I have been home from Magical Anima for some 2 weeks now.  It is amazing to me how quickly the vividness that is apparent in the wildnerness, and particularly in magical places of power, seeps away once home and back in the anesthetized world that I live in.  And that brings something to mind.  Though the world I live in is far less wild than than the pinkrockwalledWONDER in New Mexico, how anesthetized I am depends wholly on me.  Good reminder.  At any rate, this particular visit was quite different from last year's in many many ways.  First, I had company.  Christine and I made the journey together, and that was fantastic.  Here's a clip:

  I think we both wondered how we would do on such a long journey and then in close-quarters.  And it was just find.  We seem to have a great ability to be present together and also quiet, seperate, alone, and apart.  I have been ever so blessed in my life to find people that I can be fully myself with - which includes long period of silence and not-togetherness.  My syster, Christine, is one such person.  That she is also on her own journey toward Herself  makes our time together and apart even more amazing.  Here's another picture (and I think one that really catches us for some reason):



So, having Christine there with me was very different.  I was thrilled to have her see this amazing place and to meet the amazing folks that live there: Loba, Kiva, Rhiannon, and Wolf.  If you haven't already looked at the Anima site and the blogs check them out here.

Christine was not the major difference.  It was in the affect the canyon had on me.  Last year's journey was my first truly alone quest toward myself.  I walked away from my house, my Mom, my dog and cats, and my husband to go into the canyon.  I took off my wedding ring and stripped myself of my armour to the best of my ability.  I knew going in that I was going to face Fear.  Again.  And I did.  Fear, loneliness, and myself.  And it was often a gut wrenching experience (gentled though with periods of intense nurturing).  I cried, felt myself torn apart, had intense dreams and visitation experiences, experienced some extrasensory issues, became physically sick, and had vice grip cramps and intense bleeding - all in the scope of 5 days.  I KNEW the entire time that I was experiencing a birthing process.  And I came away from Anima and changed jobs, took a hiatus from school, and ultimately divorced my husband of 17+ years.  Needless, perhaps, to say, I was a little nervous about this year's journey while at the same time being intensely excited. 

When Christine and I finally arrived in Reserve and then made it to the place where we would leave Molly (my VW) for the week, I sensed that i had a homing device under my skin somewhere.  I knew WHERE I WAS and WHERE I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE in that moment.  We had heavy packs.  Very heavy.  and we decided to carry them in - 2 miles across 7 river crossings.  We silently walked, passing a tomato back and forth between us because there was no more room in either pack.  About half way in, a friend who was on a working weekend offered to drive us; we refused.  Somehow, it seemed right to walk the entire way in and do it with those heavy packs on our backs.  The closer we got, the more i felt a sense of coming home, coming full circle.  Returning, as though the real quest had started with my departure last year.

And that is what my whole visit felt like this year.  Coming full circle.  So much so that I wondered if I would take nothing from the canyon this year.  Would I gain anything? Or was this journey only about tying up the ends?  It was such a gentle experience.  Truly.  Were there tears?  Yes.  I decided to do a vision quest while there (and ultimately fell asleep I was so comfortable).  While I thought this would be a rippingtearingvicegripcontracting experience, i was not prepared for the way it really went.  So sure was I that I need to plant myself (something Loba had encouraged me to do) before it became dark, I gathered little wood and ended up sitting down long before sun down (time moves strangely in the canyon).  As I watched the last golden rays shrink away from the top of the mountain, I began to cry.  I felt myself push the last of this layer of dead skin from my body.  And it hurt.  It was the layer of IAMNOTHINGIFIAMNOTJOHN'SWIFE&WHOIMAYBECOMEWILLNOTBEGOODENOUGH.  I wept.  Snot flew.  I heaved.  I squeezed and rubbed and rolled.  And then I stopped.  Sat.  Stared.  And darkness fell.  There was no fear.  Nada.  Only comfort.  Like being held.  I didn't start my fire for a long time, and I watched the stars come out.  Then I dozed.  And woke.  And watched the stars move.  I finally started my fire, mostly because I felt like I needed to, was supposed to.  And i soon discovered that I had been in such a hurry to sit, to plant in place, that I had not gathered enough wood.  So I watched my fire die.  I watched the waning moon rise and felt the first cramps of that moonth's period start.  And i slept.  Safe.  Next to my dead fire.  When I woke, the stars had moved again, and the moon was high.  And dawn came.  Quietly, then noisily as all the feathered folk woke up.  It was freezing.  Freezing.  Freezing.  Something inside of me was different though, and I don't know how to really speak of it.  I had sat and slept, howled and kept silent under a star-filled sky in the wilderness, and when I unfolded myself, something was different, and something still is.  As I walked back from the river, having gone down to splash and cleanse a bit, a huge blue heron flew over me toward the sun, singing in his raspy voice.  Beautiful.  And I knew I was bleeding and felt my deep connection to Luna.  And I cleaned up, gathered blankets, put water on my coals, and walked back to the Gaia lodge.  The ripping and tearing that I experienced before dark was the last time I really cried during this journey. 

