We started with each person sharing how they were doing and how their week was. It was a beautiful conversation that reflected growth in the capacity to pull all energies together to manage everyday life. Members had seen healing and movement in their spirit.
As is usual gifts had been presented at the ancestral altar. In noting the presentation of one member, a conversation ensued about the importance of the nature and types of gifts we take to the ancestors. Although gifts are sometimes chosen based on ease and convenience, they all carry ‘messages’ and are a part of our spiritual communication. We use these gifts to convey messages of thanksgiving, gratitude and from both our conscious and sub conscious spaces permit our spirits to show the ancestors what energies we crave in our lives.
I was used as an example of this since I have been taking a lot of sweet gifts such as chocolate, juice, biscuits etc. to the altar for some time. This could signifying, which was true, that I want to invite some kind of ‘sweetness’ into my life. Because I had been doing this for some time, Nana pointed out that if we keep giving the same gifts to the ancestors and we are not aware of a response, we need to say something. It is possible a discussion needs to be had with the ancestors to see the best way to approach them for what you need.
We then moved into a game of African telephone. During this game Nana sent 4 different messages. The first one said ‘My ancestors are fabulous'. That message was shared from one person to the other and was transferred well. The second message said ‘The ancestors are always with you, sitting with you, walking with you and guiding you.’ This time, let’s say, amid laughter and much brow knitting, the message did not arrive at its destination intact. The third time around the message was ‘our existence is due to our existence.’ This message was transformed. At this point we stopped and examined all that had come into play during the message transmissions. We identified the presence of expectations, self pressure, anxiety, expectations, ego and confusion in the process and how they affected the message.
It was mentioned that the communication of the latter messages may have gone awry because they were longer that the first message and so it was it was easier for them to be messed up. Nana sent a fourth message, a short, fun tongue twister, ‘she sells seashells by the seashore.’ The message ended up as…she sells that she sells seashells. We went ahead here and claimed that this time it was due to the S sounds. This was a serious fun exercise that took us into a conversation about spiritual communication.
Main points from the conversation are:
How do you trust spiritual communication?
Spiritual Communication is as simple as the first message we sent in our game but when we add all the extraneous variables that we don’t really need, it becomes complicated. In order to communicate well and understand well, we should be in and maintain a state of readiness. No expectations, established time-frame and fixations as to how, through whom or what. Only the knowing that spirit will choose the most effective channel.
How do we improve spiritual communication?
We closed with songs and each of us saying closing words.