The Shaman’s Fire & The Alchemist’s Flame III

The fire and the flame of transformation are capricious, fickle and lethal allies. They’ll force you into your suffering and then drop you flat into the boiling vat without looking back. They’re cold blooded in their execution and ruthless in doing so. They just want you to be free. Likewise, to hold Sacred space for another in their Dark Night journey is a tricky dance, partially co-created with their wellness in mind and also in disregard for their preferences.

I just got off the phone with the call-in client I’ve recently written about. After phoning out of the blue and catching me on a day off, this dear one cried for the first five minutes, nonstop. As she wasn’t able to complete a sentence or answer a question in response, I quickly recognized a very old pattern playing out.

Whether transference is kicking in or she just needs me to hold the pain she simply can’t, I realized she wasn’t just calling for support. She was calling to be saved. Hey, I know this one really well. (And if you’ve ever been emotionally buried, you know it too.) However, sooner or later - in order to get better, she’s going to have to learn to meet her self and embrace her suffering for, with and by herself. In this, no, we can’t do it alone and yes, we have to do it for ourselves.

Do you remember training wheels when you were a kid – on the little booster bike you first learned to ride on? I do, recalling how comforted I was knowing I had these little wheels keeping me upright and rolling along. They were my cycle’s support system. And yet, there came a time when to cross the street and go farther afield, they had to come off. I had to lose the safety supports to ride freely on my own.

A lot of people are so enmeshed in their personal story and in extreme cases, their acute suffering, they can’t possibly see out the other side. They’re so used to their distress, they aren’t able to envision themselves without their pain. They’re not only used to it, they’ve come to define themselves by it. It’s as if it becomes a necessary appendage attachment, required to function properly or is it just what’s become normal?

When you’ve come to accept your sadness as a familiar and reliable companion, you’ve already acquiesced your power and let your pain body become your accepted standard. It just gets too much. You lay down like a tired animal, willing to concede the inevitable and give up the ghost. Eventually, enough is too much.

The Shaman’s fire is like a ragged blade that cuts through the miasma of your stuckness, making an
irreparable slice through the fabric of your life. This transformative act is the end and a new beginning, all at once. At the time of course, all hell breaks loose in you, like opening a bag of bees. The sense of overwhelm and confusion is near total, with no clear sightlines anywhere. The enveloping murky fog feels like it owns you, inside and out.

And at the time, it does. As a result, there’s really no way to receive the well wishes, wisdom or insights of another. It bounces off the protective/defensive coating of the dying shell of your ego. And the truth is, until you push off this shell, it really does own you. How to tell someone who’s really crunching, this imposing truth? Better they pick up some momentum, first. How to convey the impossible Zen notion: As long as they keep breathing and engaging in their life, life will rescue them. Huh! How is this possible?

  

 That’s the parallax view, isn’t it? Of knowing all really is well in the mystery of Divine timing and yet, knowing they’ll have to do an enormous about-face, big time life shift to pull it off. Experience says it’ll take their eventual best to rebirth themselves. But hey, you gotta believe something good will come out of it. This is especially so if someone else has been that rock for you, somewhere along the tortuous path of your journey. It becomes a personal dharma duty in return – a duty to reply the blessing for another in need.

Only having been scrapped out over the years did I learn, it’s the friction in the situation that’s rounding me smooth. The squeeze of a life rebirth is supposed to feel tight and like fusion, what comes out isn’t what you started with. And this is a very good thing, however at the time, it just sucks!

One of the blessings bestowed by the Goddess is I’ve learned to let go much better. I’ve gotten better at going with the flow Lifeforce directs instead of as before – which was doubly scary – when I pushed+pulled my way through life and not so gracefully, either. Often hardly. For instance, it was only when I went to healing school in ’96 did I learn I’d been mostly living from my wounded child, all my frikkin’ life.

Most always reacting from seeing life through murky emotional filters, that didn’t have a lot of upside, self-worth wise, I like most, did my best with what I had. In this, it’s near impossible to steer a clear path when the emotional lenses are so cloudy and smudged. It’s like driving in a sand storm. Whatever direction is anybody’s guess. From immediate impression, a lot of people seem to live this way, however, I may be biased, living in NYC. But then again …

Yet, in these in-between-the-world times, the Turning of The Ages, you simply gotta go on. You have to endeavor to persevere, especially now. Energy moves, that’s its nature. Either up the spiral or down, you’re gonna go. Energy nor life remains stationary for very long, especially these days. Not making a choice is still a choice. The good news is: You get to decide. Sitting still too long as like full-body frostbite. You gonna die.

Thank You & Love To Us All ~

 

PS I invite you to share these posts with anyone you feel would benefit and if you feel inspired, to write your feedback insights through the ‘Comment’ key on this blog. Also, please check out my work, Heart Tantra - The Attunement Session - on my web site heartantra.com. I offer in-person sessions here in the NYC area and absentee or long-distance work if you don't. Always Blessings On Your Way!