#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.

#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.

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.

THE ART OF STALKING

MEDICINE WHEEL YOGA MAT

In the first chapter of his first book, The Teachings of don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, 1968, Carlos Castaneda makes mention of two things which form a part of the foundation of my Initiation as a Shaman.  Carlos is told to ‘find his spot’ on don Juan’s veranda; and later, he is instructed in the Art of Stalking.  Carlos’s ‘spot’ is a certain type of Earth Energy Vortex; and Stalking is the very complicated process of figuring out what’s going on in the unfathomable world of Shamanic Spirit.

The drawing above shows my first yoga mat.  The Medicine Wheel is a time-honored device of indigenous peoples to help them organize the energies of Spirit.  It is also the basis of Mandala paintings.  By organizing around the four directions, the world of Spirit is brought into easier understanding, and rituals can be more easily organized.  This is an exercise in Stalking developed by peoples around the globe.

In today’s world, we need to develop a deeper and more profound approach to understanding the world around us.  The industrial world has lost the sense of time, ever since we invented clocks.  But Nature provides us with an incomparable teacher:  the Moon.

Since ancient Shamans had no compass or clocks, or artificial light, they used the stars and seasons and arc of the sun to keep track of what was happening around them.  As it turns out, the focus of these ancient peoples on certain aspects of the world created a condensation of the energies of consciousness around these points of focus.  This concentrated consciousness morphed into gods.  And the gods were able to communicate with their creators.  Sounds backwards?  Check it out.  You can do the same thing, when you create the Medicine Energies where you live.

One of the easiest things to focus your attentions upon is the Moon.  We are all familiar with the hackneyed concepts of Full Moon and Dark Moon, but what we see is merely a dot on our calendars.  We do not have the energetic capacities to fully grasp or discern the energy patterns of these very subtle fluxuations coming to us from the Moon.  The phrase ‘many moons’ takes on deeper meaning when we actually use the lunar cycles to organize our sense of the passage of time.

If you follow the weather reports on TV, you may notice that they are often way off just before or just after the New or Full moon.  The energies of these times are an example of  the spiritual psychology of the world we live in.  The Moon has varying moods, and these moods correspond to events occurring on the planet.  A Shaman has the sorts of powers which can cause the Moon to respond in some way.  Often, after a ceremony, a Shaman looks to the mood of the Moon to judge its success. 

The awareness necessary to discern these responses from the Moon can be developed by removing oneself from the standardized responses to the world conditioned by the culture in which we live.

In Shamanic Yoga, simply practicing yoga is one way to remove oneself  from the vibes of the world around us.  And the awareness of the nature of the human energy field which is developed while deep in asana, is one way of discerning the subtleties of these messages from the Moon.  Because it is the Shaman’s Body, which is developed from the Yoga Body, which has the antennae or receptors which can pick up the vibes from the Moon.

The world around us is a vast sea of energies.  These energies are forms of consciousness.  The consciousness which is normally contained in the ‘brain’ is not sufficient to discern the subtleties around us.  So Shamans use entheogens and psychedelics to augment their energy field perceptors.  And Shamanic Yogis develop these perceptors in their own physical energy fields.

The Art of Stalking is the art of developing the attention span (often a span of months or years) to apprehend and decipher the communications from the entities of the natural world.  Shamanic Art is often used as one means of record-keeping, as peoples develop an iconography to describe these impressions from the subtle energies.

DAGAJI AT WORK

ASTRASANA

I spent the better part of the 1970s writing dream poems.  I would get up in the morning, get out of the house, and walk the mile to the Continental Cafe on University Way in Seattle, where I would sit at my table in the back corner, with my coffee and Danish, and write the poem from last night's dream.  I wrote in standard free verse form for a long time, and then switched to prose poems.  At a writer's conference in Napa, California, the poet (later Poet Laureate of the US) Robert Hass, after reading my manuscript, told me, "After reading some of these pieces, I stopped reading critically, and began to read for what I could learn from this poet."  In one of those poems, the yoga posture in the photo above was given to me.  I was a star fallen splat to the earth.  After I entered into Shamanship in 1990, I proceeded in my trance work to a point where I moved from my trance chair to the yoga floor.  When I got to Yakima in 2006, I began a project which culminated in Jesus becoming my Nagual (projection from my loins).  During the many trance tasks which were necessary to perform this ploy, my trances were all during the waking, walking around in daily life state of consciousness.  But the energy consumed in these trances, having to negotiate daily life and trance life at the same time, caused me to spend many hours a day, for days on end, lying on the yoga floor in astrasana, either asleep or in a deep drowse.

Astrasana has amazing benefits.  Nothing teaches you like the floor.  My yoga mat is 60" x 90", canvas painted with latex house paint both sides.  Beneath it is the carpet and an electric blanket covered by other canvas mats, so that it is firm but comfortable, and warm enough in winter.  The hardness of the floor supports each part of the skeletal frame uniformly, so that the non-uniform structure of the bones becomes evident.  Using the Concentration Breath, each part of the skeleton can be manipulated into contraction or relaxation, in an evenly controlled rhythm.  This manipulation brings the Mental Body deeply and thoroughly into yug (union) with the physical body.  This union (yoga) allows the body to become an extension of the mind and the entire energy field becomes a mechanism of perception and awareness.

The heart area is opened, and each of the chakras is open and in relaxation.  Raising arms and legs, or moving them in any direction shifts the flow of the chi, and Chi Mudras can begin to manipulate the physical body.  Any time you feel like it, you can roll over and watch TV.  (This style of yoga developed when I one day realized I would never develop a home practice if I didn't get out of my chair to watch TV!)

The belly position is called the Missionaryasana.  For those in Earth Centered disciplines, this pose brings obvious benefits.