Archive for October, 2004

Dialogue — Relationship and needing approval

Published by Jonathan 3 years, 9 months ago in Various Inspirations, Realisations and Explorations. 0 Comments

Following is some discussion I have been having with a friend…

Her message (in part) was…

—–Original Message—–
Sent: Wednesday, 20 October 2004 7:01 p.m.

… You say, for example in ‘your world’ what I wrote was of value. In ‘my world’, that was not my experience. If we are all in ‘our worlds’, engaging with our stories, where and when does the bridge occur? (I’m not referring to you and I specifically here).
Where and when and how does relationship enter between worlds and what is the potential if each person is taking responsibility for their part.

My answer to this first part…

This is not so easy to answer as I feel it has to be experienced. What I will say is this — the nature of the relationship between two or more people is determined by the relationship those people have to Self and to God. Hence, anything is possible. For he who is identified with the ego-mind the nature of his relationship to another person will tend to very much revolve around the perception that they are out there. They do things TO ME and I can do things to them — including judging them and summing them up in my mind.

For he who is identified in and aware of the nature of much of what I attempt to explain in my writings it becomes far more probable that he will experience the perceived “other” as an aspect of Self. Hence nothing happens to me and I only do things to myself as opposed to projecting out to an-another.

Relationship, in my experience, is the vital element that makes waking up entirely possible. The flip side of that, however, is that unconscious relationship is also that which makes it so easy to remain in what seems like a never-ending spiral of confusion and avoidance.
When I refer to “relationship” I am referring not only to the relationship between a person and other people, but also between a person and anything that they perceive within their world.
Continue reading ‘Dialogue — Relationship and needing approval’

Ongoing discussion with a friend

Published by Jonathan 3 years, 9 months ago in Various Inspirations, Realisations and Explorations. 0 Comments

THE 2ND EMAIL FROM MY FRIEND
(This is the continuation of the discusion that can be viewed HERE on this page)

Sent: Friday, 15 October 2004 11:26 p.m.
To: Jonathan Evatt
….
Maybe, in the meantime, you could answer two questions for me: 1. What do you understand to be the purpose of the creation? 2. Do you see human emotion as illusory?

I admit that there is much that IS illusory in human perception and in the interpretation of experience. But I contend that ‘experience’ itself is not illusory or even a ‘dream’, is of God and serves a fundamental purpose in the creation and in God’s NEED for expression (even if it is not EXPERIENCED as NEED prior to manifestation). I have met too many people who wish to classify emotion as illusion or dream, and it is here that I part with some of the classical understandings of the Divine.

My equation: emotion = (Divine) energy in motion

Much love

Debbie

I really had no answer for these questions.
Yet, after I started writing here is what came to light.

Greetings beloved…
Wonderful to hear from you.

In answer to your questions…

1) I leave that mystery in the hands of God. It is not something I am presently able to put into words… into the symbolic. To me it must be experienced directly.

2) Let us take a look at the word “illusion” -

il·lu·sion
n.
1. An erroneous perception of reality.
2. An erroneous concept or belief.
3. The condition of being deceived by a false perception or belief.

I feel that some people, when they hear me say that X is an “illusion”, immediately think (and oft to their horror) that I am saying that X has no basis in reality.
That is not the meaning of the word illusion. When I have the erroneous belief that X is in fact A or B or C (or anything other than X) then I am in the realm of illusion.
“Sin” has often been translated from the Greek word “harmatia” which means “to miss the mark” or “to miss the target”. “Sin” has also been translated from various Latin words that relate to “guilt” or being “guilty”. Hence “sin” to me also comes back to having an erroneous perception of reality… my perception “missing the mark” so to speak. The flit side of that is the guilt that arises through believing in false idols… for believing in that X is in fact A, B, C or whatever.
The “Original Sin” to me denotes that one and only moment of divergence from that which is Real… that which is God’s Will.

I have elaborated in this way so that you know what symbology the word “illusion” represents for me. Language is after all just a form of symbols that we form some degree of consensus around at some level in order to commune-icate.

I also pick up on the word “experience”.

Where does experience take place? What is the epicentre of experience? Do we “experience” thoughts and emotions? Do we experience the perceived world?
Do we actually experience the dream?
— continued on Page 2 —

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Richard Linklater’s Waking Life.

