I Am, my own Shaman

“A thousand years ago I had people come to me to be healed, in this life I have come to myself to be healed. I am grateful.”

One of my great loves is a love of words well strung. Or words, simply hitting the right spot. A few weeks ago one of my favourite teachers Clarissa Pinkola Estes, posted an article on her facebook which I will include post my rambling. She spoke of going to the wise person who is not cleaned up, someone who lives in the roots, in short someone who has had from what by some standards a “messy time of it”. This stopped me in my tracks. My entire life came into stark focus. Everything that I am, everywhere I have been has made me a wise one. I can claim that in the same breath that this is also not always true. 

This turn of thought made me wonder at the longing that I have had to be a healer, I have learned a few methods... and have only really used them on a few. In a flash of insight. I KNEW. Its me! Its ME! I am here to tend to me. To love me. To nurture me. Tears poured...

Yes, I am my own Shaman this time round. I walk the dunes, the fynbos stretches, love the trees, sit on the beach...to heal me...

Clarissa’s post:

“Dear Brave Souls: about wise souls, truly.

If one were to seek in oneself or in another what some colloquially call 'a wise person'... I'd suggest one go to those who and that which is not cleaned up, those who live and have lived in the roots, not as a temporary tourist excursion but because of a twist of fate, an unwise turn, a struggle to surface from underwater whilst bearing up under the wearing of concrete shoes.

Nice cleaned up Hallmark card 'wisdom' is ok. But it's a map with all the broken gravel blue highways and rough pathways through the woods and across the desert, missing. If you want the skivvy, ask a soul who has been trapped in the broken places for a time, whose scars not only still show, but they GLOW in a certain Light of goodness and love and humor and alertness and aliveness to many things.

And consider this: my great loves-- amongst them Avrohim Heschel, Dorothy Day, Thich Nhat Hahn, Dalai Lama, Rigoberta, Maya... lived face down in the dirt, often fled for their lives-- that... that creates the kind of indelible wisdom that is from the ages, across and outside of time, incorruptible, unsentimental, un-darling, and would never go on a Hallmark or other kind of greeting card without setting the entire paper of the card on FIRE.

I have been for years, threatening in good humor, to bring out my own line of greeting cards with my paintings on the fronts, such as... perhaps the time is NOW to do so. First card thereby from small card publishing company known as 'planet cpe publishing'... this card when opened, reads:

"Tell the person who tells you 'what doesnt kill you makes you strong,' to get lost... permanently. What kills you, kills you, and you lie dead with bones scattered. It is resurrection, for sure that is our great untapped strength, a rough reality you will come to know by screaming, reeling, and scrabbling upward, breaking your fingernails to the quick as you climb the slime wall in order to snatch back your illicitly stolen life again... that, THAT is worth the striving, that you can and will come back from the freakin' 'land away,' where you have been left for dead.

Listen to no one who says such travail is surrounded with flowers and pretty script and lace. It isn’t, it's surrounded by bloodshed and splashed brains and an eerie light that is NOT the end, but rather is

The Presence despite all else, The Presence of Holy Hell on Earth... and you will rise. You WILL rise out of Hell, leaving Hell behind and bringing the Holy back with you to the topside world. Well worn, shined and you have earned the right to wear that kind of true Wisdom hard won. Thus, now: Courage. Courage. Courage."

And with love, and I mean it...
dr.e”