Studying & Bringing Ancient Teachings Until Modern Day

[00:00:00] Welcome to Elements of Community Podcast about discovering and exploring The Elements of Community. I am Lucas Root. And each week we talk with a community leader about what makes their communities thrive and bring value to both the leaders and the members join me as we unpack the magic of the Elements of Community.

[00:00:34] And today we are joined by Isis. Isis, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

[00:00:41] Oh, thank you. I would love to, greetings everyone. My name is Isis Indriya born in Mesa, Arizona raised in the island of Guam mature a woman. And I come here on behalf of my ancestors and I'm currently residing on the ancestral homelands of the Nisenan.

[00:00:57] This area is called Ulicha, also known as Nevada County, California. Being from Guam and as a Chamorro woman, Pacific Islander I really grown up in village life, literally where our home, our island is made up of villages. And so I really come from this modern day experience of village life in my heart and my mind.

[00:01:18] And also I do want to share. My mom died when I was four years old. And her passing has been a really beautiful learning for me and how to commune with her as an ancestor on the other side. And then with her passing, I think she's led me to village living and living in community and having a lot of aunties and uncles and grandmas and grandpas.

[00:01:41] And so I just want to say her name here, cause I love to say her name was Deborah Nackey. Then call her into this council with us. So there's a little bit about me.

[00:01:53] Thank you. That was lovely. And welcome to your mother, Deborah.

[00:01:57] So we had a good chance to talk about some of your really amazing communities. And we sort of settled on one of them to talk about, can you share what I call the CPOP the community point of possibility or how you think of them.

[00:02:15] Yeah. Thank you. First of all, thank you for having me on your podcast.

[00:02:19] Really feel grateful about that and grateful that you're devoted to this topic. In general, because it feels like right now at this time of transition, community's so important, we need each other you know what I mean? We really are. And more than anything, we need each other. So I just really appreciate your devotion to this work and this podcast.

[00:02:41] And community's really been a big part of my whole life of learning. Being raised on the island of Guam and my mom passing and then just kind of being passed around with all the aunties and uncles and all the villages. And I was really raised with a lot of people. And so I'm really grateful about that.

[00:02:59] And then when I moved to America, I really miss that and I kind of felt lonely. And so when I moved, when I was 17, I just started to create community because I just grew up that way and I needed it. And so my community building journey started when I was around 18 years old in Seattle, Washington. And we had this gathering series called the Oracle gatherings.

[00:03:26] It was centered around a crystal ball. We call her the Oracle and we did a series for about 10 or 11 years of these events, building community of like first 10, first, 20, then hundreds and then thousands. There were coming around this crystal ball to commune and celebrate, study and learn and dance. Then I moved to Bali, and was building community there.

[00:03:50] And then I moved to California and one day I didn't have the crystal ball. And then one day I was like, oh, I really would love to be with that crystal ball again, because she came to me in a vision. And so the crystal ball, I asked if I could be brought to me. And once the crystal ball came into my life, which I call the Oracle all these visions that have come from back then started to manifest.

[00:04:14] And a lot of it's connected to Egypt. I traveled to Egypt multiple times, sometimes multiple times a year, at least once a year with groups to go there and learn and train. And one of the visions was a school because we would come and ritual regularly around this crystal ball. And we had this crystal ball has been the center of maybe hundreds of rituals.

[00:04:36] Small ones and large ones. And so it became the center of community building since 2001 for a very long time. And so then when I went and went to Egypt to make offerings there. I made an offering about the school, came back and then within like a couple months, the Academy for Oracle Arts was born and the academy of Oracle arts is a school centered on.

[00:05:01] Our line is an original approach and original approach to ancient ways, or were devoted to studying and bringing ancient teachings until modern day. Because we really see that the teachings that have lasted through the ages of time, lasted through the ages and at the center of that, the heart of that is the Oracle crystal ball.

