It's the Winter Solstice, a time to look back on our lives and set our intentions for the future. It's also a new moon, another great time to sent intentions. I really debated whether or not to post this log publicly because its VERY personal. I'm sure there are things here that only I will understand but I thought, what the heck. I've always had a deep reverence and love for the nature and Shamanism has always given me a spiritual connection to this part of me. The following are some notes I took based on some recent shamanic journeys I had. The first one goes back, almost twenty years. The last one goes as far back as last Sunday.
I went
running in the back trails and couldn’t help noticing the ravens again,
speaking so loudly in their eloquent caws and clicks. One flew so low, I fell
in love with the graceful way it glided and its gorgeous shimmery plumage,
blacker than night. I watched how they met and flew, dance and mated. One would
let out five caws and I’d here another answer back with five caws. Then seven
caws, then four, then four, then seven, almost like the syllables of a poem.
Even the clicks and trills had a symphonic rhythm.
The
ravens have appeared to me so much in the past few weeks, I decided to go on a
shamanic journey and see if they were trying to tell me something.
The
first time I went on a journey to find my spiritual animal totem, I was about
twenty years old. My friends and I journeyed through the Malibu national forest
protected land until we found a sand cave that we visited when we wanted to
connect with nature. The cave was never the same each time we saw it. It was
made of sand and was full of carvings. It had a hole on top and many ashes in
the middle where people had bon fires. You could tell by the types of carvings
on the inside of the cave, that it attracted all kinds. My friend always sealed
the hiking trail with some kind of “magic” spell so no one would bother us.
Strangely enough, no one ever did. On the night of the shamanic journey, my
other friend brought his own hand made drums. The beating of those drums would
lead me deep into my subconscious and out into the unknown.
He beat
the drum during the meditation and I found myself going into some opening in
the ground where I saw many animals. Before the journey, I thought that maybe
the tiger would be my spirit animal. I really enjoyed the tiger style when I
studied kung fu and some of my friends called me “tigress” but I was open to
anything. I passed many animals, giraffes, dear, squirrels, even a lioness that
felt very maternal but who told me I wasn’t ready for her yet. I kept asking
each one of them if they were my spirit animal. When I saw the eagle, I didn’t
have a chance to ask it anything because it grabbed me by its claws and swooped
me up into the sky before I had a chance. I was told that I could ask my spirit
animal anything I wished to know but first I relished in its flight and watched
the figures beneath me grow smaller and smaller. I saw the lights of the city
and its many hills and valleys. The view was amazing and humbling.
I decided to ask the eagle
what would happen if I fall. Suddenly, it let me go and I sped to the ground.
When I hit the grassy bottom hard, I laughed and thought, “that’s all?” Then
the eagle picked me up again. “How far can we go?” I asked. I think the beat of
the drum had changed rhythm somewhere in the background and my whole psyche was
on the brink of something. The eagle took me up, past the sky and clouds, I
found myself in outer space, surrounded by darkness and stars. The eagle just
kept going, took me all the way up to the sun which blazed in its enormity and
indescribable light. Then, the eagle left me there and went away. Strangely
enough, I was not afraid. I was awestruck but fearless, floating there in the
middle of the cosmos, experiencing the magnificence of the universe and my
minute place within it.
This was the gift of wisdom
the eagle brought me. This was the power that gave me the courage to journey by
myself to the other side of the country, pay may way through school through odd
jobs and pursue my dreams. The eagle can see the big picture and that ability
to step outside myself and above any pettiness that might cause me to lose my
way. It helped me survive the ghetto without ever losing site of what I wanted.
But sometimes, the eagle can be a bit of a hermit and hold itself to a much
higher standard.
***
Fifteen years later, a
mother with a family to raise, I wanted to reconnect with my animal totems. I
knew there was more to me than the eagle and I was curious as to what spirit
could help me in my circumstances. My friend, who led me through the first shamanic
journey years before was also married with his own family. We no longer had the
freedom to journey into the woods late at night on a whim, but he still offered
his spiritual services in the guise of a CD with shamanic drums recorded on
them. I played the drums and found myself diving deep into the ocean.
