Visiting the Shaman

Day 49 - Living by the book.

Today I met with the a Shaman, the same one who advised me to "feed the ducks." He smiled at me with his eyes, tousled my hair, and said, "Lay down and close your eyes." So I relaxed back into the chair and closed my eyes.

Immediately, he went to work sewing me up inside some kind of a skin - buffalo maybe - and when I was completely sewed up in it, he tossed me into the pond where I sank to the bottom.

And I was thinking, "Oh great, he's going to drown me!" But then I thought, "OK, well maybe this means I'm drowning myself or something - sinking maybe." Anyway, no water seeped into the skin and it was like a cocoon at the bottom of the pond. Bubbles began to rise from my mouth and they filled the inside of the "cocoon" and floated up to the top of the water.

The bubbles were not really "bubbles" the way I know them when I'm not in a trance state. In the dream, they were round disc shapes with symbols on them in black and white. The one that seemed always to be first was a white circle with a black center and a white cross inside. There were lots of these symbols floating up, and each one was different.

At this point, the little shaman guy fished me out of the water, pulling me out by my feet and hung me upside down to let the water drain off, and the disks - the bubbles - the symbols - (I'm not sure what to call them) spilled out onto the ground.

He then pulled the skin apart and sat me down on a wooden high backed chair. He draped the symbols, (which seemed to be attached together like a necklace of sorts), all around me. The one with the cross in it adhered to my forehead, the rest were here and there, not in any "significant" place on my body, they just fell around me at random.

He wrapped a dry buffalo skin around me, and then handed me a stick that sort of drooped. So, I was sitting there in a chair, wet and bedraggled, with strange symbols draped around me, wrapped in a buffalo skin holding what looked like a pretty pathetic excuse for a power stick. Nothing about it at all... really, a sorry little portrait. My feet didn't even reach the ground.

He stood back and said something like... "Does the robe bring you comfort?"
I said, "Yes."
And he said, "So why don't you wrap your own self in comfort?"

He held his hand out, and I handed him my sorry excuse for a power stick. He threw it into the fire. Then I handed him the robe. It too went into the fire, followed by the necklace of symbols. I then realized that even more was asked for, so I took off my body as well. It went into the fire. I was reduced now to just a pale wavering flame.

He said, "It doesn't have to be this way."

He pulled my body out of the fire and I put it back on. The pale flame that was my "spirit" flared and expanded. He said, "This is your body, take care of it."

He pulled the discs out of the fire and tossed them over my head, and like a necklace, they settled around me. Once again, that same one with the cross on it ended up on my forehead. He said. "You have a lot of knowledge. Don't just wear it, assimilate it." And he put his hand on one of the symbols resting on my arm and it dissolved into my skin. He put his hand on the one on my forehead and it also dissolved and was absorbed into the skin.

He pulled the robe out of the fire and wrapped it around my shoulders. I noticed that it had changed from a buffalo skin to a cougar skin.

He said, "Comfort. Take it where it's offered."

I wondered if he would pull the power stick out of the fire too, but he didn't. He said, "Do this other and the power will come of its own accord."

The little flame that had already expanded into my body, now flared out and there were flames all over me. I was on fire, but not burning or uncomfortable. I went outside and stood there looking at him, wondering if I would remember all of this, and I said, "Tell me again."

He said,

• Be kind to your body and take care of it.
• Use what you know, don't just know it.
• Take comfort where it's offered.
• Power comes of its own accord.