Thursday, November 18, 2010
Monday, November 2, 2009
Chapter 15 Out of the Ocean Stepped the Otter Man
The temperature was going to hit an all time high for the Pacific Northwest and my nineteen-year-old Spirit Son, Young Eagle, wanted to go for a swim in the ocean. We borrowed the truck from my companion, Raven's Gift, picked up her niece, and went to the beach. The kids got out to find a place under the pier for their things while I parked the truck. Everything I needed was stuffed into the new red bag my niece and nephew in Southern California had gifted me. It was a Navajo design with all of the Native American Church symbols painted on one side; just the thing for beach towels, books, and sunscreen. When I got to the pier, I scanned the people playing in the sun but couldn't find my son. As I walked off the pier, I heard "Hey Dad!" It was Young Eagle; he took me to their spot on the crowded beach. It was in the shade. I put my things down. The kids ran out toward the water to swim. It was low tide. After sitting there for a while, I noticed a very strong odor, which was coming from a decaying stingray a few feet away. Time to go do the Cherokee Dance of Life! I followed the kids out toward the water.
Facing the east, a few feet away from the receding water, I addressed the seeing-far eagle and began to move. I turned to the south and addressed the energy of the innocent, trusting mouse. When I was turning toward the introspective bear of the west, I was greeted by a beautiful, brown-skinned girl in a bikini and dark glasses, who said, "What are you doing?" "It's the Cherokee Dance of Life," I said. She smiled and asked,"Will you teach it to me?" "Sure," I said, "we'll start over by facing the east toward the place where the sun rises, the place of the eagle." And we danced each of the four directions. As we were coming around the circle for the second time and we got to the south, a young man indicated that he too wanted to join us, so I talked him through the next round.
From two students to five and then seven, I kept teaching the kids on the beach the revolving movements of the Dance of Life. We must have done twenty rounds when they slowly said, "thanks" and peeled off the dance. Eventually the Otter, who appeared to have come out of the water in the south, was the only one moving with me. That's when Young Eagle and his lady friend Rose came out of the water. He had never seen the Dance before. I had only known him for six months and he was curious. "Dad, what are you doing? Are you teaching or are you learning that?" Since there was so much silent, synchronous movement, Young Eagle wasn't sure what was happening. Coyote was feeling frisky and rejuvenated with all the young energy. What came out of my mouth was, "Well, I'm not sure. I think he's the teacher. I learned this Cherokee Dance of Life about ten years ago and I thought I knew all about it, but this guy is teaching me about silent movement." Young Eagle asked to join us. When the three of us were finished with several more rounds of the dance, Otter spoke for the first time, telling us his name. We headed toward the towels. Young Eagle offered to buy ice cream.
The Otter trotted alongside as though he had always been part of the group. I was wearing Shiva's parting gift from the thrift store in southern California, my buffalo shirt, which said, "Running Strong for Native American Youth". The silent Otter watched as Young Eagle dried himself off. As we were getting ready to walk up the hill for that cool ice cream, I decided to give the quiet Otter a quiz. I picked up my red bag and turned it so the symbols faced him and asked, "Do you recognize any of these symbols?" Pointing to each in turn, he said, "That's the moon, the chief, the rattle, the drum, the staff, and I think that's called the fire bird." "Well it's called the water bird," I said amazed. Meeting this young man, the silent one, is surely more magic of the Medicine. I stepped further out into the thin air and asked, "Who do you sit up with?" He told me his teacher's name, someone I had met in Native American Church Ceremonies, a Road Chief from Canada, one with whom I had sat up all night around the fire for several years in California. Although I told Raven's Gift that I didn't need peyote anymore, the Medicine had found me. Can't hide out, even on a Washington beach dancing with the local youth. Maybe it was the image of an old man wearing a buffalo tee shirt. I knew I was in for more surprises.
After the ice cream, Rose and Young Eagle went for a walk down the beach leaving me with the quiet one. Young Eagle later told me "I thought he was mute. You know, he couldn't speak, he didn't join the conversation, just body language." When I looked into the Otter's eyes, all I could see was sadness, hurt, and fear, not the playful, enthusiasm of a sleek otter. Something was wrong. This young man was very intelligent, attentive, and seeking. He seemed to be someone who should be in a college class instead of wandering a rural beach. He told me that he was in a very bad way after dropping out of college on the east coast. He couldn't cope with the depressing information he was learning about the earth, global warming, and the violent, inhumane treatment of indigenous peoples throughout history. It all seemed so hopeless and none of the professors knew what to do about it. Arriving in his rural town, he felt like a failure. His anger erupted, getting him into trouble, and then he fell into the pit of depression. Somehow he found his way to a sweat lodge on the reservation. The Chief liked him and invited him to travel with him on the Peyote Road The medicine man thought he could heal the Otter by introducing him to the various ceremonies and our way of life, which we call the Red Road. When his relationship with the Chief ended, the Otter felt abandoned and rejected. What Otter wanted to know was, "Can you heal me?"
"What's wrong?" I asked. "Here!" He touched his neck and shoulders, "and here": he touched his lower back, "and here": he touched his lower abdomen. "It hurts, I can't get it out of me." Wondering what the "it" was, I responded with "Well, I can try, sometimes my hands can find the spots and rub them out," I said, wanting to be helpful. And so I massaged his back and shoulders, warming his muscles with the heat of my hands. He said he felt a little better, but I knew there was something deeper than the surface, something inner, like a voice or two which was having a dialogue within him, something holding his attention so that his words had difficulty reaching the surface and communicating with other people.
When I was working with my EMDR therapist, he taught me about neurological patterning in infants. He said the research indicated that the left eye takes in the mother's gaze. That's how the infant builds attachment and symbolic language networks. Those networks later must be transferred to the opposite side of the brain for language use. My therapist had held me in his gaze like a loving caregiver and I had felt comforted by this human-to-human visual touch. I asked the Otter to play a game with me, to gaze into my eyes as long as he could. I focused on his left eye and found he could hold my gaze indefinitely, just like a nursing infant in my arms taking my face completely into him. We were standing there staring at each other when two Native American boys came up to us and tried to interact. We didn't respond. One of the boys explained to the other that his Grandfather played that game with him and that he could never win, the old man would always outlast him. They continued down the beach as Otter's gaze moved from my right eye to my left eye, as though he were searching my face for information.
"Do you see things in people's faces when you do this?" he asked. I knew what he was curious about. The first time I did this game, the face I was gazing into began to morph into images of gods, goddesses, animals, men, and women. I thought I was in the presence of an extraordinary being. I fell in love with the images I saw on the man's face, unable to see him as an ordinary human. I suspected that I was experiencing unconscious projections of my inner world out onto my friend, but the experience felt so real, that I didn't want to believe I was in any way responsible for what I saw. It seemed so very much "out there" that I must be reading the spiritual reality of the other person. I think I would have fallen in love with that magical person, but I had been reading Carl Jung's psychology for over twenty years and I had experienced my own projections before. Although the experience wasn't entirely new, something within me didn't want a scientific explanation. Falling in love with the other as though it belonged to a person is so much fun. When you get to know your lover better, you realize they are human. That means there has to be another explanation for what was perceived. At that point you can play the eye game safely, because you don't see the projections any more, only the other person. Anyway that's what I saw, just a sad and lonely young man.
Once I had been introduced to face gazing and experienced the magic of projection for my self, I wasn't at all surprised when one of my students would tell me that they could see whole worlds when they gazed into my eyes, that infinity was looking back at them. So, in response to seeing things in others' faces, I said to Otter, "I used to, but not anymore." I knew that whatever he saw on my face was the image of his inner world and that it would continue to be projected onto me throughout the course of our relationship. When Young Eagle returned, his friend wanted to take us to a secluded beach where the eagles nested. I agreed to drive the group down to the other beach.
Rose was my companion's neice. On the day Young Eagle arrived, Rose and her mom saw Raven's Gift and me walking with him. She came running up to us and I could tell she wanted an invitation to hang with us. She wondered where that cute guy had come from. We had just picked him up from the ferry a few minutes before and the synchronicity of the meeting didn't escape me. I suggested she join us; we could see the new Star Wars movie that afternoon. The four of us spent the day together. We saw the transfiguration of the young Jedi into the Dark Lord at the movies, had dinner, and then visited with her mom and dad. Young Eagle wanted to tell me about his latest adventures, so the two of us stayed up late. Raven's Gift had to get up at 5 am for her commute into the city. Instead of inviting the tired Raven's Gift to join us on the beach the next day, I thought I would take care of the kids and give her a break. They wanted to extend the time as long as possible. Young Eagle wanted to catch the last ferry of the night, so he could spend time with another friend in Seattle before his flight to the east coast. After dropping off the eager Rosebud at her home, the boys and I had a late dinner and conversation. When we got into the truck for the hour-long drive to the ferry, Otter began to shake the gourd rattle and sing peyote songs. The three of us really had fun sharing songs all the way to the midnight ferry. By the time I took Otter home, it was 1am and guess who was waiting up for me?
Raven's Gift had tried going to bed, but she was angry. I thought I was being sensitive and protective of my companion's health, which was seriously compromised by her liver condition. But she felt excluded, abandoned, and rejected. Raven's Gift was recovering from two marriages to deceitful men who were having affairs with other women behind her back; my behavior played into her insecurities. We talked it through. I apologized and promised to invite her the next time and that I would try to be more sensitive in the future. What she was most angry about was that she had missed the opportunity to get to know Young Eagle. She had shared him with her niece thinking there would be more time to get to know him. That didn't happen and she was angry about it. She also wondered who this Otter Man was and why she didn't get to meet him either. I assured her that I would bring the Otter over and introduce him to her. I wondered how she would take him in. She had such good intentions, but the unconscious really works her and this young man was deeply troubled.
Looking back at our relationship, I can see that I was always trying to protect Raven's Gift from a distance. The second year of graduate school, she sat up with us during that terrible meeting when Turtle and Wolverine were misbehaving. I had forgotten Raven's Gift's birthday and her projections onto me of the perfect older man/lover were falling to the ground into fragmented pieces. During that meeting I tried to safely put her near my nephew Coyote/Eagle with his huge heart. What she wanted was to sit next to me and that she never got. Considering the way I was feeling at the time, I must have been a great actor, because she didn't have a clue what was happening in my shoes. The agony of being me was excruciating. My integrity was on the line. The young Road Chief, whose car my son Turtle had stolen, questioned my judgment. Turtle and Wolverine had wounded me, my older son,the Raven, sitting on my right was glaring at his little misbehaving brother and I was emotionally showing my wounds, symbolically bleeding in public and she wanted to sit next to me? I guess I should have thought more about that instead of trying to protect her. Even then she was an adult with college age daughters, sort of the same as me healing from her broken dreams. How did we get together in that case?
Well three and a half years had passed since we met. She was divorced and we continued to talk. When I applied for a job near her, she offered to rent me a room in her home. I visited for a week while I went for the interviews. Her home is essentially the same design as the one my ex-wife and I lived in for ten years. Something of a mind blower to revisit all those memories by making a visit. I remembered what the psychic had said the year before, when I mentioned Raven's Gift. She warned me that it wasn't safe for me to be with Raven's Gift. She said I needed a round house to be safe and that the Raven's Gift had a house which was blasted wide open from her divorce. I had listened to the Psychic and waited a year to visit. She was right about the feeling of danger; the house brought up my old wounds. But I had taken a different job near my family and was relatively successful. It's just that I felt incredibly lonely and when I shared my feelings with Raven's Gift in the spring, she said, "me too!" So what were we doing so far apart? Couldn't we try living together and see what happens? After discussing that idea for a while, the Jade Portal opened and I stepped through into the Eagle's world.
Just down the street and overlooking the Puget Sound was a sanctuary for wild life. A family of Bald Eagles had its nest there and we often would walk down for a chance to see them in the nest. The weekend after meeting Otter, Raven's gift and I went for a long walk on the beach. We climbed up hill and were sitting in the Eagle's sanctuary enjoying the quiet afternoon when I heard a Raven cawing loudly for a long time. "Some thing's wrong. That Raven isn't happy. It is trying to drive some animal away." Raven's Gift heard the voice cawing but doubted there was anything strange happening. After about twenty minutes, we walked toward the sound. In the middle of the forest about fifteen feet above the ground on an inner branch of a pine tree sat a mature Bald Eagle staring at us. Above it sat the cawing Raven, who would make flights toward the Eagle trying to get the eagle to move. It even hit the Eagle once, but the Eagle refused to move. Finally the Raven gave up and flew away.
That's when I spoke to the Eagle out loud, telling it how beautiful it was to see it and what a blessing it was to be in its company. I thanked it for showing itself to us and how I had some of its relatives' feathers and how we used them in the Native American Church Ceremonies. I told it about the Peyote Ceremony and my relatives who were part of the Eagle Clan. It never took its eyes off of us. Finally Raven's Gift was getting tired and I said good-bye to my Eagle relative. As we were walking home, a little Jack Terrier, who was usually friendly to Raven's Gift (not to me however), barked incessantly at her. She tried to reach down to pet him and he snapped at her, growling and barking loudly. She looked at me puzzled. I said, "What else would you expect, you just got an Eagle attunement and you're big enough to pick him up and carry him home for dinner. Oh course he's afraid of you!" "But he's usually very friendly." she insisted. "Well, yes when you are a Raven, but today I think he sees you differently. He's always afraid of me. Today it's Eagles we are, and they are very scary". She shook her head in disbelief.