Published by Jonathan 3 years, 9 months ago in Conscious Cinema. 0 Comments

Last night I watched an excellent movie. I highly recommend seeing it. Here’s a review on the movie that gives a little insight into what it’s about.
The movie is called “Waking Life” by Richard Linklater.

Richard Linklater’s Waking Life. - Review - movie review
Gavin Smith on Richard Linklater’s Waking Life. - Review - movie review
Gavin Smith

If this year’s Dramatic Competition lineup was the strongest in years (luckily for me, as I served on the Dramatic Competition Jury), it was also the weakest for premieres. Richard Linklater’s much-anticipated digital animation film Waking Life stood out by a mile. But then, it would be a standout in any year.

It’s at once a great leap forward for Linklater, and a partial revisiting of Slacker, his ten-year-old magnum opus, yoking together idiosyncratic indie material and a cutting-edge digital process rendered with a human touch. Linklater’s film is a cartoon like no other: the director shot a live-action film on digital video, completed his fine cut and then had a team of 31 artists animate every frame with new software designed by his principal collaborator, animation director Bob Sabiston.

Like Slacker, Waking Life is set in Austin, Linklater’s home base, and consists of an episodic series of some 40 encounters with a variety of characters, most of whom impart something of their vision of life, the world, and What It All Means to the film’s protagonist, a twentysomething kid played by Dazed and Confused’s Wiley Wiggins. Drifting from one encounter to the next, Wiggins is the passive party to a variety of monologues, rants, ruminations, lectures, and overheard conversations, only occasionally engaging in a dialogue with anyone.

If there was nothing thematic to unify Slacker’s procession of characters other than its conceit of glimpsing a succession of self-contained personal realities, Waking Life is structured around a playful, beguiling dream narrative. The whole film is a continuous dream that takes on increasingly melancholy overtones and intimations of mortality as it unfolds. On the face of things, it’s Wiggins’ character’s dream because it’s his progress that we’re following. Though he’s primarily a physical presence, moving from encounter to encounter on foot, there are a number of passages in which his disembodied point of view floats up and away to gaze down at the city below, before descending to flit invisibly from one character to another. This stream-of-unconsciousness is periodically interrupted — or jarred — by a series of false awakenings, opening up the unnerving prospect of an endless recession of dreams within more dreams that Linklater never resolves. Is Wiggins the dreamer or part of the dream? There are several potential beginnings — is it when we see Wiggins fall asleep in his house? Is it earlier, when he’s hit by a car as he studies a cryptic message in the middle of the road? Maybe it’s earlier still, when we see him asleep on the train bringing him to Austin? Most likely, it’s when the young boy in the opening scene falls asleep — and if so, then isn’t Wiggins merely the boy’s dream of himself as a young man? Potheads are going to love this film.

Within this brilliantly sustained dream framework, Linklater assembles an extraordinary array of voices and outlooks. There’s something here for everyone: from existentialism to Zen, from paranoid nihilism to quantum physics, from linguistic theory to Bazin’s Christian ontology of cinema, expounded by cult indic filmmaker Caveh Zahedi in one of many memorable vignettes. Without getting pretentious, Waking Life operates according to genuinely dialectical principles, effortlessly containing within itself opposing, contradictory, and mutually exclusive philosophies and worldviews.

Demonstrating a great ear for speech and language, and an uncanny knack for when to come in and when to cut out of a given setpiece or riff, Linklater orchestrates the whole thing beautifully — and orchestration is one of the film’s central metaphors: an early scene drops in on a six-piece orchestra in delighted mid-rehearsal, and the music they’re rehearsing is the score of the film you’re already watching. He and Sabiston have also achieved a remarkable feat with the animation, which maintains visual consistency while resisting homogenization. Its clean, minimal look is supple, expressive, and as alive with the nuances of each individual animator’s style and sensibility as it is responsive to the unique characteristics of each actor. In this light, it’s hard to say what’s most moving and triumphant about Waking Life: its inclusive celebration of idiosyncratic sensibility and the authenticity of the personal voice (”Let my own lack of a voice be heard,” one character proclaims); or its abiding sense of life as a dream without end, filled with yearning for connection and meaning that forever floats just out of reach, encompassing everything from the banal to the cosmic.