[00:05:21] And what the Oracle crystal ball is the heart of is a group called the Oracle Clan. So there's a clan of us that work with this crystal ball. We pray together and thus we stay together. And with that, we all kinds of community events, whether they're small group rituals, your long Oracle X apprenticeship programs, huge events, like we're about to present at this festival of 30,000 people.

[00:05:49] And we really just do our work in the community, both locally working with the local tribe and also globally. And that's a little bit about our community. And within that community comes us attending to the temple. We call the Mesa. We have this place here called the Mesa in Nevada City, it's a home. And it's also our learning about what it is to live in a temple and tend to the temple and the home.

[00:06:17] And then from there welcome people to the temple and strengthen and build community here locally. And then bring that out globally. So there's a little bit about our community. It has very, very many facets and echoes and expressions and pathways, but the heart of it is a crystal ball.

[00:06:37] I love it. So it all comes out of the crystal ball and you have echoes of that in different places.

[00:06:45] You have expressions of that in different ways. How does leadership play into the way that this community is formed and the way that this community interacts with your temple, with the people that decide that they want to be members and show up on occasion, where does leadership play in this?

[00:07:08] That's a great question. I personally believe in what the Oracle has told me is that everybody is a leader. It's just about cultivating that aspect and the innate intelligence within, and then clarifying what our divine directives are and what our particular leadership skill thread is that we want to cultivate.

[00:07:29] So with the Oracle at the heart of the school is to support and encourage whomever comes around to step into leadership. And do all the transformational work that's necessary so that they can become leaders because ultimately then we become a council of leaders and then the work gets done because it's impossible for one or two people to get it all done.

[00:07:50] You need a village, everything takes a village. And part of what the world talks about and teaches, and guides us through is helping us clarify what our divine directive is, what our part is, what our spoken wheel is, and to get really, really good at it. So that we all together can keep the wheel turning and that's something we've been experiencing.

[00:08:15] Like I learned about what's my role and my job. And then everyone else figures out what theirs are and then we just tend to it. We tend to the fire that way.

[00:08:25] Yeah. I love it. So with everybody being a leader, what is it that makes a person into an effective leader?

[00:08:35] Well, humility and empowerment, humble empowerment, I think is really important and a real relationship with service, like the commitment to the internal transformational work and the continuation of that, like the defined work is all day, every day for the rest of our lives.

[00:08:54] We have to support ourselves and becoming benevolent leaders and service to the upliftment of whoever relations essentially. And so this real devotion to the transformational process, because, we believe that as within, so, without, and we do the inner work, if it's reflected on the outer. So there's like this commitment to the self transformational, spiritual work, and also a devotion to being of service.

[00:09:26] And humbly empowering oneself consistently and tending to, and witnessing and supporting everyone else in their positions too. So there's devotion to the upliftment of each other by also calling in what needs to be called.

[00:09:42] And like that's something that we also have is like different pods of accountability, where we call each other in more like, hey, how about some feedback, you know what I mean? Or like learning how to give each other good feedback so that we can just help each other out more like we see it as being generous to call each other in more versus like confrontational. Because the heart of it is just for everyone's success, in heart, mind, body, and spirit, essentially.

[00:10:21] But yeah, those are some of the qualities, benevolent leadership too is one of the the core values or core teachings that we're still learning about together as a community. Is that the ancient Egyptians, believed and believe because we work with them that there's a relationship between the divine world, the natural world in the human realm, we'll all three realms.

[00:10:45] And that there's this idea that the greatest human accomplishment is to coherently co-share with the divine, the natural as humans, and that when all three together are coherently consciously co-shaping. Then from there, we're actually creating something that is of great use and benefit for many generations in the future, because it's not just us as humans we're working and learning to attune to the intelligence of the natural world and the intelligence of the divine energies that come into this place and also emerge from it.

[00:11:22] So that's also at the heart of our study and learning together to listen, pay attention, listen to the non-human realm as much as we can and keep cultivating the intelligence and irregular abilities to tune to the non-human realm so that we can do our best to tread lighter. And be of use as humans basically.