When did I begin to change from a Coyote to an Eagle? The first time I noticed it was back in 2001 during the Morning Water after my Brother fed me the thirteenth (Christ) Medicine ball of peyote. I was stretching my arms as though they were wings still wet from breaking out of the egg. I used my white eagle feather shortly after that to entrain the vampire across the fire and get him to gently massage his chest instead of digging into it which was putting the Sun Dancer next to him through the agony of being pinned to the Tree again. The "vampire" entity using the man's body was caught in the power of the Eagle's energy and couldn't look away from my gaze. "Gently, gently," I said, petting the man's chest with my feather. He stopped hurting my friend but the connection continued until I shared the Water Woman's Prayer Smoke. Then it stopped. After the Meeting, my Cherokee brother, the Mojo Puma, asked me what was going on, because he saw the energy streaking across the fire which was coming from my feather. That was the Meeting when my friend from Vermont followed a car onto the site with the license plate which read VAMPIRE. Four years later I was talking to the Eagle in the forest.
That summer in Washington I was supposed to be supporting my friend at the Sun Dance. When I took the Otter along with me the first day of the dance, I got the surprise of a lifetime. Otter's mentor was singing and drumming a dance song. One of the Sun Dancer's daughters was playing with the coffee can full of hot coals used to cedar off the participants as they entered the Dance grounds. While the adults were singing around the Sun Dance Drum, the girl was dropping twigs into the can. Otter was kneeling there beside her trying to keep his eye on her when the can burst into flames. Otter's mentor greeted him with "So you come back and the first thing you try to do is burn down the forest." The Otter answered truthfully, "It wasn't me." The Chief slapped his words across the Otter's disbelieving face with the question, "Who was it then, your evil twin?" The Chief must have realized his welcome was rather harsh, so when they passed the Chenoopah around, he offered it to the Otter saying, "Here smoke the Chenoopah with us." He didn't offer the Pipe to me as he had several times in Southern California. I felt snubbed. I was with Otter, the Chief knew that, like him, I too hoped to heal Otter through relationship with him. I didn't know what had happened to the young man during his time with the Chief, but I knew he felt hurt and abandoned, so I tried to facilitate by encouraging Otter to talk to his mentor privately. I walked discretely at a distance behind the two men as they walked and talked.
Then I saw the old man turn away from his student. When I reached Otter he was choking back his tears. I put my arms around Otter and he put his head on my shoulder sobbing uncontrollably. We were in a narrow part of the path and everyone had to squeeze past us. When we got to the truck and started home, the clutch broke and we pulled to the side of the road. I had to call a tow truck. Raven's Gift had to rescue us. After we dropped off the Otter at his home, the Raven flew into me, angrily accusing me of "abusing" the truck. She was confused about the red-eyed, tearful Otter, whom she found frightening. It seemed obvious to me that the Otter was frightened, angry, and hurt, but he was the kid right? What kid wouldn't have those feelings after what had just happened? Although I tried to explain when we were alone, I began to realize that my commitment to the Medicine and my path as a Healer was taking me to a lower branch on the tree of life and a stance from which I would not budge. The Relatives, the Community, the Medicine, the Dreamworld were my priorities. So I wrote a story to explain it to her.
Once upon a time, when the Dragon opened the Jade Portal, the hero jumped through it and found himself in a magical realm. In that beautiful world was a Princess who needed rescue and many trials with which the hero would be faced. Moving from trial to trial, episode to episode, the hero's knowledge was slowly transformed into wisdom, and the hero, who was now a wizard, wondered about what he had done to the inhabitants of the magical realm. The Princess, a human form of the Greek Goddess of Wisdom and Strategy, came complete with Owl, shield, sword and spear. Her desire for romantic love wove up a fantasy of relationship with the wandering hero/wizard and she accepted him as he was. At least that was what she said, but her suspicious, jealous nature was a force neither she nor her lover could counter. She knew his love of mentoring young men and women was central to his character. She also experienced him in relationship with these young persons, his affection, attentive listening, supportive ways had charmed her while observing him on the other side of the portal.
The Princess had been abandoned her father, who seemed to love her brothers more than her. She wondered if she were less valuable because she was a woman. She was jealous of her brothers, who, by just being boys, were showered with her father's love. Then the father and mother separated and the mother told her children a lie, that their father didn't want them anymore. That early loss set up a desire in the Princess for the good father who would love her for who she truly was. Her step-father was a disappointment, too dependent upon her mother's career and not a good father. He violated boundaries. She escaped, going out into the world seeking love. Although our heroine found lovers and married them, the story was always the same. Each lover/mate betrayed and abandoned the relationship emotionally, just like her father had with her mother. They had affairs, were secretive and pretended to love her, even professed their continued love, but she felt something was wrong. She tried to keep it together for the children, for her dream of a happy ever after, and yet her man wasn't the man with whom she fell in love. Somehow he changed, morphed into a vampire, sucking up psychic energy and behaving very unprofessionally, which put her on guard against these predatory qualities. She divorced the father of her children and, after many tears, talking it through with wizards and crones, she felt strong enough to venture forth with hope and trust in her new found freedom and self-confidence.
But what happened to the Princess then? She attracted another wizard who could wear all her projections, so she could face her unconscious yet again and perhaps learn more about herself. And the same happened to the wizard, since he had unfinished business with his inner feminine too. All his unconscious shadowy stuff was re-constellated and he was dealing with it on a daily basis once again. The only difference was that both the Princess and the Hero had studied at Hogwart's School for Wizards and had grown wiser in the process. All of the Hero's issues of previous relationships were right there in his face. His lovers from the past re-entered his life and confronted him in the presence of his lady fair. The Hero/Wizard answered truthfully and with integrity having grown strong in the spirit. He was determined to do it right this time around. Painful as it was, he accepted the consequences, the slowly it dawned on him that he was deconstructing that same fantasy, the one of another happy-ever-after. And what did he learn? That love and care of one's self must come before all else, for without that self-confident love of self, he could not care for anyone else. Choices to stand up for what we know from our personal experience may be very unpopular with those we are in relationship with. Yet they are the only way.
Carl Jung wrote a letter in 1945 to Olga Froebe-Kapteyn, where he observed that the opus, the work of the soul, consists of three parts, "insight, endurance and action." Psychology, he noted "can assist only in the provision of insight. After that comes the moral courage to do what one must and the strength to bear the consequences." Although I have found a haven on this side of the Jade Portal with much magic and healing of my wounding, I often feel the need to remember traveling through the Portal, which I call the Hokeyo. When I sing I can return to my family on the other side, by remembering how to shape shift and jump onto Coyote's tail.
In caring for Otter and Raven's Gift I encountered my lost inner child, my wounded adolescent self, and the wise old man mirrored in my relationships. James Hollis, discusses a poem by Rumi and the poet Dante in The Eden Project: In Search of the Magical Other. (1998) The poem by Rumi, which can be found in Coleman Barks The Essential Rumi (1997) goes like this:
The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
How blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along. (Barks, p. 106)
Hollis relates the poem to Dante's projection of his inner feminine onto a woman he saw in the street, who became famous as Beatrice in Dante's opus The Divine Comedy. Tying Rumi and Dante together, Hollis says, "the one who inspires us, the Beloved, has been in us all along. Indeed, this is one of the wonderful things about projection: it spurs the release of energies that might otherwise lie dormant" (p. 46).
Regarding the individual and his unconscious material as it is expressed in relationship, Hollis says, "we cannot know that of which we are unconscious, but we must never forget that the unconscious is active and projecting" (p. 55). We are continuously learning more about ourselves as we take back the projections, embracing parts of ourselves and welcoming them into communion with the ego self, the conscious self.
Of those persons who have "the capacity to activate our unconscious imagos of self and Other" (p.55), Hollis reminds us that "these imagos are comprised predominantly of our primal experiences of relationship, Mom and Dad and the dynamics between them, set in psychic granite long ago and far away. When we meet these candidates [for projection], energy is exchanged, at least from us to them, and occasionally reciprocally. When our projection hits the Other and bounces back, we experience a kind of resonance, an intimation of wholeness, and this is a form of homecoming simply because we are reconnecting with, falling in love with, ourselves (p. 55)." Hollis goes on to say that the person we have fallen in love with may indeed possess the qualities we perceive in them. And these may range "from kindness and beauty to the capacity to hurt us and repeat our historic wounding" (p.55). His point is that the Other, the lover/mate/companion, remains ultimately unknowable. What we can "know" is our own experience. Our aspects may be mirrored in the lover, and when the experience is reciprocal, "violins play, glowing colors fill the sky, hope is renewed, the world begins afresh" (p.56). All of these aspects are qualities of Eros, the Greek god of love. After Eros enters, "then begins the process of wearing away the mutual projections. But as nothing is more painful than the disappointment of projected hope, nothing is more intoxicating than its arousal. This arousal of hope, this shadowy origin of attraction, is what is called romance" (p. 56). And we all know how relationships change, grow, and dissolve.
These projections are a part of life. We fall into and out of love with an opportunity to learn from these experiences. What part of myself do I find reflected in this new person? Can I embrace these qualities of myself? Can I accept this person, this Other, as who she is and stay in relationship with her after the projections have fallen away? Or must I let go and let God direct my path?
Facing the east, a few feet away from the receding water, I addressed the seeing-far eagle and began to move. I turned to the south and addressed the energy of the innocent, trusting mouse. When I was turning toward the introspective bear of the west, I was greeted by a beautiful, brown-skinned girl in a bikini and dark glasses, who said, "What are you doing?" "It's the Cherokee Dance of Life," I said. She smiled and asked,"Will you teach it to me?" "Sure," I said, "we'll start over by facing the east toward the place where the sun rises, the place of the eagle." And we danced each of the four directions. As we were coming around the circle for the second time and we got to the south, a young man indicated that he too wanted to join us, so I talked him through the next round.
From two students to five and then seven, I kept teaching the kids on the beach the revolving movements of the Dance of Life. We must have done twenty rounds when they slowly said, "thanks" and peeled off the dance. Eventually the Otter, who appeared to have come out of the water in the south, was the only one moving with me. That's when Young Eagle and his lady friend Rose came out of the water. He had never seen the Dance before. I had only known him for six months and he was curious. "Dad, what are you doing? Are you teaching or are you learning that?" Since there was so much silent, synchronous movement, Young Eagle wasn't sure what was happening. Coyote was feeling frisky and rejuvenated with all the young energy. What came out of my mouth was, "Well, I'm not sure. I think he's the teacher. I learned this Cherokee Dance of Life about ten years ago and I thought I knew all about it, but this guy is teaching me about silent movement." Young Eagle asked to join us. When the three of us were finished with several more rounds of the dance, Otter spoke for the first time, telling us his name. We headed toward the towels. Young Eagle offered to buy ice cream.
The Otter trotted alongside as though he had always been part of the group. I was wearing Shiva's parting gift from the thrift store in southern California, my buffalo shirt, which said, "Running Strong for Native American Youth". The silent Otter watched as Young Eagle dried himself off. As we were getting ready to walk up the hill for that cool ice cream, I decided to give the quiet Otter a quiz. I picked up my red bag and turned it so the symbols faced him and asked, "Do you recognize any of these symbols?" Pointing to each in turn, he said, "That's the moon, the chief, the rattle, the drum, the staff, and I think that's called the fire bird." "Well it's called the water bird," I said amazed. Meeting this young man, the silent one, is surely more magic of the Medicine. I stepped further out into the thin air and asked, "Who do you sit up with?" He told me his teacher's name, someone I had met in Native American Church Ceremonies, a Road Chief from Canada, one with whom I had sat up all night around the fire for several years in California. Although I told Raven's Gift that I didn't need peyote anymore, the Medicine had found me. Can't hide out, even on a Washington beach dancing with the local youth. Maybe it was the image of an old man wearing a buffalo tee shirt. I knew I was in for more surprises.
After the ice cream, Rose and Young Eagle went for a walk down the beach leaving me with the quiet one. Young Eagle later told me "I thought he was mute. You know, he couldn't speak, he didn't join the conversation, just body language." When I looked into the Otter's eyes, all I could see was sadness, hurt, and fear, not the playful, enthusiasm of a sleek otter. Something was wrong. This young man was very intelligent, attentive, and seeking. He seemed to be someone who should be in a college class instead of wandering a rural beach. He told me that he was in a very bad way after dropping out of college on the east coast. He couldn't cope with the depressing information he was learning about the earth, global warming, and the violent, inhumane treatment of indigenous peoples throughout history. It all seemed so hopeless and none of the professors knew what to do about it. Arriving in his rural town, he felt like a failure. His anger erupted, getting him into trouble, and then he fell into the pit of depression. Somehow he found his way to a sweat lodge on the reservation. The Chief liked him and invited him to travel with him on the Peyote Road The medicine man thought he could heal the Otter by introducing him to the various ceremonies and our way of life, which we call the Red Road. When his relationship with the Chief ended, the Otter felt abandoned and rejected. What Otter wanted to know was, "Can you heal me?"
"What's wrong?" I asked. "Here!" He touched his neck and shoulders, "and here": he touched his lower back, "and here": he touched his lower abdomen. "It hurts, I can't get it out of me." Wondering what the "it" was, I responded with "Well, I can try, sometimes my hands can find the spots and rub them out," I said, wanting to be helpful. And so I massaged his back and shoulders, warming his muscles with the heat of my hands. He said he felt a little better, but I knew there was something deeper than the surface, something inner, like a voice or two which was having a dialogue within him, something holding his attention so that his words had difficulty reaching the surface and communicating with other people.
