This is the launch and first public screening of Katalin’s ten minute short documentary, Fire of the Goddess: A Ceremony of Self~Marriage. The night willalso include a short presentation on ‘Why Self-Marriage?’ and the Dakini, an ancient sacred feminine goddess form.

Attending this event is an opportunity for you to experience what Katalin holds most dear about Mother India: the merging of art~sacred~ceremony with the everyday~ mundane~ordinary. Katalin and the extraordinary Dakini goddesses, dancers, singers and musicians are creating a space that connects us to the ancient Dakini~Yogini temple, to forge a bridge between a time of honoring the Goddess, the sacred feminine and now, a time of full Rebirth.

Here you will be able to make offerings from your heart, experience sacred chanting, participate in ceremonial expression and beauty and find the quality of transcendence in creating and stating your own personal self~marriage vows.

featured:

~Interactive Dakini Goddesses
~Tribal Fusion Bellydancers: Starfire Flame Sisters
~Kirtan with Robinette & Friends
~Inner Shrine to Write, Speak Vows to Self
~Indian Delights Including Raw Foods, Elixirs and Chai

Saturday, April 27th, 7 PM, $10
at 12 MileMarker, Route 130,
Pahoa, Big Island HAWAII

www.katalinkoda.com
www.earthweaver.blogspot.com

Join us in this special women’s retreat to honor Midsummer, a time of celebration, joy and activation.  On the Big Island, we are ignited by the power and magic of Pele, the goddess of fire and the volcano.  As the year turns toward the dark, this is the moment to take a leap of faith into the unknown and find our wildest potential, supported by love, beauty and strength in a circle of women.

Summer Solstice is the moment when the sun reaches its furthest point from the equator and is the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.  This is considered a potent magical time to assist us on our life’s paths.

This course is appropriate for any woman who is yearning to activate and deepen her connection to her own infinite potential.  

Fire of the Goddess uses the sacred art of circling and ceremony, explorations of goddess mythology and the ancient practice of Yoga to connect deeply with our inner love, power and wisdom.  Anusara, flowing with Grace,  Yoga aligns us directly with the divine and empowers us as women to embody our divinity in feminine form.  Inspired by the Big Island’s natural landscapes of ocean, volcano, caves and jungles we integrate the wonder of nature and transform our lives into wholeness and fulfillment.

Fire of the Goddess:  Celebrate Summer Solstice includes:

~Daily Anusara Yoga and Women’s Circles

~Goddess Mythology

~Shamanic Journeywork

~Healing Practices and Sacred Space Work

~Initiations into Personal Power

~Bonfire Ceremony

~Opportunities to Explore the Coast of the Big Island

Fire of the Goddess retreat is located at Kalani Honua on the Big Island of Hawaii.  Check out more here! This special Summer Solstice retreat will be held at the Ocean Cottages, a secluded area of Kalani’s grounds giving us the quiet serenity to dive deep into our work with the sacred feminine.  Accommodation at Kalani is eco-village style, simple and comfortable with low impact living.  Cost includes three gourmet meals a day on the open air lanai and access to all of Kalani facilities. There will be free time to use the services including the pool, sauna, jacuzzi, traditional Hawaiian massage and various healing treatments.

Reserve your space now, email Katalin at katalinkoda@gmail.com

Riding on the sacred breath of wind, cultivating drala or windhorse, these prayers are intended to benefit all beings. Drala is a Tibetan word that literally means, ‘above’ or ‘beyond the enemy.’ According to Chogyam Trungpa, drala is ‘wisdom beyond aggression…the self-existing wisdom and power of the cosmic mirror that are reflected both in us and in our world of perception.’ ~from Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, p. 78

Trungpa goes on to explore the principle of drala that our own power and wisdom as a human being is not separate from the world around us; in fact it is very much connected and a direct reflection of of our own vision. We can tap into this seemingly magical quality of drala by simply being present. The more present we are, the more awareness is cultivated. As we step into a place of presence, we indeed see how magical the world is: the sun’s gentle rays spreading across my face; the movement of the flag; the sound of the dove cooing on the line. Each of these qualities are simply the world as it is and yet utterly beautiful in their simplicity, in their presence of being.  “Something living, something real is taking place in everything”. ~Ibid.

This is what I realized during these 10 days, a culmination of many months of practice, integration and wisdom:

‘no itching is eternal’ ~ After a intense blissful surge on day 3, I became slightly alarmed at such a powerful feeling, so much so that I even considered leaving, not sure I’d be able to handle so much energy. Luckily, the teacher clued me into the reality that nothing is impermanent; and especially not bliss. As Goenka, the teacher of this fine technique says, ‘no itching is eternal.’ In other words, all things are impermanent; how they ebb and flow away.

