I remember four significant moments in my life that marked a tremendous shift in my consciousness and eventually brought me to the realization that I was destined for a shamanic life. Before it began I had no idea where it would lead.
Do prayers get answered?
The first was what I like to think of as an answer to my prayers. Not a single prayer so much as a long term yearning for the truth, or ... what I came to know as the great truths. With good intentions, still loyal to my childhood religion, brought up in a conservative Christian community, I was at a point where I was dissatisfied. I beseached 'God' for answers in what I though of as some kind of deal at the age of twenty eight. My wife was expecting our first child. I was struggling with my faith and my father was encouraging me to lead a course at the church with him in the hope of bolstering my belief. I was in two minds and had questioned many tenants of the faith over recent years.
I clearly wasn't listening all that well obviously, or was it just my youthful enthusiasm, I'm not sure. But I knocked and the door opened, I asked and I certainly received. This was the moment that marked my first transition.
"Do you really want to know the answers? My imagination toyed with me.
"The road less traveled is less traveled for good reason. It is thorny and un-trodden, abandoned and often misleading." But I wanted it. Or so I thought.
One of these distinct moment was reading a series of books that allowed me to shed what I will call 'my Christian guilt'. It was a period of about four months, of reading and contemplation that I moved from understanding the world as we know it in the three dimensional sense to discovering this macrocosm of what life and consciousness really is. I cried many tears in that four months.
As my journey progressed over the next decade, I met monks and meditated with them 'on the mountain'. I encountered the Buddha and his Dharma, and the Four Noble Truths. I sweated in the shaman's sweat lodge and learned his songs, met my ancestors and stopped talking so much and began to listen to the silence. I learned about Yoga and Patanjali's Eight Fold Path. I met many interesting and prominent people along the way, including a few witches. I eventually performed ceremonies for them and became intimately connected to their broader community. I journeyed into the world of the plant medicine helpers, Ayahusaca and the mind altering effects of DMT, discovering things not of this world, not accessible without passing through the portal provided by these anthropomorphic plants. I was allowed to step out of myself and see myself as the individual that I am, but also as a part of a larger spiritual cluster, intricately connected to everyone and everything around me. Along the way I came to understand that each one of these pilgrims I had encountered was simply a soul seeking a connection with the divine, to contact Spirit and the great consciousness in the universe and feel acknowledged and relevant.
Many sublime signs along my path assured me I was going in the right direction. As I learned to trust my intuition, more and more doors opened up to me. More and more fascinating things were revealed and opportunities provided.
"When I asked for patience,
I was given opportunities to practice patience.
When I asked for bravery,
I was given encounters that demanded I be brave."
One day while I was very into my Buddhism and Yoga, I was selling low cost housing in one of Cape Towns townships. I had to see a client for signatures and she worked at Cape Towns most famous hotel, The Mount Nelson as a chamber maid. I parked my car in the large landscaped grounds and remember how calm and peaceful I felt on that beautiful sunny day. As I walked through the wide corridors of the hotel and rounded a bend I froze. Approaching me with a small entourage was none other than His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. No shit! I just stood there. As he approached I placed my two hands together in a prayer pose almost subconsciously, my eyes began to fill with tears. He stopped ever so calmly, reached out and took my hands in his. We said nothing , just a bow in acknowledgment, and then he was gone. The electricity of that moment has never left me. This was not one of the moments, it was just a very special experience.
The second, almost magical moment happened a couple of years later one early morning while camping. We had visited a new camp site in the mountains above Piketberg in the Cape. Friends had recommended the crystal clear mountain pools which were the main attraction of the camp. We arrived late on Friday so there was no time to explore. We set up camp and had a peaceful braai. (a real barbecue)
I am not a big sleeper so I was awake before dawn and itching to check out the place. I kissed my sleepy wife and baby girl and set off like 'Siddhartha' on my quest.
After a short walk I found a rock pool hidden behind some rushes at the foot of a low ridge. I climbed the ridge and sat down to meditate in the peaceful morning nature. I must have been there for an hour because my 15 cm candle was now just a waxy puddle. I climbed down, satisfied with my calming, private time and made my way back to camp for breakfast. A few minutes down the sandy track, a large raptor made a shadow over me as it sailed across the rays of the rising sun. The shadow of the bird caught my eye as there were no trees around. It danced on the scrub before me and passed over me again and again. I mused at it for a while. So elegant. Wish I could swoop and fly like an eagle, I dreamed as I walked along. The buzzard stabilized and seemed to line up and dive. In an instant I felt a thud and crashed to the floor. I jumped to my feet immediately, shaking my head. My arms were aching. I looked down at them and they had transformed into a glorious set of wings. I tried to fly and with utmost ease I lifted off the ground a few feet and drifted down again. In a semi trance I took off again, beating my wings to try and achieve some height. Up, up I soared as if almost weightless. Soon the ground was far below me. Up, up I went. I felt quiet in control. The blue of the sky became darker and darker and then I was in the darkness, like on the edge of space. I reached a sort of apex and landed on what seemed like a glass road, solid but transparent. Two rows of magical beasts appeared on either side creating an avenue. Gigantic creatures with the manes of lions, elephants trunks and fore quarters, tapering to a crocodile like tail. They seemed unaware of me as I drifted along the glass road telekinetically.
