It is my solar day. The earth has returned to this place in its orbit: the place where it was when I was born. This day, alone and quiet, I shall listen for echoes of my solar birth and death.
I once remembered myself well. Even long past my childhood, hope and wonder were yet mine. Disappointments were part of the challenge. Worst case scenario: a period of repose and recollection. Even these times of withdrawal for the meditations of adjustment and growth, though draining at times, never carried the vile and accursed word: depression. Sometimes now I forget who I am, and stumble, badly a couple of times, recently. This day, I shall try to remember, again.
The earth was in this place about our Mother-Star when one of her daughters, ripe with child, gave birth unto this living temple. This body, hewn from stone and fire, and suckled on the milk of meaning and purpose. A child's truths give way to the wisdom and understanding of an adult. What seemed to mean so much earlier in life, often is "revealed" or claimed to be, nothing. Even worse is when actual durable truths and real meanings begin to seem empty.
When a child is born, he already knows the important truths. His mind juggles both the profound and the subtle, in the language of symbols, with their respective emotional charges. In all my studies and meditation I have not gathered an iota of meaning. The great truths are with us from the beginning, though the language to communicate them is not.
After much diligence in my studies and prayerful meditation, as well as a good number of times in service as a teacher or spiritual counsel I received an initiation and a guiding vision that profoundly changed my life. Our scriptures read "Born again", translated properly from the Greek it is "Born from above" I was quite familiar with spiritual transformation. The sudden realization that God is great and God is good and he's not just for Sundays anymore! I had given my life to God long ago and my eyes, now filled with faith and hope, had been busily recreating my universe: now with the Divine and Loving Creator as the source, center, foundation, and glorious destiny. The initiation that I had relieved was different than this. Following a very intense psychological breakthrough, I had completed the shaman's journey. I had come to know the intrinsic sacredness of this planet, myself and all humanity.
Tirelessly, I pursued the actual will of my true self. I woke up for a moment of clear vision. I began to trust my symbol-speaking infant within, a little more each day. The un-learning that is involved is virtually unfathomable! Fortunately most of minor details are changed unconsciously, it is the broad strokes that are our responsibility, God can handle the rest. The true self is very likely to be closer to divinity than the average vision of God in the minds of the men of earth.We are God-shaped! "In His Image" we were created. We are the creators and care-takers of our own universe. Self-aware, freewill, sentient beings. Is there a God in your universe? Of course there is! It is you! God isn't pulling strings: it is your body, your mind,and your choices. Love is crucial, when your the head of an universe, or a family, or a tribe or country. Love is the will to do good for others. Love is the deciding factor in the continuing existence of the group, or even, the self! Love is the energy or even life-force that charges one with purpose. Love will face the most difficult problems or perform the most menial tasks and do this, without hesitation. When the need of the family is clear, then so is the call of duty, "Do it for the family!" With love, you can create and sustain, without love, nothing lives.
A sense of purpose and meaning in one's life is the life blood of the universe. An ever increasing love for God and his children is the assurance that in a mere hundred thousand years or so, you will love God and his family, without limits or conditions of any kind! Hopefully much sooner, of course! It takes this kind of love to be a parent, or priest, or counselor. If we, as men, can see the need for agape' love, how much greater, must be our Father's love? When you address a situation, it is not love that says, "do the usual, think not." Love will look diligently for a creative solution, one that is better for everyone. A faithful, trustworthy child is a joy to his parents, and most likely will improve his siblings life as well.
The patriotic love for the unity of one's nation, combined and balanced with the love for the individual an his personal freedom, empowered the writing of the Mangna Carta as well as the Constitution of the United States of America. Love looks for a better solution, always. I believe that God truly wills the very best for all of us. Nature, in its dramatic yet sublime beauty is to me a clear indication of not only a creator, but a loving parent with the hand of an artist! God's love whispers in great thunderous peals that echo throughout nature, and the universe!
Man is the crown of nature. We are like a flower planted over two-billion years ago. Clearly, faith is the primary lesson of this world. We can see this in the near total absence of evidence showing divine involvement in our creation. This age of science has even caused some to miss the obvious: they would suppose the human race to be naught but an accident! It takes life to give life. Chemicals alone are inherently dead, not living! God gave life to the first single celled plant here on earth. Those humble microbes contained the complete design of man from the very beginning, It just has a multi-billion year gestation period! --*--Ref. Urantia Book."The History of Earth"section, under the "Planetary Life" chapter.
Most shamans or medicine men believe in a Supreme Being-- Shaman of God Page--, their are a few exceptions. The shaman is a holy man. Neither the saints nor the pastoral crew of our churches would dare to take the life-altering journeys of a shaman. The shaman must love his tribe and his land, even the enemies of the tribe are accepted in the eyes of the shaman. He serves the intrinsic sacredness of both nature and man, whether or not he has faith in an absolute-sacred creator. The shaman "becomes" the land, the trees, the animals, and man as well, in his visionary journeys. He feels the "emotions" of the animals and even the plants. Yes, these do have emotions, though without the self-transcendent self-awareness they are spared the most taxing aspect of emotions as we know them. There is no emotions about emotions. When a fish is startled it darts away in alarm. The fish will never feel resentment or anger towards the source of his fright nor feel foolish for getting "all worked up" should there turn out to be no danger at all. There is a kind of joy throughout all of nature, even during pain or loss. A man filled with purpose is the same way: Faith can turn hardships into invigorating challenges and he can endure pain and loss without letting them weigh so heavily upon his mind and emotions.
