Are you shy or reluctant to share spiritual experiences?

Carol Sill and Jim Van Wyck talk about some of the benefits to sharing spiritual experiences, and have a little fun while testing the technical aspects of using Google Talk and recording the discussion.

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Runestones & trusting in the present moment

Intuitive counsellor Deanne Mineau shows us her runestones, discussing their use in divination, and talks about how trusting in the moment can help reveal a deeper understanding of our lives.

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Varied Paths to the One Center

And so we in Edmonton, Alberta, did a ritual by a sacred spring that we were lucky enough to find. And that was all simultaneously done. There were people, I know, as far south as Patagonia in South America. There were people in England and Europe as well as North America simultaneously doing ceremonies, lighting sacred fires.

Judy Evaski talks with Carol Sill on Open Pathways

C: Hi this is Carol Sill and I’m here in Vancouver today talking with Judy Evaski about Open Source Spirit, and her spiritual path. Hi Judy.

J: Hi Carol.

C: You were talking a bit about how your path has been varied…

J: Yes, it’s a really interesting project, open source spirituality, and I notice that many people have chosen a path and developed it really fully. Often from starting on another path. I would say that my path is a little different, in that it’s been a sequential exploration, but with the same essential seed from the beginning.

C: So what would that sequence be? How did you start?

J: Well I started out as most North Americans did, in the Christian church, and then gradually got involved with the social movements, the social justice movement, the peace movement, and trying to make spiritual ideals into a reality.

And from there I was lucky enough to meet up with some of the North American Sufis, who actually I think contain or hold the essence or the seed that is in the center of most of the spiritual paths. And so it wasn’t a religion, per se, it was a spiritual philosophy that gave me tools and confidence and some basic techniques of meditation, as well as various spiritual paths. So that I became able to understand the language that was in each of the paths and to start to identify what were the common threads.

So many of us compare religions or philosophies by finding the essence of what’s different between them. And that’s kind of a western way of thinking. Although that’s evolving now, and I think that’s why a project like this can occur, because we are now more able, and we have a language. Many people have pursued spiritual paths other than the one that they began in, and so that’s why we’re seeing the blossoming of something like this, I believe.

C: So after your sufi involvement, you went into some other directions as well?

J: Yes, and it was more that life provided me with these experiences. I was very fortunate to have met a Tibetan lama who had escaped Tibet in ’54 (59?)  with the Dalai Lama, and made his way to Alberta, where he began to become who he was before. And he was also, I would say, someone who had a sufic perspective: in terms of – he had a very formalized Tibetan Buddhist path, and we did practices with him in that path.

However he had a very well-developed heart which I believe is the essence of all of the religions. And all of the spiritual paths. And in fact all of the political paths. I understand now that people who are very involved politically are every bit as much on a spiritual path as others.

C: I know you’ve had experience in the Native tradition as well. How did that happen?

J: That was a wonderful thing. A sufi friend sent me an email about the Giant Medicine Wheel that was occurring in 2004, with its center based in the Grand Tetons in Yellowstone Park. Apparently every 500 years or so, it was a tradition that native communities from North America and South America possibly, certainly Central America, Mexico, would come together and they would share their rituals in a way that would affirm the stability of Mother Earth, of affirming our love for her, our understanding our place within the matrix of creation. And it appealed to me to be part of that medicine wheel ceremony, because although there was the center, they also had the 12 sites around the perimeter, about 500 miles out from the center.

And so we in Edmonton, Alberta, did a ritual by a sacred spring that we were lucky enough to find. And that was all simultaneously done. There were people, I know, as far south as Patagonia in South America. There were people in England and Europe as well as North America simultaneously doing ceremonies, lighting sacred fires.

It was a time of great sharing from the Native tradition from the elders to those of us who were not, but had a spiritual leaning. There was a lot of special teachings released for us at this time.

So out of that I met the current elder that I’ve been working with. He was a Seneca elder, from Six Nations, although living off reserve. And he was mixed blood, which I am as well. I discovered not that long ago that I have Basque blood. I was adopted, so I didn’t know that. The fact that he was mixed blood and able to speak of it was already a resonance. I grew up in that area, and I had always wanted to connect with the old spirits of that land, and I didn’t have a context in which to do that, other than through the Native path.

So luckily this man was willing to strike up an email correspondence, again something that’s very unusual and outside of the norm of that culture. And yet, we’re all adapting, which is why you can do a project like this now, whereas  a few years ago you probably couldn’t. Many of the sacred teachings wouldn’t be spoken of in a technological framework.

Similarly, if I were to speak of Native teachings, it would be expected that I would do some smudging, like with some sweetgrass or sage. And it’s just a very wonderful tradition that they have that creates a sacred space to talk about sacred things.

C: That’s beautiful. Thanks.

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Invocation

This little introduction video includes many of the sacred words, themes, and memes we’ll be exploring in this Open Source Spirit project. Thanks to wordle!
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Welcome Conversation

“We’d love to talk with you and then take that conversation over to the web for more comments, and we hope by this that we can get a really open conversation going about some of the ideas that really matter.”