Before me an amphitheater of mountains came into view and in each of the four peaks that stood out, the individual faces of four old women appeared. Above them like clouds, hung the images of four old men also. Each spoke to me. I will reserve what they had to say out of respect for their command. The Grandmothers spoke, representing the elemental spirits of earth, air, fire and water. The old Grandfathers also spoke as the four directions. They gave me a task and a new name which only select people and themselves call me. The last grandmother, Grandmother Fire gave me something to remember. She extended a laser beam from her third eye into mine. My body - wings and all, fell like two halves of an egg to the sides of me and my spirit took off. When I turned to return from where I had come from, a regiment of falcons and buzzards and eagles and hawks filled the glass road before me. Each row taking off as I passed over it, my totems all around me. The road ended and the black sky was all I was. Free falling, gliding, no longer power in my arms, only to steer. I drifted down into the blue again and down to the ground. I must have blacked out because I stood up again in a shock, shaking my head as before. This time, no wings, just my burning, aching arms ... one cream feather trapped between my fingers. Was it a dream, a trance? It was vivid as day. Lost in my thoughts I arrived back at the camp where my friends and family were preparing breakfast and tidying up.
"What's that mark on your forehead?" my wife asked.
The Wounded Healer
The third was an encounter with a large Bull Mastiff, some years later.
It was a sunny Thursday. I was running errands and on my way to pick up my daughter from friends, I stopped in to drop a letter of demand at the home of a builder who had not been ethical in our dealings. I parked my zooty BMW cabriolet outside the house and ran up the steep embankment to the front door. As I reached the plateau I noticed the big dog sitting next to his dog house and bowl just beyond the front door area toward the back of the plot. I noticed that he was chained and seemed pretty calm. I have a great rapport with animals and acknowledged him with a "Hey Boy!" He allowed me to pass and seemed fine, only pricking his ears up and watching me. I knocked on the door two or three times and when no one answered, I slipped the letter under the door and proceeded to leave. It was a gorgeous day up until that moment. The view from that vantage point looked out over the Helderberg mountains and False Bay. I could see all the way to Hangklip. I was in a good mood with a spring in my step. Then I heard a deep growl, milliseconds later the force of the dogs jaw was like a car hitting me from behind. I felt the canines pop through my calf skin and spread the muscle as they went in. It was so heavy. I realized that this animal meant business and this was no warning nip. The next eight seconds or so felt like the end for me. I turned on my heels, my left calf firmly in the dogs jaw. I delivered four or five sharp blows to his head with my fist but he didn't seem to feel it. Then he let go of my leg and grabbed my punching arm. I was down. The beast had me spread eagle, pinned beneath his 60 kg hunk of muscle, flat on my back and standing over me. Only my right forearm in his jaw, snarling and foaming and trying to get to my throat, which was half an arms length from his face. My life flashed before me as the saying goes. My adrenaline was surging. I heard people screaming nearby. I noticed the choke chain around his thick neck as I starred into the dog's eyes and begged for mercy and for my life.
I maneuvered my other hand free and grabbed the chain and twisted it around my hand as violently as I could in the confines of the dogs fore quarters. He let go of my arm and I was up. The chain came off his neck in my hand and I used it to strike him as hard as I could. Several blows and he retreated. I was bezerked. The Mastiff yelped and ran off. A neighbor was shouting in Portuguese or something, from a balcony next door but I was in shock. I made it to the safety of my car, called my wife and told her to meet me to get me to the hospital. Then I drove to the friend to fetch my daughter. I was focused on the flesh on my forearm that had come out when the dog extracted his teeth. It did not look good and I was worried about tetanus. It was when I depressed the clutch that I remembered the bite to my leg. The pain shot through me and I almost swerved into the curb. I pulled up my trouser leg and looked straight into my calf muscle which was a bigger, messier version of my arm wound. I drove with difficulty and when I arrived at the friends home, hooted wildly for them to open up. My wife arrived and drove me to the hospital on two wheels. I was really impressed with her driving that day. I was admitted to surgery immediately and the rest I don't remember. What I do remember is slipping into a place brought on by a memory of Joan Halifax's, Shamanic Voices. I had read it some years ago and this process had stuck with me but I had not understood it until this encounter with the hound. The theory came back to me in my anesthetized state. Deep in the quiet places of the psyche, the chapter about the crisis journey shaman go through surfaced. Wolf (the proto-dog and totem animal) had come to teach me. Here is a clip from the movie, The Simpsons. Many great truths are shared with people through most movies, but if you do not know what you are looking at you will not realize what you are seeing. That is where the saying, Hide the truth in broad daylight, comes from. The truth is, it is all out there, around us. Let those who have eyes, see. In this clip, Homer visits a shaman. She takes him on 'a journey' with Ayahuasca into a trance to find his purpose. No I'm not kidding, The Simpsons.
The crisis journey is a shamanic initiation phenomenon where the shaman is 'born again', symbolically dismembered and put back together in his new state, awakened to his path.