Gavin Smith is FILM COMMENT’s editor.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Film Society of Lincoln Center

Human rights AND responsibilities

Published by Jonathan 3 years, 9 months ago in General. 0 Comments

In the last century or so humanity has made a lot of changes toward defining and upholding basic human rights. This has, in many regards, been a very life-giving accomplishment — although there is still much to be achieved in this pursuit as many regions of the world still do not uphold these basic human rights.
The grave failure in the “Human Rights movement” is that there has been absolutely no parallel progress into defining and upholding the basic yet vital “Human Responsibilities” that every human right entails.

With every “right” comes a responsibility.
This, as far as I can tell, is something the upholders and supporters of “Human rights” have complete failed to see or at least include in the Declaration of Human Rights.
Where is the declaration of Human Responsibilities?
Do we grant a man the Right to own a weapon without also upholding his Responsibility to “do no harm” with it? No, of course not. Yet, of course, there are many who legally own weapons — as an exercise of their Right to own such weapons — yet they have made no conscious commitment to the responsibility to “do no harm” with that weapon.

I’ve always had a great interest in words and the way they are formed and the meaning(s) within various words. To me the word “responsibility” quite obviously breaks down to response - ability. Hence it it referring to a persons ability-to-respond. The purpose of this article is to point out that with every “human right” comes one or more response-abilities — meaning that my ability to respond is increased and hence my level of responsibility is increased.

I can see within the collective story that great leaps and bounds have been taken to bring forth human rights. Yet as far as I can ascertain there seems to be an imbalance inherent in this movement so long as people are not also equally made aware of their responsibilities.

One brief example. Take America for instance. A country that prides itself on it’s Constitution and the constitution rights people have as American citizens. All sorts of freedoms are put forth in this constitution. Yet where is the responsibility factor? We now have a country that plays out such profound levels of duality it’s quite comical to watch. The collective consciousness of “America” has done a great deal to bring forth new spiritual insight and awareness in the world yet at exactly the same time it is — in my experience — one of the most controlled and destructive nation’s in the world. It plays out such massive and far reaching roles of control, distortion, terrorism, and destruction. I don’t portray this as being “good” or “bad”. It’s just an observation of what is playing out. My point is simply that if the American Constitution included not only the rights of the American people but also the responsibilities that go with those rights then today we would be looking at a very different America and — due to it’s massive influence on the planet — a very different world.

I hope I haven’t offended any of my relations in American. Although, if I have then I simply invite those who are offended to please take an open and honest look at what it is you identify with so strongly in a country, which is simply a political construct, construed out of nothing other than a collective story.

Perhaps the world would benefit from a Declaration Of Human Responsibilities? Do you have any suggestions as to what such a declaration might include?

Ciao,

Jonathan

“I” Statements

Published by Jonathan 3 years, 9 months ago in MKP Related and Various Inspirations, Realisations and Explorations. 1 Comment

“Making “I” statements”
I imagine that the first impression of someone reading this would be “What the heck does that mean” — and understandably so.
The extent to which people in my cultural environment (the English speaking ones) talk in second person when discussing personal experience is almost 100% of what I hear. Hence it’s has become completely normal. So normal that some people I have met either resist the idea of changing this habit and/or find it really challenging to change it once they notice what’s going on.

Let me give a simple example:
“Hey Joe, how are things going with you?”
“Well Bob, not bad. But ya know, I’m still having a real hard time with my wife and family. You know how it is. You get home in the evening, and the wife starts going on about this and that, and all ya wanna do is sit down, have a bear, and relax a bit. You just want to put your feet up and unwind from the day. Yet there’s ya wife ranting and raving about all this stuff. Then when she thinks you’re not listening she starts to get more and more wound up and ya just think ‘fuck it all’ and you get out of the house to get some quite time to yourself”.

Here’s another example:
“Bob, what’s your favourite thing you like to do?”
“Oh mate… well that would have to be fishing. I just love fishing. Man oh man… ya get out there on the water… you’ve got a few tinnies at hand and a nice rod in the other hand, plenty of bait that you picked up at the shop on the nice drive out to the beach.”
“So tell what it is about fishing that you like so much Bob”
“Well, when you’re just sitting there… quietly waiting. It’s so calm. I feel really peaceful. All your worries start to pass away and all the stuff you were worrying about at work just disappears. Then you’re just out there all alone with just the ocean, the birds and you sitting there. You don’t even care if you catch anything at the end of the time. I just like being out there. You can sit and think about things without any interruption. It really helps you to get a handle on the week. I like that a lot Joe. You just can’t get any better than that…”
Continue reading ‘“I” Statements’

