrayed again and again by the failure in our culture to offer valid and effective paths back to our soul and its purpose for being here. Join members from the Last Mask Center Community as they interview Christina about finding the most direct path to living your soul's true purpose.

**This show originally aired on May 7, 2013**

Tuesday, January 9, 2018 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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FLDS Women Are Taking Their Power Back

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Just when you thought the story of Warren Jeffs and the FLDS couldn't be any more stomach-turning, new and still more horrible details come to light. The "prophet," who remains incarcerated for molesting his very young "brides," is now facing new allegations of sexual abuse, via a lawsuit by one of his alleged victims. Worse, she cites numerous co-conspirators, including two of his brothers, in a scheme to ritually abuse girls as young as eight.

A new lawsuit accuses Fundamentalist LDS Church leader Warren Jeffs and others in the church of ritualistic sex abuse involving girls as young as eight years old.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in state court by a 21-year-old woman only identified as "R.H.," levels allegations of abuse against Warren Jeffs, his brothers Lyle Jeffs and Seth Jeffs; and former FLDS leader Wendell Nielsen of sex abuse. It also goes after the FLDS Church and the court-controlled real-estate holdings arm, the United Effort Plan Trust.

. . .

"Systemic sex abuse at the hands of Warren Jeffs and other leaders of the FLDS Church from the age of eight until the age of 14," her attorney, Alan Mortensen, told FOX 13 in an interview Wednesday.

The details, which can be read in court documents, are hair-raising.

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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Bridges to Earth's New Era with Will Taegel

Walking with Bears: On Bridges to Earth's New Era, by Will Taegel, PhD,completes a trilogy including Wild Heart and The Mother Tongue, that addresses a human return to Earth-based consciousness as a response to the shuddering crises of our times. In this third groundbreaking book, Taegel takes us to the confluence of modern science and ancient wisdom to a bridge that links us from where we are in the Old Story to where we are going. Join us this week as Will Taegel and host, Christina Pratt, explore what it will take within each of us to walk across the bridges that lead into the New Story. In the tumult of climate change, nuclear threat, traumatic distress, and political chaos we can find prophetic hope in our intimacy with the flow of Nature, capacity to heal, and to love.

This week's guest:
Will Taegel, PhD

Will Taegel Will Taegel walks in two dimensions. One reflects his lifelong connection with the Indigenous Mind/Heart and the other his psychological and scientific research. While both his doctorates concentrate on the synergy of ecopsychology and the matrix of field physics, he counts his shamanic training described in Walking With Bears: On Bridges to Earth's New Era as the most important of his life. This book completes a trilogy that includes Wild Heart and The Mother Tongue, all address a human return to Earth-based consciousness. Will Taegel and his wife Judith Yost are co-founders of a 35-year-old eco-spiritual community called the Earthtribe, which hosts many spiritual and Earth-based events. You can learn more about the Earthtribe at http://earthtribe.com/.

Tuesday, January 2, 2018 at 11:00 AM Pacific

Log on to Listen
Why Shamanism Now? on Co-Creator Network
Questions? Comments? Call: 1-512-772-1938

All episodes are now available in the iTunes Podcast Library.