Within two month of the dog bite I lost my position as a branch manager of a sales company after ten good years, as the company restructured and trimmed away some fat when the recession of 2008 set in. This was the moment I realized why I had learned what I had learned during the recovery period. I wasn't however ready to acknowledge that I would not be finding my career success in the commercial world. so I went into another sales job. But I knew then I was a shaman.
Baptism of Fire
A year later I was on vacation in Thailand with my wife and some friends. We were at the hedonistic paradise of the Full Moon Party at Hadrin Bay on Koh Pangan island several miles off Thailand's East coast in the turquoise Andaman sea. This place is Eden. Straight out of the movie, The Beach, it is the exact atmosphere and place Leo de Caprio and Tilda Swinton visit when they return to the mainland 'for supplies'.
It is electric and shamanic in its elements. It is significant for several reasons, not least it's remoteness. It is a continuous trance party, as each week the party is aptly names by the cycle the moon is in, New Moon party, No Moon Party, whatever, it's a party. The beach is alight with pyrotechnic acts, stilt walkers, jugglers, burning skipping ropes and hoops of fire. Let's just say Health and Safety- not big on the agenda. Shamanism requires this ecstatic state.
So there we were taking in the scenes. Although drinking is an all day affair when on vacation in such a place, I was by no means intoxicated enough to do what I did. We were only on the beach where the main events were for about an hour. The music is loud and the beach packed for two kilometers with ravers and freaks from around the world. Nice freaks, but the strangest array of humans, all engaged in deep house and the joys of sharing on such a scale with our human family. I do not know what possessed me to do what I did next but, it has happened to me several times on my path. It is as though an unbridled hand steers me against my better judgment, literally and physically, often to my dismay as I watch myself doing things I would not usually consider. I gave my wife my glass and launched myself headlong into a hoop of fire. The other guys had simply hopped through the 5,5ft burning hoops, but not I. Oh no! I had to flick -flack through it. I knew before I leapt that I would not make it through successfully, ie, landing on my feet, but as if it was out of my control, I just did it. I landed flat on my bare back on the burning paraffin. I sat up quickly using my left arm to raise myself off the cool sand and the seering chord. It wasn't at all bad at first. I got up and looked around to see who had seen me fall. Oh everyone, great. People were coming up to me and saying, "Dude that was insane. Are you okay!", "Yeah, I'm good, what was all the fuss." The were walking around behind me and taking pictures of my back. It burned a little but I was surprised then that it was so mild. Go jump in the sea, someone suggested. I looked toward the shoreline and a row of guys stood peeing into the dark water. No thanks, I thought. It was starting to burn. I started feeling delirious and a paramedic ran up to my wife and said I needed to get to the doctor quickly. We were stuffed into a taxi and weaved through the narrow little streets filled with revelers. The doctor was amazing, no forms, not identification, 'just come in, fix you up vely goood"
I was cleaned and bandaged and my wife given instructions what to do the next day. We were soon on our way back to our hotel by tuk-tuk.
The next morning I was really uncomfortable, both upper arms fully bandaged and my chest and back in a 20 cm. wide bandage in the 45 degree heat. My wife went to breakfast but I didn't feel like any. I took my phone and went to the beach in front of the hotel off the deck where she sat. I found a hammock under a cool tree and eased myself into it. The phone suddenly rang. I hadn't had one call since I had been there for two weeks. It was my witch priestess and adviser. Congratulations Shaman, you have passed the exam. You are our first official registered marriage officer. I am thrilled. Where are you? I'm still in Thailand.
Ok, speak when you're back. I realized that that was my baptism of fire. That was the moment I become a marriage officer and a 'shaman-officiale`'
We left Thailand three days later. I remember the last night in a hotel room in Bangkok. I think the nerve endings were growing back. My goodness, it was painful. The dog bite was scary because it was uncontrolled and malicious, but this pain was unbearable and unstoppable.
I got home to S.A only to find Jacob Zuma had stolen the presidency. Gosh, can I not go away for three weeks and leave you all to look after the country?
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Ancient Heartbeat
The final moment that stands out for me so far, was less spectacular but as moving. On a Sweat Lodge with a secret group of shaman at a secret location in the Cederberg one weekend, probably my fourth 'sweat', there was a participant who stood up during the prayer session before we entered the lodge. He walked a little way off and turned his back to us, raised his arms into the air and shouted out to the heavens. He spoke in a language I had never heard. It wasn't gobbledy-gook or some uncontrolled mumbling. It was words. Words that seemed to penetrate me. Words I had never heard but knew. The electricity from his invocation resonated so with me that I spent much of the rest of the weekend with him, picking his sharp mind in an attempt to understand what I had experienced. He told me that this was the language of the Norse, The North men of Scandinavia. It is possible he said, that hearing it again has awakened some thing stored deep within your bone seed. (a shamanic word for DNA, long before DNA was discovered) I began to trace my ancestry and as the puzzle came together I realized that my ancestors only recently, (1741) traveled here, to where I live now, in South Africa, from a town only 507 km from the Danish border.
This was when I began to understood Celtic shamanism from a white mans perspective.
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Contact me at ancientheartsacredhealing@gmail.com
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