With the love of the Great Spirit (or at least the mother-power of our star) flowing through him he can make the overwhelming and often dangerous journeys required of a shaman. To "become everything" for the discernment of the best plans of action for the tribe and the land or even individuals in need of healing. He can even play out various scenarios to test out a given plan, sometimes, generations in the future! The whole tribe, even the chief, obeys the shaman, but ultimately he is the servant of them all.
There was no doubt what so ever when I received my vision, that was no ordinary dream! I have only received a few during some twenty years of mystical studies. Some disciplines call them "big dreams" If you ever have a vision you will know that it was no ordinary dream. The symbols in a vision are packed with emotional energy, yet they are stable and in balance. It sears itself in to your mind, unlike a dream, you never have to try to remember a vision. I still remember each of mine as though they had just occurred last night!
In Dr. Stanislav Grof's book Beyond the Brain he reports his conclusions from twenty-five years of shamanic-psychological experiments under careful laboratory conditions. Time and time again he came to the undeniable conclusion that we live in a psychic-energy-ocean. He also found that this connection between us transcends even time and space! Carl Jung received a vision telling him this very thing. It was this vision that guided him to break away from his mentor Sigmund Freud. Instead of the unconscious being filled with repressed memories, he received the vision that showed him some of the aspects of this psychic-ocean, and he coined the term: collective unconscious. So instead of the back of our minds being filled with pushed back junk, our personal unconscious (also Jung's term) is a little piece of the wisdom of all mankind!
As I mentioned, infants think in symbols, not words. Well perhaps you've noticed a good number of symbols in this paper (I have even made up some words for these symbols by hyphenating words together) Words mean only what we agree they mean; symbols have no such handicap. A great vision can often take a great many volumes and discourses to express even part of its meaning. Jung's vision of the collective unconscious is, even yet, being understood; much less fully communicated to the general public. James Hillman, Marie-Louise von Franz, are two of the many psychological researchers carrying on the work from this one visionary assignment.
I have tried to live as a true ambassador of God, though of late I have fallen short. You may or may not accept it when I say I am a priest of the Father in heaven. I could lose my faith or backslide so far that I would give up hope or whatever else and my claim of priesthood would crumble. Yet when a man becomes a shaman he can never go back to being an ordinary man. A shaman is a shaman for life. You do not need faith for the science of the astral planes round about the earth. Phenomena will virtually knock incessantly, demanding to be acknowledged, whether you believe, or not ( even more sometimes to doubters). I am, and always will be, a shaman. I am a shaman and a servant of the Most High.
I have received several visions at key points in my mystical career. The times that I used the empathetic skills of the shaman to have psychic conversations with PRE-verbal infants were, perhaps, even more profound. I have had only one mentor, briefly, in my shamanic career. After many conversations that refined my understanding of Carl Jung's work he introduced me to the works of Stanislav Grof. Dr Grof found that many of our emotions, especially under stress, are colored by our own birth-trauma experiences. My mentor on one or two occasions guided me through the recollection of my own physical birth. The theory is that the memories are stored in the body itself, and simply have to be listened to. It is more of a clearing of the mind then any actual mental effort. I believed that I had made contact with my birth memories and continued on my own. After awhile I had re-adjusted my view of the universe without the colorations of these dark memories, and I was ready to move on.
Children, especially infants, seemed to recognize instantly that I was different. They knew that I had relearned the language of symbols. We (the child and I) almost always went in to a psychic conversation as soon as we met. (This was also before I had learned how to control these conversations.) The children would usually start with a recounting of their own birth-trauma (possibly just joining in to the conversation between me and my own infant-self that was going on at the time). An odd memory of these times is the pause that seemed to follow after there initial psychic discourse. They always seemed to pause after their psychic story as if they where waiting to be told to be quiet, or simply dismissed. I would usually have to encourage them (psychically) that I enjoyed listening to them, even when negative emotions are attached to them. I often had to tell them (psychically) that they were not "Just being silly, or cranky or whatever" Once the birth-trauma was discussed, however, they let it go and moved on! After their grievances were aired the emotional wounds seemed to heal remarkably fast. I seemed to find that infants are extremely resilient emotionally, and they get over their emotional cataclysms quickly!
I soon discovered that this was only the beginning. Once we (the child and I) got past the topic of birth-trauma, I became aware that this was merely the gate to a vast symbolic garden within! Some of the very young children could remember a pre-physical and a pre-human existence. The physical seemed to start in the womb as a tad-pole-like creature in a combination physical and psychic ocean. Almost every other "fish" (archetype) was larger than there tiny form. They quickly learned to stay in the safe, loving waters of "mommy's waters" (personal unconscious). Sometimes the fish in mommy's sea would seem to nearly devour him, but she would always protect him (even from the monsters in her own unconscious!).
To study the greatest truths, both the most profound and the most basic, you'll always find that "All roads lead to Rome." We are born with a keen ability to discern the most subtle differences in meanings and and innate adeptness for handling the most profound truths and symbols. Incapable of presenting a verbal argument in support of what we know is true, we invariably have to accept what we are told. We are taught, almost categorically, to forget this in-born wisdom and listen to "authority" By the time we learn to speak we have almost always forgotten what we had to say! When I looked in to a child's eyes, I saw hope shoot through them like a bolt of lightning! This was clearly confirmed by one of my fellow traveler's observations. Tony said to me, "Her little face just lit up! She bounced and smiled as if to say 'this is what it (life) was all about! That is what I want to be when I grow up; awake-alive!" I could only add humbly, "Yes, I know, I felt it too."
It is, now, a happy birthday!
