#4 A NEW PLOY FROM JESUS

DAGAJI W SPIRIT GUIDE ORB AT RIGHT SHOULDER - JUNE 2012

[Blog #4 in series]

It happens the same way every time.  Trying to get rid of Jesus and my Allies is such a challenge!  It tests my energy and imagination.  At a certain point they become so impossible I explode, and some sort of ploy or strategy emerges to rid me of them.  It works for a while.  Life is great for a while, without them.

Then, a very faint sign.  Makes me wonder.  Then a not-so-faint sign, and by now I know.  It’s almost always Marilyn Monroe.  She seems to be the leader, the aggressive one.  Nefertiti always hides.  Then Jesus comes along with some phony ploy.  By then, the game is on, and there isn’t much I can do, until they overplay their hand and I explode again.  They go away.

I wasn’t going to write this blog, then Jesus pulled an excellent ploy, and I decided to write about it, and then today the ploy fell apart, and I decided not to write about it, and now I’m writing about it.  There’s no choice but to resume a regular life.

After blog #3, I was resting for a day.  I decided to sit in the vortex again (see photo above), just to do my energy-flow exercises.  As I was getting deeper into it, it opened into another trance.

There was Jesus, standing at the edge of the sky, looking back over his shoulder at me.  He was asking permission to go.  He wanted to resume his mission as my Nagual out in the world (however he imagines that mission).  As I looked at him, I could see nothing wrong.  He had changed.  My work on him had apparently succeeded.

He had shoulder-length brown hair, with a band of some kind of vegetation around his head.  It wasn’t flowers.  Seemed more like straw.  Whatever it was, it was meant to convey spiritual modesty.  Also modest, was his long white robe or gown, draped simply to the tops of his bare feet.  He was ready to go out into the world as a modest teacher or healer, rather than the King of Heaven, or Lord of the Underworld, as he had shown himself to me over the years.

I just said, “Let him go.”  There was nothing wrong with him.  If he was my Nagual, I saw nothing that would embarrass or incriminate me; he was nothing like the Jesus I had known.  “Send him out,” I said, and he stepped forward.  I have no idea where he was going or what he intended to do.  But the feeling he left behind was Divine.  I felt a Heavenly peace and enjoyment.

Later that day, I was drumming with my little tom-tom, and I could See him, and the energies swirled around me.  It was delightful.  He said something, and I responded, very happy that things had turned out so nicely.

And later on, sitting in the trance chair,  I turned on Pandora for some music.  I had it set to Young Punk Radio.  The music came on, and I was really grooving on it.  Of all the channels, the punks were the only ones who could penetrate the emptiness of my life among the dead.  The driving penetration of the beat, the soaring instrumental backgrounds, the nasal vocals, all were engineered to pierce the monotony of life.  Jesus was with me, having a great time.  “Ouch!” he said, “OUCH!!!”  He hadn’t said that for months.  That is his code word.  He would utter it often during my recitals, when I would be speaking the oracle.  Then I heard him say, “I got Daga!”  It was the first time he had used my Shaman name.  When they thought they had made a good contact with me, they would say “I got ……”  Nefertiti called me “the bebe.”  Jesus called me “Bobo”.  It felt good.  I was happy.

I had been working on a drawing, which was supposed to be my Dragon, emerging into the Dreamtime after the end of my Initiation as a Shaman.  But as I worked, it began to change.  It grew hair all over its face, exactly like one of the dogs next door.  This dog had been absent from the neighborhood for quite some time, but just the day before he had returned.  He has a spooky look in his eye, and cowers when I look at him.  He turns out to be the dog who leaves large piles of dog poop in the gravel parking lot.  At the same time, I became aware that a lost spirit of some sort was inhabiting the drawing, and had possessed the dog.  I used some garlic, and there was no more dog poop, and I did some mojo on the drawing to clear it.  But I put it away, not to finish it. 

Then the Dark of the Moon made its gesture.  The sky clouded over and it began to pour rain.  That night was the first hard freeze of the year.  The dog’s bucket froze over.  I put my woolen Chief’s blanket on the bed.  Today it was cold.