When I was working with my EMDR therapist, he taught me about neurological patterning in infants. He said the research indicated that the left eye takes in the mother's gaze. That's how the infant builds attachment and symbolic language networks. Those networks later must be transferred to the opposite side of the brain for language use. My therapist had held me in his gaze like a loving caregiver and I had felt comforted by this human-to-human visual touch. I asked the Otter to play a game with me, to gaze into my eyes as long as he could. I focused on his left eye and found he could hold my gaze indefinitely, just like a nursing infant in my arms taking my face completely into him. We were standing there staring at each other when two Native American boys came up to us and tried to interact. We didn't respond. One of the boys explained to the other that his Grandfather played that game with him and that he could never win, the old man would always outlast him. They continued down the beach as Otter's gaze moved from my right eye to my left eye, as though he were searching my face for information.
"Do you see things in people's faces when you do this?" he asked. I knew what he was curious about. The first time I did this game, the face I was gazing into began to morph into images of gods, goddesses, animals, men, and women. I thought I was in the presence of an extraordinary being. I fell in love with the images I saw on the man's face, unable to see him as an ordinary human. I suspected that I was experiencing unconscious projections of my inner world out onto my friend, but the experience felt so real, that I didn't want to believe I was in any way responsible for what I saw. It seemed so very much "out there" that I must be reading the spiritual reality of the other person. I think I would have fallen in love with that magical person, but I had been reading Carl Jung's psychology for over twenty years and I had experienced my own projections before. Although the experience wasn't entirely new, something within me didn't want a scientific explanation. Falling in love with the other as though it belonged to a person is so much fun. When you get to know your lover better, you realize they are human. That means there has to be another explanation for what was perceived. At that point you can play the eye game safely, because you don't see the projections any more, only the other person. Anyway that's what I saw, just a sad and lonely young man.
Once I had been introduced to face gazing and experienced the magic of projection for my self, I wasn't at all surprised when one of my students would tell me that they could see whole worlds when they gazed into my eyes, that infinity was looking back at them. So, in response to seeing things in others' faces, I said to Otter, "I used to, but not anymore." I knew that whatever he saw on my face was the image of his inner world and that it would continue to be projected onto me throughout the course of our relationship. When Young Eagle returned, his friend wanted to take us to a secluded beach where the eagles nested. I agreed to drive the group down to the other beach.
Rose was my companion's neice. On the day Young Eagle arrived, Rose and her mom saw Raven's Gift and me walking with him. She came running up to us and I could tell she wanted an invitation to hang with us. She wondered where that cute guy had come from. We had just picked him up from the ferry a few minutes before and the synchronicity of the meeting didn't escape me. I suggested she join us; we could see the new Star Wars movie that afternoon. The four of us spent the day together. We saw the transfiguration of the young Jedi into the Dark Lord at the movies, had dinner, and then visited with her mom and dad. Young Eagle wanted to tell me about his latest adventures, so the two of us stayed up late. Raven's Gift had to get up at 5 am for her commute into the city. Instead of inviting the tired Raven's Gift to join us on the beach the next day, I thought I would take care of the kids and give her a break. They wanted to extend the time as long as possible. Young Eagle wanted to catch the last ferry of the night, so he could spend time with another friend in Seattle before his flight to the east coast. After dropping off the eager Rosebud at her home, the boys and I had a late dinner and conversation. When we got into the truck for the hour-long drive to the ferry, Otter began to shake the gourd rattle and sing peyote songs. The three of us really had fun sharing songs all the way to the midnight ferry. By the time I took Otter home, it was 1am and guess who was waiting up for me?
Raven's Gift had tried going to bed, but she was angry. I thought I was being sensitive and protective of my companion's health, which was seriously compromised by her liver condition. But she felt excluded, abandoned, and rejected. Raven's Gift was recovering from two marriages to deceitful men who were having affairs with other women behind her back; my behavior played into her insecurities. We talked it through. I apologized and promised to invite her the next time and that I would try to be more sensitive in the future. What she was most angry about was that she had missed the opportunity to get to know Young Eagle. She had shared him with her niece thinking there would be more time to get to know him. That didn't happen and she was angry about it. She also wondered who this Otter Man was and why she didn't get to meet him either. I assured her that I would bring the Otter over and introduce him to her. I wondered how she would take him in. She had such good intentions, but the unconscious really works her and this young man was deeply troubled.
Looking back at our relationship, I can see that I was always trying to protect Raven's Gift from a distance. The second year of graduate school, she sat up with us during that terrible meeting when Turtle and Wolverine were misbehaving. I had forgotten Raven's Gift's birthday and her projections onto me of the perfect older man/lover were falling to the ground into fragmented pieces. During that meeting I tried to safely put her near my nephew Coyote/Eagle with his huge heart. What she wanted was to sit next to me and that she never got. Considering the way I was feeling at the time, I must have been a great actor, because she didn't have a clue what was happening in my shoes. The agony of being me was excruciating. My integrity was on the line. The young Road Chief, whose car my son Turtle had stolen, questioned my judgment. Turtle and Wolverine had wounded me, my older son,the Raven, sitting on my right was glaring at his little misbehaving brother and I was emotionally showing my wounds, symbolically bleeding in public and she wanted to sit next to me? I guess I should have thought more about that instead of trying to protect her. Even then she was an adult with college age daughters, sort of the same as me healing from her broken dreams. How did we get together in that case?
Well three and a half years had passed since we met. She was divorced and we continued to talk. When I applied for a job near her, she offered to rent me a room in her home. I visited for a week while I went for the interviews. Her home is essentially the same design as the one my ex-wife and I lived in for ten years. Something of a mind blower to revisit all those memories by making a visit. I remembered what the psychic had said the year before, when I mentioned Raven's Gift. She warned me that it wasn't safe for me to be with Raven's Gift. She said I needed a round house to be safe and that the Raven's Gift had a house which was blasted wide open from her divorce. I had listened to the Psychic and waited a year to visit. She was right about the feeling of danger; the house brought up my old wounds. But I had taken a different job near my family and was relatively successful. It's just that I felt incredibly lonely and when I shared my feelings with Raven's Gift in the spring, she said, "me too!" So what were we doing so far apart? Couldn't we try living together and see what happens? After discussing that idea for a while, the Jade Portal opened and I stepped through into the Eagle's world.
Just down the street and overlooking the Puget Sound was a sanctuary for wild life. A family of Bald Eagles had its nest there and we often would walk down for a chance to see them in the nest. The weekend after meeting Otter, Raven's gift and I went for a long walk on the beach. We climbed up hill and were sitting in the Eagle's sanctuary enjoying the quiet afternoon when I heard a Raven cawing loudly for a long time. "Some thing's wrong. That Raven isn't happy. It is trying to drive some animal away." Raven's Gift heard the voice cawing but doubted there was anything strange happening. After about twenty minutes, we walked toward the sound. In the middle of the forest about fifteen feet above the ground on an inner branch of a pine tree sat a mature Bald Eagle staring at us. Above it sat the cawing Raven, who would make flights toward the Eagle trying to get the eagle to move. It even hit the Eagle once, but the Eagle refused to move. Finally the Raven gave up and flew away.
That's when I spoke to the Eagle out loud, telling it how beautiful it was to see it and what a blessing it was to be in its company. I thanked it for showing itself to us and how I had some of its relatives' feathers and how we used them in the Native American Church Ceremonies. I told it about the Peyote Ceremony and my relatives who were part of the Eagle Clan. It never took its eyes off of us. Finally Raven's Gift was getting tired and I said good-bye to my Eagle relative. As we were walking home, a little Jack Terrier, who was usually friendly to Raven's Gift (not to me however), barked incessantly at her. She tried to reach down to pet him and he snapped at her, growling and barking loudly. She looked at me puzzled. I said, "What else would you expect, you just got an Eagle attunement and you're big enough to pick him up and carry him home for dinner. Oh course he's afraid of you!" "But he's usually very friendly." she insisted. "Well, yes when you are a Raven, but today I think he sees you differently. He's always afraid of me. Today it's Eagles we are, and they are very scary". She shook her head in disbelief.
When did I begin to change from a Coyote to an Eagle? The first time I noticed it was back in 2001 during the Morning Water after my Brother fed me the thirteenth (Christ) Medicine ball of peyote. I was stretching my arms as though they were wings still wet from breaking out of the egg. I used my white eagle feather shortly after that to entrain the vampire across the fire and get him to gently massage his chest instead of digging into it which was putting the Sun Dancer next to him through the agony of being pinned to the Tree again. The "vampire" entity using the man's body was caught in the power of the Eagle's energy and couldn't look away from my gaze. "Gently, gently," I said, petting the man's chest with my feather. He stopped hurting my friend but the connection continued until I shared the Water Woman's Prayer Smoke. Then it stopped. After the Meeting, my Cherokee brother, the Mojo Puma, asked me what was going on, because he saw the energy streaking across the fire which was coming from my feather. That was the Meeting when my friend from Vermont followed a car onto the site with the license plate which read VAMPIRE. Four years later I was talking to the Eagle in the forest.
That summer in Washington I was supposed to be supporting my friend at the Sun Dance. When I took the Otter along with me the first day of the dance, I got the surprise of a lifetime. Otter's mentor was singing and drumming a dance song. One of the Sun Dancer's daughters was playing with the coffee can full of hot coals used to cedar off the participants as they entered the Dance grounds. While the adults were singing around the Sun Dance Drum, the girl was dropping twigs into the can. Otter was kneeling there beside her trying to keep his eye on her when the can burst into flames. Otter's mentor greeted him with "So you come back and the first thing you try to do is burn down the forest." The Otter answered truthfully, "It wasn't me." The Chief slapped his words across the Otter's disbelieving face with the question, "Who was it then, your evil twin?" The Chief must have realized his welcome was rather harsh, so when they passed the Chenoopah around, he offered it to the Otter saying, "Here smoke the Chenoopah with us." He didn't offer the Pipe to me as he had several times in Southern California. I felt snubbed. I was with Otter, the Chief knew that, like him, I too hoped to heal Otter through relationship with him. I didn't know what had happened to the young man during his time with the Chief, but I knew he felt hurt and abandoned, so I tried to facilitate by encouraging Otter to talk to his mentor privately. I walked discretely at a distance behind the two men as they walked and talked.
Then I saw the old man turn away from his student. When I reached Otter he was choking back his tears. I put my arms around Otter and he put his head on my shoulder sobbing uncontrollably. We were in a narrow part of the path and everyone had to squeeze past us. When we got to the truck and started home, the clutch broke and we pulled to the side of the road. I had to call a tow truck. Raven's Gift had to rescue us. After we dropped off the Otter at his home, the Raven flew into me, angrily accusing me of "abusing" the truck. She was confused about the red-eyed, tearful Otter, whom she found frightening. It seemed obvious to me that the Otter was frightened, angry, and hurt, but he was the kid right? What kid wouldn't have those feelings after what had just happened? Although I tried to explain when we were alone, I began to realize that my commitment to the Medicine and my path as a Healer was taking me to a lower branch on the tree of life and a stance from which I would not budge. The Relatives, the Community, the Medicine, the Dreamworld were my priorities. So I wrote a story to explain it to her.
Once upon a time, when the Dragon opened the Jade Portal, the hero jumped through it and found himself in a magical realm. In that beautiful world was a Princess who needed rescue and many trials with which the hero would be faced. Moving from trial to trial, episode to episode, the hero's knowledge was slowly transformed into wisdom, and the hero, who was now a wizard, wondered about what he had done to the inhabitants of the magical realm. The Princess, a human form of the Greek Goddess of Wisdom and Strategy, came complete with Owl, shield, sword and spear. Her desire for romantic love wove up a fantasy of relationship with the wandering hero/wizard and she accepted him as he was. At least that was what she said, but her suspicious, jealous nature was a force neither she nor her lover could counter. She knew his love of mentoring young men and women was central to his character. She also experienced him in relationship with these young persons, his affection, attentive listening, supportive ways had charmed her while observing him on the other side of the portal.
The Princess had been abandoned her father, who seemed to love her brothers more than her. She wondered if she were less valuable because she was a woman. She was jealous of her brothers, who, by just being boys, were showered with her father's love. Then the father and mother separated and the mother told her children a lie, that their father didn't want them anymore. That early loss set up a desire in the Princess for the good father who would love her for who she truly was. Her step-father was a disappointment, too dependent upon her mother's career and not a good father. He violated boundaries. She escaped, going out into the world seeking love. Although our heroine found lovers and married them, the story was always the same. Each lover/mate betrayed and abandoned the relationship emotionally, just like her father had with her mother. They had affairs, were secretive and pretended to love her, even professed their continued love, but she felt something was wrong. She tried to keep it together for the children, for her dream of a happy ever after, and yet her man wasn't the man with whom she fell in love. Somehow he changed, morphed into a vampire, sucking up psychic energy and behaving very unprofessionally, which put her on guard against these predatory qualities. She divorced the father of her children and, after many tears, talking it through with wizards and crones, she felt strong enough to venture forth with hope and trust in her new found freedom and self-confidence.
