Hello Travellers. Its me again. Boy is life hotting up. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to share my ravings. I could keep them to myself but you just never know when someone just might find the contents of my life of value in theirs. After all connection is what its all about. So lets connect!
Last month I got a big stirring up and after a lot of soul searching etc. that you all know about, the tohu (signs) came through clearly. It wasn't for me to up stakes and go where I was more needed but to stay here and continue my work. Thank all of you who contributed to the conversation in so many ways and from so many different places. Thank you for your deep sharing of your own journeys. The offers for dinner have been stored away for the future so don't be surprised if you get a phone call one of these days. But I didn't starve. (Not that I expected to. That was metaphorical). But I did find a flow of creativity. Over my lifetime, I have come to know that there is a purpose for everything. Its just a matter of finding it and following.
In fact things started to shift almost immediately. I saw that I needed to lighten the load, clear out the excess baggage and prepare for the new. The new cannot come in unless we prepare a place for it at our table. I burnt 5 file boxes and 4 folders full of past paperwork and old journals (I still have a filing cabinet to go), sold a caravan, put my crash helmet and bike gear in trade me and started to feel great.. In fact I was really just on the lip of climbing over the rim of that pit when the next set of trainings arrived for me. Its about them that this newsletter is about.
Its been a year of sickness too, but the last bout didn't include fever so I could keep going. This time I was needed to take deep internal notice of the alternate realities and worlds that sometimes call me and I couldn't do that and work (or anything else. They get very insistent when they need to be heard, these allies of mine).
A shaman is a walker between the worlds. When it first started happening to me formally, I was reasonable unimpressed, preferring to be seen as a 'serious' transpersonal psychologist with shamanic leanings, rather than a serious shaman with psychological leanings, if you see what I mean. Not to mention that I was terrified. In the middle of a three week bout of grief over loss of love and community, as I had only been here a year, I was initiated as a shaman (whilst in the bath) with a visit from a Greyseal. Shocked right out of my depression, I determined that OK,ok, I was a shaman but what did that mean? If I didn't tell no one would know. And that's just the way I would have preferred it. So began the path of the reluctant shaman being dragged kicking and screaming out of the shamanic closet. Of course it didn't stay buried. "They" took great delight in outing me wherever possible. But I resisted....oh yes I did! I didn't go quietly. (And I still do resist, which is why I get resistant clients that also need to listen to where they are being guided and go where they least want to. That was a revelation that came a few days ago as to why my practice had been acting the way it had. It was mirroring me again. After all, I tell everyone else that resistance is a sign your on the edge of a big life changer (which is never as bad as we think its going to be). You teach what you most need to learn.
Not long after my initiation, I started getting 'downloads' of information at night instead of sleep. For years I spent most nights in alpha, like it or not. I was given the short shamanic course, a three year Psychosynthesis Course, and eventually two books over time. The next thing that happened was due to getting a horrible virus about 2001. Put me out for 3 weeks. Splitting headache and sick stomach that went on and on with this fever. Many a shaman has been made through a fever. In fact that is the root of the whole native American Sweat Lodge deal and the Irish people have a similar one. Induce a fever-slip between the worlds- and never be the same again.
In the middle of my 2001 fever, laying on my couch, I was visited by a Maori woman chanting strongly. She drew a symbol on my belly and round my head. The next day my recovery began. At the time she had told me her name was Tawira. Now that's what it sounded like to my Aussie ear, though it has since been suggested that it was probably Tawera. The initiation in the bath was enough like a visualization that I could fob it off with my cynic from time to time. Tawera was of a different order. Hallucination? Ah, there's a get-out. But I was better. Humm! Except that she came again in between sleep and wake some weeks later and asked me to marry her. Now that freaked me out! I have been gay for decades, but the concept of commitment to anyone but the woman I loved was strange and scarey. If I agreed, would I loose my physical love?? Could I ever get out of it, this marriage between the worlds? What if I defaulted? You get the picture. So I refused. What I turned down was the sacred union on this land, to this land and its people. The sacred marriage was a common rite in Celtic tradition. Its what gave someone the blessing of the land for a good harvest. The blessing of the Goddess. What fool I was, but I was not ready. She never came again.
Until a few days ago. I called her.