I went to the coffee shop to begin a new drawing.  I was drawing in the circles for the wheel of days, to signify the fact that in Shamanic work like this, it is always the next day that tells us what is happening.  One day is never enough.  Days and days come and go as a scenario plays itself out in spirit.  It is through the practice of Shamanic Yoga that I am able to remain grounded and centered during extended ploys of the spirits.  And the knowledge of the Moods of the Moon, as well as the ‘tattwas’ of the I Ching.  The changes help the spirits accomplish their ploys, and helps us decipher them and withstand their intensity.  This ploy had sucked all the energy from the Medicine Room, and I was exhausted.

That’s the reason they put six beers in a six-pack.  It takes two beers to usher in the ploy.  The next day, two more beers ground the ploy into the waking intellect so we can understand the hidden dimensions and intent of the spirits.

And today I consumed the last two beers, as I slammed the door shut on Jesus.  Not to say that he didn’t make a final grandstand gesture.

As I sat at an unusual table in the coffee shop, near the rear entrance, I could see down the stairs into the lower level.  I hardly ever go down there, because there is no daylight, but more than that, that is the Christian hangout.  Nearly every time I go down there, I see some Christian soul-sucker at work.  It’s amazing to see.  The young and innocent dupes go down there for Bible study with some older, more experienced devotee, and soon the energies are being sucked from him or her, leaving a vacant look in the eyes.

Today was even more interesting.  The door behind me opened silently, and a large man in a black clerical  coat/gown slipped quietly down the stairs, followed by two young people.  After a moment, I could see one person lean forward and kiss the hand of the Cleric.  A short while later, he came back up the stairs, and I could see the oversize silver chain with its elaborate silver cross dangling down the front of his black inner jacket.  He looked directly at me, and I could see Power oozing from his every pore.  He disappeared out the door.

At home, later, I spent a long time, ‘rehearsing’.  I find it is necessary to rehearse to myself exactly what happens during these ploys, and discussing with myself the various options/ramifications/implications of the ploy, my reaction to it, and the possible tactics to be used to re-center my Intent, as well as to clear the Medicine at the appropriate depths.  Nothing is ever as it seems on the surface, except when it’s exactly as it seems.  Some ploys demand a response.  Some ploys have to be ignored.  There is meaning in everything.  Observing the subtleties during repeated phases of the moon is perfect training for determining the subtle meanings in spirit ploys.  One of the first things to be learned is the art of Forbearance.  Since the meanings and Intent of the spirits are hard to see, acting too soon would be folly.  Ahhh, I love the Art of Stalking!

The “Beer Test” is my contribution to the Art of Stalking.  Drinking that first beer takes us to a lower level of awareness and physical energy.  During that descent, the Shaman’s Body is able to discern what’s what.  If there is something amiss in the Emotional Body, or elsewhere, it will announce itself during that first beer.  It’s important not to miss these signals from the Emotional Body, because that’s where the spirits lodge their insidious intrusions.  The bruise that forms can be debilitating, and can be the cause of disease if left untended.

During my first two beers, earlier, I was euphoric, still under the effect of the venom of Jesus’ attack.  It took two days, and the visit from the Cleric to make it clear to me what his Intent had been.

Without the inner knowledge of my body, gained from Shamanic Yoga and the breathwork that unites (‘yug’) the Mental Body with the Physical Body, I would never be able to detect the damages to the Emotional Body.  As they are revealed in tight or mis-aligned muscles and muscle groups, they dissolve under the Intent and gaze of the Shaman as s/he directs the prana into the problem area.

