The day begins. My heart couldn’t be any more open. Tears stream down my
cheeks in yoga. I feel serene, still, full, expansive, complete –
in Love with the whole of the world. I feel calm and grounded driving up the mountain.
I have been fasting for the 24 hours prior to ceremony. I have been abstinent
from all pharmaceutical and over-the-counter medications for a month, and Santa Maria
and alcohol for eight months. I have been abstinent from all sexual activity almost for almost a year and a half. I have been eating clean for years now, often vegan
and much raw, for as long as I can remember. I practice yoga daily – pranayam, asana, karma, all of the forms; everything is yoga. Everything is sadhana. I consistently surround myself only with persons of high
vibrational energy; I have learned to ground and cleanse myself after working with persons of lower
vibrational energy.
I am as clean as I can be. I am a hollow reed. I am the
Light Fantastic. I have fasted for days in solitude, in communion with Mother Earth, multiple times, and I have had visions; I have prayed and meditated and have spoken with Mother Nature, and she has seen and heard me and answered my prayers.
What more could Sagrada Madre, Empress of the Forest, Grandmother, have to teach me? What else is there but limitless Love and Light?
–
People arrive at the Wilderness Temple, and I greet them with joy. Amid all the movement, I feel still.
We begin the ceremony.
Sitting upright on a bolster, I feel the kundalini energy flowing
and swirling, grounding through the sit bones and radiating through the crown
of my head.
I am prepared as I take the first drink, a full cup of the
vine itself. She is sweet and earthy.
We verbalize intentions as the sun slips below the horizon.
“My intention is to love unconditionally – myself, my
fellows, this land, the heavens, and all Beings.”
I drink a large cup of the full medicine. She is still
sweet, still earthy.
Upright on the bolster, gently swaying, the great spiral of
energy moves up from Mother Earth and into the Heavens, and from the Heavens back down to Mother Earth. Clockwise and counterclockwise, and vice versa. Arms outstretched, heart forward, I greet Her – I surrender, I surrender, I surrender.
Sweet songs of prayer envelop me completely. The Universe begins having an endless orgasm, and I do not exist.
<i am the ecstasy electric before the bliss>
It is All complete in Its Totality. There is nothing
but Sacred Geometry in all dimensions as spacetime ceases to be. There is nothing but perfection. There is nothing but
Love.
Someone on the Altar comes over and gently tells me that I’m
vocalizing too loudly, could I please contain it?
Is there sound reverberating through the body? Where is the body?
Where am I? I do not exist.
The Divine Feminine from the Altar looks like an illuminated alien faerie angel. I am grateful for her mirror. I withdraw the energy pouring through, deeper
within, and lay on the ground.
The Altar continues to sing the sweetest songs, calling in
the spirits of the terrestrial world. The sound of my tribe purging percolates
into the greater awareness. I hold them with Love, although I do not exist. The
crickets continue to sing as they have been all evening. But I am unaware of
all these soundscapes, because I AM these soundscapes.
A second round is called. I do not hear this. I sit up. I
still do not exist.
I want to offer a cedar prayer on behalf of my little sister
(in life-threatening eating disorder). On my way to offer the
prayer, I see l'Rainbow.
“l'Rainbow, I don’t exist, I’m not real!”
She laughs, “None
of this is real.”
I find myself kneeling at the altar of Sagrada Madre again. Another
full cup? There is no Danka to say anything but yes.
The cedar altar is occupied, so I kneel before a Divine Masculine.
“Brother, I don’t
exist! Can I please have some hapé?”
“You do exist, you’re right here.” It’s
too soon after drinking the medicine for hapé, he says.
“I want to dance, but the
body isn’t coordinated enough to dance, and also I don’t exist,” I say.
“You do
exist, and you can dance.”
I don’t actually exist, but there is no one there to
resist these possibilities.
I dance – or rather, dancing happens before the altar.
Dancing in joyful appreciation of the drums. The body knows how to carry their rhythms.
The forest faerie flows in communion with the sound, her cloak weaving richness
of experience into reality. Others begin to join; dancing is contagious. The
Energy needs to move Itself.
