Lasavia is an organisation that has grown from my own healing practice, spiritual exploration and teaching. It was originally a name given through a spiritual vision to mean a Garden of Eden. The name came with the vision of the logo and was to be the name for the essences I was creating. Later I found out its root comes from Spanish and means life force. From these beginnings it is now growing into an organisation whose purpose is to provide training, resources and mentoring for transformative growth.
The Lasavia logo encompasses the concept of the three pathways; the mind, the heart and the pathway of devotion.
Lasavia is an organisation that looks at the education of the soul. This comes from an understanding that the soul needs the practice of relationship, self-awareness, understanding of the will, and the nature of devotion and service. That we look at wholeness and the integration into ordinary life and that fundamentally spiritual transformation is not some kind of conditioning but a potent experience that involves the whole of us. I see that crucial to this transformation is the work of co-creation and being in circles.
The Lasavia Course is a training.
I have realised over the years that the most common way people learn about shamanic practices and alchemy is in short workshops, I used to think that if people had done lots of workshops they were well trained in this work. But I discovered that when they are in circle they are ill practiced in deep respectful process. They are in fact beginners.
The Lasavia course is imbued with ethical practice; to me this is important as it highlights that ethics is not something separate from what we practice, but it is within the work itself.
Gathering to learn and explore together in circles is not only a foundation for our growth but a continuum.
Nature connection is crucial as a core value around understanding our role and where we interconnect to our ecosystem. Part of building a healthy foundation for Lasavia is our participation and connection to nature.
The following values came out of a strategy meeting with Chalice, Deah, Meggan and myself facilitated by Annette Lees. I have looked long and hard at these values and consider them in alignment with the purpose of Lasavia.
We value diversity and encourage the growth of an individual’s particular gift within the support of a diverse community.
We value truth and encourage the building of an intrinsic ethical foundation.
We value humility, understanding that we are part of a vast dynamic, interconnected ecosystem.
Our first value is Diversity.
Diversity is connected to being part of a greater whole, it is linked to community, and we are diverse because we are in relationship to the greater whole. This value becomes an active principle in working with co-creative circles, mentoring and healing relationships. To value diversity is to value difference.
We value Truth.
Truth may be revelatory, and truth may be painful; what is powerful is that the more we express our truth, the more the truth grows in us. I see truth as being present and anchored within. I see truth through the ability to self-reflect, the ability to be self-responsible and to be able to look. It is powerful to receive truth, in so doing we may have to receive the pain that comes with truth, and there is humility in this. Sometimes truth is an action. As a value to uphold, truth is taking space to self-reflect, to look and to be present. Angeles Arrien in The Four-fold Way writes tell the truth without blame or judgement. It’s not just how we value the truth, it’s how we express this and act within this truth. I see love and truth in the same vein. While I was in Germany in 2017 we talked and worked around what love and truth were. It was looking at love as an unconditional force all around, and that is how truth is, and that it was looking at the resistance both to love and to truth. The following is what came through around this subject: It is not about holding on but allowing to be part of a great movement within love. When we hold on, we hold on to nothing. When we move we then have what it is we were wanting. The fear locks us into holding to nothing and the fear creates distortion in the mind and the mind creates a story of what we are holding onto. Saint Thomas Aquinas said The law of divine love is the standard for all human actions.
We value Humility.
The first action of humility is to come into connection with everything close to us. To see how all around us there is an interconnected web of life and we are intrinsic to that. To be with humility is to be of earth and to experience that our mana within us does not put us above anything else but brings a consciousness of our part in the world around us. Humility arises simply from a heart connection to the divine.