CRYSTAL POEM WITH JESUS

GOD'S-EYE CRYSTAL

the crystal is pressed to my third eye

the tablets of Moses appear off to the left,

at the end of a road which leads to them

we are headed into deep space, colors

woven into a darkness with no path

Jesus is on my right, jellyfish of light

“Go, Tarzan, walk forward,” he urges

as a light goes on, high in my forehead

I am a sticky web of fabrics, colors

the same as the space I walk into

there is no difference between me

and where we are going; my body

begins to generate pulsations in my loins

a field of sparkling opalescent fibers forms

around a diamond whose God’s-eye shape

encloses a tunnel of fibers pulsating toward me

it separates itself from a fog of love vibrations

and there we are, two as one

06.01.00     DAGAJI

#3 DRAGON FLYING WITH MERLIN

Detail from cover,  Nine Songs, Chinese Shamanic poems

[This is the third in the series dealing with my entry into the events of my Apprenticeship.] 

In order to deal with the tremendous energies of my Allies (term from Castaneda, referring to spirits who can take you into the ‘Nagual’, the place outside the universe we live in, which is the Universe of Consciousness, or ‘Tonal’, --a place where there is no Consciousness), I have had to use my knowledge of yoga.  Each of my Allies has required different techniques.  Jesus, for example, caused me to squat, as if carrying a heavy weight.  I had to hold my body erect with my breath; a very useful technique.  It took me a while to recognize the spirit who caused me to squinch up my nose in a ‘piggy face’.  Marilyn Monroe had taught me about the ‘Face Chakra’, and how to use the muscles in my face to achieve various results while ‘shaping’ my breath.  It out to be Merlin, the magician, who liked to use my voice to speak, once the face was sufficiently contorted.  My voice sounded very stupid and weird.

On Wednesday, October 23, 2013, I was wakened by a dream where I was kitchen-prepping ‘the last vegetables in NYC’.  I spent the morning doing work with the I Ching, which is controlled by Marilyn Monroe. Since the Full Moon had passed, I set up the altar for Hecate, as the moon began to wane.  I smudged the apartment with sage, and began to get ready to replace the clear plastic sheet which covers the front window during the cold of winter.  The rolled up plastic was not in the utility closet, or anywhere else.  Gone.  I did some kitchen work, then sat in the vortex to see if I could trace the plastic.  Before long, my face contorted, as it usually does, in Merlin’s pose, so that my breath is directed in certain ways throughout my energy system.  Again, I went into a trance.  I was with Merlin.  He is another of my former incarnations, and is almost always present with me.  This time, we were together facing a vast darkness of space.

In a moment, we were flying.  I was learning the flight of the Dragon.  (My Shaman name, Dagaji, means ‘sacred Dragon’.  It was given to me in about 2002 by Gaia, the earth goddess.)   It was hard work!  A woman encouraged me, “Come on, Tony!”, using my childhood nickname.  As I took flight, a dark spirit face appeared right in front of my eyes, looking right into me.  It was Merlin, introducing himself.  As I continued to fly, we came to a place of land, with maybe a seashore (Japan?).  A young woman was coming toward me, perhaps from the sea.  Her shirt was open in front, showing her small breasts with large dark nipples.  I woke up slumped in my meditation pose. 

A few hours later, I posted the first blog in this series, and later composed and posted the second.  The next morning, during my time in the vortex, Jesus was very active in my yoni, causing me to rise in my seat as he growled and shouted with the energies.  I went through the day, and in the afternoon sat to clear my energies with the drums.

I began to sing my song, “Oh, woe is me…”, and after a few moments I lurched from my seat and removed the Allies’ stones from the little altar I had set up for them.  I hid them away in a storage box.  My spirit had again rejected them!  Later I watched a World Series game, and went to bed.

This morning, I used my crow wing to clear the energies from the bed where I had slept.  I did the I Ching, as a courtesy to MM.  I was pissed!  I did the bala asana, into the bow, and by that time it was 7:00, and the corner market was open.  I went out and bought a six pack of Miller.  I drank a beer, made some pancakes, had another beer, did the I Ching, and passed out on the floor.  When I woke up, I sat with the drums, and sang a little song, “They grab you by the eyeball,

and drag you through the knothole!”  Then I drummed for Gaia.  I went to the coffee shop, but couldn’t write a poem, and couldn’t draw.  I went back home and did another I Ching, which came out “Exhaustion”.  My energy body was shot!