Our First Welcome Conversation – Jim Van Wyck and Carol Sill

J: This is the first video conversation of OpenSourceSpirit.org. My name’s Jim Van Wyck, I’m in Los Angeles, and my friend Carol is..

C: I’m here in Vancouver BC Canada. We came up with this idea of working together at a distance to communicate with each other and with the rest of you, to make contact with all people who are working in the spiritual realm, finding ways to take your interior guidance and share it with others.

J: That’s right. Our idea is to take the principles of open source, which mean everyone works together in a collaborative fashion and no one is leader, no one is boss, we just share our ideas – and we’ll apply open source to spirituality, or Open Source Spirit. Could you say a few words please Carol?

C: I’d like to say that every person who’s involved in this endeavour makes a difference. Like you said Jim, there’s no real leaders except the inner guide within ourselves, and we’re getting some amazing information that is really worth sharing with one another. And together we can find out just exactly what we are doing in this big experiment.

J: Yeah, and if you are attracted at all to the idea of Open Source Spirit,  Carol and I, and all the rest of us who are going to come along and join, would like to welcome you to contribute, to share,  and to be a part of our community. You can do that by writing, by putting comments on the blog, we’ll have a forum soon, and you can also do that, if you have a webcam, by having a conversation with Carol Sill or myself about your particular version of spirituality.

C: We’d love to talk with you and then take that conversation over to the web for more comments, and we hope by this that we can get a really open conversation going about some of the ideas that really matter.

J: And we have a lot of exciting conversations planned, between Carol and myself, with some of the other people we know and have met, some of our friends who we’ve never met but we’re going to ask to participate here. If you have anything to say, to contribute, to share, we’d love to hear from you and be a part of it. All you need is a webcamera and an internet connection, and we can have you too participate. That’s all I have to say on our welcome, except I do welcome you, and perhaps I’ll give you the last word, Carol.

C: I’d like to say exactly the same thing: Welcome to Open Source Spirit!

View the video of this conversation.

First Conversation

“Spirituality really appears to want to express itself, it seems to be popping out everywhere. Indeed, the whole world that we live in is just a particular experience and expression of spirituality in its totality.”

An early online conversation between Jim Van Wyck and Carol Sill on Open Source Spirit.

J: Carol and I are here to talk about a new project we have called “Open Source Spirit”  and Carol what would you like to tell us about Open Source Spirit at this time?

C: I think the best thing to say is that we’re applying the principles of open source to the spiritual life, which, actually, that’s been going on for centuries. It has always been part of the spiritual life, but it ends up getting codified and taken into particular streams and “marketed” that way through religious teachings.

J: Yeah, brilliant. Now what I think about open source is that it means that interesting combination between collaboration and individual effort. So that “Open Source” means that the subject, in our case, Open Source Spirituality, is available to all of us and shared between all of us in an open way, and yet individually expressed, and different people can make changes to the source code. The source code in this experience is their individual reflection and their individual expression of the Divine.

C: That’s exactly it. Each one of us is doing this experiment all the time, especially if you’re awakening your intuition or being in touch with some guiding spirit within, you start to develop yourself innerly and find resonance outside yourself that shows the collaboration of others who’ve gone before and use that to work more on your own interior self-development.

J: The way Carol and I have originally thought of this is that Open Source Spirit would have two sides. We have OpenSourceSpirit.org, which is a website and a place for collaboration which is and will always be free and non-profit, and for some of the contributors, or any of the contributors who wanted to promote their products or their seminars or their books or their sacred candles or whatever, there is a place for that at OpenSourceSpirit.com. Now I haven’t really talked with you about this Carol, but there is a lot of information about spiritual paths, the great holy texts that have been secret in many traditions for all the years, where do you think we should put all those texts – on OpenSourceSpirit.org or .com? We haven’t even talked about that, but we do want to republish many of the sacred texts, right?

C: I think we should point to everything in the .com, making it available to everyone for free of course, because it is already available to everyone. That’s what I think would be great: all the sacred texts, all the holy study that’s been done for centuries should be brought together in one place be made available – which it is in the great mind that we all share, you know, it already is all available to us.  As far as the .org side goes, I see that as a place where people are hearing what they are doing, what their development is, asking questions, working within this idea of a greater community of seekers of truth.

J: Yeah. One of my real hopes is to have really a lot of video; video talks, video things. Part of our change in consciousness is a shift more from the written word to visual expression. Just as most of the great spiritual teachers never actually wrote a book, they talked and then their followers later on, perhaps 150 years in the case of Jesus, or 300, 400 or 500 years in the case of Buddha, or really right away in the case of Mohammed, they wrote those things down. But Mohammed, Jesus, Buddha never really wrote a book. So I think that we can move back to, move forward actually to a different expression, by having people talk about their spirituality rather than write about it, although I think the internet is still a written medium but moving towards the visual. What do you think, Carol?