The rest of the time was spent singing.  Singing songs with no words that came from deep deep down inside of me.  Singing alone and sometimes singing with Christine.  The rest of the time was spent drumming.  Drumming alone and drumming with Christine.  Drumming and singing.  Drumming and howling.  Drumming and sensing the rhythm of my untamed self.  The rest of the time was spent learning or remembering.  Learning or remembering that death is our destiny.  It is right there all the time, and when it is time, Death will fold us into Her arms and take us away.  What happens after that is not my concern.  What happens before that time is absolutely my concern.  I must LIVE and LIVE now.  I cannot afford the dreamstate numbness that I have often bathed in.  I must be fully ALIVE now.  Knowing this, I created a list of things to do RIGHT NOW.  It still amazes me, though, how easy it is to sleep.  Still, there is something percolating inside of me.  I know it.  And so I come back to AWAKENESS when I realize that I have been asleep.

  This is a moment to moment task, since sleep seems to be my most cherished activity at times!

While there, I was able to spend several hours with Kiva Rose.  She is my teacher.  I am attempting to embrace my medicine woman self, which I believe is also my witch self, more fully, and am enrolled in Anima studies with Kiva.  We walked up the special wash near the lodge, and she pointed out different medicinal plants, and we talked about those that can be especially useful for Bipolar symptoms, anxiety, and trauma related issues.  We also talked deeply for a time about the medicine wheel and my birthplace in the West.  It was enlightening and so so so relieving!  I was encouraged to embrace my animal self (though I have yet to figure out exactly who my animal tribe is)....my need to be in my den, to be alone, to have quiet.  And this led to talk about my work.  Kiva is so supportive of who I really am, and she seems to so clearly understand that my path in life scares me a bit - because of its sure-to-be unconventionality.  Talking of my nature as a West person helped me to see that path and see it in the light of my personality, of my being.  This lends to a bit more courage... 

Courage Inc and HerStory came out (in part) of this discussion.  Courage Inc. started before I left, but talking with Kiva and gaining more of a personal understanding of myself helped to clarify it for me.  HerStory is really Christine's baby.  We talked and talked about it on our drive home.  These two startups are, at this point, voluntary and don't support income, but that will not always be the case.  My intention and my desire is for Courage, Inc. to be at least half of my support one day.  As i talked with Kiva, I remembered a doctor of mine encouraging me to work as a counselor only part time and to dedicate the rest to art and other activities.  He said this based on my Bipolar diagnosis.  Kiva and I talked about this too.  As a way of supporting and fully embracing my inherent sensitivities, gifts, abilities, and needs.  What a deal.

I am fully embracing my identity as a Medicine Womyn and Witch.  Fully.  That is my path, and what comes of it, well, that is the journey.  This journey includes figuring out how I will bring my medicine to others, where I will live and plant roots, how I will interact with the people and beings around me, and how I will relate to Mama Earth.  One of the missing links in my spiritual path was my relative disconnection from Her.  I was connecting via mind, via dance, via study.  I had forgotten the purest connection.  Sun, dirt, water, plants......  She is outside and inside of me.  The best place for me to connect to Her is through Her.  Outside.  In the heat and the dirt.  And I realized that by connecting to Her body, I will connect to my own, my trance life will be more grounded and deeper, and my medicine will become stronger.  I know these things to be true. 