But what happened to the Princess then? She attracted another wizard who could wear all her projections, so she could face her unconscious yet again and perhaps learn more about herself. And the same happened to the wizard, since he had unfinished business with his inner feminine too. All his unconscious shadowy stuff was re-constellated and he was dealing with it on a daily basis once again. The only difference was that both the Princess and the Hero had studied at Hogwart's School for Wizards and had grown wiser in the process. All of the Hero's issues of previous relationships were right there in his face. His lovers from the past re-entered his life and confronted him in the presence of his lady fair. The Hero/Wizard answered truthfully and with integrity having grown strong in the spirit. He was determined to do it right this time around. Painful as it was, he accepted the consequences, the slowly it dawned on him that he was deconstructing that same fantasy, the one of another happy-ever-after. And what did he learn? That love and care of one's self must come before all else, for without that self-confident love of self, he could not care for anyone else. Choices to stand up for what we know from our personal experience may be very unpopular with those we are in relationship with. Yet they are the only way.
Carl Jung wrote a letter in 1945 to Olga Froebe-Kapteyn, where he observed that the opus, the work of the soul, consists of three parts, "insight, endurance and action." Psychology, he noted "can assist only in the provision of insight. After that comes the moral courage to do what one must and the strength to bear the consequences." Although I have found a haven on this side of the Jade Portal with much magic and healing of my wounding, I often feel the need to remember traveling through the Portal, which I call the Hokeyo. When I sing I can return to my family on the other side, by remembering how to shape shift and jump onto Coyote's tail.
In caring for Otter and Raven's Gift I encountered my lost inner child, my wounded adolescent self, and the wise old man mirrored in my relationships. James Hollis, discusses a poem by Rumi and the poet Dante in The Eden Project: In Search of the Magical Other. (1998) The poem by Rumi, which can be found in Coleman Barks The Essential Rumi (1997) goes like this:
The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
How blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along. (Barks, p. 106)
Hollis relates the poem to Dante's projection of his inner feminine onto a woman he saw in the street, who became famous as Beatrice in Dante's opus The Divine Comedy. Tying Rumi and Dante together, Hollis says, "the one who inspires us, the Beloved, has been in us all along. Indeed, this is one of the wonderful things about projection: it spurs the release of energies that might otherwise lie dormant" (p. 46).
Regarding the individual and his unconscious material as it is expressed in relationship, Hollis says, "we cannot know that of which we are unconscious, but we must never forget that the unconscious is active and projecting" (p. 55). We are continuously learning more about ourselves as we take back the projections, embracing parts of ourselves and welcoming them into communion with the ego self, the conscious self.
Of those persons who have "the capacity to activate our unconscious imagos of self and Other" (p.55), Hollis reminds us that "these imagos are comprised predominantly of our primal experiences of relationship, Mom and Dad and the dynamics between them, set in psychic granite long ago and far away. When we meet these candidates [for projection], energy is exchanged, at least from us to them, and occasionally reciprocally. When our projection hits the Other and bounces back, we experience a kind of resonance, an intimation of wholeness, and this is a form of homecoming simply because we are reconnecting with, falling in love with, ourselves (p. 55)." Hollis goes on to say that the person we have fallen in love with may indeed possess the qualities we perceive in them. And these may range "from kindness and beauty to the capacity to hurt us and repeat our historic wounding" (p.55). His point is that the Other, the lover/mate/companion, remains ultimately unknowable. What we can "know" is our own experience. Our aspects may be mirrored in the lover, and when the experience is reciprocal, "violins play, glowing colors fill the sky, hope is renewed, the world begins afresh" (p.56). All of these aspects are qualities of Eros, the Greek god of love. After Eros enters, "then begins the process of wearing away the mutual projections. But as nothing is more painful than the disappointment of projected hope, nothing is more intoxicating than its arousal. This arousal of hope, this shadowy origin of attraction, is what is called romance" (p. 56). And we all know how relationships change, grow, and dissolve.
These projections are a part of life. We fall into and out of love with an opportunity to learn from these experiences. What part of myself do I find reflected in this new person? Can I embrace these qualities of myself? Can I accept this person, this Other, as who she is and stay in relationship with her after the projections have fallen away? Or must I let go and let God direct my path?
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Chapter 14 The Jade Portal
Chapter Fourteen
The Jade Portal
In February after my daughter’s Las Vegas Wedding, I had told Raven’s Gift how lonely I felt, even with all the people around me who loved me. “Me too,” she said. Without thinking, I spoke from my heart with, “Then what are we doing apart? Couldn’t we try being lonely together?” She said that her renter was moving out of the extra bedroom at the end of March. OK, then would she rent it to me? That was settled quickly; all I had to do was figure out a way to fly to Seattle, quit my job, and start over again. Sounded a little scary, but why not try to be happy? There were a few unfinished items of spiritual business to complete. First was the trip to Tucson.
My Apache/Yaqui nephew wanted to go on a road trip with me. He invited me to his friend’s birthday Meeting. They had been good friends growing up on the reservation before Gabriel moved to California. After befriending me at the Meeting I sponsored for New Years, the Archangel became a solid, loving member of my family. After all we have the same Saints’ Day so why not celebrate together whenever we could? On the trip down to Tucson, Gabriel pulled out some tunes he thought I might like. These were tunes I hadn’t heard since high school, like I’m forty years older than him and he likes the music I liked in High School? What kind of magic is that all about? He sang Peyote Songs and introduced me to his family. Complete and loving acceptance for each other was the basis of our relationship. I just trusted the Medicine and this young tattoo artist said he wanted to hang with me, so we did.
Before leaving California we stopped at an oasis where my Coyote nephew and his lover the Fox lived. Gabriel was surprised with my spiritual resources, which came with dinner, shower and beds for the night. The Fox came from a Greek/Irish family and she knew how to make me feel at home. I knew how to support her art and love of the Coyote (even if I wasn’t sure the Coyote loved her the way she wanted to be loved). Earlier that spring I stayed with them for the Coyote's Aquarian clan birthday celebration, where all of the Aquarians the couple knew were invited to a Happy Birthday Party. That party epitomized Coyote's lack of boundaries, his lady's boundaries were clean and crisp, his were non-existent. It made for an interesting experience. My first challenge was in meeting his friend and teacher, another Aquarian elder, an Apache Medicine Woman. She said she knew me and I did feel that I had met her somewhere. We were talking about our lives, when it all came together. Fifteen years before we were both working for the inter-tribal Health Center in northern California. She was right, what a good memory she had.
Back in the desert oasis with the Archangel, the Coyote and the Fox, I shared the story of meeting the Medicine Woman and the amazing synchronicity which happens whenever I am around members of the Coyote clan. Finally exhausted I headed for the guest bedroom which the Fox had prepared for me. I went to bed, but rest I did not. All night long, over and over, I had dreamed I was fighting with a vampire in black pants and white shirt. By six am I was totally exhausted in body and spirit; that's when I finally fell asleep. A few hours of rest made it possible to tell the dream. He didn’t mention his vampire tattoo until the ride back home from Tucson. “That’s part of our past now; we know how to deal with that kind of energy,” were the Archangel’s soothing words. Why did I need soothing on the trip home? For that you must understand the strange, magical events unfolding when we arrived at our destination.
When we got to the reservation, it was during the tribe’s traditional annual celebrations, recounting their escape from genocide in Mexico. The people had identified with the story of Christ taught by the Roman Catholic missionaries in Mexico. It coincided with their mythology and was easy to assimilate in their own unique way of understanding the story of the Hebrews escape from Egypt and the crucifixion of Christ during the passover celebration within Judaism. Given the secret ways of these people, the reservation was closed to outsiders at this time. Consequently the Tipi looked a little out of place at the Tribal Center. We were assured that everything was all right, the tribal council had approved the peyote ceremony. We sat down to have the soup the sponsor’s mom had made. She seemed a little spaced out and the soup reflected it. The chicken thighs were attached to the legs, not cut up into pieces. The carrots came out of a bag pre-cut and washed. The potatoes were new red ones and uncut. The pepper and salt were in the soup. There was no salt on the tables. The Road Chief was Dine (Navajo) and had brought about fifteen younger men in their twenties and thirties to the meeting. I knew that they would want salt and asked the Sponsor and his mom about that. They had none to offer, even though their home was just a few blocks away; they didn’t think it was important. So when the Dine men asked for the salt, I said, “It’s in the soup.” Every time they would shape their heads, as if to say, "these people aren't like us Holy Ones, who need our salt." Coyote must have enjoyed watching me. I was trying to support the mother's attempt to nourish her son's friends, who seemed a little too macho for the setting. Here I thought I was just being an elder, who was more balanced than the other men. Buth there was a feeling that something was happening that I didn’t understand. When the Meeting started, I looked around me at the circle of natives. I was the only white man in the Tipi that night!
The Dine Road Chief sat talking to me in the Tipi before the Meeting began. He wanted to know who I was before he shared his Comanche Fireplace with me. He found my story of starting a Montessori Charter School for the Pomo people interesting and was curious about how I used dreams in the Wellness Conferences held in Tucson during previous visits. He knew the Sponsor’s friend had brought me from California and he treated me with the kind of respect one would expect from a younger man. He surprised everyone that night, when he asked me to pray over the Midnight Water with the Cedar. I did the best job I could in extending comfort to those who were grieving the loss of loved ones and wishing for the happiness of the Officers and their companions. As soon as the Fireman put down his Prayer Smoke and the Water was being passed around, the Dine Elder, wearing black pants and a white shirt, spoke up and verbally attacked me. He told me that I had no right to be eating Medicine with Natives; that was exclusively their right. He didn’t care what the Supreme Court of the United States said to the contrary. And he was insulted by my Californian references to their wives as “companions”. Fortunately I was prepared by my experience in the Dreamworld to do battle with the Dark Sorcerer.
When the Road Chief’s wife got up and walked out during a Prayer Smoke, I noticed her odd behavior. In our Fireplace, nobody would be allowed to walk on a Smoke. Smokes come first. Nor would a Chief’s wife absent herself at a time when he could share the Smoke with her. The second time she got up while her husband was praying with a Smoke, I turned to Gabriel and asked if he noticed what she had done. “Yes,” he replied, “what do you suppose that means?” I leaned over and whispered in his ear, “I don’t know, but I bet we’ll find out by morning.” Throughout the night the singing was superb. The Road Chief seemed a little uneasy when it was time to cedar off the Sponsor who was at least ten years younger than him. The twenty-three-year old Yaqui, who was a Drug and Alcohol Counselor by profession, stepped in front of the Chief in order to go around the fire. “Who do you think you are?” the Chief asked, “trying to lead me; I am your elder. You follow me!” It seemed a little excessive, but maybe the protocol was extremely important.
For Morning Water, the Road Chief asked the Dine Elder, who also happened to be a Road Chief, to pray with the Cedar. I was shocked with his berating everyone in the circle, telling them of their faults and encouraging them to continue to try to be good men and to continue to eat the Medicine. He emotionally abused the kids and thereby elevated his status. His wife had spent the night in a motel and she wasn’t there to have any input. He talked on and on for well over an hour while the Road Chief’s wife knelt over the water bucket in front of the fire. When the old Sorcerer, who turned out to be the Superintendent of Schools for the Navajo Nation, finally threw the cedar into the fire, the Road Chief’s wife was close to the ground with fatigue. The Chief then rolled his wife’s smoke and walked over to the fire and lit it, thus preventing her from expressing herself before the prayer. Again I was shocked with this rude treatment of the man’s wife. While she was praying, she finally broke down and, with tears running down her face, said, “Oh Creator God, please keep that alcohol away from my husband. I so hate the way we treat each other when he’s drinking.” There it was, out at last! Her disrespecting him by walking on his Smokes had a reason. I nudged Gabriel and he nodded his head in understanding. While the woman was praying, several of the young Dine men got up and turned their backs to the fire! What rude behavior! I was getting more and more angry.
After the Water Woman’s Prayer, which was extended by passing her Smoke to the old Sorcerer, who added more words, thus forcing the Water Woman to stay on her knees, the Morning Water was passed around. I could see my friend Gabriel wince as I began to speak. He was too respectful of his elder to stop me, but it was his friend’s Birthday and he knew that all the Sponsor wanted was to have a good time. I told the story of how an Arapaho Grandfather had corrected his Road Chief Grandson during Morning Water a couple of years earlier. He had been waiting all night thinking of how to be kind and gentle when he said, “In our tradition, we clean up before a Smoke so everything will be nice for the person taking the Prayer Smoke to express themselves before they talk to God. You and your Fireman didn’t let that man express himself and that was very rude. Then he refused to share the Smoke with you or your Officers. He put it down on the altar. What I want to say is this: in the Arapaho Fireplace you let people express themselves! I don’t want to see this happen again in your Fireplace.” I told the circle that I had told that story five months earlier. It was a Doctoring Meeting for my brother, who was trying to express himself about how he had felt suicidal and was going to share how the Creator had healed his hepatitis C, but the Fireman, who was much younger and frightened by talk of suicide, picked up the Lighter Stick and handed it to the Sponsor. My Brother looked surprised, like he might have done something wrong, and lit his Smoke. The Fireman said, “You can continue to express yourself after your Smoke is lit”. Although my brother attempted to do just that, when the Fireman returned to his seat, he motioned for the Drummer to begin the singing and the talk of suicide ended. As the Elder, it didn’t matter whether I was white, black, blue or green, I knew disrespect when I saw it and not allowing the Water Woman to express herself was rude and it resulted in the truth coming out in the way it did. The men who turned their backs to her and to the fire were rude too. We need to treat each other with respect and kindness. As the Arapaho Grandfather had said, “We need to get along with each other.”