The virus I have had this week has been a doozy. In and out of mild temperature states. Lucid dreams-not making lots of sense but very real and chaotic. I had one about being in a boat in an underground cavern with the outlet blocked by a rock wall with a locked doorway in it. I realised I had to unlock the door to allow the flow but spent all night fading in and out of the task. I wasn't ready. The feeling reminded me so much of that fever that Tawera arrived in the middle off that I wondered. I called her and an old Kuia came. It was Tawera. I said, "you've aged", and she said " so have you' Right! I asked if she would heal me again and she said yes... for a cost. If she did, I was to agree that my DNA would stay in this land after my death. Guess what? Yep. scared again. After my recent thinking that I was perhaps to be sent back to Oz, what if I let her down ...again. But I realized that it was about commitment. That she wasn't asking me never to leave the country but to make sure my DNA stayed here and co-mingled with the land. To marry it.
Of course I agreed. Well, you would wouldn't you?
Next day they changed my antibiotics (helps when you get the right medication). They were a type that cuts bits out of the DNA of the bacteria and causes it to collapse. Poof! No more bacteria. Fever went on though.
I faded out and saw a rosette representing the new antibiotic and in the middle of it was the words "I am". I guess healing comes when you commit to who you are. Then straight away a Maori warrior with a Taiaha pranced forward as part of a formal Marae welcome and placed a dart before me in challenge. Now before I go on (Not much longer I promise, but you can stop reading any time your bored). As I said, before I go on there is something you need to know. I am dead against strip mining other peoples culture and becoming pseudo anything. I have a shamanic and indigenous heritage that it would take more than this lifetime to resurrect out of the grave assigned to it. I love and respect other peoples paths and ways but I don't have to become one because I'm not one., Sharing mutual understanding ..sure. When indigenous people come to me offering gifts I am not so ungracious as to say "Nah! No way!" I have been initiated into the Peruvian Munay Ki, I have been taught by a Waitaha mentor and had a mantle placed around my shoulders to work with Pakeha to ground them in the land. But I am always a little hesitant about what this means and not wanting to stepping over a line in the sand and being misunderstood by either side. So the Warriors challenge was asking me to step forward and pick it up. For those of you that don't know about Marae protocol, this is a good time to find out. Briefly, when the visitors (manahiri) come to a Marae, they have to show to the tangata to whenua (locals) that they are friendly or they wont be let in (of course). So they get challenged and must meet that challenge with their own warriors. If they do the protocol properly then they get to come in and party. If they do it wrong, all hell breaks loose. I was scared again. Sometimes I feel like a spiritual doormouse.
But I was beginning to get that they wanted me to rise to the challenge they have been setting me, for years I suppose, so I picked up the dart and was told that the first challenge was to accept the challenge. Deh! Now I said that quick but think about it. Its so profound it hurts. Unless we accept life's challenges there is no learning thereafter. Thank you, thank you. Honore ki te Atu o te whenua. Honour to the spirits of this Land. Nothing begins until we step up to the plate.
The next Dart was layed down for me. It was set down in the middle of the previous rosette with 'I am' inscribed within it. The lesson was that the DNA holds all the knowledge of our experience. If we do not have the courage to have the experiences, the DNA is not enriched, even if those experiences are not pleasant. This virus had not been a easy trip, but what I was being updated with was worth a fever blister or two. We build the strength of our immune system by coming up against things that make it stronger. While hygiene is good, sterility is not always the most appropriate way to conduct life. Coddled kids got all the colds. When knowledge is coupled with experience it becomes wisdom and makes us strong.
The final dart was placed. It was set down in the middle of a spiral carved by the taiaha. The message was that if the dart remained in the centre and was never taken up as a challenge, life could never have happened. The Big Bang would have been a non-event. We could never have happened. If everything stays potential at the centre of our lives but is never opened up to the experience of all, our personal life never happens. We can stand still forever, but its not a life. We carve life by taking the dart and drawing the journey that we send it on. It isn't about getting it right. Its about getting on with it! We have done whatever we have done to ourselves, each other and the planet. Now we get on and learn from that and keep drawing, keep picking up the challenges, keep learning, keep experiencing. We keep life going because that's what its here for.
The final bit was whether I should tell you all this or whether I was being an egotistical drama queen with elevated ideas of my own importance. Not to mention being an Australian cockney. But I guess that was the doormouse again, so here it is. Blessed Be. Jay Sparrowhawk Loudmouth Ray.
