How I came to be a chant lover!!
I loved singing when I was a child. I used to always put myself up for singing parts at school, but I never got picked!
When I was a teenager, I dreamed of being in a band (well, didn’t we all!!) and singing, singing, singing all day long!!But oh dear, no-one ever told me I had a nice voice, I really wanted to sing, & I enjoyed it SO much!
So I guessed that my deepest fear must be true, I couldn’t sing!
There went my singing ambitions. I felt silly for ever thinking I could sing.
Once a year at Christmas I would try and get to a carole service, and would love, love, love singing all those wonderful tunes that made my heart sing and brought me so much joy.
If I didn’t have time, I would really miss going.
So the years went by.
I had my son, and was a stay at home mother. I got used to being at home, and found that I was getting more and more introverted, even finding it hard to go out and speak to people, so I looked around for something that I could do that would push my boundaries and take me out of my comfort zone a little.
I joined a singing class!!
We practiced scales, and learnt how to breathe (I never got the hang of that one) and even did concerts.
There were people there whose voices were just beautiful!
I found it really hard to stand up and sing in front of other people, to ‘let my voice out’.
I still didn’t feel like I could sing.
I stopped going after a while; it had served it’s purpose and I’d gotten a bit braver about life!
I forgot all about the singing again.
I got into all my spiritual stuff. I used to go to priestess (of the goddess) meetings where we used to take turns at holding the meeting.
One night it was about chanting.
I wasn’t going to go, as usual I was too tired after taking care of my little boy all day; going out late in the evening was too much for me (going to bed early was more my thing!!)
Then I received a phone call with a message from a clairvoyant that I knew!
He had suggested that I go to the meeting, that there would be something there for me.
I was excited & intrigued, so off I went!
I can’t remember much now of the meeting, but I know that it was great, and I loved it!
I know I’ve been chanting ever since!
I know that I stopped worrying about how I sounded, and whether or not I could ‘sing’.
Who cared?!! The energy that these chants brought through were amazing!!!
At some point I discovered that other people could feel the energies that these chants brought through when I sang them as well.
By this time, I had learnt how to channel energy, then how to channel messages from ascended masters/ angels and so on.
The chanting seemed to be another way to channel divine energy.
I got such a good response from people when I did it, that it encouraged me to carry on sharing the chants that I learnt.
I would work with the same chant for months at a time.
One chant, (the great short compassionate heart dharini) I worked with every day for over a year. Initially, listening to it over and over and over again (like a woman possessed!) until the sounds started to make sense, and I started to learn the words!
I found that once I had learnt a chant by heart, and could sing it confidently, without thought (ie, it had entered into my unconscious, and become an unconscious thing that I didn’t have to think about, like driving a car, or riding a bike!), then I felt like the chant had ‘entered into me’.
It felt like the chant was part of me, that the energy was inside me, part of my being.
As I learnt the chants in this way, singing them over and over and over again, they would start to reveal themselves to me, telling me things about themselves, giving me little insights.
Then I would research the chants online, and find that the meanings that had revealed themselves spontaneously to me in this way, were echoed in the information I would find on the websites.
I’ve only worked with a handful of chants in this way (well, maybe I’m onto the second handful now), and it is only these chants that I sing to other people. I only sing the chants that have ‘become part of me’. That I’m ‘at-one’ with.
Working with these chants in this way fundamentally changes me from within. They clear energy in me, and reshape my energy field, until I’m aligned with them. I only work with one chant at time in this way, but then find that sometimes later they return to me, and I work with them into an even deeper level.
From singing these chants, I also noticed over time, that when I sang the chants that I’m very in tune with, that I would feel a great deal of energy coming out of my hands. I’d seen the pictures of the buddhas and boddisatvas with their palms turned up, in postures of blessings and it gave me the idea that these chants were producing divine energies, that they opened up a doorway to these divine energies, and they were pouring through via the vehicle of the divine mantra.
I had a strong wish to be able to gift this to others, but wasn’t sure how.
Yet, it seemed such an important thing for me to do.
I could feel it very strongly inside.