The Road Chief surprised us all when he asked the Sponsor for help with his alcohol addiction. When the meeting ended and I went outside to stretch, several of the Dine men came up and shook my hand. They didn’t say much, just wanted to touch the White Man who stood up to their Elder and fought with him through the night. Gabriel hugged me California style and I apologized for being so outspoken. He was glad I escaped with my scalp after chastising the men for their rude, disrespectful treatment of the women in the Meeting. The women who spoke to me were in agreement, “what you said seemed pretty right on!” was the Fireman’s wife’s comment. Her husband told me he was the nephew of the Grandfather I was talking about and it felt good to hear me talk about him the way I did.
When I reentered the Tipi, the Old Sorcerer was sitting in my place! I went over and sat next to the Pima Elder talking to him. She knew my friend in Washington, the one I had prayed for in Albuquerque. His name came up during the fiery exchange of words during Midnight Water, when the Old Sorcerer aligned me with the Suquamish Nation and I said, “no, my friend is Skokomish. I have never sat up with the Suquamish people!” She wanted to tell me how my friend had started the Pow-Wows at the University of Arizona and how she met him at that time when he was a student there. He had demonstrated his gift of clairvoyance to her and she had never forgotten the accuracy with which he described her home and its surroundings. The Elder Woman was working on her PhD in Law and created the space for the Dine Elder and me to be friendly to each other. The Old Sorcerer treated me kindly and with respect now that the Fireworks of the dramatic evening were over. He realized that I wouldn’t back down and he was impressed that he couldn’t intimidate me.
The Archangel got us packed up and drove to his Uncle’s house. The Uncle worked in facility similar the one where I worked. He was familiar with both the drug addicts and the mentally ill, who were also his clients. He was happy to see his nephew and he approved of me as well, so we had a good rest, a meal and a loving send off. We stopped at the desert oasis on the way home and shared stories with my relatives, the Fox and the Coyote. The Coyote was laughing at all my experiences and looking forward to my supporting him during the Sun Dance up in Washington. He knew exactly who the Dine Elder was thinking about up on the Suquamish Reservation and he was chuckling to himself as he imagined the fun of introducing me to his relatives up there.
The second piece of unfinished business was another Peyote Ceremony I was planning to attend. It was the Black Labrador’s birthday Meeting, which was scheduled for the Saturday following his actual birthday. On the morning of his birthday, I had a dream that I was working for a new family in a beautiful garden which looked like Eden or Paradise. The phone number was 964-JADE. The mother of my protégé He Calls Owls, whom I hadn’t seen in over six years, was checking my groceries in a country store. She was happy to be doing this work, although she was trained as a nurse and counselor, so it seemed a bit strange. I woke up and thought about the number sequence 964, which in numerology would be treated as a sum of 9+6+4 = 19. Adding the separate numerals of the total would yield (1+9= 10). Ten is symbolic of completion/ending and a new beginning, a return to unity, and in the Tarot number X is the Wheel of Fortune or Destiny. I discussed the possibility of it being a literal phone number with my housemate, who checked that out. He discovered that it had been a working number, but in his Raven/Trickster fashion said, “now it is only working in the ether”. I looked up the meaning of jade in the I Ching. Jade has a combination of hardness and luster and was often associated with sexuality. Jade is very precious.
I was excited about seeing my young friend the Black Labrador on Saturday for his Native American Church Meeting. His adopted Peyote Road Chief Dad would be running it. My airplane tickets were purchased. I would fly to the Bay Area where I would meet up with my nephew Coyote/Eagle. The Little Hummingbird Woman was traveling to the Bay Area with her new boyfriend, whose Birthday coincided with the Black Labrador’s Meeting. We were planning to meet up in Mendocino County so we could sit up together. At lunch the Black Labrador called. I wished him Happy Birthday. He was just calling to say his Birthday Meeting was being “rescheduled”. His new Dad was unable to do the Meeting; he was coming back from the Peyote Gardens when his truck’s transmission died. It was being repaired. He went on to say that earlier in the morning, the Lab’s biological father, noted for his abrasive, emotional abuse and cold, legalistic distancing, had flown into a rage when the young Lab had mentioned borrowing money for his birthday. As we said good-bye, I couldn’t help thinking the Black Labrador’s new Dad, the Sandpiper, was just a mirror of the old biological one. His new Dad, the Road Chief, was the Drummer at my first Peyote Ceremony; the one whose rage turned on a dime into unconditional love.
The Sandpiper was the same man who had no difficulty praying for me when the Astrologer brought him over to bless my apartment in the mountains six years earlier. After that blessing I put up a dinner for the Astrologer and his English wife. On her first trip to America, while traveling across the south west, she noticed a Tipi on a hillside and went to investigate. She was told there was to be a peyote ceremony later that evening and she asked if she could attend it. She was told to come back later and ask the Road Chief. She did, he said yes, and that was how she met the Sandpiper's spirit father. That Arapaho road chief had invited her into her first Native American Church ceremony many years before. This happened about the time the old man met and adopted his spirit child, the Sandpiper's wife, who had been raised in Scotland and the Findhorn community. As I said, it was a gathering of the clan, so to speak. The Astrologer and his wife brought the Sandpiper's estranged wife and children with them. We were joined by my youngest sons for dinner. The Sandpiper, in his passive aggressive way didn't attend, he was busy working, putting up sheetrock at their ranch. A few weeks after the dinner, his wife moved back to the ranch with him. At the dinner she had shared some dreams with me and we talked about her study of Aikido, tigers, and singing.
The next experience of meeting up with the Sandpiper and his wife was the time he had forgotten the Medicine and asked me to go get it at his house and bring it to him in the Sierra Mountains. That’s when he wanted me to ditch the Glassblower and I refused. He wouldn’t let the kid sit up with us that time. I think that’s when he unconsciously started seeing me as his shadow. He treated me as if I were personally trying to thwart him, probably the way his father used to do. The following year, which happened to be my wedding anniversary, I was attending a ceremony on his land. That was the time his wife told him that his rage was destroying his children and unless he could put that behind him, she would be unable to continue being his wife. He had heard her words as a request for a divorce. When the Black Lab met the Sandpiper, he was living with a new woman. I think I function as the screen upon which people can project their abusive, critical father images. Whenever we are together, the Sandpiper is cordial and polite at first, but after sitting up and eating Medicine all night, I will invariably have said or done something by morning so that he feels justified in expressing anger and/or disrespect toward me. He grew up with an alcoholic, emotionally distancing father, who is about my age. It is easy for him to transfer his feelings toward his dad onto me. That’s usually what happens when we are together. I feel like I had been cast in a psychodrama as the abusive, emotionally distancing father image.
The Black Labrador knew all about my feelings and experiences when he took the Sandpiper as his Dad. He even wondered if I would have difficulty supporting his Meeting knowing I would be sitting up with his Peyote Dad. I had assured him that my issues with his dad were not of my making. If his Dad could hold onto his projections, everything would be fine. Naturally the synchronistic events around the angry, abusive and distancing fathers who changed Black Labrador’s Birthday plans to suit their needs did register on my radar screen as shadow images. And I was also wondering about my biological son’s emotional distancing. His birthday was just two days after the Black Labrador’s and the day before my daughter Dancing Bat’s birthday. He hadn’t communicated with me since his younger brother, the Puma’s wedding. I guess my mysterious exit from the foggy Mendocino Headlands Wedding Reception the year before was experienced as rejecting, so I got rejected in turn. That’s how Bears are, very strong and stubborn, hard to move unless they decide to do so themselves. His mom is a Bear also. I wonder where he gets it!
After talking with the Black Lab I cancelled my airline tickets and called my relatives, postponing our plans to meet until a later weekend. I then went home to have dinner with my housemates. When I shared the morning's dream with my landlady, she seemed to go into a trance and suddenly sat up very erect with her head held high. Her totem animal was the Dragon and at that moment she looked like a Dragon Lady. She said in a strange voice, “Oh, that means the JADE PORTAL is opening for you.” She then relaxed into her regular posture and told me how she had experienced a miracle that day. Her normally conflicted relationship with her brother shifted when he suggested their Grandmother, who was almost 100 years old, move into the room I would be vacating when I moved to the Pacific Northwest. Later that night the Little Hummingbird Woman and I went to hear her boyfriend’s band. We looked for jade to mark the dream image. I wanted a Dragon with its tail in its mouth, the ancient uroboros symbol of totality like the yin-yang which consumes itself and begets itself, the life/death/rebirth symbol. We could find no jade, so I settled for an abalone disk with a hole in the center.
The Hummingbird Woman later told me that she had discovered that one cannot buy jade for oneself; it has to be given to you by a friend. That was why I couldn’t find any jade when I was looking for it. During her trip to the San Francisco Bay area over that weekend, she had been looking for the jade uroboros everywhere in Chinatown. She had almost given up hope, when she saw a street vender’s cart and asked the woman if she had a Dragon with its tail in its mouth, like a large ring. She did indeed have a hand carved Dragon meeting the description. The Hummingbird opened her hand and offered me her gift of a Jade Dragon. “It’s for you Papa, from a friend. That’s how I could find it, because the Spirit drew me to it. I am both your friend and daughter, what better person than me to give it to you!” The tears welled up in my eyes as I grasped the large, jade pendant. What a wonderful child to have adopted me as her dad. Within two weeks everything opened up, just like the Dragon Lady suggested. I flew up the first load of things to Washington. When I returned, I gave my daughter, all my kitchen and camping equipment. Although she was only 22 years-old, I knew that one day the Little Hummingbird would need to set up house and she might as well have the pots and pans we used to cook for all the Peyote Ceremonies. My little hummingbird flew away to Brasil to be in a wedding and then another miracle happened. When my youngest Spirit Son, Young Eagle, left Santa Barbara, he had given the lighter stick from the New Year's Community Meeting of 2004, which I sponsored, to his friend. He didn't tell me that.
Just before Amazing Grace's meeting on May 7th, I wanted to find Shiva, the hitchhiker I picked up on the road to Lake County from Ukiah in May the year before. Shiva’s default setting was to hide when frightened, only reappearing in Santa Barbara the day before or the day of a Peyote Ceremony. He never would come to one, but for nine months I always invited him. So on Friday May 6 he called me out of the blue (not really too surprising given the Owl’s ability to see through the night) and when I invited him to join the community at the Meeting, he said, “Yes and could I bring a friend?” "Of course", I said. Then he told me the friend was recently gifted a lighter stick from a Peyote Ceremony. Hum, I thought that is a very rare gift; usually Sponsors keep their stick in their homes. Then I asked him who the person was, "Young Eagle" was the answer. “Oh that’s my son. I gave him the Lighter Stick. His giving it to your housemate has brought you back to me and he doesn’t even know who you are. Far out! Creator certainly does work in mysterious ways!”
So Shiva and his friend sat up with us. Much to my surprise, (it was Shiva's second meeting) the Fireman chose him to sit Door and clean up wellness and help him with the fire! Creator healed a psychic wound that night which only could have been healed through Love’s magic. I got to sit next to Shiva. We ate Medicine together like we had done ten months earlier, when he asked me to teach him how to be intimate with a lover. After that traumatic experience when I confronted the Fireman with the story I told in Tucson, I set about doing more research on how to treat sexually abused men. Sitting beside him, I could honestly tell him that I didn’t know how to love him the way he needed to be loved. I gave him what he literally asked for instead of what he was wanting symbolically and I was sorry I didn’t know how much it would hurt both of us. I told him that I would try to do better if he would let me back into his world. I helped him do his job and was able to openly love him up in public in socially acceptable ways. He was so grateful to receive a hand painted ceramic gift from the sponsor and get all of the praise for a job well done. In the next two days, I gave Shiva the rest of my things, the futon, sleeping bag, quilt, sheets, a bell, basket, and cedar, got on the train and went to the Raven's in Santa Monica. From there I flew to the Bay Area, sat up for my nephew the Coyote/Eagle's 37th birthday. The Owl was there too and the next day I stayed with him. He was happily chewing my ear with his ideas of how to use his PhD Dissertation to build a bridge between shamanism and psychotherapy. After a wonderfully long theoretical discussion, dinner, and a relaxing sleep, I caught the plane for Seattle.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Chapter 13 The Ancient Healer
Chapter Thirteen
The Ancient Healer
“How did this all begin?” I wondered, as the eighty-year-old Healer began to massage my body. I could hardly walk. The pain in my leg and back wouldn’t go away and I was beginning to consider suicide as a solution. I could trace the pain to an event a couple of weeks ago. I was training in the Brazilian martial art of Capoeira and the young master wanted me to kick a punching bag with my legs. The kicks required twisting the back and hitting the shins repeatedly. The kids were in their twenties. I was sixty-two.
I started Capoeira six years before, thinking I was taking the Pomo Indian kids to learn self-defense. When Mestre Amunka told me he would only train the kids if I would train with them, I was dumbfounded. Surely he didn’t expect an elder to do cartwheels, to sing, and dance around like an acrobat to Brazilian music. “But I’m fifty-six!” I had protested. “I’m fifty,” he replied staring into my big blue deer eyes with the blaze of headlights on a dark forest road. “What’s happening to me? Is he serious? Yes, he means it! He wants me to play with them. Hum, I guess if he’s willing to train me, I could learn.” That’s how I found a sense of connection, a semblance of family on two or three days a week in rural California.