My understanding of the Sweat Lodge

Published by Jonathan 3 years, 9 months ago in MKP Related. 0 Comments

The Sweat Lodge is an ancient tradition — one that I have experience a number of times over the last 12 years, and have had explained to me in various ways. For me there is some deep symbology in the Sweat Lodge. For the benefit of my fellow men involved in MKP I would like to elaborate on what the Sweat Lodge means to me. I do this because I know that it was through my appreciation of it’s symbology that the experience of Sweat lodge was intensified and enriched.

How accurately my interpretation of the Sweat lodge resembles the traditional Native American view on it I can not say. I’ve never looked into it or studied it in any way, so I have no way of known. Hence, take from this what you like. If it inspires interest within you then please by all means do some research on the net and look into this some more.

There are a number of components to a Sweat lodge:

  1. Water
  2. Wood
  3. Fire
  4. Rocks
  5. Darkness
  6. The Lodge
  7. The Circle
  8. Sage, sweet grass, and other forms of incense

The lodge represents the womb. We enter the womb through a small orifice. This whole is very low, both to keep the heat in but also to instil a sense of humility as we enter on our hands and knees. We go naked into the lodge, stripped of our worldly possessions and image — like a child in the womb of the Mother.

There is a direct energetic link between the Fire and the Lodge. To me this is the balance of the Masculine and Feminine archetypes that are present within the this dualistic world in which we live. The Father principles provides the heat for the rocks. This rocks are not unlike the many hot sperm that enter the Mother in order to create a new born child. The Mother aspect — the Womb or the Lodge — is a dark, moist, primal place. It is here in this dark place that the Child is born — where the lodge participants are renewed and emerged clean and purified.

In Native Medicine, Medicine Grizzly-Bear Lake writes about reasons people go unclothe in the sweat bath: “We prefer to go into the sacred sweat lodge stripped of all our clothes, symbols, badges of education, status and wealth, camouflages or other coverings which feed the human ego. We go naked as a newborn into the womb of our Mother Earth; humble, pure, innocent and prepared for nurturing. We try to strip ourselves of [defining] human qualities, desires and characteristics in order to become m ore spirit-like; we shed our human image and physical attributes in order to discover our soul and its spiritual nature. And, in most cases we come out reborn and re-created.”

The first lodge I participated in we followed quite specific protocol with regard to how we entered the lodge. The participants stood in a semi-circle around the back side of the fire. The from the left side (facing the lodge) we filed clockwise around the fire, crossed over to the right side of the lodge, circled around the lodge in an anticlockwise fashion, and then once back at the entrance to the lodge we entered to the right and again circled around inside the lodge (on hands and knees) in an anticlockwise direction. The first participant in would then site to the left of the door as the other members filed in and around from the right side. These circles again are symbolic of the cyclical and spiralic nature of Creation. All things manifest through spiralic energy patterns, that can be observed throughout the natural world and universe.

There within the dark womb we physically sweat out impurities from the body so that it may be renewed.
Then, through the process of clear intent — and anchored by prayer, ritual, and thousands of years of tradition — we also cleanse the spirit. I have found that my most power lodge experiences have been the hottest ones. For me it is in the intense heat, steam and darkness that I get to face my fear of pain, suffering and ultimately death. When the heat reaches that point where I feel I can go no further, that is where I get to make a choice and perhaps face any habitual choices around how I relate to my capacity to remain alive and well in the face of apparent adversity. I can either choose to react, thinking “I must get out. I can’t take this any more”, or I can surrender, let go, and sink into the place where “the world can do me no harm, for I am the Eternal Self that is God”. This has nothing to do with being physically strong or macho. Far from it — for trying to face the heat with physical strength and machoism will only throw the participants into opposition with the heat. With opposition a fight then arises and that fight is going to result in any but surrender and letting go.

No, the type of surrender I am talking about is a surrender into the spiritual nature of Self. From that place the heat does me no harm. From that place I can simple soften and let go. For the newly formed child in a womb has no resistance to the world. It knows not the fear of death, pain and suffering. It lives quite contently in its dark, warm world of the Mother’s womb.