[00:11:49] And then another big prayer that we have is to be useful to be beneficial, to be helpful, like we want to be helpful, versus versus have power over. It's like the opposite, we want to be useful. We want to be beneficial, we want to be helpful. And then as we're doing the internal transformation work to essentially bring in more light and from an infinite place into this realm, we want to do our best to serve and support and uplift the web of relations also.

[00:12:28] Yeah. So one of the five elements of community that I've identified so far is common heart. And one of the ways that I talk about common heart is to enroll somebody else in yourself to enroll a community in yourself. As you would say, and I love this use of the language to call people in and then to be enrolled.

[00:12:55] And so that's to be called into the community and to be called into the heart of the people that are a member of that community. And to subscribe yourself to that common heart, that common uplift. And the way that you talk about this is very strongly supportive of that idea that common heart is an important element of community is one of the five core elements. Right?

[00:13:18] And it sounds like you also talked about some other things in terms of leadership, and I love that you brought in the common heart. You also talk about coachability, so somebody who's willing to accept that they're flawed, right? We're human. We're not perfect. We're flawed. And we have an opportunity to improve ourselves at all times and being coachable in the moment as well as on the grand scale to make ourselves better.

[00:13:43] And then the last one, and I really liked this was sort of this connection to the vision of the community or the purpose of the community and having the drive to move forward.

[00:13:56] Yeah, something that we also are learning about together is this idea of legacy. And oftentimes the way I was raised and trained to consider legacy was maybe like a really successful business or like multiple homes or it had a material business oriented approach. That's the way that not from my family, but in the Western world that I was trained.

[00:14:22] And what we think about a lot with legacy is an offering. An offering that is helpful, beneficial for many generations into the future. And that's like at the heart of our prayer, whatever we're cultivating, maybe an offering that's helpful and beneficial for many generations into the future. So an offering consciousness is something we're consistently doing our best to learn about and cultivate and embody, offering consciously.

[00:14:54] Where, whatever we're doing, is an offering. And then that by nature I find helps me transform and then be more attuned to what it is I am doing because it's an offering, you know? And then in that nature too, the cultivation of the consciousness of offering is a way of life. It makes the divine everywhere and everything, because everything is an offering. I'm making an offering to everything, human and non-human.

[00:15:27] And then I find too, one of the things my dad said to me that I carry with me every day helps me remember, when I needed, I can call upon this. He said, if there's one thing that I could offer to you, that's been very helpful for me in my life. He said, always maintain a state of awe and wonder because then the world will keep opening up and the world will keep blossoming for you with you.

[00:15:53] And so I do my best.

[00:15:54] That's beautiful.

[00:15:55] Yeah. I really do my best to keep that rolling in my consciousness.

[00:16:05] Amazing. So what is it that makes a community and effective community?

[00:16:11] That's a really big question. I feel like first and foremost, at least for us is praying together. I love this phrase. I don't even know where I heard this quote, but I've heard it and we carry it here in the temple. People that pray together, stay together.

[00:16:29] And so there's this relation and commitment to communing with a sacred way of life and acknowledging the holy elements of as sacred and this earth is sacred. And the core is what we return to, but where we come from and where we returned, we forget one ways is like praying with the holy water.

[00:16:51] We do this regularly praying with the holy fire, working with holy smoke in relation to making offerings to this holy earth. The basic divine nature, qualities of the elements we return to, to teach us, and I think because in relationship to the earth, we're pretty young as humans.

[00:17:17] Yeah, we are.

[00:17:17] And so there's like so much to tell in this planet. So we do our best to humble ourselves at the altar of the earth and her various expressions through prayer and through ceremonial practice. And I feel like that is what makes our ability to be in community more ffective and harmonious and it's bumpy moments.

[00:17:44] We can have that to return to help us find harmony again in the community. And then our prayer practice, because the prayer helps us align our hearts, minds, bodies, and spirits, our intention. It brings attention to what our intentions are individually. And then it helps bring attention to our community intention.