I am beginning to see how the Apprenticeship is going to work.  I am in deep trouble!  My Allies seem to have no clue that my energy body is a wreck after the heart attacks, and because my truck is in need of repairs which I can’t afford, I can’t get out to the Power Sites to restore my energies.  I love a challenge.  I love to invent ways to deal with the situations the Allies force me into.  I love it when I beat the crap out of them!  It reminds me of Castaneda’s work, but I can’t decide which one of them is ‘The Worthy Opponent’, and who is ‘The Petty Tyrant’.  In any case, they have managed to bring my own personal spirit totally into my physical body.  He is a bit slow to act, but he’s always there, always fighting for my independence.  I’ll never forget the day a few weeks ago when Jesus showed me the pages of an open Bible, and said, “I told you so!”, and my spirit spat on him.

So I put this away for the night, and Saturday came, a lovely sunrise.  I did the I Ching again.  As I was kneeling on the floor tossing the coins, the spirits came to me.  All of them.  I moved to the trance chair to read the hexagram, and they began to work on me.  They were all over me, inside and out, having sex with every part of my body, a huge slathery free-for-all!  I realized this is the ultimate goal of Tantric Brahmacharya, --the total Tantric union with Spirit.  This was the culmination of all my yoga training! 

I understood the reasons for the repeated assaults on my energy body.  Each spirit was making a home there, in preparation for the long journey.

#2 THE DEAD COMPUTER

MEDICINE STONES FOR MAKING GEM ELIXIRS

[This is the second of three blogs regarding the circumstances of my birth, the ending of my Initiation as a Shaman, and the beginning of my Apprenticeship.]

In Ayurveda, the digestion is regarded as the central fire of the human system.  The Ayurvedic diet is geared toward enhancing digestion with six distinct tastes, which stimulate digestion and appetite.  Undigested food in the intestinal tract is seen as one cause of many physical discomforts.  This undigested food is called ‘ama’.

In Shamanic Yoga, we see ama very differently.  As we go through our days, our auras or energy fields absorb many different toxins from the atmosphere, and from human contact.  Humans who do not consciously clean their energy systems carry and project a soot-like substance which will cling to the energies of the people near them.  This ama is present in places which are not cleansed, as well.  Shamans use sage to cleanse their Medicine Areas and living quarters, as well as their physical energy fields.  Spirits also carry ama.

After twenty two – plus years of living with my spirits, I absorbed and cleansed myself of many types of ama.  The blow to my energy body caused by the woman in my trance, in the first blog, left a huge bruise of ama in my physical body.  But not only in my physical body, the ama permeated my Medicine Area and home.  Shamanism is a multi-dimensional reality.  A blow like that can affect many things.  I knew it would take days or weeks to understand the many ways it had affected me.

The next day, I sat to use my drums and my ‘singing in tongues’ to cleanse my energy bodies.  Drumming is more effective than sage, to clear specific areas, or to dispel specific types of ama, such as spells or curses, or the effects of actual blows to the energy bodies.  Many things went through my mind, until, by the time I switched to the larger drum, I was able to clear out a vision of some of the ama I had picked up during my journeys to Hades with different spirits over the years.  As I drummed, I saw thousands of human souls, or spirits, rising up from a hillside and coming down towards me, like a thousand small exclamation points.

A few days later, on the 16^th, I was awakened by a ‘beep’ in my dreams.  It had a particular visual shape, which indicated it had come from Marilyn Monroe.  She likes to wake me with a ‘hypnopompic’ dream.  Since the end of my Initiation as a Shaman, she and the other spirits had been mostly absent from my life.  I was left to wonder just what my life was supposed to be like, after an Initiation.  I did my best to return to just being ‘me’.  But little by little, there were signs that the Allies were returning.  So I braced myself for what might come next.  Since they were still with me, I determined to set myself for simply accepting their presence in my life, and see what happened.  I decided to set up a small altar, where they would be welcome.  I set their personal stones there for them, and did things to honor their presence.  I thought I might get ‘out front’ of whatever it was.  That evening, I sat down to use the computer, but the mouse cursor would not move.  I was stuck.  I tried everything, before I realized it was Marilyn Monroe.  She has a way of getting into electronics.  She frequently screws up my computer, and she used to ‘beep’ the door chime in my truck when I had a thought she agreed with; until the door chime broke!  So the computer was dead.  Full Moon was two days away.