In the centre of each sweat lodge a small shallow pit is dug. It is here the heated rocks are placed as they are brought into the lodge. This hole is deeply symbolic, even holy; within Plains Indian tradition this hole represents the centre of the universe. Dirt from this centre is used to form a small altar mound in front of the lodge entrance. On this altar, participants can place special things that may help them in the sweat. The altar is always on an east-west axis between the fire at the east end and the lodge at the west end of the line. To some, this is an avenue of power while others call it an energy exchange. The fire is special in many respects. For Creeks, Fire is a piece of the sun, perfect symbol of Creator; through Fire One Above, the Creator, finds expression.

Early Finnish sauna bathers believed fire was heaven sent. If the sweat fire was fuelled by choice firewood and tended with appropriate ritual, disease and evil influences could be warded off. Treated disrespectfully, fire could (and would eventually) engulf and destroy the bather.

As we make the sweat fire, after gathering all the appropriate and needed materials, we are also preparing propitiations between mind, body, spirit and soul–a conciliatory reckoning to restore balance and harmony between these four elements. To show this intent while building the fire, fire makers offer constant prayers of thanksgiving for all the purposes at hand, especially prayers for participants that they may be cleansed in all these four parts and experience renewal. The purifying heat to come forth from the fire is also acknowledged and thanked for its help: heat, light and strength. The visible conclusion to all Native American prayers is the gift of tobacco to Creator. A fire maker often places tobacco into the structure of the fire as he or she sets the wood in place; tobacco is always carefully and tenderly placed into the newly ignited fire after it has caught sufficiently. Many fire tenders offer participants tobacco to place in the fire with their own special prayers and thanksgivings. It is not unusual for knowledgeable participants to bring tobacco with them for that purpose and to share with their sweat leader or fire maker. — quotes from Bobby Woods, Lakota (Sioux) sweat leader (http://www.tfn.net/Museum/culture/sweat_lodge.html)

In the tradition of Sweat that I was first introduced there was also the protocol that each component of the lodge must be used to its completion. This, to me, is about maintaining and following through on each and every intention that is set. Therefore, all the wood that is brought for the fire is used and burnt — for that was the intention the motivate collecting the wood in the first instance. The fire keepers roll is not complete until he has watched over the completion of that. Also, all the water that is taken into the lodge during each round is completely used up during that particular round. If people are finding it too much to bare then patiently we wait in the dark until the group is ready to follow through on the intention with which that water entered the lodge.

For me there is also symbology in the water being applied to the hot rocks. Water is symbolic of emotion. The bright glowing hot rocks are symbolic of the seeds of inspiration that come from the Divine Father. Their heat is their power to consume, transform, and renew. The waters of emotion and pour out upon these hot seeds of light and fire. There the emotion is cleansed and transformed — from it’s dense watery state into that of steam. This is not unlike the process of transforming our inner emotional patterns and states with the Light and Heat of Truth. They then vaporise into a powerful cleansing substance that opens the lungs (through which we breath in life) and the skin (representative of the boundary between individual self and the world and the relationship thereof).

So that, my friends, is a quite look at what the Sweat Lodge means to me. I trust that having now read this you too might gain an even deeper and more powerful experience of the Tradition called Sweat Lodge.

With love and blessings,

Jonathan

PS. Whilst writing this article I did a quite search on the net to see if I could find a few key quotes to include above. I looked at one page located at http://www.tfn.net/Museum/culture/sweat_lodge.html. If this article I have put together (quite quickly) then I highly recommend you visit that page and read what the author has to say as it will give you an even deeper appreciation of what I have only just touched on.

Dialog with an “old” friend

Published by Jonathan 3 years, 9 months ago in Various Inspirations, Realisations and Explorations. 0 Comments

Here are some beautiful insights sent to me by an old friend. Below that I include the response that arose to these words.

Dear Jonathan

Claudia directed me to your website some time ago and I have been thinking about communicating with you for a while, but it is only now that I have been directed within to make this contact. I would like to offer you some new perspectives on the things that you talk about…not to replace them but hopefully to expand on them. I am fully aware of the truth that exists in your words but I am also aware of additional truth that does not seem to be represented there. I hope you will open your heart and mind to my words and that a beautiful dialogue can emerge from the sharing of different internal experiences.
I am going to attempt keeping this as simple as possible—yet already as I write I am aware of how complicated the human ego-mind has become and hence it will invariably complicate things when you read my simple explanation of the illusion.

