Still it grows

I am meeting native Americans on facebook, Medicine men are answering my questions. My job situation is in flux. Life is good but challenging...this is not easy. I am tired when I do my tobacco ties, I remember ex lovers, meeting current friends, University. I remember peoples weddings, funerals, births. I remember new years eve many times...has my life been moving forward, or spinning around on a loop?

A dream

Recently I have noticed my nails growing and getting dirty. I seem to have have to cut them more than usual this year. Maybe it's a slight change in diet or temperature. Last night I had a dream. There was a baby, there was a man, when I think of him now he reminds me of a guy I met outside Paris. We were on the bed, the day was bright, I turned and my finger nail grazed the baby's head. He told me I had done serious significant damage. I was sceptical. I looked a the baby's head. There was a huge livid bruise just beneath the skin. I was amazed. It was deep deep red, almost as if I gouged a hole in the skull and only the thin layer of skin was keeping the wound from  being exposed.

The Vision quest.

I am continuing with the life cord I am making. Sometimes is exhausting. Lots of things come up for me as I remember each month of my life. Many things I had forgotten. I am finding guides every where. My life has been turned upside down, and yet nothing on the surface has changed.
Sometimes making little sacks of tobacco really gives the urge to skin up a ciggarette and have a smoke. With my addictive nature it's not a good idea. My asthma probably wouldn't enjoy it either.

I seem to be on the express train to somewhere. Every day is throwing up new doubts, and challenges, and I stay fixed on doing my vision quest. Maybe I won't be able to get the time off work. Maybe I will. Nothing is certain. It seems this is the way it's supposed to be. I will take a photo maybe of my life cord before I go and post it here... I don't know if I am doing it right, or if there is a right way even.

When you open yourself to change , change comes quickly.

Going inside

I have been on a journey. I put it out in public at the start of the year that I was lacking a spiritual practice in my life. I needed to find some form of expression. Pretty soon afterwards the person I said it to, invited me to come to a sweat lodge in  village about an hour from here. I had never done a sweat lodge before but I was familiar with the physical idea of people stitting in a hut in the dark with roasting hot stones in the centre. I had heard of this in many 'indigenous' cultures. So I jumped at the chance.

I had little or no idea what I was letting myself in for. I still don't. I asked questions but got no answers. I did get a message to contact a guy and do what they call a vision quest. When this was first suggested, I loved the idea. It was finacially impractical, logistically difficult and I let it drop.

I went 4 times and sweated . Each time I got this same talking to. The last time I thought I better really pay attention.  So I sent an email and was told I should go to Paris and be seen.

I was anxious about things like Personality Cults, and new age wackos and all sorts of things that could be wrong, but it seemed to open up before me once I decided to go.

To make a long story short. I found myself in Paris this weekend, on the outskirts in a village next to a forest. I knew no one. I arrived. I involved myself in the journey to cut young trees and collect stones. A hut was constructed. People introduced themselves one by one.
I am not really saying anything here. I have skimmed over all the details and only given a brief outline of the experience. Suffice to say I react to people on a feeling level. When I meet someone for the first time, I look in their eyes, but even before that, I feel. I have always been like this. I feel energy and I react accordingly, or I respond to that energy, with my own baggage I suppose, my own energy. So some people I was instantly in touch with, others required that I waited. So I did. Sometimes I don't.

For many people it was their first time. There was in total I guess about 20 of us. The shamin was a swiss guy who looked nothing like a shamin. But he had studied theology and then later studied with the Lakota people, and then also studied with shamins in I think Malaysia. The fire keeper was German, tatooed quiet, we communicated a bit.

I had the most fun I have had in a long time. I was taken by fits of laughter, bouts of tears, I was burned by the sun and the steam of the sweat lodge, I was touched by peoples stories.....not always expressed through words... I could feel things. Yeah I know some of it was in me, but for sure some of it was in them.

The shaman accepted me. I will now do a vision quest in June 9-16. I have long thought about this. I have to make a little sac of tobacco for every month of my life. and string them together, I have to clean up my act, get my house in order, say goodbye, and go have my vision.  I don't know what will happen. I don't know if this person writing will come back. But I will go inside, deeper than I have ever been before... it's scary but it is fun, but by god it's scary.

Think of me!