[00:18:08] And so it helps strengthen that too. Like we have our individual one and then our community one. And oftentimes when we have a prayer for like, maybe somebody needs some help and they call a prayer and then we come around to support that person and uplift that person where we're thinking about the Amazon and we have relations in the Amazon.

[00:18:28] We like we'll come around for prayer for the Amazon. And then we keep that in our consciousness. So it's like at the heart of where we're coming from is to protect and do our best to listen, to pay attention to learn from and protect the sacred way of life in the sacred earth. And those that tend to it.

[00:18:52] So that's really like. This is the heart, you know? And then from there, like all the visions and like threads and the ways that were meant to be an on-purpose and what our divine directives are, they come from there, they come from our prayers together and our relations with the holy elements of life.

[00:19:12] And then, we go out and we offer and we do our work and then we come back. Then we go out again and then we come back and we go out again. And when we come back, 'cause you know, sometimes like we had a ceremony a couple of weeks ago, it was straight up a grieving ceremonies.

[00:19:31] There's so much to grieve. At least what we felt in relation to planet earth and the human realm, all we did was build this beautiful altar devoted to grieving with the holy water in the middle. And so all the things we need to grieve about what's going on as humans in the earth, we got to give to the water.

[00:19:53] And then like clear out and then, so that the next day we could stand up and meet our life in service, stronger. Cause we got to take care of what we needed to inside to be clear enough to do that. You know? So that's some of what we do.

[00:20:08] Yeah, we can't carry our baggage around.

[00:20:13] Nope. Yeah. So that's some of what I feel is what makes community effective.

[00:20:21] Oh, the other thing too, this thing that I feel like is what makes community effective is the water. We drink, the fluid we eat, the way we tend to the land, the way we tend to the body of the earth, because we are made of the body of the earth. So like gardening and healthy food and shifting out of like package based food, into like relations with farms and growing our own food.

[00:20:48] And then also a devotion to clean water, and cleansing, but not over cleansing where we have no more nutrients also tonifying and nourishing, a culture of nourishment that's literally related to food that then becomes what we're nourishing our bodies and our heart and our mind, our spirit.

[00:21:08] Through all the ways that we do that, then we can actually be nourishing for others. And so that's also a strong value and focus in our community.

[00:21:18] I love it. Okay. So I'm going to try to tie these back in and I might miss some. So definitely jump in. Prayer is it's kind of like a project. So we as a community in order to be a community, we have to have a purpose. And that's sort of the thing that we're working towards and one of the guiding principles of us as a community.

[00:21:41] And then we also have to have projects and the projects really like bring us together in the moment day after day. And prayer is a project. It's a project that we're embarking on and it's short, it's a small project, it the last a few minutes or a few hours. And the same is true of like a whole day ritual.

[00:21:59] Like the grieving ceremony that you did. In the language of community, this is a project and it's something that we as a community are doing together. And I love it, until this conversation. I hadn't thought about it that way, that prayer and rituals are a project.

[00:22:15] And then it seems to me like you're also doing other bigger projects, projects that you do out in the village, in the town or projects that you're doing with other related communities to make us all a tighter knit group or to create more ties. And those projects as well are bringing your community together and strengthening the bonds within the community and bearing that shared heart so that people can re-enroll themselves each time that a project comes up and they can reaffirm their enrollment through that project.

[00:22:48] And then you also talked about common language and prayer also goes to that prayer as a common language. It's the way that we're talking to ourselves and through ourselves to earth and to the community that we're serving to the purpose of that community. And that common language is deep and important. And I can hear how deep and important it is in the way that you talk about it.

[00:23:09] And then food, water. Normally I don't think about these in terms of a language, but it seems like the way that you're talking about them in your community, you're actually talking about food and water as though it's a combination of a project and a language that's common to the community, important to the community and oven through and for the committee.