I was looking at Capoeira trying to match the natural physical abilities of the Native American kids with an activity which would be a better gang than the ones they had chosen on the streets of their homeland. Conquered by the white European settlers, those Pomo kids had nothing left save their genetic inheritance and a loose affiliation with the local tribes. They used their senses to learn about the environment, just like their ancestors before them. They weren’t abstract thinkers like the other European kids at school, so they soon fell behind academically, landing in sports and then cutting school, and experimenting with sex, drugs, and alcohol. The need for connection led directly into the gangs. In order to define themselves as Indians, with a history and life-style of their own, they ran headlong into confrontation with the police and authority figures. It seemed like a no brainer to me that identification with an indigenous martial art, where singing and dancing were the focus, would key into their genetic memory. The kids were successful, praised, and encouraged, but lost interest. Perhaps it was the fact that I, the white European (with native blood), had introduced them to Capoeira. If one of their uncles had sponsored them, they could identify with him and feel good about connecting with their South American relatives through a common practice and ceremony.
How did I get the idea of Capoeira anyway? In 1998 I was teaching Critical Thinking at the community college and one of my students, a great-grandson of Sitting Bull, invited me to a Sweat Lodge. He was a Lakota Sun-Dancer who married a local Pomo woman. His wife was also a student of mine, but in a different class, and since they had different last names, I didn’t draw the connection between them until later when I saw them together at a Pow-Wow. Her class was required to write a final paper on a topic of interest to them. She chose spousal abuse as her topic, as that was her history of alcohol abuse and being battered by her husbands. Now that she was in recovery, she was the Director of the Women’s Shelter. I was stunned to connect the flesh and blood man of her paper to the Sun-Dancer whose profound tribal wisdom inspired me. The paradox was hard to sit with. How is it that we carry this wisdom within us and yet cannot walk our talk?
After digesting the contradictions of human life, we become more humble and compassionate. I decided to attend the Inipi or Purification Ceremony, which is also called the Sweat Lodge, on the Pomo Reservation. The Pomo people allowed my friend to put up his lodge on their ancestral land as a gesture of hospitality. They were inclusive in attitude, a kind of live and let live approach to the invasion of their homeland. They were outnumbered and overpowered; they held on to whatever they could. Times were tough, but they were tougher; they survived. And so I went to the Lakota Lodge.
That’s where I met the young Cherokee MD from the Indian Health Center and his Brazilian friend, a Capoeira Mestre from Sao Paulo, Brazil. That’s where the idea of Capoeira was implanted during the Prayer Service deep in the womb of mother earth. And as I began to train, I discovered my theory was correct. Almost all of the Capoeiristas had indigenous blood running through their veins. Something about the singing together and supporting the play of one’s skills spoke to the native memory inside of us. We felt connected in a common purpose. And as the young people began to trust me more and more, they shared their histories of abuse and addiction which would have killed them, if it hadn’t been for the Mestre, who recognized the need for bonding, activity which challenges, and the hope of a life within the Capoeira world where extended spiritual family blended into blood family. That is what held me in the community and that is what hurt me.
The inner young man inside of me wants to be liked; he wants love, affection and acceptance. In order to get that approval, I kicked the bag and hurt myself so badly that I couldn’t stand the thought of feeling that pain any longer. My sister told me about her wizard, who spends the winter in Southern California, and since I was considering suicide, anything was worth a try. But as the Healer worked on me, we talked of the one strange thing we had in common. We were both from the same small rural town in Idaho! And as he told me of moving there in the winter of 1949, I began to remember that winter as if I were yesterday. It was the coldest on record, with more snow than ever before. I was six then. We traveled to Sun Valley and saw ice statues, mounds of snow as big as a house and a curious town which had a vague sense of familiarity, like something out of a dream or perhaps a recollection of a genetic memory from Austria or Switzerland. As I drifted off into memories of my boyhood the pain disappeared. When I got up off the table, I felt no pain. It was a miracle!
The Healer and I talked about acupressure points, energy meridians and where I should massage my arms and legs to increase circulation. Two days later the symptoms were back and I was back on the Healer’s table. This gave me the opportunity to go backwards in time to Idaho and remember meeting my spirit guide. I was thirteen and with a group of boy scouts exploring the lava tubes created millions of years ago. The one I was exploring had a sand floor, deposited over thousands of years by rivers flowing down from the snow-covered mountains. My friends had left me alone in the tube. I went further back until I came to a strange outcropping, which looked like an altar about chest high. As I approached the smooth rock, I noticed it was dripping with what at first I thought was red paint. No, upon closer inspection, it was dried blood. White bones were at the foot of the altar collecting in the sand. As I went further into the cave and came around a turn, I stood face to face with the owner. It was as surprised to see me in there as I was to see it. We stood staring at each other as the adrenalin rushed and our hearts beat faster. I was taller. He had razor sharp teeth and claws. I had never seen a bobcat up close and personal before. Finally I yelled in fright and the cat turned and ran up and out of its backdoor, a chimney-like crack in the side of the cave.
As I came back into my sixty-two year old body resting on the Healer’s table, I felt no pain. I got up, went home and felt so good, that I put on Capoeira music and was turning cartwheels and kicking imaginary opponents. It was so good to be alive. And yes, within two days the pain returned and so did the torrential rains, which brought whole mountainsides down on sleeping families. My sister and I were going to a wedding that weekend and our travel was delayed seven hours while we sat in our car. The rain slowed traffic to a crawl. I thought I would never walk again. Sis loaded me up with her pain pills. When we got to Nevada and our motel, I got into the hot tub in the pouring rain and soaked my aching body until I could get into bed. I didn’t sleep much that night. The morning was sunny and the Las Vegas Wedding was unforgettable!
My prejudice against Elvis Presley Weddings was about to dissolve. Initially I thought such a theme wedding was extremely tacky, so very different from my big, fat, Greek Wedding in 1967. Even though I knew the relationship between the partners was the key to a public announcement of commitment like a wedding ceremony, I still retained that sense of the sacred within the Christian tradition in which I was raised. But the Elvis wedding was one of the most loving, real expressions of what marriage is all about I had encountered. I had to swallow a lot of humble pie that day.
The bride clearly wanted me to formalize our relationship. From the moment I met her in Santa Barbara, she understood me psychically. She could put out the desire to see me and I would walk into the restaurant where she was sitting. “I was expecting you”, she would say. We did that a lot. Now she was getting married to a man I had never met. When I asked her whether she wanted to be my niece or my daughter, she said, smiling, “Your daughter of course!” and so she was from that moment on.
The groom was charming and told me a lot about himself. He was thirty-four and his younger brother was his best man. They had recently buried their father, a life-long alcoholic, who had abandoned them during puberty. Their mother was the strong, emotional force in their lives. As he talked, I began to see a parallel story emerging. I was thirty-four when my younger brother and I buried our father who succumbed to the alcohol spirit. He too abandoned us emotionally at about the same age. The brothers were the same 18 months apart as my brother and I were. They grew up in rural Oregon. We grew up in rural Idaho. They have Celtic roots. We have Celtic roots. The groom’s thoughtfulness and sensitivity was like a magic mirror in which I saw myself reflected.
And then I was back in Reno, Nevada at my brother’s wedding in 1967. All of the parents were drunk, mine more than the bride-to-be’s parents. My dad’s gambling addiction was so pressing that he wandered away while we were preparing for the wedding. My brother, the groom, wanted his dad there for the wedding and left the wedding party in search of his drunken father. My new bride of a month helped me calm the situation. But, true to my mom’s shadow character, no sooner had the groom left than the Queen Mother began to make cruel, insinuating
remarks suggesting the bride was pregnant and therefore a slut. Her gift seemed more like a wicked step-mother’s venom than the acceptance of her new daughter-in-law. Evidently Mom had forgotten how she had trapped my dad into marriage two years before my birth. Mom miscarried the baby, but she was pregnant on her wedding day. Sadly, in her drunkenness, all she expressed was her envy of the bride. Like the wicked step-mother standing in front of the magic mirror, Mom was seething with rage. The bride was beautiful and she was getting the beautiful son. Mom felt she was losing both of her sons within a month’s time. At least that was how she was acting, like a woman in the presence of thieves who are taking away her most prized possessions. And just after my brother arrived, Mom’s demeanor changed to sweetness and light. Our dad wasn’t with the groom. But luckily, he stumbled into the room just before the wedding ceremony.
remarks suggesting the bride was pregnant and therefore a slut. Her gift seemed more like a wicked step-mother’s venom than the acceptance of her new daughter-in-law. Evidently Mom had forgotten how she had trapped my dad into marriage two years before my birth. Mom miscarried the baby, but she was pregnant on her wedding day. Sadly, in her drunkenness, all she expressed was her envy of the bride. Like the wicked step-mother standing in front of the magic mirror, Mom was seething with rage. The bride was beautiful and she was getting the beautiful son. Mom felt she was losing both of her sons within a month’s time. At least that was how she was acting, like a woman in the presence of thieves who are taking away her most prized possessions. And just after my brother arrived, Mom’s demeanor changed to sweetness and light. Our dad wasn’t with the groom. But luckily, he stumbled into the room just before the wedding ceremony.
At the banquet we all danced. But the band-leader didn’t know who the bride and groom were. Judging by the way my wife and I were dancing and talking, he assumed we were the bride and groom and singled us out. That hurt my brother. He always complained about never being able to compete with his older brother. Although we corrected the situation on the wedding night, my brother just added another insult to his injury list. Twenty-six years later he had enough unresolved hurts on his list, which he never talked with me about, to permanently sever our relationship. That was twelve years ago. We had only spoken twice in that period of time, although I had tried repeatedly to break through his wall of silence, he held his own counsel in his castle. As I remembered the wedding in Reno and told my newly wed son and daughter the story, I felt a great relief. I went to bed that night in pain but feeling like a huge weight had been lifted.
In the morning all the symptoms were gone. No pain at all! Nowhere! I was so impressed that I risked making a telephone call to my brother. Amazingly, he took the call and listened to the story punctuating it with “yes” “Ya” and “Uha” at all the previously unacknowledged events. He sighed when I told him I just wanted him to know that I had noticed and I was sorry I hadn’t told him sooner. He talked about getting together someday, thanked me for the call and hung up. I have felt better ever since. Remembering and grieving the pain of our lives is hard to do; we were raised on denial of feelings. But the tears and recognition of our suffering transforms it. Nothing has changed except my attitude toward it, and that has made all the difference. The pain in the body is real, but perhaps it is an invitation to remember a promise unkept to one’s inner child.
When my daughter, the Jewish Hummingbird Princess, moved across the desert and up into the hills near the ocean, my nephew the Actor, who reminds me of Hermes and like the beautiful god, dismisses boundaries as unnecessary, needed help moving his mentor into her new home. He went next door to ask for that help. The Paladin, who in Medieval Christian times rescued ladies in distress, opened the door to his twenty-first century home when the young man with long curly locks rang the doorbell. Looking like a page out of King Arthur’s Court or perhaps a dream, the guy wanted help moving some heavy furniture into the home his mistress had bought. The Paladin was more than happy to help, and when he met his new neighbor, fell hopelessly in love with her. It seemed too good to be true. They were the same age, divorced, loving parents of children whose ages overlapped, and wow the chemistry of sex was exploding all over the place! I was amazed at what a beautiful couple they made. He was completely devoted to her from the moment he laid eyes on her. And it might have worked out the way he wanted it to, but Creator had a few lessons to teach us all.
My Daughter’s biological father, a Lawyer who loved to gamble, was dying and like my dad, he loved his grandchildren. He watched my relationship with his grandchildren and he trusted me, he could tell I loved them for who they were and that I attended to them in the way he would want to be able to care for them. His greatest gift to me was his complete trust in me. As he slowly slipped into the Spirit World, the Paladin and I were always there for his daughter. She called us her Angels of Death. That was a compliment of course, coming from a woman whose ancestors were Rabbis back in Russia before immigrating to the USA. We supported her in the hospital and the rest home and drove with her and the children to the grave site when it was time to bury her father. The Paladin told me that his dad had died three years before and he never did grieve for him, so he was taking advantage of the opportunity to go through his grief with his friend’s father’s passing. At the Orthodox Jewish funeral, I sat between the Princess and her ex-husband the Prince. The Paladin sat behind us covering our backs with his psychic sword. When I spoke about the old man’s trusting me with the most precious treasure, his genetic future, I broke into sobs. The Rabbi put his hand on my back and waited for me to recover my composure. We waited while the grave was filled in and then we went to the wake.
While all the Jews were inside talking about the deceased and their stories about their relationship, the Prince was outside practicing soccer with his children. It was a very strange scene; two worlds and cultures juxtaposed, yet not touching. I wondered if I would have been unable to deal with the Eastern Mediterranean funeral vibe when I was the Englishman in denial. I was looking at myself and my relationship. It was no wonder the Princess and I were attracted to one another, she was the younger version of my actress/teacher/psychologist spouse. And I was the unconscious of my feelings alcoholic family patterned Prince acting like death was a common event like brushing his teeth or practicing for a soccer match.