The next morning I set out before sunrise for a short morning walk.  Since the two heart attacks and stroke which signaled the ending of my Initiation as a Shaman, back in March, I’ve not been able to walk far, nor fast.  But that morning my heart was just very, very, heavy.  Just heavy.  I had to cut my walk short.  After a small breakfast, I went to the yoga floor to perform a bala asana, much like a prayer position, but designed to bring intensity to the digestive fires.  I felt the Red Sea rising within me.  (Rest, Digestion, Sexual Energy = RDSE, or Red Sea)  It was so intense I had to perform puja.  I knew the spirits were with me.

The next day, Friday, was the Full Moon.  Early that morning, I opened the front door, which faces west, and could see the last of the gibbous moon just above the horizon before sunrise.  I placed objects on my little porch roof to catch the last rays of the moon.  My computer still didn’t work.  So I sat in my vortex to find out why.

As I sat there, I got a vision of Marilyn Monroe.  She was angry with me.  Years ago, when she first appeared to me, the image of her face shone with Glory.  It was ecstatic with the joy of Illumination.  Over the years, after many, many episodes between us, many battles, many victories for each of us, I was able to send her to Hades as a punishment for her ruination of my life.  When she came back, her face had lost its glow.  She has never forgiven me for that.  So, for the Full Moon, she had shut down my computer.

At 4 am the next morning I was awakened as my left foot poked through a hole ripped in my sheet.  I got out of bed, and noticed my sinus was host to a raging cold.  I took some of my Cold Elixirs (Brown Picture Jasper, Carbon Steel, Moss Agate, Purple Fluorite, Rhyolite, and Rutilated Quartz), some Vitamin C and some aspirin, and went back to bed.  When I got up later, I again went to the vortex, to see if I could get more info on my computer.  This time, I saw Nefertiti.  She was angry with me.  By this time I knew that the computer had been shut down so they could have me to themselves, to do some work in preparation for what was to come next in my Apprenticeship.

Early in my Initiation as a Shaman, she had shown me the story of Ui Tada.  Nefertiti first introduced herself to me as “Ui”.  Later, I learned that Ui Tada had been the concubine of the Samurai Swordsman, Miyamoto Musashi.  Musashi was one of my earlier incarnations.  He came to me early in my Initiation, and we worked together on some poems and drawings.  I learned that the spirit who is now Marilyn Monroe had lived in his body at that time, just as she lives in mine now.  Ui was mad at me because of Musashi.  The story is that during ritual anal intercourse, Musashi had beheaded her with his sword.  I am certain that it had been Marilyn Monroe’s idea.  (She later revealed to me that she had also been Jack the Ripper.)  At any rate, the computer was still out of commission.

I went through the day, and later on, sat again in the vortex to check on the computer.  This time, I was reminded of Valentine’s Day 2005, when Marilyn Monroe had wanted to do a painting for me.  She took me out to a pub, where we had four pints of microbrew, and four shots of tequila, staggered back to the studio and did the painting, and, as I remembered later, just as I was passing out on the floor, I witnessed the Monroe running wildly in her spirit body, round and round the studio, with ‘nothing on but the radio’.  What a priceless memory!

I went to check on the computer, and it worked.