My concern is that you may have created a closed circle where anything I say will automatically be written off as ‘complication from the human ego-mind’. That would be unfortunate. The truth is that I have been studying the ‘illusion’ for 30 years now and the very first spiritual knowledge that I received was exactly that which you speak about. I fully understood it to the extent that anyone can who has had glimpses of the state but is not fully living it and who has given so much of her life to the study of it. I have also had 30 years to work through the various levels of my own human ego-mind and while I don’t claim to be free of every limitation, I certainly have come far enough to know what I create as my own illusion and what is true knowledge that has come to me from God and through my own experience.
Continue reading ‘Dialog with an “old” friend’

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Smudging - Sacred smoke bowel blessings

Published by Jonathan 3 years, 9 months ago in MKP Related. 0 Comments

Smudging is a practice that has been used in many cultures around the world.

The form of smudging that we use in MKP has been inherited from our Native North American ancestors.

We use white sage for the smudging process. Sweat grass can also be used in the process — after the sage — in order to bring in a positive energy.

In some ways, smudging is a very crude form of incense. Where it differs though is that smudging is generally used in very specific application as opposed to incense which is generally used to produce ambient smoke in a room.

Smudging with certain herbs acknowledges that all things are energy. My body, my mind, my emotions, my aura, my feelings, my spirit, the room, the air, etcetera, are all composed on energy. Energy is fluid in nature and it’s quality is determined by frequency, vibration, resonance, and any harmonics or disharmonies/discordance that might except between these.

Every substance carries a particular resonance. Some substances — such as White Sage — have traditionally been recognised for their particular energy and their ability to shift, clear or change the energy of something else.

Every emotion carries a particular frequency.

Let us take look at an example. A man — let’s call him Jim — gets home from work, after driving for an hour in slow traffic etc. He feels drained, reactive, and irritable. His mood and energy are relatively "low" and "heavy". The children running around the house and playing might really get on his nerves and result in him feeling really fucked off. He reacts and goes into a rage. Then after that he feels down, sad and depressed. In that rage he further qualified his already messy energy state with further discordance. He experiences that discordance through a depressed feeling. His energy has quite literally become denser and hence more compressed or "depressed".

In walks White Sage.
White Sage has a very purifying energy about it. Not too dissimilar to how UV lamps have a purifying quality and will purify drinking water. White Sage, the great master that she is, has an uplifting energy too. She is expansive in her nature. She is loving and supportive of clarity and puts and end to all dross. When we burn White Sage the smoke carries these qualities into the physical and etheric (pranic / metaphysical / subtle) levels within a room, within a person’s aura or personal energy field, etc.

Now getting back to Jim, when he gets home he could check his own energy and allow himself to be aware of how he is feeling. In doing that — which is VITAL if he wishes to remain in his integrity with Self and with Life — he notes that his energy is pretty messy and discordant. Rather than being victim to that he could take himself to a quite place — outside in nature, a quite room, an alter, or whatever works for him — and have a meeting with madame White Sage. Smudging will help clear the dross in his energy field. Yet more than this — the act of bringing into his world the intention to "clear away discordant energy and come back into a place of clarity" will also play a big part in his energy re-qualifying itself into a state that is much more concordant with the Love that is innate to all Life.

Even without White Sage, it is possible to hold the clear intent to re-qualify your energy. Picking a "Sacred" place to do this — some place that holds a clear, loving and sacred energy for you — will further aid the process. This is a key aspect of the power of ritual. This, to me, is a major reason why it’s important that Men are being reintroduced to ritual through the MKP process.

Reflecting on the ritual of being smudged before stepping into an I-Group meeting, I would say that this twofold process comes into effect.
1) We get to experience the physical and metaphysical cleansing properties of White Sage.
2) We come into a place of focused intention. The intention being that "Now I let go of the world I have just walked through, I release whatever dross I am carrying around, and I am now stepping into a sacred space with my fellow Men".

Well, that’s about all I feel to write on this for now. I think I’ve said enough.

With my love and many blessings,

Jonathan

PS. The other — and perhaps longing standing — name for Smudging is "sacred smoke bowel blessing". It was often performed with a bowel containing some hot coals. It’s also very common to keep the smudge bundle in a bowel, with some sand in it to help with putting it out without wasting it.