Lynn V. Andrews; International Author, Shaman and Founder of the Lynn Andrews Center for Sacred Arts Training

Celebrate the 20th Anniversary in 2008!

"Shapeshifting Into Power"

May 29 - June 1, 2008

at beautiful Ghost Ranch, Abiqui, New Mexico

Registration Closed.

About Joshua Tree

SHAPESHIFTING INTO POWER

A shaman is a master at shapeshifting. The ability to shapeshift into your inner power can help you to heal and transform your life and your health. As you shift, you are aware of the changes which you discover leads to the powers of ethical choice by empowering your heart. Shapeshifting develops your self-esteem and intuition through the use of your power animals. Move into the moment, and allow the power of transformation to begin its healing in your life!

Since 1989, the Joshua Tree Gathering has been held as an extraordinary gathering of people from all over the world-women and men who come together for ceremony, meditation and healing. This year's event will be held at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. Each year Lynn guides us through inspiring meditations, using an ancient tradition of sacred sounds and words, as taught to her by the Sisterhood of the Shields. This unique approach to meditation will catapult you into an expanded awareness of human potential and spiritual abilities. We will immerse ourselves in a rich texture of images, music, ceremony and the creation of sacred art. It is these very elements of beauty and power, woven into one multidimensional, magnificent event, that will be unlike anything you have experienced before!

PROFESSIONAL ADVANCEMENT

Expand your skills by learning how to help your clients:

Understand the essential role of our thoughts in the process of healing.
Explore the connection of mind, body, and spirit in illness and health.
Increase their sense of personal power, self-esteem and self-worth.
Strengthen their personal intent, accountability, and ability to manifest their dreams into reality.
Develop an understanding of the difference between feelings and emotions.
Explore unique methods for releasing suppressed emotions.
Become active participants in their own psychological and spiritual growth.

LOCATION

The location for our gathering this year will be Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, New Mexico. It will be on the high desert Mesa of the New Mexico wilderness; a beautiful and natural landscape surrounded by spectacular rock formations, ancient energy, fossils and dinosaur bones.

Ghost Ranch is a 21,000-acre retreat and education center run by the Presbyterian church, close to the village of Abiquiu in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico. It is the subject of many landscapes by the American painter Georgia O'Keeffe, who maintained a summer home there in 1934, then her permanent residence on the property from 1949 until her death.

Dinosaur bones were found here as early as 1885. In 1947 the paleontologist Edwin H. Colbert documented the discovery of over a thousand well-preserved fossilized skeletons of the small Triassic dinosaur called Coelophysis in a quarry here.

Ghost Ranch was given by Arthur and Pheobe Pack to the Presbyterian Church in 1955. The 21,000 acres that comprise Ghost Ranch were part of a land grant to Pedro Martin Serrano from the King of Spain in 1766. The grant was called Piedra Lumbre (shining rock). The name "Ghost Ranch," or the local name "El Rancho de los Brujos," was derived from the many tales of ghosts and legends of hangings in the Ranch's history.

"Rancho de los Brujos" the Ranch was called; "Ranch of the Witches," haunted by evil spirits. It is not surprising that today's name for this land is "Ghost Ranch," and the logo is a cow's skull.

For many years only a narrow dirt road led up the twisting Chama River Valley northwest from Abiquiu. The turn-off to Ghost Ranch was marked by an animal skull long before Arthur Pack bought the ranch in 1936.

There were many bones to be seen in this high desert country and artist, Georgia O'Keeffe was entranced by them, painting them, displaying them, and shipping a barrelful back to New York. One of her Ghost Ranch neighbors, a Navaho named Juan de Dios, had a pet steer of which he was very fond. When it died he gave the animal's skull to O'Keeffe for her collection. O'Keeffe made a drawing of this ox skull and presented it to Arthur Pack as a gift. He promptly adopted the artwork as the logo for Ghost Ranch.

Joshua Tree Gathering "On The Mesa" at Ghost Ranch, will be home to an extraordinary gathering of people from all over the world, women and men who have come together at this place of beauty for ceremony, ritual, meditation and healing. Facilitated by Lynn Andrews, the gatherings are profound in nature and magical in spirit. Lynn draws from her decades of apprenticeship with Agnes Whistling Elk and Ruby Plenty Chiefs to deliver a workshop that powerfully impacts each and every participant. As Lynn teaches, we are one with Mother Earth . . . to heal her we need first to heal ourselves.

"Everyone has what he or she needs, the mirrors. Each of us has asked, before being born, for everything needed. The problem is, when we are born, we become caught in the dream. We are born into a kind of sleep. To become enlightened is to wake up from that dream."

Volunteering at Joshua Tree

Thank you for your interest in volunteering.

