Dance to Your Own Drum Beat

Drumming is the heartbeat of humanity

It had been some months since I'd participated in Drum Circle. If you are not familiar with Drum Circle, think of all those times that you have been to the beach for a beach party and your pals have with them their stringed instruments and along comes your uncle, we'll call him Roland, who brings not only his washtub bass (no kidding...and the dude still has his!!) but also he brought with him bongo drums, and someone else brought a conga drum, and then people like me, who bring with them everywhere they go their own drum. In my case, that drum is the drum which travels with me everywhere. It is my 'ipu heke, and not just any 'ipu heke, but the very one which will travel with me to Hawai'i, to my Auntie Kalei, with the other teachers and some haumana and a few good friends, to climb to the top of the volcano and to be initiated back into my own Spirit, into my own Soul, and to welcome, officially and Spiritually and in the very most Kanaka Maoli way, to the world the newer version of me.

Drum Circle...

Just the very words, "Drum Circle" will evoke in all of us thoughts and visions of Native Americans in traditional Spiritual clothing, out beneath the wide sky, surrounded by Love and Nature, and sharing with one another the most primal thing that we can that is not procreation - the very heartbeat within us all.

Drums and the beats we produce with them mirror the beat of our Souls and the sound of the one thing which is the most intimate to each of our very selves - our very heartbeat. There is something very primal and native about a drum. In hula there are several different types that are used but the one that is used most is the 'ipu gourd drum. I know this drum. I own several of them in varied sizes and each of them carries its own Spirit. Each drum has its own sound, even the ones which have begun to crack and break from my using them so very much...they still are lovely to hear, still are magical in the way that they each make me feel when I am using them. The ones that I have gifted to others - again, cracked or not - carry with them my personal Spirit, for it is with these very drums which I have created my own music and have mimicked the very beat of the heart within me. If you have been gifted with one of my drums, know now just how much Spiritual Power you are in possession of, and realize that there is nothing and no one who can strip those 'ipu of their Power.
You were granted into my Life for a reason, and while in some cases that reason has yet to reveal itself, know that I was compelled to leave those drums with you and in your care because your heartbeat, much like your Soul,  is much like my own - true, native, wild and behemoth, perhaps even leviathan in size.

Not having been actively involved in Drum Circle taught me how badly we humans tend to miss the mark when it comes to the things in life that we hold as being very important to us and to our lives, and one of those things which I so very well missed is Drum Circle.

Anymore now, I am open to things and activities which connect us not only to the Divine Universe, but more, to our own Selves, because once we can reconnect with our own Selves we can then go forward and connect with other Souls, and that is what this life is really all about - experiencing things and events with like Souls.  Yet even though there are others who may seem to be just like us in many ways, we still need to maintain who we are, still need to ensure that we blend with the Souls and the energies of others when the time calls us to, and more importantly, that we understand that we are not there to become like them, but rather so that we may add to their lives, as well as to our own lives, the elements that are not there by our own manifestations. We will always draw who and what we need to , who and what we Desire the most, and who and what we so very badly need, and sometimes those things and people all end up being within the same person, and a lot of the time that very person is our Self.

Be Open to That Which Seems to be Way Out There...it may very well be exactly what you need!

We humans like to deny ourselves what the Universe so freely gives to us. Like spoiled children we want more than we are given, and when we push aside the things that we need in hopes that the thing we think we want will appear, too often we end up more disappointed, more with a feeling of lack, more with all those thoughts and feelings that we were trying to avoid, when instead we should have been pushing through those emotions. Rather than stuffing them back down to a place where we ourselves have judged us in a manner which is more hostile than that which we were "given" by others, we need to allow those feelings their right to surface, need to allow ourselves the luxury of feeling those things. It might seem weird to us to actually feel an emotion and to push through it rather than stuffing it down to where we want to believe that we are fine, when really, we are not.

When I say "Way Out There," I mean that there are not a lot of people who have been to an actual drum circle, not a lot of folks who have experienced the Soul within them as it melds with the body, and to hear those drum beats and how eventually, those beats also become One Soul of Music - Ancient Music, the kind that is stored within each and every human being. Eventually our inhibitions become something that is merely a shadow of what it was that we thought we were, and evolves to become something musically enhanced, Spiritually Brilliant and completely and totally the soulful measure of Divine Love - the sort which can only come from the heart and soul of Humankind.

Be Open to the things which make no sense to you, because eventually they will make perfect and Divine Sense. I have a habit of seeing things come to fruition in a Divinely Timed and Planned Way, and this is not something which I do not ascribe to every little tiny thing that has happened in my own life. All the way down to this morning's drum circle with like minded others whose only true goal is to return to the Soul of themselves.

If you will excuse me....I hear my Soul calling me...it sounds like the throatiness, the Goddess-like deepness of voice which is unique to my own 'ipu heke, my own chanting, my very own heartbeat...and most of all, is the very beat of my Spirit. It is the Kanaka Maoli within's Voice...the Ka Leo 'O Ke Uhane, the very voice that is my Own Soul...

I Love You All!!!
ROX

Reverend Roxanne Cottell is the Kumu Hula and Creator of the Spiritual Hula Program for Women and the Co-Founder of Na Hula O Ka Wahine 'Ui. She is a blogger, book author, choreographer and Spiritual Adviser. To contact Roxanne for information about the Spiritual Hula Program for Women or information regarding private hula sessions with her feel free to send her an email.

(c) 2012 Roxanne K. Cottell. All Rights Reserved.