I can hardly believe how chilly these mornings are becoming! I am sitting here on my porch, wrapped in a blanket as I write. Puffy white clouds are floating by, and there are four graceful birds soaring on the highest wind currents. Turkey vultures. Such wicked, gnarly looking creatures! And yet, as they fly far above, they seem to be one of the few species of birds that are floating for pleasure, riding the waves of the wind without hurry or imminent purpose. Of course, they are scouting for dinner, but with what abandon and ease!
The sun is bolder today, and I am yearning to feel it on my body...not much sun on the porch until mid-afternoon, unfortunately. The pink cones on the Magnolia are looking fuzzy, and turning a duller shade of pinkish-brown...oh, how this evolution thrills me, day after day, to watch the world changing in front of my very eyes! It's so easy to believe that things are the same, day after day...but when major change comes, it feels epic, catastrophic, or completely unheralded. But sitting here on my little spot on the porch, I am grateful to watch the world around me changing every day, little by little.
And as I contemplate the neverending flow of change, I, too, am remembering the space of Mushroom Medicine. It, like the other plant medicines I have worked with, takes me into a space of timelessness. When the intensity of the Mushrooms comes into me, I am tuned into a sound that I call, "the sound of eternity," a symphony of perfectly orchestrated birdsong, rushing water, and wind in the trees. This sound calls to me to leave behind the time-bound world that I inhabit in my normal waking life, and to sink deeply into the space of eternity...a place where change occurs on the microcosmic level, but where the constant is livingness, aliveness that persists beyond any brokenness, decay, or semblance of death. Aliveness that, too, transcends the apparent differences of trees and animals and rocks and earth and being human.
In my last ceremony with this medicine, nearly three months ago, I faced this truth - that Life - God - Universe - is indifferent to my little life and place in the cosmos. And it came to me in a vision that showed me the world as a two-dimensional grid of existence that was NOT beautiful or connected or alive at all. This, followed by an intense encounter with Death, sent me into a time of existential crisis. Everything that I felt connected to became distant. My spiritual path made no sense. I was filled with fear and meaninglessness, and felt lost, completely lost. Now, looking back on that encounter, I am grateful beyond words.
I grew up in the South, in the Bible Belt, in a culture that was infused with fear-based views of God and Jesus, and a lot of unquestioned attachment to the mythology that accompanies that way of life. I never felt comfortable within those circles of religion, but knew no alternative. As soon as I moved away to college -
Baltimore - I met people who held different views on life, on what was holy, on the nature of reality. What a blessing it was! I walked away from the Christianity of my childhood without thinking twice, and was grateful to shed such a limiting view of the world. Leaping forward to the ceremony above, what I have come to understand is that while I walked away from the religion and culture of my childhood, and changed my mind about so many fearful, dogmatic beliefs, those things still existed within my body. My entire way of being for the first 18 years of my life had not only created my mind, but had become part of the very structure of my body, too. And up until this past summer, I had only walked away from beliefs and feelings that didn't fit. I had never gone deeply into the way these old ideas lived on inside of my very cells.
In that Mushroom ceremony, I was shaken and unravelled beyond anything I had previously experienced. I now see that the worldview of my childhood was being shaken and unravelled out of my body. My cosmology was being brought into deep alignment. And all those old beliefs - that God exists outside of me, the nature of life and death, the meaning of prayer, and my connection to the divine - were being vigorously uprooted. What a blessing, but what a difficult process! And now, as I sit here on my porch, I am not unconsciously ruled by those old beliefs that color my experience.
I am endlessly grateful for the powerful plant teachers that have changed my life. I don't think anyone ever suggested that living a deep path of spiritual awakening could be like this! A process of meeting God by truly meeting myself. Of letting go of beliefs instead of adopting new ones. Of embracing my true nature instead of breaking that nature into something more manageable, less sinful, or whatever. Of relaxing into myself, of resisting nothing, of allowing my heart to lead me. Of being who I am, instead of creating a better version of myself. Of abandoning any path of seeking outside of myself, and allowing the revelations to come from within, and trusting that with all of my heart. No, no one ever told me that if I wanted to meet God, that I would find that presence within every cell in my body, and within every living thing upon the Earth. And truly, no one ever told me that knowing these things would bring me more humility and compassion than anything I could imagine those words to mean.
No comments:
Post a Comment