The Sacred Path

I’m constantly amazed, although at this point I shouldn’t be, how things are brought into our lives and how before they arrive, we may not completely sense what is coming, but somewhere just outside our vision, we are aware of something watching us; something waiting patiently for that point of intersection.

We were given a list of suggested reading for our upcoming Shamanic workshop in May which will be about healing. At the top of that list of books, was Coyote Medicine by Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona, MD, Ph.D. I ordered it along with five others on the list as a start. On the day I ordered the books, I downloaded and installed a plugin called “Now Reading” which is now in the sidebar on my blog, and at the top of the list, I entered Coyote Medicine and put it in the “now reading” category even though I had not yet received the book and entered another one in the “planned reading” category.

The books ended up being shipped by Amazon in three separate shipments with Coyote Medicine being in the last shipment I received. When the other two shipments arrived, I opened them and set the books aside intending on selecting one and starting to read it, but never got that urge to pick one of them up. When Coyote Medicine arrived, that was the book I picked up and started reading. I was waiting for it but didn’t consciously realize it.

I must say I found Coyote Medicine quite enlightening in many ways. For one thing it brought back fond memories of childhood as he describes flying into Casper, Wyoming to attend a sweat lodge and tipi healing ceremony on the Wind River Indian Reservation in west central Wyoming.

My first four years of life was spent in Riverton, Wyoming which is on the southeastern corner of the Wind River Indian Reservation. My father was part Shoshone, and a registered member of the tribe, and during our time in Riverton we attended quite a few ceremonies on the Reservation and I have fond memories of those times. Between the ages of 4 and 5 we moved to Casper, Wyoming, but we would make the trip from Casper to Riverton to visit family many times during the year. Dr. Mehl’s description of driving from Casper to Riverton along highway 20-26, through Powder River, Moneta, Shoshoni (with a stop at Yellowstone Drug for a milkshake) brought back fond memories. I had many wonderful milkshakes on trips back and forth.

For someone who is studying Shamanism, Coyote Medicine is virtually a must read (and for those who are not, a suggested read). Dr. Mehl is part Cherokee, and during medical school, he was confronted by views, attitudes and practices that went against the traditional healing methods he had been exposed to by his grandmother while he was young. This book is somewhat autobiographical and chronicles his sometimes difficult journey to integrated traditional healing methods with modern medical practices.

Traditional indigenous healing methods cannot replace modern medicine, and both Dr. Mehl and Hank Wesselman say that they should be used in conjunction with modern medicine. What Coyote Medicine has done for me is expanded or widened my perspective on healing, and anything that causes you to pause and look at something from a wider perspective is always a good thing.

I was reminded recently how powerful intent and commitment can be. A friend had been having some problems and had asked me to do a healing journey to see if I could help out. The day of the request, I popped upstairs and let my spirit helpers know about the request. Lately I have noticed that I will get a “feeling” when it is time to do the actual journey, and the feeling hit me the next evening.

The day after the journey my friend emailed me to let me know that after she made the request, that a lot of things in her life started to fall in place and improve. In other words, the healing had began at the time she set the intent by asking me to help. I sent her my report on what I found and told her I would look in on her again just to make sure nothing else had come up.

Physical symptoms are not necessarily connected to physical dis-eases or injuries, and can sometimes occur to get our attention; to alert us to something we need to change or pay attention to in our lives.

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In my post titled Cleaning out the attic I mentioned that it takes energy to maintain things we keep in our attics. There is a limit to the amount of energy available to us, which is simply a part of the earth life system. When we are using a large percentage of what we can pull in, it can make us vulnerable to illness. Now days when I get a cold or flu (rare anymore) I will shut down all outside operation (no work, no travel, et-cetera) and basically allow my body and system to have as much of my energy as it needs to take care of the problem. I of course also journey and ask my helping spirits to work on it for me as well. Hank Wesselman has a good article on The Classic Causes of Illness he wrote for The Meta Arts magazine that I highly recommend.

My friend Deb and I from time to time do a thing she calls tripping, where we basically journey while on the phone and look into things for each other. On one of our trips a few years ago, she found some “cords” as she described them, attached to me. She said they did not originate from me, but from somewhere else and there was an energy flow coming from me down the cord. She asked if she could disconnect them, and I told her to go ahead. I had been experiencing a cold that had been hanging on for far longer than it should have, and within a couple days, I was back to normal.

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