The Abalone Shell

I have always had a strong intuition that has led me throughout my life. I feel very blessed for this. It led me to my spiritual path.

Sometimes though, I doubt myself. I am human after all.

I have followed a Native American spiritual path for many years now which has given me the gift to pray with a sacred pipe or channunpa. This is a very honorable tool to have and I am still in awe that I have been given permission to be a pipe keeper.

Sometimes I feel unworthy though. I am human.

I am a white woman, born American of a melting pot of different cultures. I do not know who my blood ancestors are. I think of those of us who did not grow up with an ancestral heritage. It’s unfortunate.

I often think of the many natives who know their heritage but have lost their traditions. Some forced out of it, being told this practice was devil-worshipping and to stop their traditions or die. I think about those who are afraid now of their ancestors' sacred ceremonies. I think of the few who still practice these ceremonies but do not want whites associated with them at all. I wonder if they know how blessed they are to know where they come from.

I am incredibly grateful to those natives who do know. To the ones who shared their spiritual tradition with whites. Believing they were a way to help keep these ceremonies from dying out. These native elders taught us that Great Spirit does not discriminate for who can pray in this way. That the channunpa was brought by White Buffalo Calf Woman for all of the people. They tell us that anyone who is drawn to this path can pray in this way if they are respectful.

No, I did not just decide it was my right to be a pipe keeper. I was given permission. I earned this privilege through commitment to this spiritual path. Through believing in the power of these ancient ways. In honoring the earth. In knowing that we are all related, which in Lakota translates- Mitakuye Oyasin. I earned it through years of commitment to these sacred ceremonies.

Though I was not raised on any ancestral traditions, I was taught similarly that we are all created equal. That no part of nature is any less than any human being. Just as my mother was taught and her mother and her mother’s mother. And my spiritual path has taken me into an even deeper understanding of Mitakuye Oyasin.

I love seashells and I have collected them on beaches all over the world. I find that each place has its unique shells that may not be found elsewhere. I have found many different kinds of shells but there is one that I have never seen on any beach. The abalone shell has been used in Native American tradition for ceremonies for eons. It is used to burn sage in for purification and to represent the sea. The ones I own I received as gifts. I somehow never felt right buying one. And I never had one small enough to travel with.

While I was abroad I spent a lot of time praying by the seashore with my channunpa. I thought a lot about what I was doing there. I wondered again, who I was to think I had the right to practice this tradition from a culture that was not even mine.

I was doubting myself again. Then came the gift.

In Malaysia, I was staying in a dorm with other volunteers and one day I came in to find many of them had left. The Europeans who were there before did not spend time collecting shells on the beach. They were backpackers just moving from place to place. All of their packs were gone and the room was practically empty.

           There beside my bed was a very small abalone shell. A perfect shining specimen of the most sacred shell of Native American spiritual practice. It appeared out of nowhere, not even from this continent. And it was the perfect size for travel. I knew it was a gift from creator. A reminder that I am worthy of following this sacred path. That yes, my intuition has served me right and I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

Reminding me that every being on earth is sacred, including this small shell. We are all created equal. We are all related. Mitakuye Oyasin