More change is coming. 

jw

Please Forward to Friends & Post to Any Forums– Announcing:

The Shaman Path Intensive
(for both men and women)

July 2nd - 5th, 2009

www.animacenter.org

A 3 day intensive held not in a classroom but an ancient Place Of Power. Taught by Jesse Wolf Hardin and Medicine Woman Traditon cofounder Kiva Rose … with the focus on realizing a deep and experiential understanding of empowered self… and on redefining the role of the contemporary shaman in terms of envisioning possibilities: maximizing awareness, discovering purpose, bridging the worlds, and personal, community and ecological healing.

“The change of direction can be accomplished only through what Carl Jung has referred to as ‘an obedience to awareness’.”
-Joan Halifax  The Wounded Healer

Specific topics will depend on the needs and desires of the participants, but may include:
• Developing conscious hyperpresence, hyperawareness, hypersentience, precognition and intuition, tapping primal instinct
• Sensing, connecting with, drawing energy and discerning lessons from the various manifestations of the earthen spirit.
• Recognizing and learning from our kindred spirits, including our animal totems
• Reshaping perception
• Plant medicines and teachers
• Moving energy, and the Animá principals of healing
• The Animá Medicine Wheel
• Reincorporating the scattered or denied parts of our whole selves. Reintegrating mind, body, heart, spirit and earth.

“Kiva is a wise medicine woman, teacher and healer whose gentle integrity is truly an inspiration. I honor her strength, her consciousness, her wisdom…”
-Ivy, on Tribe

Kiva will do the opening teaching session with the help of Loba, orienting, defining, grounding and evoking…. as well as discuss plant medicines and teachers, cofaciliate a Medicine Wheel discussion and possibly lead a plant walk if there are enough requests.   Wolf will join Kiva teaching any other topics the group chooses to focus on, and will provide shamanic drumming at a special location on Saturday night.

    “A surprising experience; archaic, fresh, future, wild, refined, all at once… my respects to Jesse Wolf Hardin.”
-Gary Snyder, Pulitzer Prize-winning author

Together participants walk through the portal of the feeling heart, to enter into deeper connection with the daily miraculous… taking responsibility as potentially powerful, artful co-creators of our world and our reality. Those wishing, have the option of spending a night or more out on a mini-quest, or otherwise customize the weekend experience to best meet their needs.

“I find Kiva Rose to be wise, inspiring, inquisitive and kind…and surefooted, as she walks the land and learns from the green growing things.”
-Kimberly Arana, Herbalist, Propriatress of The Blessed Thistle

“Jesse’s voice inspires our passion to take us further — seeing the world whole — even holy.”
-Terry Tempest Williams, author of Refuge

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To Participate, Click Here For Your Shaman Path Registration Form:

shamans-path-intensive-registration.doc

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 Download this Announcement without photos, to kindly forward and post:

shaman-intensive-announcement.rtf

If you’d be willing to printout Shaman Intensive Flyers and post them in appropirate places, please dowload the file here:

 Shaman Path Intensive Flyer

And click here to read Jesse’s essay: “The Shaman: Awakening the Powers Within”:

5-shaman-path-essay.doc

Logistics & Particulars will be mailed to anyone sending in a Registration Form.

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    “Jesse Wolf Hardin has a true understanding of embodied spirituality – the sacred spirit in nature and in human beings… not as an abstraction but in ways sensual, practical, and transformative.” 
-Starhawk, author of  Spiral Dance

  “Wolf sings us Full Circle to the raw, sweet wildness within, and calls us forward to the future primeval.”

-Joanna Macy, author of World As Self, World As Lover

“Kiva Rose inspires me. Her passion, fascination and perpetual curiosity of plants, people, nature, and the relationship that binds them in wholeness stirs those touched by it; encourages our own listening, our own insights and musings.  Kiva, in a word, rocks.”
-Jim McDonald, Practicing Herbalist, Teacher & Author

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Thank you very much for forwarding this announcement, and posting it on any forums or sites you may be involved with.