So I kept on doing my chanting, and whenever I did workshops or services, or healing sessions, I would often use the chanting.
Sometimes I would be inspired to plan to do it. Sometimes it would happen spontaneously, and I would just ‘have to’ chant.
(Often it happens like that for me! I just get an overwhelming urge to chant, and I can’t concentrate on anything else until I’ve done it!
This happens to me too, when I visit sacred/ ‘power’ places, and often around earth vortexes, I just get this overwhelming need to chant, so that’s what I have to do!!)
I’ve also been given an insight that these handful of chants, are ones that I’ve already worked with over & over (& over & over!) in past lives, where I really did sit and chant them for years and years many many times so that they already have a firm hold in my soul energy.
Then last year I started to use the chants in my online courses, and that’s when chanting for other people really went up to whole new level!
One of my suggested practices on the online courses that I’ve run, is to sit in front of Sarah’s symbol (which wraps you in her energy/ I call it ‘going into the embrace of Sarah’), and to do daily a chanting practice.
Each week on the course, I would do a Sarah blessing for the group, which sometimes would be energy channeled out through me, and sometimes I would be inspired to chant that energy out for people.
Also on the courses I would also take on the daily chanting practices as well, and from chanting day after day, month after month and doing it whilst consciously working on certain issues, I started to realise the incredible power that these chants hold for making the positive changes in our lives that we want to make.
I started to realise more and more consciously what a blessing the chanting is.
Seeing the difference it made to the people on the courses and getting amazing feedback, I really started to get it!
And that in the same way that I can chant for myself, and powerfully move through my blocks, that I can also chant for other people, and help them move through their blocks.
So this last 2 months, I’ve been developing a service chanting for others, and have been overwhelmed by the amount of people that want me to chant for them!
Now, I’m spending a great deal of my time & energy chanting for others!
Recently I realised that this was a dream I had had for myself!
Around 4 years ago I had a turning point in my life.
I couldn’t continue with life the way it was. Everything had changed. I couldn’t stay in my old life, it simply wasn’t there for me anymore, the energy had completely gone dead overnight. It was really awful, I would never have chosen it be like that, but that’s what happened, and I just had to get on and deal with it!
I had to try and create a new life for myself out of, what felt like was nothing. (it really felt as if overnight, the energy matrix of my whole life had been wiped out in one fell swoop, and I woke up to find it all gone. What a surprise that was!!)
And in this attempt to create something out of nothing, I had one wish and I went around saying to people ‘if I was more traditional, I would go and be a buddhist nun now, because what I really want to do, is chant and pray for people’!
But I couldn’t take that path, as the path that has revealed itself to me, was one of divine beings that show themselves to me – I don’t get to choose!
I didn’t ‘choose’ to work with Sarah. She was simply there!
So I didn’t feel I could take ‘a path’, such as Christianity or Buddhism, because I have divine beings from many of the world religions communicate with me, and I don’t know how to fit them into a traditional spiritual life (or whether they would be accepted!)
And I remembered this the other day, that I’d said this thing about wanting to be a nun (!) and suddenly realised that I have managed to create a spiritual life in the everyday world, where I do get to pray and chant for people a great deal.
I also have to do the shopping & cleaning, and deal with all of the stuff that we all have to, living here in our 21st century lives, but blessing, chanting, praying, meditating, channeling, doing healing work and also working with my own spiritual & personal development are the mainstays of my life now.
Sounds like what I wanted to do I guess!
And these days, when I do my chants for others, people often come up to me and tell me how much they loved my voice!
Because now I’m doing my thing, and doing the thing that I love.
When I stand up to chant, I have the intent & hope to share the divine energies inherent within that mantra.
This is my truest hearts desire. The voice just comes along with it!
Blessed Be!
Rachel.
Rachel holds classes and workshops, generally on-line these days. She will almost inevitably chant at any public occasion she is invited to (and some she isn’t!). You can find out more & read about Rachel’s work with the ascended master Sarah at https://www.rachelgoodwin.dk/
If you’d like to read more about sacred chants for healing, a great book is by Thomas Ashley-Farrand called Healing Mantras.
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