The next day, Sunday, I was up early, did some housework, and again went to sit in the vortex.  Out of nowhere, I found myself suddenly very sad, saying, “I want my mama!” and choking back the words as soon as I saw them.  Where had that come from?  I was remembering the situation of my birth, which I addressed in the previous blog.  It had not been good!  I was not happy to be born of this woman!  I went immediately into Shamanic breathwork, to clear my energy body.  I opened up my ‘yinyang’, that center of yogic gravity at the psoas muscle in the pelvis, and from there used the breath to bring a column of energy up through all the parts of my body which had gotten tightened and twisted at the thought of the curses attendant upon my birth.  The column of energy went right on up through my crown chakra, the Soul Star, and the Stellar Gateway, and as it rose, my vital energy went right up with it, and I saw myself being returned to the womb from which I had been born.  It all happened in less than a wink, although I remember it took me several breath cycles to move that energy up through my body.  But as it happened, the ‘voice of seeing’ (from Castaneda) told me that the curses from my birth had been reversed.

#1 AYURVEDA: A SHAMANIC ENCOUNTER

Shamanic Meditation

[This is the first in a series of three blogs regarding the circumstance of my birth, the ending of my Initiation as a Shaman, and the beginning of my Apprenticeship]

After many years of studying yoga and practicing on my own, and teaching my Shamanic Yoga, I came to a point where I needed a deeper experience.  I had been undergoing my Initiation as a Shaman for two decades, and my life experience was much deeper than anything conceived of in regular yoga.  When I first Googled Ayurveda, I came across info on the three doshas, but that was not what I was interested in.  I looked around at Ayurvedic diet, and other aspects.

Two things that interested me, because they related so pertinently to the Shamanic experience, were Dinacharya and Ritucharya, i.e., daily and seasonal practices to keep healthy and in synch with the life force.  Ayurveda translates as ‘life science’, and the path, or practice of Shamanism requires a mastery of the science of living, which is why I believe a personal yoga practice is so important to the Shaman.  The Shamanic world is very active on many levels, and requires a highly developed awareness of areas of life which are totally ignored in the normal societal experience.

The “Medicine Energies” of Shamanism are built of many aspects of the world of nature as it exists in our immediate environment –our homes and yards.  So the Ayurvedic practices of Ritucharya struck me as pertinent.  The year is divided into segments of two months, instead of our three month seasons.  I thought this was interesting and useful, but upon practice, I realized that the Wiccan/Pagan divisions of the year using ‘cross-quarter days’ (the midpoints of the seasons, rather than the solstices and equinoxes) was superior.  The world-view of the yoga community is not based on the Shamanic knowledge of ‘Power’ –that force in the universe which comes to the assistance of the Shaman, and is especially apparent at the midpoints of seasons, when things begin to change to the next season.

I found many aspects of the yoga philosophy to be less than adequate in comparison to the Shamanic way.

But in my Googling, I came across an essay, which I have since lost track of, in which

the first line was, “Rest, digestion, and sexual energy –the three pillars of life.”  As I read on, I found the Ayurvedic emphasis on agni, or the digestive fires, to be very interesting and helpful.  The Ayurvedic view of the workings of the human body is very different than the normal western view.  I began to work with the agni.

I found that, after eating, I would lie down on the yoga floor to digest, and after a bit, I would be flooded with sexual energy.  I began the practice of transferring this energy to my meditation vortex.  After eating, I would go sit in the Buddha Vortex while the agni was providing its fire.  This began to add considerable energy to the vortex.

Many months later, about six months after the ending of my Initiation as a Shaman, in the month of October, 2013, this process began an important phase of my journey into my ‘Apprenticeship’.  On Friday October 11, one day after my 71^st birthday, I again sat in the vortex with a full stomach.  Again, the sexual energies arose.  This time, however, I went into a trance state.  I had turned on the “Jazz” channel on Pandora, for my meditation.  The first tunes were by Miles Davis and John Coltrane.  I’ve always loved their music.  Suddenly, I was in a dance hall in Harlem, in the 1950s.  A woman across the dance floor made eye contact with me.  She was wearing an elegant, slim-fitting night club dress of satin, and it accented every curve of her ravishing figure.  The music was like I’ve never heard it.  It was a slow passage, so slow that I marveled at how powerful the rhythms were.  It was a deadly serious piece of music, to match the deadly serious expression on the woman’s face.  She knew exactly what she was doing.  Her languid stroll was intended to transfix my attention, which it did.  She entered my energy field with the intent of a woman who could wrap the world around her little finger; it was not like the world as I had ever known it.  It was the world of the rich and powerful, the jazz world of Harlem, where the players were Big Time, and the stakes were high.  She took me to the middle of the floor, and I wilted. 