‘why watch TV?’ ~ Following the sugar and coffee detox of the first day, I soon realized how mad my mind truly is. As the days went by, certainly the madness slowed from a kind of merry-go-round on steroid activity to a bubbling stream of whimsical fantasy mixed with deeper profound questions about self and life. I was amazed at my own voracious creativity. One thought would precede a volume of maniacal mental acrobats. The seemingly innocuous desire for a hamburger (we only ate 2 vegetarian meals per day and tea in the afternoon) would suddenly bloom from not just a hamburger, but a hamburger served by dancing pigs, singing peacocks under a full moon at a large banquet hall set for 12. ? I’m not sure everyone is this wildly creative, but certainly the monkey mind was in full effect. I realized that my mind, though exhausting at times, was so completely interesting that the notion of watching television shows and movies seemed hilarious when I can just tune into my inner world.

‘i’m so attached to my daughter’~ As the days passed, my mind did slow down and even reached moments of incredible calm and stillness. When this happened, deep, buried emotions, memories and old stories connected to the sensations of the body rose up and cleared away. Without a doubt, the most intense ‘storm’ as Goenka calls them, when we get caught up in the emotion, memory or story, was the attachment to my own daughter. Of course. Layered below my own feelings of attachment and love toward here was a huge storm of fear that overpowered me for many hours. I felt so deeply afraid that I began to project and create an entire story of how she had been hurt and I desperately wanted to leave and go call her. I talked myself through it and it faded by the next day; however it was a powerful witness to not only my attachments but also my deep, buried fear of the unknown.

‘hopes, expectations and identities cause tension’ ~ On day 2, it occurred to me that whatever I hoped for, whatever I expect in life and whatever identity I may think I am are all actually quite intangible and ultimately impermanent . Hopes change and fluctuate like the season; one day I may hope for a big house; another for a simpler life. I know many people rely on hope to ‘get them through’ however if we are to examine our hopes more closely we might find they drift away like dandelion fluff into the wind. What does it really mean to ‘hope for the best?’ Often times what we think is best may turn out for the worse and vice versa.

Along with hopes are our hold on expectations, of ourselves and others as well as identities; both aspects of our being that are also fluid and impermanent. I realized there is nothing inherently wrong with hopes, expectations or identities however tension does arise when we hold onto these. The more we cling to hope, expect something to be a certain way or try to permanently identify our self with something external, the more we solidify the self. But in the practice of Vipassana, the aim is to simply accept things as they are. When we do that, in a deep state, we recognize and experience that all things that arise also fall away. All emotions, thoughts, stories, identities, hopes and expectations eventually dissolve just as clouds drifting past on the wind.

“We all have a valid, proper sense of self, or “I,” but then we additionally have a misconception of that “I” as inherently existing. Under the sway of this delusion, we view the self as existing under its own power, established by way of its own nature, able to set itself up.”

~Tenzin Gyatso is the Fourteen Dalai Lama of Tibet. This selection is from How to Practice: The Way to a Meaningful Life, by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins, Ph.D.

A big MAHALO, thank you to all who have contributed thus far to the Fire of the Goddess: Documentary Film Campaign! I have received not only funds, but incredible support from many of you through connections. We now have just five days left on the campaign. All funds that are now raised will go toward production and post-production of creating a film that transmits the power, love and wisdom that blazes forth from the Fire of the Goddess. If you haven’t already, check it out here!

I am looking forward to my journey to the ancient Mahamaya dakini temple in Orissa, east India. I will be there in just one month, creating ceremony to marry my authentic self and give offerings to sixty-four images of the Divine Feminine.

Before I reach this temple, I land in Calcutta home to the wild dark mother Goddess, Kali Ma. Kali slices through illusions, bringing our ego down and allowing the clear light of Truth and Love to shine forth. I will then be journeying onward to Orissa Dakini Temple. After my ceremony I will be heading to the Himalayas to receive special teachings from Tibetan master, His Holiness Karmapa.

4 PM HAWAII TIME, 7 PM PST, 10 PM EST

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/witchschool/2012/05/24/et-wild-wednesday-over-to-oberon-ariel

This interview will be available on this page for a week, then archived.  If you miss today you can listen at your convenience anytime!

Have you been dreaming of writing that story?  Wishing to try crafting a poem?  Wondering how to better express yourself through words?  Come and explore your inner realms and discover your voice through the medium of creative writing guided by local author and poet, Katalin Koda. Using a variety of forms including journaling, poetry and prose we will work on crafting solid pieces to be shared with our circle and the community.  This weekly circle will include strategies and ways to create new works and finish existing ones.  Please bring a current piece you are working with if you have one (short story, essay, poem).  ALL writing levels are encouraged, ages 14 and up!  If you do not have any current work, just bring paper and pen.  Weekly, Thursday evenings 7 – 8:30 PM at Kupukupu Center, Pahoa Town, Big Island. $5-10 sliding scale.

See www.kupukupucenter.com for more information.