I am so happy today for my friend and teacher Meredith, who has just put up her first blog:
http://starravenblog.blogspot.com/
She is a remarkable spiritual teacher and guide who has been reluctant to put herself out into the blogosphere. I can relate very well to this hesitation and I look out on you all and see an abundance of talent and ability that is covered up and hidden.
The writer in me was hidden for years and years. I always knew he was there, and he would venture out from time to time to lay down a few lines, then he would quickly scurry back to the security of some dark and secret place. I was keeping it all to myself, and now I see that I was not only cheating myself, I was keeping myself from you. I have been guided in the last months to realize that it is a grave error to hoard you gifts. When they are shared with the world, that action stands to bring you personal joy and abundance.
What an amazing thing it is to make yourself available to whatever is blowing your way. For me, my hidden personas could not fully emerge until I had undergone a radical opening. The opening made me so vulnerable that taking the next steps did not seem so scary.
It bears repeating here, that at the time I was feeling so enthused about emerging as “the writer” and feeling confident that I had finally realized my true self, I met with my teacher, Mark Pope. He leaned across the table and said tenderly, “You know, John, the next one you’re going to have to wake up from is the writer.” I leaned back in my chair and thought to myself, “Oh shit!” Because I knew in a flash that he was right.
“The writer” is not who I really am. But I had fixated for so long on that goal, that when I had achieved it, I thought I had arrived. Now it is just a funny story. When I understand who I really am and stand in that truth, “the writer” is available to me at any time. He is not an elusive mystical persona; he is an aspect of me that I can utilize. He is the hammer, but I hold the tool in my hand. Every realization is another opening.
And just when I think I cannot be any more open, something else shows up and points me further down The Road to Find Out. This last week I participated with some beautiful and masterful teachers in what they called Shamanic Breath-work. I had heard about the process and frankly was a little frightened of the practice. The work involves placing yourself into a trance state, and I was not sure my active mind would let me go there.
They instructed us to practice the breath up to the point that we were surprised. And I wondered, “Surprised by what?” I found out. The months of work I had done in Sedona prepared me for this moment, just at this time. I went into the altered state quite easily. That was the surprise! And I journeyed. I flew through the air, I swam in the ocean like a fish, and I even tunneled into the earth and was reborn as a tree. I don’t remember encountering the element “fire” but when I came out, I felt like the whole experience could be called “standing in the fire”.
I was brought out of the trance by a soft heart-beat drumming and the gentle voice of Linda Star Wolf:. http://shamanicbreathwork.org/ I was reluctant and slow to return. At the end of the process my body had become quite heavy and felt like it was sinking into the floor.
But I was brought back by the soft touch of my co-journeyer, Meredith, who welcomed me home with an embrace. I was overwhelmed by what can only be called divine love for her and all the others in the room, most of whom I didn’t even know. “You, the white-haired guy in the black shirt, ‘I love you.’ And the couple from Cornville, ‘I love you too.’”
Today I praise the summer, and embrace the joy and fun that the season promises.
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