[00:23:31] Absolutely 100%. We also focus on studying a particular, we call it a blueprint of creation. That is a language it's a living system that talks about creation principles. And so we're also devoting our time to study particular version, a few versions of creation principles so that we're also thinking of looking at the bigger picture and then applying it in our homes.

[00:24:04] And then the other thing that's really important, which you share is very true is there are a lot of projects that are our offerings that we do in the world. And what's nice when we come back to the project of a ritual or ceremony and entered the study of the ceremony, the study of the ritual to come around and being ritual and ceremony.

[00:24:23] Is that the visions that come from those ceremonies or those rituals or those prayers they're connected to the heart of the altar there. And then what projects we do, we have that as a memory palace to return to, to draw upon, the heart of the spirit of it to tend to all of our projects.

[00:24:44] So we have smaller projects in the community and we have really, really big ones. And what's really nice about that too, is because we come around to study and pray together. Then we can know who's really strong and what, and then they can come on to this part of the project because they're really strong in this.

[00:25:02] So we actually get to know each other that way. And then how that applies to bigger offerings in the world. You know, usually when you start a project with people, especially when they're large community projects, you don't know them. It's by nature. You got to get to know each other and like figure out how it works and then projects that are connected, like a relation with the spirit.

[00:25:26] It's hard when you don't have that dialogue or that language, like you're talking about a common language to then offer something that can be a benefit and used. And so we're learning all of those things. So then to the world, you know.

[00:25:42] Yeah, I love it. Cool. Can we take a moment and take a look at like one specific element of community? And in this case I'd like to request that we talk about common heart. And how does common heart play in your community? How does it strengthen your community? How does it deepen the enrollment, the engaged of your community. And where does it show up for the people who want to be a part?

[00:26:09] Well, one of the things that we really devote our time to is just caring, cultivating a feeling of caring, like strict word for us and part of what's really beautiful about the devotion to prayer and ritual is one of the parts of the technology of the ritual is there's one part where we do a prayer for ourselves.

[00:26:34] And then there's another part where we share about things in the world that could benefit from our attention and from our heart and from our prayers, and then different people will share people or situations in the world so that we have a bigger picture. And then what that does is we send our prayers in those directions, the best way that we know how through our intention, but what it does aside from like bringing attention.

[00:26:59] To the heart, the challenges of the world is it strengthens our heart to feel where we're like, oh my God, we just like feel. And then when you feel more and your senses feel more, we care more. And then when we care more, we want to tend more and contribute and participate in the world versus step away from it.

[00:27:25] We want to be more involved because we're actually talking about in prayer and ritual the things that need our attention. And so then our personal heart grows, our relation to the heart of the altar grows and then our relationship to learning how to listen to the heart of the earth grows, you know, we're learning.

[00:27:48] And I feel like oftentimes one of the prayers that I was really devoted to in 2018 consistently for like a long time was this classic Rumi quote, do not seek love, but instead all the barriers you've built up against it. So for a long time, through a lot of rituals and prayers and ceremonies and healing and all these things.

[00:28:11] I kept doing what I could to like dissolve the barriers that built up around my heart, the chambers of my heart, and just like take them down, not like get mad at them and be like, cast them out is more like, thank you for your role. And we're done now, you know? And let the walls come down.

[00:28:35] And as the walls had started to come down, of course as the heart is breaking open, we just feel more. And then sometimes it's a lot to feel more. But then I noticed as I was feeling more and feeling more and feeling more, my ability to tend and I'm still learning about that, but my ability to tend got stronger.

[00:28:58] And then I started to focus my energy towards what my divine directive is. And thus started magnetizing all of the things that support that. Because I'm communing with something larger than myself is how I see it. And so the heart of,this alter and the heart of this community is doing our best to listen and attuned to the heart of this planet, through learning, to tune to the heart of ourselves and the heart of each other to make a life of offerings basically, offer something good.

[00:29:36] That's what we want to do. Just offer something useful and helpful for many generations into the future. Not just this one, like our consciousness is not about just here because we have children and then there's more children coming and whatever we do now is theirs.