Before the internment ceremony, I kneeled down in front of a waterfall, rolled a Prayer Smoke and prayed for my friend’s transition into the Spirit World. The Paladin and the Princess both shared that Prayer Smoke with me. The Paladin’s family intermarried with the Spanish conquerors before they came north into California. He looks Native American, brown smooth skin and slim, like he just got off of his horse and took care of it before he could be bothered to be social. When the horses and the children are taken care of, the Paladin is a very attentive companion. That’s why he makes such a good Angel of Death, his compassion and patience are real. He speaks from his heart and he listens with it too. Someone wanted me to talk about how I had met the Princess after the funeral and I was telling stories about our relationship and my Native American adventures. The Paladin was circling me in rapt attention. After a while I suddenly got it and asked him, “Would you like to have a Dad again?” “Ya, I would love to have a Dad, someone I could say I love you to like I did to my dad before he died.” “OK,” I said, “do you want me to be your dad?” “YES!” he said emphatically. I took the silver turquoise ring that Raven’s Gift had given me off of my finger. I gave it to the Paladin and told him to shake my hand. “Now you are my son,” I said embracing him.
Impulsivity is a Coyote trait and such a fun one. I got rewarded with the most real, loving man I had ever met. And he changed my attitude toward Roman Catholics. My wife’s prejudice against the Church of Rome and its destruction of the Greek Byzantine Empire and Church during the Crusades was always floating around in my consciousness. My previous lives as a Russian Orthodox Monk and a Greek Christian were unconsciously supporting my Protestant upbringing and its cautiousness regarding Romans. The Paladin squashed all that with his Christ-like love. He wasn’t threatened by anyone’s belief structure. He found his support in his Church when his wife abandoned the marriage and his alcoholism became a problem. His community was there for him through his recovery and the struggles to support his daughters as a single parent. He had Bible study at his home every week and he never tried to push his beliefs on anyone. He opened his home to me, embraced me like the father he lost and found again, and continually wanted to sit up with me and support the Native American Church. For him there was no contradiction being Native American and Roman Catholic. Unfortunately there was a contradiction which couldn’t be overcome by love. Religious persecution and the need for intellectual sword play; that’s what the Princess was dealing with.
It didn’t matter that the Paladin would come over and sit with her all night long whenever she asked. It didn’t matter that he loved her and would support her. It didn’t matter that his kids liked her kids. None of that mattered to her. Nor did the fact that he was sexy and fun and exciting to play with and liked to dance and play the guitar. Her problem was very simple. Could she put aside two thousand years of persecution of her people by the Roman Catholic Church? He wanted her to see the Passion of Christ! That horrible movie which painted her people and religion out to be murderers? Never was it going to happen. How could he be so insensitive? An educated man would at least know why she couldn’t go to a movie like that. That’s why it would never work. She needed someone who could challenge her intellectually. The Prince (her ex-husband) was cute and good in bed but he was a Roman Catholic and never again was she going there! Never. End of discussion!
And so the Paladin learned that high maintenance Jewish Princesses can be your friends, sit up with you in the Native American Church, share the same town and mutual friends, even the same relatives, but not your bed. She had the superb support of the Paladin’s unconditional love when her health and her father’s health was life threatening. He gave her his love and became her Angel of Death. I was the one who lucked out. I got the loving, compassionate son I could always call and talk to. He never fails to make me cards, kisses me, hugs me and rubs my aching back. He gets me food and water and sits with me after every Peyote Ceremony he attends. And after holding my Macaque feathers for a year, one of his friends gave him her beautiful Macaque feather fan. His selfless love came back to him in the fan. He has learned to sing and help out with the wood for our Ceremonies. My brother the Lion loves him and appreciates the fact that he will always show up early, help out and will be the last to leave having cleaned up everything. He’s a great model for his younger brothers.
Even the Raven hangs out with the Paladin now. The Raven is of course the equal to the Princess intellectually. Funny how they don’t spend much time arguing like she says she likes. Maybe they both prefer an audience and have difficulty being one for others; Just a Coyote thought. Of course there’s the reverse discrimination thing too. The Raven hates Semitic thought. It destroyed the naturalistic philosophy of the ancient Greeks when it was assimilated by St. Paul into his new religion. Monotheism whether it is Judaism, Christianity, or Islam is just too Semitic for the Raven. He finds Zen Buddhism and Yoga more to his liking and ironically so does the Princess, but who says this world has to make sense?
Chapter 12 COYOTE GETS WELL
Chapter Twelve
COYOTE GETS WELL
Thanksgiving was over on Thursday. By Saturday Coyote was waiting patiently for Raven to arrive. Did I say “patiently”? Well he was trying to be patient having spent the morning steaming feathers, checking his rattle, getting dressed for the Peyote Ceremony. Raven was always later than he said he would be. “That kid is just like my dad, always keeping me waiting!” thought Coyote. But he knew it was useless to complain, Raven would just get his feelings hurt and spend more time giving reasons why he was late and Coyote would have to listen to more thinking about thoughts and it made him sick just thinking about all that thinking. Coyote was ready to sit with his relatives around the fire.
Coyote was wondering about the Raven’s fears of facing the “chemical accident” memories during the Peyote Ceremony. Too much Ecstacy at Christmas the year before had ended the Raven’s love affair when the Fox dropped more tablets than requested into Raven’s cup. He might have overlooked the betrayal, since making love on the stuff was great, “like melting into one another,” he had said; but it was the craving for more in the morning that did it. Synthetic designer drugs, magic meth-amphetamines, wow! “Raven gets into the most entangling webs in search of sexual expressiveness,” thought Papa Coyote. Libido enters in where Ravens love to tread.
Peyote on the other hand reminded the Bird of the “accident” and made him vomit up the toxic waste products of synthetic love. “Medicine Pop,” the Raven said, “I had the strangest dream. We were setting up the fireplace in a Mediterranean town square, like Spain or Italy.” “Or Greece?” Coyote interjected. “Ya”, Raven continued, “like Europe. Uncle was in front of the Cathedral. There was a stream running through the middle of the plaza, with a little bridge. I decided to sit on the bridge, but Uncle warned me to be careful not to fall in the water. I ignored the warning and sat on the bridge. The meeting started; we passed the Medicine around. I dug into it and then, about Midnight Water time, started to fall asleep and tumbled off the bridge, into the stream. Uncle just said, “Nephews, fish him out.” And they used nets to pull me up. I was dripping. My feathers were soaked. They didn’t let me out of the netting, they just put me by the fire and every so often, turned me. All the relatives were sitting around. Whenever I started to doze off again, a Medicine Rodent came up and bit me on the foot. It was the strangest dream, what do you think it means?”
“Hum,” said Coyote hiding his excitement and thinking to himself, “Raven didn’t show up for the last two meetings I sponsored, my adopted kid keeps waddling in with his wish I could have, but I fell asleep on the way there story line again. Raven has such good intentions and such intense fears of the Medicine. Nets huh? Sounds more like entangling Raven in his own indecisiveness.” Coyote cleared the chicken off his face and said, “Well Medicine Son, that’s quite a dream. Sounds like you don’t listen to your elders very well. You decided to sit on that bridge huh?” “Ya, I did, right in the middle.” “Maybe tonight you can sit in the south east where you like being. That way you’ll be on the end of the bridge line which runs north/south across the tips of the crescent moon. That would be a way to honor the dream without falling into the water of the unconscious.” And that’s exactly where he sat.
Just before we went into the Tipi to put our things down, Coyote/Eagle, my nephew asked a favor of me. “Uncle,” he said, “I know I told you I was introducing the kid I am mentoring to the Ceremony tonight. He’s the one we have talked a lot about. Well, I was wondering if you could arrange it so I could sit next to the Little Humming Bird Woman. Since I have to sit Door tonight, I will only have one side open, so could you put her on one side of you and would you take care of the kid, Skywalker, for me?” “Sure, no problem, anything you want,” replied Uncle Coyote. It seemed simple. I would put the kid, Skywalker, between me and the Raven. The Little Humming Bird made me promise I would sit beside her, so she’ll sit between me and my nephew the Doorman. Yet there was one little piece of data which was about to make its entry into the night’s drama. My nephew’s mom (the lady with the ruby throated humming bird tattooed to her shoulder, whom I met after having the Hummingbird Man Dream) told me earlier in the day, “that kid Skywalker reminds me of my son at his age. He’s only eighteen, but he’s done the same drugs. He’s lucky he hasn’t gone any further down that path.”
While we were standing in line, the Skywalker, who was ahead of me stretched his shoulders and said, “Man that’s sore.” I reached up and began to massage his shoulders. They were hard as rock. As I applied as much pressure as I could, I said, “What are you trying to do, carry the weight of the world on your shoulders?” He chuckled and said, “Something like that.” In the meeting I told him to do what I did and ask the Medicine for healing. As the Medicine came around, I had four scoops and four sips of tea. The kid did too. The Raven, who was sitting to his left, was looking at the Skywalker’s copycat behavior and I could tell he was curious about how the evening would develop. In our Fireplace, two sets of Medicine are moving around the circle. The one, starting with the Chief and the Drummer, travels from the West to the East, toward where the Door is. The other starts at the Doorman and travels from there toward the West and the Drummer. Since we were sitting in the south, the Medicine came around twice and the Skywalker ate four more scoops and four more sips of tea. He was mimicking me completely. The Raven’s eyes were getting wider open as he stared at us. We were eating a lot more Medicine than he felt comfortable eating.
The Raven usually got well easily. My brother, the Roadrunner, told me how he was running a meeting once and the energy got stuck. It was a healing meeting, but the Sponsor wasn’t getting well, nobody was. Nothing would move, so he went over, picked up the jar of Medicine and set it down in front of the Raven. Sure enough within a couple of minutes after he ate the Medicine, the Raven vomited and the energy began to flow again.
What was happening to me with the Skywalker at my side felt like a mind meld. Every time I put my arm around the kid, I would feel compelled to start rubbing his shoulders and his back. He loved it and thanked me for it. But I was starting to get images of emotional and sexual abuse which he must have experienced in his childhood. He seemed to be about eight years old, judging by the way he would snuggle into me and the psychic images I was picking up. But there was some kind of block, like he saw and heard something he shouldn’t have or didn’t want to have heard or experienced. It took me back into my adolescence and my feelings of molestation, the emotional incest between me and each of my parents, the way they would play me off of each other like I were a basket ball to be played to make points. I always lost one or the other or both of them in that game. Mom used me to make Dad jealous. Dad used me to make Mom jealous. They always ended up drunk and in bed together. The Medicine was bringing all of those feelings of abandonment and rejection up again, and it was entangled in Skywalker’s story somehow. I felt like I was being rolled over by Coyote’s Acme Steamroller. Touching the Skywalker brought all those feelings to consciousness.
I knew the kid had used drugs and alcohol to numb his feelings. I knew from talking with him that he had a brilliant mind. I had taught college students his age for over twenty years and this kid was unusually smart. That too reminded me of my eighteen-year-old self. As the feelings surfaced in me, I couldn’t tell any more whether they were my memories or his. We seemed to be emotionally fused together. The Raven remarked later, “You two locked horns at the beginning of the meeting. It was wild seeing you guys mesh.” The nausea was mounting in waves. It felt like all those times in college when I drank too much beer and I was about to heave up my guts. Since I never get well in meetings, I was expecting the nausea to dissipate as soon as someone got well. I had a flashback to my Columbus Day meeting the month before, when my sister said she had a vision of me getting well. She told me that I just resisted getting well, and others made it easy for me by doing it for me. I have always felt the Medicine likes me and that there are lots of different ways of getting well, of healing the soul’s wounds. That’s what psychotherapy means, “Soul Healing.” But I wanted to please her and cooperate with her intuitive feelings. She is a Doctor of Oriental Medicine. So I asked her to make Medicine for me again that night. I was ready to get well. That was the fifth Ceremony that I ate thirteen Medicine Balls which were prayed over with special intentions to heal me. I didn’t get well in October, but I was going to for Thanksgiving. It was coming up like lava in a volcano!
No sooner than I got well, so did the kid. The Raven, turned toward us and announced, “Wow, Medicine Pop just got well! This is going to be a five star meeting!” When the Medicine came around again, the kid was looking at me wondering what I would do. I turned to him and said, “If you don’t feel better yet, eat more medicine. You’ll either get well and feel better, or you’ll feel better later. So eat more medicine.” I did and he followed suit. As the meeting continued I felt I had cleared most of the emotional abuse out of my system. The kid on the other hand, was vomiting up his guts an hour later, and he ate more Medicine and he got to feeling much better by morning. The Raven, to everybody’s surprise, didn’t get well nor did he fall into the deep sleep of the unconscious waters of his dream. He enjoyed himself. He got to see history in the making. The one and only time Coyote Got Well!
The Little Hummingbird had made herself a part of my life. By the last week in December we were preparing baklava for our friend Jaguar Woman’s Meeting. It was to be on Friday, New Year’s Eve night. We had a great day together talking and cooking for the meeting. When the baklava was in the refrigerator, we went to the inexpensive Mexican restaurant for dinner and more conversation. I told her about the conflicted feelings I which I had about attending the large Cathedral services at Christmas time with my sister. As we munched on tacos, I told her my dream.
I had dreamed my dog was tied, with a long rope, to Holy Trinity Church and that Russian hunters were trying to kill him. In order to save my dog (which looked like Coyote), I diverted their attention to a Hunting Lodge covered inside and out with snow. It looked like the one in the movie Doctor Zhivago, which came out during my senior year in high school. I lay down in a bed and pulled the frozen covers over me and quietly waited. Although it was clear I was in the room, the only thing the hunters did was pour water on the snow covering the bed. When I didn’t move, they left. My dog was safe.