It was the whale who drew me
there and we swam together, side by side. She felt so warm and compassionate,
unlike the strong, intellectual eagle whose plane was everything in the air and
above. That whale took me into a dark voyage deep into the reaches of my
subconscious, a place so deeply personal I can barely describe it. I’m sure I
wrote about it and maybe that journal entry is buried somewhere in a box with
my other writings. I must say, the realm of the ocean was scarier than the realm
above the earth but with the whale by my side I was not afraid of what I had to
face deep within myself.
I did manage to write two
books under the guidance of the whale, so dark and sensual, yet, so maternal
and warm.
***
Five years later, I’m seeing
ravens everywhere and I know I have to learn what they are trying to tell me. I
do a search on youtube for spiritual animal drumming. I only have a bit of
time, being a working mom. I find the perfect video, a woman with a drum and
she leads me through it while I sit in a cross legged position in front of the
screen.
I remember it as if it were
yesterday, because I just did it yesterday. Lol. First I went into the
underworld and found myself entombed in the plane of the spirits and of nature.
In my first shamanic journey, I approached each animal cautiously, politely
asking them if they were my spirit animal. This time, I reconnected with each
of them as if they were long lost friends. I rolled in the long grass and
scurried with the bugs. I ran on hands and feet with the dear and rolled with
the playful coyotes. I waved “hi” to the whale as it swam past me in the ocean.
I knew they were all part of me in some form or another and after all these
years, I have become comfortable with this.
It’s the wolf that catches
my attention, its eyes burning with a ferocity I relate with and it walks by my
side, promising me that it will protect me no matter what. I was always the cautious
type keeping my space and analyzing things keenly before approaching. This mentality has kept me alive, especially when I was young starving artist living
in the ghetto.
Then the raven finds me,
cawing and chattering as it does in real life. What is it trying to tell me? We
walk through the realms, past the animals and I’m aware that I’m not in the air
on in the water. I’m on the ground, being protected by the wolf and the raven
is telling me that there is some way of living in between the worlds without
having to constantly split off my personality. Maybe she’s also telling me that
I need to learn to communicate better as being either deep in the ocean or high
above everyone has cut me off from the rest of mankind. This is probably the
hardest thing for me to do, live between the realms and something about the
raven is teaching me that there are realms between realms that we can’t even
see, ways of shifting through atoms and jumping between universes. The wolf is
telling me that this is a dangerous endeavor because I can no longer hide in my
subconscious or escape into the stars, observing mankind from the outside. Yet,
I’ll be okay because the wolf will never let anything happen to me.
I
know the raven is a messenger between the dead and the living and there have
been some strange deaths lately. I do remember getting a reading done when I
was young and the raven came up as my spirit animal. I think its teaching me to
find the intuition I had as a child, something I learned to suppress because I
feared its power. I know the raven has always been here, even as a child. I
wish the journey could have been longer but it was a timed journey and I found
myself coming back to reality as we know it. I’ll definitely be exploring more
of what the raven is trying to teach me. Lord knows they’re everywhere. The
moment I step outside, there is always one in site.
***
When
I told my son about this, he looked up the youtube video and wanted to try it
so we went back to the underworld. I saw the raven and the wolf again. The
raven was trying to tell me something. It liked to talk in its own language and
I think it was saying “look look. There’s something important you’re not seeing.”
When it flew it didn’t pick me up. I flew behind it, knowing my own way of
taking flight. I flew into the sky and realized I didn’t need the raven. I flew
into the minds of some of my friends.
***
Yesterday I went to the
trail where I do the sprints, surprised that the ravens didn’t greet me as soon
as I entered the trail. As I ran, I could feel the spirit of the wolf near me.