[00:29:58] And so that's a big part of it too. We really devote the attunement to the child. And one of the things that we also devote a lot of our heart to is protecting the imagination of our children, of the children, because imagination is very precious. It's very important. This is the part of innovation is our imagination and that what we imagine.

[00:30:27] So we really are doing our best to learn how to do that. Protect the imagination of the children. Cause a lot of kids are coming out too, so it's real

[00:30:43] It is real. Okay. So I hear the heart of yourself connected to the heart of the community, and then you're opening that up. So you're connecting to the heart of the earth and the world, the people that. I love that.

[00:30:57] Yes. Right. Cause we are a community of earth and it behooves us to think about it that way. You also were connecting to a couple of other ideals and it sounds to me like, and maybe we should have a conversation around this. It sounds to me like heart is connection to ideals as much as it is connection to each other.

[00:31:19] And one of those ideals that's really important to you is prayer. And one of those ideals that's really important to you that you just brought up was protecting the heart of your children and protecting their access to freedom most importantly innovation, but freedom and creativity.

[00:31:34] Absolutely. 100%.

[00:31:37] It's funny you bring this too, because one of our sources of study in the ancient Egyptian, you know, stories is this Netrodu. Netrodu is another name for nature. They call it a divine principle of nature is Maat and Maat. There's this story in the ancient Egyptian realm is that when the body dies and the heart goes on a journey through the Duat the heart is weighed against the feather of justice.

[00:32:08] Which is the feather of Maat. And the heart is weighed against these 42 ideals originally, they were called the 42 negative confessions, but they're called the 42 ideals now. And hearts weighed one by one against these 42. If the heart's lighter than the feather, then it's the journey home to the celestial kingdom.

[00:32:28] If not, maybe it's experienced another life for et cetera, et cetera. So what we do is we study through these 42 Ideals regularly. And they're essentially our point of focus for our lives. And there's a devotion to studying these ideals for the rest of our lives so that we can attune to keeping and doing our best, to keep the waters pure, doing our best, to be conscious about how we use our words, doing our best to honor all alters as sacred

[00:33:03] Doing our best to create harmony in our walk. There's a bunch of these modern day ideals that we utilize to help us be in right relationship with each other and the divine and the natural world as best as we can. So it's funny you brought that up because that's actually something literally that we do.

[00:33:22] That's awesome.

[00:33:23] Yeah.

[00:33:25] I'm a pretty good listener.

[00:33:30] Incredible.

[00:33:32] Awesome. Wow. I love that. And what other ways do you connect your common heart? The heart of the community to ideals?

[00:33:41] What other ways do we connect the common heart of the community to ideals? Like what are more ideals or what are practices and experience ways that we experience it?

[00:33:52] Practices and ways that we experience it?

[00:33:55] Well, we literally have an actual ritual practice what we call our highest self or a higher self, and to align our will with the will of the divine. It's a literal ritual practice where you say your name and you call an infinite source energy to align highest self with the will of the divine to be of benefit to the earth.

[00:34:23] This is like a literal practice that we do regularly all the time. To actually sync up, which we believe all parts of self to be of service and align our will to be of service. So that's one of them. Another practice that we do regularly is we call in this infinite light energy connected to the sun that we see as igniting our hearts, the sun in our hearts.

[00:34:53] That then transmutes any feelings of doubt or uncertainty or anger or challenge back into light. Now, not as a spiritually bypassing, not to spiritually bypass anything that needs to be worked on in an honest way, but way to remind us that like, thank you, doubt. I'm sending you back, you know what I mean?

[00:35:15] Cause like right now I really want to focus on being courageous. And it's just a really simple way to just transmute those thoughts because sometimes we, see it as those thoughts are ours. And sometimes we see that they're not ours because you know, we cultivate a feeling of sensitivity. We can start to feel others more and some people are more impacted.

