Embracing Life…part 6

I am wrapping up this series with one final personal story and the bow that took six years to attach to the box, turning it into a gift.

When I was in my 20s, I was full of life. I danced a lot because it felt like the only way to discharge the 10,000 volts pulsing through my system. I still remember one time, driving home from the corporate job I would soon quit, when Candi Staton’s music carried me to God somewhere on West Broadway in Vancouver. The buzz was always there - the electricity, the deep desire to know it all. No one could stop me. But I also knew that if I didn’t honour the call of that lightning, it would set me on a fast and short life course. Most friends in my 20s probably saw me headed down that path. It ran in the family.

Usually found on the dance floor shuffling to house tracks that had love in the chorus and friends into the same vibes. It kept me alive.

So in my late 20s I found a new boat captain with a higher calling…but he still was piloting…lightning that doesn’t understand slow, earthy logic.

You would think the jungle blistering both my eyeballs would have been a warning. Nope. I hadn’t felt more alive in years. It was just a precursor to bigger things.

O Captain, my captain, eventually moored in the deep Amazon, deciding it was time for a six-hour, agonizing tetany attack that felt like my bones were being crushed - all in the name of the thousand adjectives that will never come close to describing the plant apprenticeship. I had been dieting for a while, but this round took me to excruciating levels of pain that lasted for hours. Tetany starts as that tingling in your hands and face, curling your hands into fists. It’s common in deep breathwork. I had met it many times in ceremony, but it usually stayed localized to my face and hands. This time, my entire nervous system was firing at level ten, unable to bend my legs or arms or uncurl my claw-like hands. On top of that, the nerve pain was also level ten.

As my body locked in living rigor mortis, the tetany slowly crept up my torso toward my heart. It was the one and only time I screamed out loud to God to live, as my survival was up for debate that night, and I knew it. If my heart muscle joined the party, that was it. The tetany hovered just below my diaphragm for a long time, toying with me. No icaro, no beatdowns with plants, no bath could touch it. I truly wondered if this was where I would leave the world.

As you’re reading these words, I made it through. However, it took over 48 hours to recover feeling in my hands, and for six months afterward, life was very hard. A lot of things went sideways. It took immense personal discipline and focus to move through that experience while holding space for myself back home.

Afterward, the captain left the building, and the shadow of my shadow whispered, “See, this is what happens when you go all out. You almost die. Sit down.” FAFO. And a thousand other subtle, agoraphobic gems.

One if the years before the BIG dieta. It was hard. I could handle three days of shredding kidney pain on my knees for 72 hours but it was nothing like the night I describe here.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but the shadow of my shadow took a deep seat in my being. I kept calm, carried on, and did the work. I chalked the loss of my sparkle up to getting older and witnessing humans humaning in the name of healing. I was also tired from the depth of the work we were doing with clients.

When the student is ready, the teacher appears.

It was time to learn how to open to life, even when death is possible. Through working together, dreams revealed that this experience had birthed a deep mistrust of the Divine Mother and Father to stand with me in the face of terror and potential death. It’s that same feeling in deep meditation when the personality dissolves, and the expansion feels so massive that the body blacks out from overwhelm. Déjà vu has done it to me too - too much knowing and remembrance in one moment for the brain to process. Blackout.

Thanks to my teacher and over 100 people focusing on me during a call, I was fortunate to have the fortitude and light to meet this question again.

It’s easy to stay open when life is going your way. It’s harder when people are cruel or steal your wallet, harder still in a world with genocide and poverty no one seems to solve. But the question of how to walk with God/Spirit in the face of it all burns inside me. I truly believe a world with more compassion, patience, and love would yield different results than what we’re seeing. Human consciousness is the root of it all.

There needs to be those waving signs, fighting the fight, AND space for those silently choosing to courageously meet every moment with love to the best of their ability. I am not here to be overtly political and some will be angry for that - but my role in this life is facing a different kind of fire.

We need teachers who help others cross the bridges we can’t walk alone. I have had some beautiful souls step forward at the right time and it feels only right to pay that forward.

So for those who wrote asking what happens after the stability piece, I’ll share a bit more.

The stability piece is hard (see part 5) and not to be skipped. It will bring up all kinds of stuff, and if your body is resisting or going into fits, stay with it—you need more time. Keep praying for the Divine Mother and Father to walk with you, to meet what arises without turning away. Invite the discomfort in, practice, and let it move through your heart. I’d give this phase months until things start to stabilize. I faced months of anxiety as my system began to land and purge.

You need to feel like you have feet to stand on and support before going further. Working on your relationship with the Divine Mother and Father (and your own parents) is crucial. Where did you feel your mother or father didn’t answer prayers? Didn’t support you? Had their own ancestral demons to face? Do you need to carry those demons forward, or can you change the story to heal the whole line?

When your body and energy start to stabilize, it becomes easier to give stressors a breather, even for thirty minutes. Then you can step into meditation where the personality structure can rest. The emotional and mental bodies become silent, allowing you to access a field of higher wisdom where intuition and deeper wisdom speak. I used to think the thinking mind would solve everything. It’s a tool, but true inner wisdom for life resides elsewhere. Imagine: we must trust enough to set down the ruminating to truly know. When silence arrives, even for a set time each day, dreams open, and communication begins.

This is the work I aim to open going forward. After years of working with plant medicine clients, I see what works and what needs tweaking. I’m not saying I know better, but many systems Westerners follow were made up. I’ve spoken to old-timers in the Amazon about this. Back in the day, every village did it differently. It comes through - living, breathing, and constantly evolving. As I learn to listen, I ask what wants to evolve through this personality.

Not what “I” want. Every time the “I” demands, I’m looking at what’s in front of me and contracting because it isn’t here now. As we contract less, the Divine Mother and Father can be present because the door is open. Imagine having infinite support? We do.

We just need to keep the door open.