I want to take a few minutes here and talk about the initiation I’ve been experiencing.I keep talking about death and as I bring that word into the discussion it occurs to me that something like that isn’t a small matter. It’s heavy and I think that there’s an implication behind it which is compelling me to place here in writing what the word I’m using means to me and what this experience has done to me as a human being.
A number of years ago I discovered, almost by chance, that I have the ability to calm and alleviate physical pain and suffering in the human body with my hands. One day I was giving my wife a massage and she noted that there was a considerable amount of heat coming out of my hands. I thought it was interesting and when she observed that it wasn’t something that had happened in the past with other people, even when she’d gone to get a massage, I stopped and wondered. We kept talking and I told her about how since I was a child I’ve put my hands on my stomach when I had the flu or nausea and the pain goes away. She, again, observed that she didn’t know anyone who could do this and that it wasn’t just an ordinary thing.
Now understand this wasn’t my first run in with “stuff that people don’t normally do.” Since the late ‘90′s I’ve been involved in other activities that would be considered “out of the ordinary” such as talking to the dead, seeing the future, talking to my spirit guides and having direct communications with the higher power via automatic writing. I have pages and pages and pages of communications that I’ve done over the years. It’s been quite remarkable, actually.
So anyways, I bring this up because since the late ‘90s my life has been an extended series of nearly insurmountable challenges, likely the biggest prior to the current initiation being a nine month period in 2002/2003 where I had my ability to sleep stripped from me. Since then it’s been employment instability. I’ve been assailed by colleagues at every job I’ve worked. Beyond this I’ve found myself repeatedly stuck in positions that were dead ends and found myself forced out due to my inability to control circumstances. Each time this happened I’d be unemployed for months on end and our family would be brought to brink of utter destitution before it would resolve. While it was going on I have to say I didn’t really understand the depth of what was occurring. I knew that the universe had a purpose and the higher power and my guides were communicating to me about what was happening but it wasn’t until a few years ago I really began to grasp what they’ve been saying to me all these years about who/what I am and what it all means.
After I lost my last career role four years ago things really started to come apart within my life and my psyche. I had recently relocated to Oregon and the experience of removing myself from the physical construct I had been using to define my external reality for the better part of 20 years prior was like ripping the foundation out from under a house. I literally came apart mentally and emotionally. As I have mentioned in past postings over the course of three years I was underemployed working the absolute worst job I’ve ever done making 1/3 what my family needs to survive for 18 months followed by entering then abruptly being driven violently out of two career- track positions. It was almost as if some unseen darkness had turned its hand against me and my family and was trying to destroy us.
As this was happening I utilized every resource I could to try and discern what was happening and understand why things just didn’t seem to want to stay together for any length of time. In my conversations with the higher power and my spirit guides I kept getting this message about Dark Night of the Soul and Shamanic Initiation. I researched them both online and discovered that people who display similar profiles to myself as relates to apparent psychic and healing abilities go through versions of an experience that literally destroys their lives. In antiquity it appeared that the tribal shaman would literally be killed by a spirit and brought back to life under a new set of identity parameters defined by the spirit world and not their old identity. I read story after story of modern-day individuals who would speak of years-long struggles that had come to be referred to as “Dark Night of the Soul.”
Now understand I’m not illogical. A major component of my identity is my logical self. As I read the information and dissected what was being said, especially around the “Shamanic Death” I looked at myself and decided that it really couldn’t be that bad. I was still alive, I was still here. I hadn’t gone through that level of suffering. There was no way I was that. I couldn’t be that. I didn’t want to be that, honestly. What I really wanted was to get back to my life and move on. My family needs resources and my wife and I have big plans for where we want to take ourselves as far as having a home of our own, a new car, a stable financial situation, plenty of support for our offspring and the ability to take a vacation once in a while.
I’m not going to go into detail about what has transpired since then. What I will say is the reality of what I have gone through the last 12 months is the closest thing I could equate to death without actually dying. I literally sit here today destitute. The universe has found means to provide for our most basic needs up until now but the reality of the human identity in this modern world isn’t so much about means as it is about self-realization. I can tell you with the utmost certainty that the only realization I’ve come to the last 12 months is that a force beyond any human capacity has intervened on my life and has systematically taken apart my identity as a provider and a productive and integrated human being bit by bit. There has been no option and no discussion. Having the ego that I do I have not rolled over and gone quietly. I have continued to struggle and resist but I can tell you it has been pointless.
I am completely and totally at the behest of my creator and it’s will for my life.
Which brings me to my closing point. I discounted for very long time the premise that the higher power and my guides have been putting to me over and over again that I am a Shaman and my calling is to use my abilities to help people. This direction is not where I want to go. It’s not conducive to a normal life and I want to do it when I’m ready which is not right now. To further reinforce my argument I’ve read opinions from individuals online who make the point that a “real” Shaman is one who has experienced the actual Shamanic death. I look at me, I’m still alive, I didn’t die. It’s all quite simple. I’m not a Shaman. Now can I get on with my life?
As I sit here today powerless and with zero ability to do anything to fix the destroyed life I see laying in pieces around me I’m finding myself compelled to believe what I hear the higher power saying to me about my calling and question the purist assessment that a Shaman must die a physical death to actually be one. I don’t think anything is that black and white. There’s a component to this that is highly personal and directly related to my relationship with source. I think it begins there and I think as I move forward the only real choice I have is to let this play out to its end and recognize that the person that I was is no longer. He is being replaced by something else, something sponsored by a force beyond this construct. What that means is fluid and where it takes me is something that will define itself in each present moment. Nothing is ever fixed or permanent in the space of ultimate reality, this I know for certain.