[00:35:37] Sometimes they take on other people's stuff. And then that way we just send it back to the light and it's not like so dramatic, so then when there's real healing work that needs to happen, we can focus on that deep healing work, because sometimes all the other stuff cloud up.

[00:35:54] How do you do that?

[00:35:56] The healing work? Well, we're really grateful to be in a circle and a council a large community of different kinds of healers that are devoted on people learning how to heal themselves through committing to healing, everything from like nutritionist to acupuncturist, to people that know how to do lambyasa and remove things to people that know how to tend to prayer in a ceremony and work with plant intelligences.

[00:36:28] We have a variety of ways that we, of course, massage too like massage is a really important piece. In my opinion, I needed my nervous system regularly, you know, and then also like we sit in sweat ceremonies regularly and consistently we're devoted to a healing way of life.

[00:36:50] You know, we do yoga regularly too. It's it's not just like when we 100% absolutely need it. We also try to live that way, it's almost like preventative methods.

[00:37:06] It sounds to me like a practice separate from a project might actually be an element of community or at least an element of yours.

[00:37:13] I'm trying to bring in whether or not that's true of all communities, but it seems like you have a few different practices that are not really projects, they're practices. They're separate from projects and they incorporate heart and they incorporate language, so there is a common language.

[00:37:30] There is a common heart, and this practice is separate from a common language. It's separate from a common heart and they're not projects because they're ongoing. There are things that you do. All the time and they build you up individually and as a community together, but they don't have a start and a stop.

[00:37:48] Cause that's what a project is. It has a start and a stop, right? So a prayer is a project. A ritual is a project, but this doesn't have a start and a stop. It's a practice.

[00:38:00] Absolutely. We have practices that we utilize and we do regularly that help prepare our heart, mind, body, and spirit for our projects.

[00:38:10] Now does it truly distinct from a common language or does it function in the same way as our language?

[00:38:18] It functions as a language because, I believe because what comes with the language is an understanding of what these things are like, what does it mean to have a higher self.

[00:38:30] So we discuss that or what does it mean to like align our will with the will of the divine? We didn't discuss that.

[00:38:38] I can see it being aligned. So like dancing is very much a language. I mean, it's also a practice and you, sometimes you start and stop dancing. So dancing could be a project too.

[00:38:51] Right. So dancing could be any one of those three, depending on how it plays in a community. It sounds to me like practice might be a facet of language.

[00:39:05] I love that. It is actually, you know, it's funny you bring that up too, because with our practice comes learning how to be an expression of the rituals.

[00:39:19] So like when we do temple dance, as an example, like in some of our rituals, we write a hymn to Mary Magdalen or hymn to Eset as an example, whatever the divinity is we want to work with. And then we're learning how to turn those hymns into embodiments in ritual movements. So that when we are walking and embodying in life, we're also walking these prayers because there's a really different thing of pointing to like this as a gesture, you know?

[00:39:50] So we're learning how our body becomes walking prayers. And in that week, you become more attuned to everything on the inside and how we express ourselves in the outside. And what this also leads to, which is one of our projects. Like that has a stopping and a start and an end is we cultivate a series of practices that help us attune ourselves to the way that we commune with the sacred.

[00:40:19] And then with that, we have rituals where we pray about what to offer. And then from there, we have a story that comes through the rituals that then we are cultivating right now to become a ritual theater offering to the larger community. So for instance, this one, it's called the rights of lightning unveiling the Magdalene and its original theater piece that comes from our prayers and our study to then embody the principles of creation to the best of our ability to make an offering of that prayer, to the larger community.

[00:40:53] Most of which the larger community will have no idea that the depth of ritual that came before it it's just theater piece. For us. It's like a whole world of study, research, embodiment, prayer channel, all kinds of things. It's at the heart of our community because the heart of the community is like, we want to make an offering to this, to her, to this story.

[00:41:19] And so then that leads to this project that's connected to this time of transition because we feel like this is really important and really helpful and really necessary to bring forward the lineage of the Magdalene, because she's been bailed because we feel that she's a big expression or the lineage of prison expression of the earth.