I came out of the trance, and life went on.

I train hard for times like these.  These times are powerful, like the cross-quarter days which mark the turning points of the seasons.  In my journey through the process of Initiation, which took over two decades, and saw me turn from a healthy and fit man of 48 to a man losing his teeth and vitality at 71, I’ve developed techniques such as surfing the moon, and harnessing the cross-quarter days, for the power they bring, and many other aspects of adapting to the much different time-frame of Shamanic Reality.  This moment of trance, I knew, was a sigil for me.  It marked something, which would reveal itself in its own time. It was a ‘blow from Power’, as Castaneda would call it.  I knew that the next period of time, days or weeks, would reveal the import of this event.  So I marked it in my log book.

Not long after that, I fell into a terrible funk.  She had damaged my energy body.  I had been struck deeply.  It hurt to realize that I had been shown just what a punk I am.  No way in the world could I have entered that reality which she showed me, with the high stakes players, the fast women, and the genius musicians.  It was the blow to my energy body which I knew to be the signal of what was to come.

SURFING THE MOON

SUPERMOON

Check your adrenalin levels.  Are you always going at an adrenalin pace?  Got work to do?  Hurry, hurry!  You might find yourself on an adrenalin trip about now.  We have a fine fat gibbous moon tonight in Yakima, with FULL MOON on Friday morning.  Always running on clock time, week days, weekends, holidays, paydays, bills due, deadlines... seems like we just got through the New Moon.  Lots of things came crashing to an end just ten days ago, and then the crescent failed to show on time because of the cloudy weather.  The moon was resting.  Then all of a sudden we got moving again, with new things cooking.

Although it's four days till the moon is actually at Full, the few days before are usually filled with signs and signals of the lunar mood.  Since we're approaching Halloween, the world around us will be awash with hucksters selling their wares to the commercial classes.  When I became a Shaman, I found I had to remove myself from all this clamor.  Because the Moon has messages for the inner self every two weeks, and especially at significant times of the year.  The culture at large is much removed from the inner self.  A Shaman has a direct link to lunar moods, and therefore to moods of the spirit world which affect each of us at profound levels.  As we carry these moods of the moon from New to Full to New again, month after month, year after year, we learn to sense the surf.  

What if we're doing a healing?  My healings require that I carry the spirit of the client in my 'pouch', or energy field, or attention span, for many moon cycles, sometimes.  I find that the factors which affect my client reveal themselves as subtle shifts of energies often akin to the moon's shifting moods.  I use the waxing and waning of the moon to bring clarity to my understanding of situations involving me, or my client, or the world at large.  With each shift of understanding, I am able to make adjustments to the Medicine Energies, and the particular 'charm' I'm building for the client.  I can tell by the 'tattwas', or 'times', or 'moods' of each day, in the same way I am aware of the Moon's moods, just what is happening with my client, and whether the charm is working.  There is always a light to guide me.

It is my job to keep myself open to these aspects of the world as they change around me and my Medicine.  A few years ago, I was working with a woman in Southern California, who was very agitated, and was having problems in nearly every aspect of her life.  After a few weeks, we had developed a close rapport, and she was doing better, but her ex-husband appeared in her life, and she went off the deep end.

One morning I woke up and felt that she was in trouble.  I did a ceremony for her.  An hour later I got an email.  She was in the hospital, having swallowed a a bottle of sleeping pills.  In her near-death experience,  I had awakened her with a touch on the brow.  Intuitions and feelings can be very powerful over great distance, but a certain level of awareness must be maintained in order to pick up on the clues, whether it's for a client or for yourself.

Month after month, year after year, the Moon brings changes in our awareness throughout its cycle.  There is always a warm feeling when I feel these changes in my energy field.