Lynn offers a limited number of volunteer positions each year for her Joshua Tree Gathering. Please strongly consider attending the event as a full-paying participant if this is your first time. The reason we urge you to do this is that the Sacred Joshua Tree Gatherings with Lynn contain an enormous amount of information, involve very deep inner processing and often a need for extra sleep and personal time. Though volunteers are guaranteed presence at all meditations and event lectures, they do not always have the time to attend to themselves that participants do. However, if you are unable to pay the full fee, enjoy hard work & being of service we invite you to apply to volunteer!

Applications are accepted from January 1st through six weeks before the event begins.

To request information on applying to volunteer, please use our Joshua Tree Volunteer contact form . Click the button and print out the form. Then email your response back to us at the email address provided. Thank you and we look forward to hearing from you!

Julie Hill

Volunteer Coordinator

Applications are no longer being accepted. Thank you!

Continuing Education Credit for Joshua Tree

For detailed information, please check the Continuing Education Credit information page. Click on the button below to go directly to the Joshua Tree section.

Essay Contest Information

We are delighted to announce

The winner of the 2008 Joshua Tree Essay Contest

MICHELE MORGEN

New York, N. Y.

Michele Morgan (known on the forum as zippypie) knew when she read this year’s topic that it was right up her alley – for she is an actress, returning to acting after years of exploring other roles. Her act of power this year is creating a one-woman play.

As a young woman, Michele loved to act. After schooling and some years as a psychotherapist, she has moved back to New York to resume acting. Born in the Philly area, she laughingly describes herself as a bit of a gypsy, as she has lived in a number of places. Her journey in life took her to school in New York and Chicago, and then to work in Los Angeles.

In 1990 Medicine Woman called to her from a shelf in a bookstore, and she began reading Lynn’s work. Working through the Teachings Around the Sacred Wheel workbook led to her attend the 1993 Joshua Tree Event as a volunteer. She returned the next year as a participant. A couple of years ago Michele began taking Lynn’s online courses, including Luminous Fibers, Act of Power, and the recent Dreaming series. She is also currently participating in the Woman at the Edge of Two World’s bookclub on the Forum.

Michele’s spiritual journey has included Wiccan and Buddist elements. She received her training in psychotherapy at Naropa, a Buddist graduate school in Boulder, Colorado. Her program focused on art therapy and she worked mainly with children in her practice. She continues to enjoy art of all kinds, and especially creating three-dimensional objects.

Congratulations, Michele!

Here are the instructions for this year’s essay:

“Shapeshifting into Power”

If all the world’s a stage, as Shakespeare said, consider the parts you have played during this lifetime, and the part you are playing now. How are you taking your power and manifesting in the world? How has this changed over time? Write about your process and experience of transformation in manifesting your life.

And here is Michele’s essay:

Once upon a time, I was all things and many more. I chose to forget my perfection and be born. I began a journey of remembering. I chose to suffer in order to know joy. I chose to be human, to be like everyone else but to be different – to be me.

The sun peeks over the horizon, a peachy soft fleshy pulse of color and light and warmth.

I am who I have chosen to be, who I choose to be. I walk on the edges because that's my nature. I join in the human stream with friends and family. I dive into the stars and the mysteries and the silky blackness of aloneness, of solitude, of joining with nothingness and everythingness and being.

I am afraid of being seen. I am retraining, building stamina, lifting weights of thoughts which have fermented into giant fear-soaked raisins in my brain, my heart, my spirit. I squeeze them. I lay them out in the sun to dry. I examine them like a puzzle, a painting, a flower blossoming into fruit, the peachy soft fleshy pulse of the sun, now shining brightly above the horizon as I breathe, in and out, and with a sigh of joy, of reconciling, of love, embrace myself in all my complex simplicity.

A life of opposites. Sometimes consciously chosen, sometimes cluelessly. Or so it seems to the Victim, the Martyr. I know her. We spent many years together and occasionally she drops in for a cup of tea. I now have the strength to show her out the door when her visit has overstayed.

I have been brave. I have been cowardly. I've played the Child and the Mother, the Friend and the Backstabber, the Confident One, the Leader. I've joined forces with the Rebel. She's more exciting than the Follower, yet she steamrollers over others, especially those she loves. The time has come for her to stop fighting just because she can.

I have been the Goddess, the Lover, the Muse. I have explored the hidden caves of the Hermit and the raging fires of the Scorned One.

Like a switch being flipped, I find myself in midlife, wondering what has become of all the roles I have played. I use them in my acting work, my Act of Power, but are they me? Who is "me"?

If my spirit is a fragmented mirror, do the fragments disappear when the mirror is reassembled? Or are they still separate pieces forming a greater whole? Facets of a diamond, reflecting the rainbow of my truth into the world. Where I have been. Where I may go.

I journey on. I let go of becoming. I am, and I have always been and always shall be. The perception of me has changed. There is no good or bad, no right or wrong. I step into the spotlight of power in perfect love and perfect trust. I fall blissfully into its endless peachy soft fleshy pulse of eternal light. I am. Whatever

Contest Rules are posted in PDF format!