C: I think every medium has its own particular message. Marshall McLuhan was really aware of that. What we’re doing by taking this way of thinking out of the private realm of written language only and bringing it out into the video realm is really an experiment. Because the oral teachings were done face to face where you actually shared the vibration of the individual, of the whole, and of the whole audience while that was being given

J: Yes

C: Whereas now with video, video tends to flatten the energy. So we’re experimenting here to see just how much can be conveyed.

J: Of course. What happens is that I think what is conveyed is the same thing in a different way. Anyways…you are the McLuhan and media expert here and I think that’s great. Now you wrote a wonderful thing, to me, about “this is for you if…” and we should talk a little bit, I think, Carol, about who we would like to join us. So you wrote, “This is for you if you’re awakening intuition, seeing life beyond the material world…philosophical questions.” You wrote some other wonderful things, who do you think should join us. Who is this for?

C: I think anybody who just catches it and says, Open Source Spirit: that’s it. Obviously that’s who it’s for. There’s something a little bit inspiring in the name and I think that each person resonates it in their own way. There’s so much “open source” out now, there’s “open source sewing” for heaven’s sake. Everything is available “open source” now because we know, we recognize that everybody has something to give and contribute to the grand experiment.

J: Yes, those words are interesting: “open” – I think the key word is open. The other ones are grand and have their own resonance but I think openness is where we will find our friends. What do you think?

C: Yes but also there are others that are looking for the source, so that’s a big one.

J. Yes.

C: And the unseen, the fact that there is spirit involved, has to be acknowledged. Because we are going towards that which is unseen or unknown or not perceived by the senses.

J: Spirit, spirituality has this great urge to express itself. It may be the phenomenal world that we feel is just merely a spiritual expression, of spirit. What do you think, Carol?

C: Could you say that again?

J: I said: Spirituality really appears to want to express itself, it seems to be popping out everywhere. Indeed, the whole world that we live in is just a particular experience and expression of spirituality in its totality.

C: Yes it is. And we don’t have to do anything else other than experience that aspect of it. But nonetheless because we’re human and because we can’t see everything all the time and because we are part of this game we have to play hide and seek. That’s the fun of it and that’s the tragedy of it too. But there is art involved in that too. So the idea of playing with the concepts of open, source, and spirit is something that can really – I mean it really inspires me. I just feel like this gives a great model, a lot more scope.

J: Now if you’re looking at this video, and you’d like to contribute, please write. There’s a space right down here below the video somewhere for you to write your comments. Also there’s a spot there to email either Carol or I so that perhaps we can talk to you via the internet, via webcam, and perhaps make a little video interview like this.
Carol, in the bigger sense, what do you think we’re doing here? What’s your purpose for playing here in the world of Open Source Spirit and to help create it?

C: Actually, I don’t know what it is. I want to discover that. That’s why I’m doing this. I just had the concept and I thought I have to follow this through. I don’t know how far it goes, or really where it leads but I’m very willing to find out. I think there’s something really fascinating going on here, and I like the idea of being able to pull all these threads together, just to see how far we can go with it.

J: Great. Well, let’s call it a call here, Carol…

C: I have one more thing to say…

J: If you have a thousand more things to say… we have time.

C: The other thing to say is that everybody makes a difference. Every individual makes a difference. The real purpose of this is to create a basket or a capacity where everyone who is involved in a spiritual path, whether it’s acknowledged exteriorly or it’s an interior path that you only know yourself, everybody has an opportunity to express themselves within this. And this is a huge capacity, a great basket that will help us connect with one another in another way.

J: That’s a wonderful way to end.

Source

Jim Van Wyck and Carol Sill talk about the meanings of the word “Source”.

“It’s a huge thing to talk about because the source isn’t separate from us and we’re not separate from the source, but we feel we have to go back to it. So all of the quest stories and the tales of going to the source, or going to the source of the Ganges, finding the mountain of Siva where the source of the water flows from; all of this is a metaphor for us to go inside ourselves and make those connections.”

Link here for the text version of this conversation.

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First Video Conversation

In our first video conversation, Jim and I are exploring the very beginnings of the Open Source Spirit project.

“Spirituality really appears to want to express itself, it seems to be popping out everywhere. Indeed, the whole world that we live in is just a particular experience and expression of spirituality in its totality.”

Link here for a text version.

This is for you if …..

Carol sent these words to me this morning.

OpenSourceSpirit is for you if:

If you are awakening intuition, sensing life beyond the material world,
looking for answers to the philosophical questions.

If you have had experience with some or one of the many spiritual paths.

If you are following your inner guidance, aware that there is more to life than meets the eye, ready to take an evolutionary leap.

If you wish to become immersed in the sea of being, in the life of love, or in the world beyond the seen.

If you are experimenting within the lab of your own nature.

If you wake with ideas in your head.

If you do yoga, sing, dance, are a scientist or gardener.

If you write, play or compose music, paint or sculpt.

If you are an artist, a scientist, a teacher, a philosopher, a meditator, an athlete, a parent, a son or daughter, a man, a woman, a seeker of truth.

If you have read Rumi, Gopi Krishna, the Bible, Buddhist scriptures, On the Road, the words of the poets, the saints, the business people, the lawgivers, the historians.

If you love life and its seen and unseen gifts.