During the previous year, before moving to Santa Barbara, I had been attending St. Herman of Alaska Russian Orthodox Church. My experience there seemed to be mirrored in the dream. The Priest had been a Baptist Minister before converting to Orthodoxy and still had a lot of his fundamentalist ways about him. I had been wearing my Tlinklit hat with stylized eagle feather on it to church. It was Russian style and the old women loved me, but the Priest was distrustful and eventually forced my hand. He wanted me to explain the Native American clothing. How was it Orthodox? When pushed, the Coyote (or doggie, as they are called by Western singers) got irritated with the guy’s attitude and snarled back at him. I announced my commitment to the Native American Church, which was my religious preference. When I walked away that day I guess psychically I had left my Coyote tethered to the Cathedral. That is how it seemed talking to the Hummingbird. Every time I try to embrace my Celtic roots and sit in the beautiful atmosphere of the stained glass, candles, and crafted stone, someone talks to me about politics, relationships and Native American culture.
At the Cathedral one morning when I was listening to people talk after the service, one of the elder women was expressing her frustration about the way we humans are treating the planet. I was thinking she was being too negative if she wanted to be heard, she needed to give the younger people some hope. She changed her attitude to a more positive one and after she finished talking, she came up to me and introduced herself as Eagle Song (the name given her by the Chumash Medicine Man). She was as direct as her name; right to the point she asked, “How long have you known you were telepathic?” I was surprised and delighted by her directness. She told me that she heard me saying that she was too negative. She then told me about her psychic abilities and how they were difficult burdens to carry over her seventy-five years.
Eagle Song told of how the Spanish Missionaries had dumped the bodies of the Chumash relatives in a ravine near her first home in the area and when the Medicine Man visited they both could feel the anger of the spirits. I have heard these stories whenever I visit the Christian Churches of California. Our ancestors were converted or killed and their ways forgotten as quickly as possible. Yet we were raised in the tradition of our conquerors. We are the conquerors. Our mixed up blood can be very confusing at times. At Christmas when the well-intentioned folk singer sang about the Lakota man found dead under a bridge in South Dakota right after a traditional Christmas carol, I got up and walked out of the Cathedral. I untied the Coyote and headed home. It was cold and lonely just like the Hunting Lodge of the Dreamworld, but I had saved my instinctive character from being killed and I was looking forward to sitting up with the relatives on New Year’s Eve.
The day before the meeting, I went to have brunch at the coffee shop. The man at the next table started a conversation about how he had thought of buying the building when it was a service station. I listened to his story about moving to Oregon and bars and restaurants his sister owned and how he was just traveling through. Throughout my listening patiently I noticed a young man, a girl, and a couple of elder men sit down for coffee at the table behind the talker. By their behavior I decided they were probably stopping by after an AA meeting or something like that. They weren’t family and their conversation seemed disjointed. Eventually all of them left except the young man, who reminded me of one of the deer who walked with me in Mendocino County. He seemed to be watching me as I talked to the stranger. When the guy left for Oregon, the deer was still attentively watching me, so I said in Coyote fashion, “So, What are you all about?” He responded with “That’s an interesting question. No one has ever asked me that before.” And he began to tell me all about himself. Several hours later I invited him to join us at the Peyote Ceremony. He said he would consider it. Since he was in an alcohol recovery program, I wondered if he would really come. People don’t have to eat peyote to pray all night with us, but the Medicine is such a blessing it would be hard to resist trying to heal oneself with its help.
The next day I stopped at my favorite Coffee Cat espresso shop during lunch and who should be sitting there but Shiva and his black belt friend the Lion. Shiva’s body was to be used to demonstrate acupuncture points in the Lion’s Oriental Medicine final exam. When I invited them to the meeting that night, I also mentioned they could stop by my house for baklava before we left. Shiva was interested, the Lion only ate natural food and was shaking his head no, when Shiva said, “Baklava is my favorite dessert. We’ll stop by for that at least.” And so they did; late of course, just before we left. The Lion was another wounded boy; his mother had immigrated from Germany to marry a man who turned out to be an alcoholic. When the parents divorced, the boy was in his early teens and felt abandoned by his father when he needed a dad the most. The mother had lived through Hitler’s control of Germany and she sounded like a candidate for the Gestapo, very rigid, cold, and harsh. The pain of his situation must have been intense and in order to numb himself, the Lion had resorted to alcohol and then psychedelic drugs during high school. A brilliant college student, he found meaning in martial arts and now Oriental Medicine.
Often I would encounter the Lion alone and he would sometimes be cordial and invite me to talk. But whenever Shiva was with him they would act in ways that would usually have resulted in rejection. Maybe that’s what they were expecting, to be rejected, so they unconsciously created the rejection. I sure had a hard time fighting them as they threw East Indian philosophy and religion at me like lightning bolts. Fortunately, that is an area I feel confident about. I could defend myself, but I could never win. They would never allow me to “get to them” with my questions. Not that I was trying to win an argument, I usually felt like the wily coyote set upon by an intellectual bear and lion team. They were physically bigger, so I had to be more clever. But it always hurt to be attacked by angry kids whose fathers had hurt them. I understood what was happening; my intentions were loving and compassionate. I was trying to hold their pain and process it with them, but it still hurts and I often felt like I had psychic holes in me after one of those encounters. Usually that occurred when they had been drinking beer and I ran into them on the street or at the coffee shop.
The Deer, who was sitting with me in the coffee shop, before I got distracted by talking about the bear/lion tag team, had a lot of rage in him too, but he was more open to dialogue. Actually he appeared as a Deer, but his shadow was a Young Raven, he seemed to be a younger version of me in a way, just before the Deer turns into the Trickster. He had been raised by a violent and usually absent father who had a tough job. The was a cop, actually a narcotics cop. The Young Raven had the job of tending his younger brothers and sister while both parents worked. When the father returned the Young Raven would have to step between his dad and his younger brothers to prevent them from getting a beating. Another brilliant mind with no parents at home went in search of a family. His friend’s parents were home a lot, usually drinking beer and that’s how the Deer/Raven became an alcoholic at thirteen. He was an excellent soccer goalie and center fielder, in fact he lived for soccer. It was the safe place where no one beat him or emotionally abused him. His friends were there and he could excel. His anger could be focused in a culturally acceptable way. After High School, he decided to join his uncle’s marijuana farming operation as a way of snubbing his nose at his dad. That’s when his submerged anger when mixed with alcohol became explosive and turned against himself in suicidal behavior, risk-taking, and hooking up with women who acted things out. He could hold their hands after they took an overdose, call the ambulance, worry at the hospital all night, and go to work in the morning with no sleep. He lived that way for a long time, until he finally literally cut himself open and swallowed all the prescription drugs his lover had in the house. He did this to “show her what it feels like” but much to his surprise, she was angry he took all the pills and didn’t bother to visit him at the hospital. Shortly after that he tried to drink himself to death and wound up in jail, followed by a rehab program including AA and 12 steps with his own East Indian Meditation twist. Sort of like a twist of lemon on an old fashioned I guess.
It was New Year’s Eve and Young Raven arrived at my house in time for conversation and tea. He doesn’t drink coffee any more; it’s bad for the liver and it’s addictive. We did sample the baklava and I explained the ceremony, showed him my sacred objects, my rattle, feathers and burned some sage to clear the air. When the Little Hummingbird arrived, I introduced her and she discovered they were the same age, sign and their birthdays were eleven days apart. She was older. She had coffee with me and we tried the baklava again. Yes it was delicious. The Hummingbird is a body worker and did some work on the Young Raven’s aching back and soccer knees. He was interested in attending massage school and she had a lot of good ideas about that.
The rain and snow in the mountains almost cancelled the meeting. When my brother called, we talked about the dream I had about the meeting and I suggested he drive up to the site to see for himself what it looked like. That way he could feel good about his decision, whatever it was. The Papa Lion drove up into the mountains around road crews moving landslides and as he stopped his truck, he was wondering whether or not to continue up the road. Just then he saw a red-tailed hawk take flight in the direction of the meeting site. He felt it was a good omen and decided to go ahead. He had called before I encountered Shiva and his buddy the Lion in the Coffee Cat.
When the beautiful Cherokee sisters arrived, I introduced them to the attractive young man who was going with us. Young Raven is charming, agile physically and spiritually. His dark side, the inner young dragon, is well covered in public. As we were packing the cars, Shiva and his buddy arrived. I offered them baklava. Shiva took two and enjoyed them both. They had decided not to join us, but were enjoying flirting with the three girls. That ended when I announced it was time to go. Shiva and his lion drove off into town and we drove up into the snow-covered mountains. Even though the road was closed except for local traffic, someone had told the flagman there was a Native American Ceremony, so he let us through.
Much to my surprise, my son Turtle had driven all the way from Utah to join us. He sat on my right and Young Raven on my left. They looked so much alike that everyone was asking if they were brothers. Turtle was disgusted. “No he’s not my brother. I don’t know who he is. Someone my dad brought!” The jealous Turtle was pretty transparent to the relatives. He had been my companion for three months before he disappeared. After that episode, I loved him but didn’t trust him anymore. It was the first time in over a year I had let him sit next to me. I even let him drum for me that night. I wanted to make peace with him without letting him get too close again. The pattern was obvious to me now. After years of trying to get my dad’s love from wounded don Juan type guys, who like my dad would abandon me once they got too close, I knew I had to protect myself. It is possible to love one another and still have safe boundaries. I was learning to take better care of myself and the Little Hummingbird’s loving smile was a reminder that things could be different. I might be sitting next to the source of painful memories, but she was emitting love and light to me all night. She invited me to remember to love myself as well as others. These were new ways of being in relationship. I was trying to re-pattern myself.
Young Raven, the Hummingbird, and I went outside after Midnight Water to discover the grass was frozen solid. As the ice crystals were forming, it seemed the reflected light of the moon and stars were moving. Young Raven looked up to see Orion in the night sky; then he saw Orion in the ice crystals. When I opened my mouth, the philosopher spoke, “The Alchemist Paracelsus said “so above, so also below”. See above in the stars and here below, we are the microcosm." Amid smiles and expressions of amazement, the Young Raven put his arms around me and held tight, he said the world was spinning and it felt so good he couldn’t believe it. He was glad to have crossed the boundary and eaten the Medicine. On his vision quest in the mountains the day before I met him, when he had to crawl on all fours like the Coyote, he had prayed for a circle of strong men. Not macho men, but men who were in touch with their feminine and felt strong because of it. He told us all that story in the morning, “And here I am sitting in a circle of strong men before the end of the week! I certainly am getting what I prayed for,” said Young Raven.
After Jaguar Woman’s Ceremony, Young Raven had gone home with the Little Hummingbird who adopted him as her brother. He in turn had introduced her to his friend Young Eagle a few days later. The three of them were together a few nights later, when I had just sat down in the East Indian Restaurant to order dinner. That’s when the Hummingbird called on her cell phone wondering if I wanted to have dinner. “Yes, I would,” I said, “how about Indian food? I am in the Taj Mahal. Can you join me? How many of you are coming? Three? OK. I’ll be waiting.” She had just parked her car across the street when she decided to call. When they arrived within minutes, I had moved to a larger table in the center of the empty restaurant. When Young Raven ordered, he asked, “Can you cook that with extra portions of love?” The Punjabi waiter beamed and later returned with our food and two desserts, which were “on the house, with extra love!”
The youngest of my three guests was only eighteen, but he easily could have been four thousand. His long curly locks of hair fell to his muscular shoulders. He smiled and laughed like Robin Hood or one of the Merry Men of Celtic stories. He exuded love, hope, trust and compassion. Could he have come through a time portal? He looked as if he had just walked out of Sherwood Forest, changed clothes to match the Twenty-First Century and joined two other shapeshifters for a night out with their Dad. These young people felt like my youngest children. We had become family around the table that night.
Later I discovered Young Eagle was a tree climber, who could disappear in the Standing People. Once he climbed up onto the roof of the outdoor Spanish style mall (five stories up) and was enjoying looking down on the people. Only the children looked up and noticed him. Young Eagle loves to perch in trees and observe. During Young Eagle’s first Peyote Ceremony, my Brother Papa Lion saw Young Eagle as a Tree Spirit. I guess the Greenman (or Cernunnos) of Young Eagle’s Celtic ancestors was looking out of Young Eagle’s eyes, showing his face to everyone. That would account for his appearance as a tree spirit I guess. By the time Young Eagle sat up for his birthday a month later, I had adopted him as my son. His sister, the little hummingbird, was being recognized as a powerful healer and was gifted hawks over and over again by men who were stunned by her beauty and kindness. She brought the Young Raven back to life a couple of times when he just couldn’t take any more pain. The last time was when she kept inviting him to ride to Ceremony and he kept saying no.
When she pulled into town, she dropped her baited hook “Michael will be there” and he changed his mind. He sat beside me and let me hold him and adopt him. In the morning he told me, “Michael you are the only man I have ever trusted in my life. Everyone else was cruel and abusive and couldn’t relate to their feminine side, filled with denial like my dad. You are so different, so kind, and loving, and not afraid of your feelings. I love having you as my dad.” So within the year I had three new children who reciprocated the love I gave so freely. They are quite the contrast to the Turtle and the Wolverine.
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