POWER STONES

POWER STONES

Psychologist C. G. Jung’s work introduces the concept of “Individuation”, which is similar to “The Totality of the Self”, in Carlos Castaneda’s works, which is very much like the goal of Yoga, to attain to the ‘union’ or ‘yoke’, or ‘yug’, in which the completed Self is joined with the Cosmic, or Divine.  Shamanism is based on this union, which is a union of the individual with the world of Spirit through the death of the imprisoned self so that the spirits might incarnate with the Shaman. 

In the path to becoming a Shaman, there are many types and forms of energy which have to be incorporated into the energy system of the individual.  This process can take many years.  Over the course of the work, there are many things which the Wannabe must do to strengthen the energy fields of the various parts of the self as they are disintegrated and re-formed into a more complete composite.  The energies of the spirits are so powerful that an unprepared person could never survive.

In the beginning, the Wannabe is taught to ‘court Power’.  “Power” is a force in the universe which comes to the wannabe as a guide.  If you enter a place in wild nature with purity of Intent, and open yourself to Power, a sign or omen will appear.  A hawk will fly directly in front of you, and will beckon to you to follow.  You will be guided to a place of Power, where you can meditate or do ceremony, and receive the transforming energies of this place and the Medicine Energies which exist there.  Repeated exposure to these energies and the wisdom of Power will open and strengthen you to withstand the ordeals which await.

One of the exercises of Courting Power is the quest for a Power Stone.

Mountains are formed from vast layers and formations of various types of stone, as they are thrust by the movements of the earth’s crust into union with the atmosphere.  The forces of the atmosphere cause the stone layers to disintegrate, and pieces fall to the slopes below, where they eventually end up in streams, or are buried in the materials which form the soil.  Over the eons, stones which enter the streams are washed to the valleys, and are shaped by the waters and the other stones which they meet (very much like people).  Stones in the earth become eroded by the chemical interactions which form the soil.

If you walk in wild nature, you will meet many stones in various forms of individuation.  Some are broken and jagged; some are rounded and smooth; some are still buried in the soil.  When Power speaks to you, it can lead you to a stone which has completed its journey of Individuation, and is waiting for you to take it into your Power.  It will be clean; it will be sitting alone, free from attachments.  It will beckon to you.  You can welcome it into your energy field and it will become a companion.  When you take it home, it will bring the specific “Medicine” of its journey, and the place where it was found.  This Medicine will stay with it for many years.  This is one part of the Medicine Energies which a Shaman uses to build a Sacred Place in which to do the work.

Each stone is like a person, an individual.  If you hold a stone, you will find that it has a bottom.  When you set it down on its bottom, it will be steady and comfortable.  Each stone has it ‘good side’.  Place the stone in its most favorable position, so that it is comfortable and its best side is front.  The stone will lend its particular Power to whatever is near it, and it will help you in setting Medicine for a particular purpose.  Stones are great sources of energy for the Medicine.  But they also are very absorbent.  So stones have to be cleansed occasionally.

The stones in the photo were together in a tiny sand spit at the confluence of the Tieton River with the Naches River, just west of Yakima in the Cascade Mountains.  They are a greenish conglomerate from the White Pass area.  They are very smooth and polished.  The smaller one has a pleasant feminine face, and weighs 13 pounds.  The larger one is shaped like the head of an animal, perhaps a horse, and weighs 17 pounds.  I use them on either side of my meditation mat against the wall in the yoga/healing room, at the base of the “Buddha Vortex”, where the spirits gather high up on the wall.  The Buddha visited me there for many months, and Bodhidharma came to me there.  At the New Moon just before the Autumnal Equinox this year (2013), Yakima was graced with many dancing lightning storms.  So I set the stones out in the downpour to be cleansed and re-energized.

One interesting thing about stones is how they absorb energy.  Many homes have large stones set out in front as landscaping pieces.  If you observe these stones, you will notice their particular personalities.  Then notice when the home is sold and the owners move to another location.  The stone will lose the particular character you noticed.  With a new owner, the stone will change to reflect the energies of the new owner.