I thought that it would be funny if I suddenly saw a wolf though there aren’t
any wolves in these parts. Strangely enough, a lone wolf appeared. It stood
about fifty yards away. I gazed at it, admiring its beauty. At some point our
eyes met and it turned away. I started wondering if this wolf really did come
out of the woodwork. We get coyotes around here, but I don’t think we get
wolves. A bunch of other dogs started to show up with their owners and I
continued with my workout. The dogs started to play with each other and I saw a
woman standing alone with her dog on a leash. Was that the wolf I saw?
I asked her what kind of dog
it was and she told me it was a Czechoslovakian wolf dog. When I remarked of
its beauty, she told me that it had problems. “Like what?” I asked. She told me
it liked to be alone and didn’t like other dogs and people. Yet, as the other
dogs played and I stood there in front of it, the dog seemed perfectly calm. I
never heard it utter a sound.
When I got home, I decided
to do another shamanic journey, still a bit disappointed that I didn’t spend
enough time with the wolf. I found a drumming meditation that didn’t involve a
guided voice and put myself in another trance.
This time, as I journeyed
into the underworld, I feel myself growing younger. I open a door in the middle
of the woods and see it is a child’s hand that is opening it. I can’t be more
than five years old now. When I go down, I find myself in a dark place, a cave
of sorts, similar to the real cave where I did my first journey. I see the
raven and the wolf, but first I walk by a sleeping tiger. In another corner, there
is a dark beast, so dark and large, I can’t describe it specifically. I
recognize it from a journey I went on many years ago. This was once the beast
that (according to an old meditation) represented my fears and anger. I fed
this beast and tamed it a long time ago. It sat there, murmuring in a deep growling
noise. I walked up to it and it opened up, so I stepped inside. I went inside
the beast.
Only the raven went with me.
It didn’t pick me up as the eagle had. It merely stayed by my side as I flew
and floated inside the large cosmos that made up the innards of the beast. It
insisted that I could do all the flying myself. Unlike the eagle, it didn’t
show me the view from up high or take me into the atmosphere of space. It
started showing me the realms between the worlds, the different dimensions and
astral planes. I saw myself as a child seeing myself as an adult and saw myself
as a child seeing my adult self visit my adolescent self to tell me about my
future husband and even to warn me about hurting him and I asked the raven
which future self is this? The raven said that it was never a real future self,
but only the future self my child self interpreted to be a future self back
when I could see the future. But the child could only see things from her very
inexperienced perspective. Still, I entered this journey as that child, the
only one who could still parallel universe travel and I asked the raven about
other astral realms and it started to take me to a blue part of the sky. I
think we entered a square to get there. I wish I can remember or describe what
was there but I can’t. The raven flew me through times, through perspectives,
through between worlds and as the drum started calling me back, I found myself
flying back from the beast which I viewed with much greater respect and
affection. I was back in the cave, trying to ask the raven one more question
before I had to go back. I asked it why the tiger was sleeping and as I
approached it to wake it up, it stirred and for the first time. I was hesitant,
wondering if it was ready to wake up and wondering what it represented. But the
drums called me back to this world and I had somewhere to go anyway.
Looking back on the last
journey, I feel a lot more at ease with a power I always feared in a strange
way. It became clear to me, more than ever, that there is nothing to fear.
There are only things we don’t understand, but once we understand them, there
is no more to fear. It’s out in the light. We fear powerful predators such as
tigers but once we understand their place in the order of the world, that fear
turns to love and admiration. We fear the parts of ourselves that are capable of
anything because we are attached to the insecurity of fear. At least, that’s
how I see it. There are ways of looking at things that can give us perspective.
When I was young, I stepped outside and saw the world from great heights. Then
I went into the oceans and into my own soul. Then, I decided to look in between
and see how it’s all somehow connected. I have to remind myself that I’ll
always have this ability to stand back and see the big picture. I’ll always
have the ability to go deep within. There will be times in my life where I might be confused about my place, times between
phases where I might not know what I want. I have to remember my ability to
meditate and go on journeys and I’m pretty sure that when that regal, powerful
tiger wakes, she’ll be unstoppable.
"We
meet ourselves time and time again in a thousand disguises on the path of
life." --Carl Jung