Shamans and the Ego

One sacred plant medicine, which has taught me a lot, is Huachuma, also known as mescaline, from the San Pedro cactus. It is an integrative plant, meaning it teaches us how to connect with nature and with spirit.
Years ago, I was at the Amazonian Shamanism Conference in Peru where I met a Curandera. At that time, she was the only female shaman I had had the opportunity to be in ceremony with. Through her, I worked with huachuma plant medicine for the first time. Wendy seemed very humble, preferring not to have a title. She was said to have trained with shamans from all over Peru for many years.
During the conference, I sat with Wendy at a day ceremony at the zoo in Iquitos. At one point we were standing in front of the jaguar enclosure where I witnessed something I had not seen before. Wendy stood looking at the big cat for a while and then he came over to the fence. He stood on his hind legs baring his belly and leaned up against the bars, looking at her and purring. I was amazed! Even a house cat does not bare its belly so easily.
Wendy explained to me what had happened. She said that she had gone into a space of shifting her energy to be on his level, focusing on feeling who he was. She did not ask him to do what he did. She just opened up to who he was and he felt her connection. He then returned her honoring of him with that gesture, showing his honor of her as well. He felt a connection, without any threat and felt safe enough to bare his belly, the most vulnerable position for a cat to put itself in.
She had me do an exercise to understand this myself. I focused on the tree I leaned against and began to truly feel its connection to everything around us and me. I felt its acceptance of everything exactly as it is. And I felt like I was part of the tree. It was a powerful early lesson in connecting with nature. 
Wendy was reminding me that as humans we do not take the time often enough to relate to the natural world around us. Our minds are always going and they make a grinding sound that the plants and animals can hear when we come near them. If we can take the time to connect with nature, the noise stops and then nature is more open to sharing its love and lessons with us.
           I invited her to come to the US after that, and share huachuma ceremony with my community in Atlanta. She was a powerful healer. At first, the ceremonies were beautiful and Wendy helped many people to heal, including close friends and family. But before long, as can be typical with powerful healers, ego took over.
           I soon learned that Wendy had an eating disorder. One night I watched her eat a gallon of ice cream and a pound of M&Ms in one sitting. Something I had not thought humanly possible until then. I had to wonder, “How many people were living inside of her?”, literally. It made sense that she could not take off the weight. We had talked about her weight problem and its effects on her health when I last saw her in Peru and she had promised she was working on it. That was not the case.
Then things got even more bizarre. She began to accuse me of things I had not done as if I was out to get her. Her eyes did not sit even in her head and I started to feel like I was dealing with multiple personalities. In one minute, she could be so kind and humble then suddenly a harsh angry personality would take over. Sometimes she even behaved like a little child. She did her best to belittle and berate me whenever possible for the most minuscule things. That was my cue. It was time to say goodbye to Wendy.
           Despite feeling abused by her it was difficult to let her go. I had thought of her like family and she had come to live with me and my partner in Atlanta at the time. It took days to convince her to leave my home. I tried to be as gentle as possible despite her harsh responses. Even though my partner knew how she had been treating me, he seemed to get gaslighted by her and was taking her side. He even went to check on her at the hotel she was staying at, against my wishes.
When I sent a message to my community that I was no longer working with her I got very little response and mostly resentment. I only said that I was disappointed that I could no longer have a relationship with her or host ceremonies for her. I said that I would not discuss why in an email but if anyone wanted to talk to me about it to feel free to call. No one wanted to believe me. They almost all took her side, without even knowing what had transpired between her and me, or even asking. That is the power that a shaman can have on a community. People become so transfixed by the idea of having a “spiritual teacher”, a personal “shaman”, that they will not even question the integrity of the person they now call their “spiritual leader”. This is the problem with the ego. Each of them felt so righteous in their belief that this person was all sacred, that they did not want to hear anything I had to say about my experience living with her.
Sadly, this had not been the first time I had left working with a shaman who had become a dear friend. Only the year before I had been bringing another Ayahuasquero to the US when I accidentally learned of his adulterous ways. Somehow my computer had deleted all of my contacts and when I reached out to him to let him know I would not be able to host ceremony for a while, he quit responding. He quit communicating knowing that I could no longer provide him with customers. I talked to the friend who had introduced me to him and she told me all about the troubles she had come across with him and the adultery. She even found that when she was around him, her body formed large boils that only went away when he was gone. I stopped bringing any more shamans to the US after that and went into my own practice of spiritual study again.
           Years later I found some redemption when I saw one of the people from the ceremonies I hosted for Wendy, at a Sundance. He told me that he was sorry for how people had treated me and that I had been right. He too took her into his home only to be treated badly and then for her to leave in the middle of the night with no trace. The friend who introduced me to her in Peru even apologized for ever getting me mixed up with her. It’s been consoling to know others could relate to my experience with her.
           The universe has blessed me with meeting some powerful shamans for teachers. Many I have had beautiful and healing experiences with, including those who lost their integrity along the way. But the greatest teachings have come from the plant teachers themselves. It is the spirit within them that has enlightened and healed me, showing me how to change my life for the better. I have been blessed to have known and continue to learn from these enlightened spiritual beings. I no longer take psychedelic plant medicines to learn and heal, they told me I did not need to anymore. They helped me learn to connect naturally with all plants and animals. They already taught me all that they could.
Since then, I have had other truly humble human teachers. They are of high integrity but I do not forget that they are human and have flaws. I learn from them but the real lessons are in the experiences the universe provides me and how I respond to that experience. I believe that what is most important is to listen to your intuition about everything a “teacher” is telling you. Decide for yourself if that instruction or healing is beneficial or is it feeding their ego. It is up to you to be aware and to notice when a healer or teacher is not living in integrity. You always have the choice to continue working with someone or not. Be careful that your ego does not decide for you.

PSA: Wildlife Volunteer Work Takes a Special Breed

                

 

PSA: Wildlife volunteer work takes a special breed. Living conditions are not great. It’s usually in remote areas away from any city. You witness many painful things.

But there is also so much beauty that comes with it. 

So,

IF YOU DO NOT LIKE using the kind of toilet pictured, taking cold showers, waking up at dawn, riding a motor bike, being bitten by leeches and mosquitos or maybe even a scorpion, sleeping under a mosquito net with open walls to the jungle, having no air conditioning or heat, having a sub par mattress and bedding to sleep on, washing your clothes by hand, sleeping in a dorm with shared bathroom, being unable to choose your menu, being in a culture where almost no one speaks your language, losing electricity on occassion, being without internet access from time to time, whitnessing humans in the poorest living conditions, seeing the hardest parts of wildlife exploitation and endangerment, or seeing domestic animals in the worst possible conditions, then this is NOT FOR YOU!

IF YOU CAN HANDLE ALL OF THAT AND YOU LOVE seeing animals in the wild, doing tasks that help the proliferation of wildlife, seeing some of the most beautiful natural places in the world, being in the wilderness, learning about new cultures, eating exotic foods, helping communities, being a steward of the environment, being around people who are happy to be alive and interacting with traditional people using very few words, then this is PERFECT FOR YOU!

( for the record we usually do have western toilets and a bidet but almost everywhere else going to and from the project, this is the toilet you will be using with only water to clean yourself with- if any- in many countries)