[00:41:46] So I hope that made sense, but it all works. They all work together. It's one big web of interdependent relationships, basically.

[00:41:56] Yeah.

[00:41:57] And our job is to listen, basically listen and pay attention. Come around the sacred and do our best to clear ourselves. We can listen in a good way, and actually notice what's really clear transmission versus our own self, you know?

[00:42:19] Yeah. I love it. Cool. I never thought about practices as being a facet of language, but that's so exciting now, now I get to take that away and like play with that in my head for awhile.

[00:42:34] Cool.

[00:42:36] Thank you. Thank you for that. That was so great. What question have I not asked you that you would like me to ask?

[00:42:42] Nothing popped up immediately, but what's popping up right now is why is community important right now?

[00:42:50] Oh, yeah, that, can you talk to me about that?

[00:42:55] I'm going to do my best. The question just emerge now. I think why community is really important right now is well in the term community is the word commune. And I've been really like doing my best to keep learning about what does it mean to commute and something that I think about.

[00:43:14] I've been thinking about a lot in relationship to communing is by nature inside the term. There's a feeling of attunement to the sacred or to me when I'm commuting and like coming in relationship with, and in that way, it feels like the sacred is at the heart of it. That's how I see it and I find that in community, part of what's really important right now is A, knowing that we're not alone.

[00:43:46] Remembering that we're in it together, remembering that the only way out is through. And then it takes a village to do anything and it takes a village of humbly empowered people that have something that they want to do together because we all need each other in this time. And the other piece I think is really important is that when you have a community coming together, you have a lot of perspectives and a lot of different ways to see things.

[00:44:14] Because I like to think of it that we're all multifaceted jewels. Everybody's a multi-facet jewel. It's not like a two way mirror. In community, we kind of like polish up this section of the facet, and like polishes this other facet and the different people help polish each other's facets that might just need to be cleaned.

[00:44:38] And then in that way, we shine more when we're shining together. And then when we're all shining, we get way more done, not to progress on the cost of all things living. I don't mean like that. I mean, we get more done to like he's really good at knowing how the soil works. Like she's really good about herbs.

[00:44:59] They really know how to tend to like this prayer and we all can take care of all the different parts so that we can actually plant a really beautiful garden.

[00:45:09] That like way more people than just us can be fed from. And that's also a big, important thing too, is like, when community comes together, we're able to take care of a lot of things that becomes nourishment for others.

[00:45:24] So it just becomes this culture, feeding and nourishing and then we also attuned to the feeling of belonging. We belong. We belong to something. We like love it and tend to it and care about it. Most of the time, in this time of like the stuff in our mind, the systems that we've been programmed to function and are breaking down.

[00:45:50] So our also is the programs they got to break down too. And with that, like oftentimes this feeling of not feeling connected or not belonging comes up in community, we feel the connection and the belonging, and then we want to do more community is like probably one of the most important things we can be cultivating right now, in my opinion.

[00:46:19] Wow. Obviously I definitely am on the same page with you. Amazing. Thank you, Isis. So for anyone who's been inspired by this and wants to reach out to you, where can they find you?

[00:46:34] Well, you can find me on my Instagram, Isis_Indriya, however the school is at AcademyOfOracleArts.com and RitualCommunity.com.au Are the two ways you can find me.

[00:46:49] Awesome. Amazing. Thank you so much.

[00:46:53] Thank you, Lucas. Thank you for having me and blessings on this podcast and all of the voices that come here and everything that is shared here on this podcast here in this one and all of the ones that before and all the ones after be a great help and benefit for many communities and many generations this reach.

[00:47:14] What a lovely blessing. Thank you so much.

[00:47:20] Thank you for joining us this week on Elements of Community. Make sure to visit our website, ElementsOfCommunity.us, where you can subscribe to the show on iTunes Stitcher, Spotify or via RSS. So you'll never miss a show. If you found value in this show, we'd appreciate a rating on iTunes.

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