re digest #1008

[Guest guest]

Hi Linda,

 

you said: I will be interested to hear all about this. In your earlier

post in this digest, where you mentioned endless possibilities...I can

relate very much to that. I have been in that space myself since

surrendering to my spirit's instructions to leave the DC area. Soon I

will be off with my significant other guy to explore the southwest. We

both feel a kind of call there, and want to look around and see if we

get any clearer messages about the where and the why. Shanti ~ Linda

 

That's funny. I feel a call to the southwest too. Dunno why, or if I

will act on it yet...

 

When I was about 25, I was very interested in Carlos Castaneda's books

and had, way of hunting for more about Mexico and altered states of

consciousness, discovered the art and religion of the Huichal indians (

http://www.huicholartonline.com/store/page5.html ). One morning, as the

LSD I was experimenting with at the time was starting to wear off, I

felt a need to take a walk. Just as the sun was rising in front of me, I

came to a small bridge across a stream, and I was unable to walk across

it. I was wearing a brighly colored vest my mother had knitted for me,

which to me was symbolic of the yarn art I had been wallowing in

recently, and I felt called to Wirikuta (

http://leda.lycaeum.org/Trips/Wirikuta_Calling.5417.shtml ). I sat at

the front end of the small bridge and pledged my life to the crossing.

After awhile, I got up and went back home. It was a holy experience for

me, which I remember fondly.

 

This past August (16 years later), I spent two weeks in New Mexico,

taking the first two of 7 modules in the Grof transpersonal training (to

become a facilitator of holotropic breathwork.). The first week was a

practical module on the music, and the second week was a module about

shamanism. Well, we were asked to state an intention on the first day

of the second module and I remembered this experience at the bridge, so,

while not really understanding what it meant, I stated the intention to

cross the bridge. The module was very difficult for me. I won't bother

with the details, but the gist is that I felt very alone and abandoned

by the end of it and it was VERY difficult to reintegrate myself back

into my life afterwards (which was and still is falling apart as you

know by now). It took a month or more to feel normal. I went back to

New Mexico in October for a second practical module (on the bodywork)

and a module of ecstatic chanting with Jai Uttal and Geoffrey Gordon (I

highly recommend chanting with them - the week got me as high as the

shaman module got me low.) Anyway, at the end of the chanting module, in

the closing circle, I announced that I had finally finished the shaman

module (the Shamanic journey being to go down into the underworld, fight

the demons and come back to one's community with some new understanding

that one can then share with them.) and that crossing the bridge meant

to me crossing from the almost pathalogical solitude of my life (I'm an

alchoholic) into community. (The community of holotropic breathworkers

for one, this satsang community for another, life itself perhaps?) I

think my passage across the bridge is still a work in progress and I

certainly turn around now and then and try to dash back to safety, but I

think you (life) won't let me get very far, so I need to face my fears

and come on over. I am grateful for the existence of community to

beckon me.

 

 

Love, Mark

ps maybe we will meet up in the southwest sometime. I wish you well,

there and everywhere.