Journeys through the mist
I recently set up a website for author, poet and fellow-shamanic practitioner, Jim Price, and I must say I very much enjoy reading his “Musings,” and thought you might as well. He writes about a wide range of things, in other words, he writes about life. He currently has three ebooks for sale and more to come.
If you are so inclined, pop over and take a look around.
We all get sick from time to time, it’s part of life really. Sometimes it is our way of telling ourselves that we have been working too hard and possibly our energy reserves are low and it is time for a rest. It can of course also be an indication that there is something deeper and more complex going on. Perhaps there is something that we have been procrastinating about dealing with. The list goes on.
I had spent a wonderful Thanksgiving week with good friends in California, and on the last day of my visit felt the telltale signs of a cold or flu coming on. My sinuses were starting to drain and I had a scratchy throat. I figured just like every other cold or flu that I have had in the past, a few days and I would be back to normal. Typically for myself, I just “weather” them and take as little in the way of medications as possible. I did a little healing work on myself and asked my healing team to lend a helping hand.
After three days, my cold seemed to be lifting and I thought I had it kicked, but by the fifth day it had moved down into my chest and my cough had gotten much worse. Again though I figured like other times, a few more days and I would be on the mend. No so.
In the fourth week, one of my ribs gave up and cracked from all the coughing and I could tell there was a lot of fluid in my lungs. By now, I had not really slept in a couple weeks, only getting maybe a half hour or hour here or there. I even resorted to getting some cough medicine from the pharmacy, but it did not help.
I decided it was time to contact some of my shamanic friends to see if they could help me out and I not only got a lot of healing energy from them, but also some good advice on very good herbal and natural remedies.
A morning or two later after a night of no sleep, I got out of bed and as my feet hit the floor, I heard a voice in my head say, ‘it is time to go to the doctor.’ Now in the past, I might not have jumped so quickly on the advice from the voice in my head, but this time I could feel the urgency.
Turns out that it had developed into pneumonia. The doctor wanted to send me to the hospital but because I don’t have health insurance, decided we would see if antibiotics would help, but she warned that if I was not significantly better within a week, I should plan on the hospital.
The first day after the trip to the doctor, I was feeling far better, and by the third day my lungs had cleared almost completely. Was it the antibiotics, or was it the help from my friends? A little of both I think. On my return visit, the doctor was quite surprised and said my lungs were completely clear. It seems that many people have had to take several rounds of antibiotics to kick the stuff that is going around.
When I realized that my life path was to include the study of Shamanism, there were a number of things that had been hanging open in my life that fell into place and connected. Everything started to make sense. Looking back on it I realized that everything I had been doing to expand my consciousness, the many programs I attended at The Monroe Institute, were all leading me to the study of Shamanism.
With Shamanism, at least when studying with Hank Wesselman and Jill Kuykendall, you are exposed to and learn all aspects of this ancient practice. You may end up specializing in one aspect such as healing, or soul retrieval, or exploring the spiritual worlds, but as my cosmic committee explained to me, you have to know how to do it all well.
You might want to go to the bathroom and perhaps get a snack and/or a beverage as this post is quite a bit longer than normal for me.
Some fifteen years ago, or so, I had a very vivid dream in which I was shown a tapestry and told that this visually represented the complete record of my current life, and that everything I thought, said, and did was recorded or woven into that tapestry. The “Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” Other dreams and experiences followed and each added additional detail and expanded the analogy of our life as a tapestry.
This photo is of a painting done by my friend Frank DeMarco in 2004, which came out of one of his sessions with The Guys Upstairs (TGU), where TGU were asked how they perceived us “downstairs” from “upstairs.” The idea was that they see us as nodes on connecting cords or threads, which reinforced the vision I received during the Exploration 27 program at The Monroe Institute back in 1997. As I remember, when Frank began this painting, he connected with TGU and more or less allowed them to paint it. At Exploration 27 I was shown the framework or grid that life is constructed on – the Matrix if you will – and that vision hung around and visually overlaid my physical life for over a month after the program. In my vision at Exploration 27, we are at nodes, or intersections of groups of threads.
The other night, during a journey to my Sacred Garden, one of my guides showed up and took me much deeper into the concept of our life as a tapestry. This rugged yet gentle ancestor shows up quite often when I am performing healing ceremonies and has a very strong, no-nonsense way about him.
These past several weeks I’ve been cranky. Not cranky with other people or cranky with myself about anything in particular, just cranky. According to friends, there is some stuff happening astrologically with an energy shift – Washington DC is in retrograde or something like that. I don’t follow astrology too closely, but whenever I notice energy shifts or something, astrology typically says something is going on.
In times like this, my journeys become quiet and I end up spending time just hanging out in my garden mostly. Even after all these years experiencing these cycles, I still find myself asking if I have “lost” the connection. It always comes back.
One thing I’ve started doing is drumming for 5 to 15 minutes a day. It’s always been difficult for me to drum and journey at the same time. The saying about not being able to walk and chew gum at the same time would apply. What I noticed the other day though, is that I had entered a light trance while drumming and that led me to the realization that I had been doing it, without knowing it for a while. It just takes practice I guess (Duh!).
I have a drumming CD that came with Hank Wesselman’s book, Journey to the Sacred Garden , and I use it from time to time, but I miss the vibration I can feel with live drumming; it penetrates and awakens me down to a cellular level. What’s even more magical is experiencing a large group drumming. Many times at the Shamanic workshops I’ve attended, after five minutes or so, I feel indigenous spirits moving in and around the group and I begin to hear their singing and chanting. The first time that happened, I opened my eyes and looked around the circle to see who in our group was singing. No one was.
My next workshop is in May, and I can hardly wait.
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