Soon it’s time to offer the prayer for Daria. Sitting before
the Divine Feminine at the cedar prayer altar, the mind is completely clear of conscious thought. Deep in the heart – the heart that is here and everywhere and nowhere – there is an ache, a desire
to take the pain and suffering from the younger One, to heal her pain and suffering
through this experience. The prayer sings unspoken and unthought from the
depths of the soul – the desire to be free from the bondage of a small self,
speaking for Itself. There is no small self here to offer itself for Daria. The
cedar burns the intention away. Danka returns to her sitting place.
Tears flow freely through the eye sockets of the body. Gentle
tears haven’t stopped since the medicine began the healing. Now the deluge
begins.
The singularity of the body’s experience explodes into the
whole of the Universe. The body does not exist. The mind does not exist. The
heart does not exist. Nothing exists. Everything is black, void, peaceful.
Then lights begin to coalesce out of the Nothingness.
Something is being created out of the Nothing. Form begins to take shape. I am
birthing the Universe into existence, or the Universe is birthing me into
existence, and both are One and the same.
“Help.” I don’t want to separate from The Void. It is
happening. The enormity of the process is ineffable. Separation is ineffable. “Pain”
can not describe separation; it is unbearable.
“Please help, I’m having trouble existing,” I hear the body
say. The Village hears the body and responds, “Danka’s having trouble!” “We love you, Danka!” and energetically surrounds
Danka with Its Love.
“Help! I can’t do this. I don’t want to do this. Please, no
more body.” The separation continues. Every iota of consciousness wants to
return to the Void. Every iota of Beingness wants to return to the Void, the
safe, warm, limitless Void. The body is being ripped from the Infinite into finite existence. The body is small and cold and doesn't want to be separate.
“Please, no more body,” it pleads, “Help!”
Purging happens, heavily and violently (How is there so much
purging happening from this body? It was a hollow reed, releasing only air, just
moments before!).
A Divine Masculine comes over, “Can I hold you?” “Please. Please help.
I can’t do this. I don’t want to do this. Please, no more body.” He holds me like
a newborn infant. I feel His Love. His Love is Everything. The body persists, and feels so tired. The body
purges violently, over and over and over again.
The Altar sees that Danka is struggling to exist. Danka
hears them talking; she still does not exist. The team offers hapé, a mapacho
prayer, and pours honey in her mouth – nothing can ground her. The Ceremony Lead Goddess and the Divine Masculine switch places behind
her, cradling her body. She massages the torso to move the Energy. She creates Danka's heartbeat, drumming the chest cavity with her hand. “FOCUS,” she says,
“What is your name?”
“I don’t exist, I am the wind,” says Danka.
“FOCUS. WHAT IS YOUR NAME?”
They get her to her feet. “You have to move this Energy; you
have to move.” She can barely stand upright, held up by her Angels. “FOCUS.
What is your name?”
“I am Danka. I am the wind!” She flaps the wings of her white cloak.
A great gust sweeps through the camp, and it begins to rain. She continues to
flap her wings, standing upright like a puppet in the hands of a Divine Marionettist.
Heavy wind and rain howl through the prayer circle. The storm has arrived. The pregnant
sky releases herself unto the terrestrial world. It rains and rains and rains. The rain passes and the Energy subsides.
Danka is exhausted; she lays back down on the ground.
Soon the rest of the Tribe is moving around her. The ceremony
is over. The Tribe chatters and eats warm soup.
Danka can not move. She still does not exist. She is cold. Her
tribe covers her with more blankets, gives her a hat, covers her swaddled body with a
tarp.
Danka is nowhere; she dissolves, and slips into sleep.
–
After daylight breaks, early in the morning, I make it to
the flying tentsile. I crawl into the warm womb and sleep again.
I am awakened some hours
later by the Ceremony Lead and a Divine Feminine from the Altar who have come by to check on me:
“Queen of the Forest.”
“Goddess, you were controlling the weather! You brought the
wind!”
“I have never seen anyone experience what you did, and NOT
gain super-human powers after it.”
Wow. I am speechless. My mind, the individual self, is still coalescing. It is
time to rise to my feet. It is time to return to my Tribe.
–
I am greeted by whoops and joyous shouts. As I join my people, I see the brilliant double rainbow stretching from rim to rim across the canyon. It is magical. It is unbelievable. It is utterly incomprehensible. I am humbled and tears stream down my cheeks.
<I knew there would be a rainbow>
It storms so that rainbows may arise.
