It started outside a rollicking pub in , Ireland. It was about one in the morning and I stopped to listen to some wonderful Irish music as I made my way back to my hotel from a presentation I'd made at the International Transpersonal Psychology Conference. While the official proceedings had ended for the night, the unofficial ones were just beginning to open up. Several fellow early revelers stood on the sidewalk enjoying the scene and talking with one another. I connected with one man in particular, a fellow Californian, and we exchanged business cards, then went on our way.
Six months later I was surprised to hear from him when he called me on the phone and asked me if I would be a guest teacher for Pelagikos, a program he directed that involved tracking blue whales using their eighty-four foot sailboat equipped for research purposes. I would spend one week with the crew and young students sailing off the Channel Islands near Santa Barbara. My job was to "bring spirituality into the scientific enterprise" and to use shamanic ways to help connect with the spirit of the whales. Excitedly I said "yes", and then turned to face my propensity for seasickness.
I ruined every one of the deep sea fishing trips my Dad Ray had taken me on as a kid. I'd even start to lose it scuba diving when I'd spend too much time bobbing around in surface swells. I could even get sick on a surf board! But I was determined, and with the help of ginger pills, wrist bands over acupuncture points and a scopolamine patch from a friend in Switzerland, I set out for my week at sea with hope it would all work and with excitement for the adventure in a new wilderness that was out of my comfort zone.
The first night out we anchored off one of the Channel Islands and I was doing pretty good. My sea legs were getting established and I was beginning to enjoy the pitch and roll of the T'ai Chi dance of waves, wind and bobbing boat. That night the crew and students gathered on deck under ample moonlight for our first ceremonial work. I asked the members of our party to think about a gift they would like to bring to the whales. "Most people take when they come to sea with little thought of giving something back. I get that our task here is to give something back, even if we don't see any whales." I emphasized.
Then I picked up my drum, purified it with the smoke of burning sage and offered the cleansing smoke around the circle to the others. While it was going around, I began a soft beat on the drum and began to pray. "Thank you Great Mother Ocean. Thank you for the gifts of your wisdom being. I pray for your health and the health of all the swimming people. Help us to open to your Medicine teachings, and help us to see what it is we can do to protect and honor you".
The following morning I did another drum journey, this time carrying the spirit of the gifts down into the sea. The beat of the drum carried me to a cave in the depths of the ocean. Inside the cave was a counsel of Whale Elders. They were in a circle surrounding a fire and seemed to be expecting me. I introduced myself and offered a piece of wood to feed Grandpa Fire. One Elder purified me with sacred smoke and motioned me to speak. I told them I had come bringing thankfulness prayers for their being as well as prayers for their health and protection, especially for their children and old people. Also that I came with gifts from others. One by one I introduced each member of our party who came up and shared their gift.
When all the gifts had been shared, I asked the Elders to consider sending us some messengers on the next day when we went out to a channel between the islands where the biologist on our crew thought there was a good chance we would find whales. "I do not know if it is for our greatest good, or for yours'," I said, " that we come into contact with you tomorrow. If it is not, I accept that, and will still continue to pray for your lives and give thanks for your wisdom teachings, for you are some of the oldest people on the planet and you know the history going way back to the earliest times. We open to whatever your counsel feels is best for us all".
The next day we sailed off with hopeful anticipation. The biologist sat high up in an observation chair with her trusty binoculars. The boat, Dariabar, sailed smoothly through the sea. We were in open waters now, the only land was far away. Suddenly an excited cry came from above; "Spouts three hundred yards off the starboard bow!" "They're humpbacks" she yelled with glee. The skipper turned the boat in the direction of the spouts and off we went. Through my own binoculars I could make out the contours of these huge masses undulating through the waves, then disappearing into the depths only to appear again in five or six minutes somewhere else.
I was thrilled. I'd seen gray whales migrating up and down the California coastline before but that was always when I had been on shore watching them from a land base. Now I was in their home, in their terrain, and it was an entirely different experience. The ocean was alive and breathing, constantly changing in mood and cycles of wind, wave, color and sound. The whales knew what was happening and danced with it in graceful T'ai chi like movements that were millions of years old. It was a bit frustrating though, because each time we approached them, they would disappear into the depths and reappear further and further away.
Then it happened. Something the biologist who had been tracking whales for years said was not unheard of but was very "unusual". Something that stunned us all, then sent shivers running up and down our spines amidst bursts of gleeful shouts of excitement, joy and amazement. Two blue whales, longer than our eighty-four foot boat, surfaced just ten feet away and began to slowly circle the boat! Speechless in awe, I watched these magnificent beings who are the largest animal that we know of to have ever lived on Mother Earth, or Mother Ocean I should say, do laps around our vessel checking us out. "Unbelievable" was all I could mumble as I and the others ran around the boat following the whales, taking pictures, taking in the immensity of their being and that they are intelligent creatures who I felt had been sent by the Elders Counsel from the drum journey.
Four times they circled. Close enough to spit on! But instead of spit, or harpoons, I sent them my love and thanked them for coming to us. I opened myself to their means of communication and let my body-being take in what ever they had to send. I felt communion with them and that they were showing me a more graceful way of being than my culturally conditioned push-force-work hard to make things happen mode of being. I felt the ancientness of their way and that they were messengers:
You have to learn a new way of living, you two-leggeds. You have to relearn how to respect the Sea of Being which is the ocean we all swim in. We are all connected. We are all related. We are all equally loved by the Creator of this Great Universe. You have forgotten and live your lives as if you were the most important of God's creations. But as you can see here, you are not. We must all learn to work cooperatively, together, for the good of all or soon great changes will come that will reduce your arrogance back into a respectful humility which is required for all of us to live together in harmony and happiness. Remember us, your swimming relatives, and help us to care for our home which is really your home as well.
Then they left. They swam off away from the boat and while we saw them and enjoyed sailing with them throughout the rest of our time at sea, never again did they come that close. No, their message was delivered, and then they went on their way. As I write this now, I'm back on land, but I still feel connected to the Counsel Fire of Whale Spirit Elders and their special gift to us. I feel a telepathic line of communication has been opened and their presence is as close as my breath.
Less than a week after my return from sea I was up at ten thousand feet in the High Sierra on the annual Vision Quest that I had been doing for twenty three years. On this particular quest the Medicine Teachings, and testings, came not from one of the larger creatures, but from one of the smallest--the mosquito! The snow was just melting at the higher elevations and even though it was late August on the calendar, it was just the beginning of spring in the mountains. The good news was that the ample water supply was quenching the thirst of Mother Earth after years of drought and the wildflowers were out in abundance to celebrate the good news. Unfortunately, the mosquito people were out in full force as well.
They arrived shortly after sun-up, and stayed with us throughout the day with no breaks for lunch, until several hours after the sun set and the temperatures dropped below their liking. I'd never seen mosquitoes with such non-stop force and numbers, not even in the Peruvian Amazon when I had been studying with a Quechua shaman years before. This was the absolute worst. All kinds of repellent were tried and failed the test. It was too hot to stay in my tent during the day. I tried it and it was a sweatbox. In desperation I bolted outside and covered my self in long pants and windbreaker wrapping the hood around my head to offer the least amount of target that I could manage to and still breath. That's pretty much how I spent my time, all covered up in a protective cacoon.
At first I was angry and resentful at this ruination of the experience I look forward to all year. I tried meditating, talking to the spirit of the mosquitoes, being calm, then totally loosing it and flailing away with my hands slapping at them, trying to catch them and throw them away with a warning to go back to their chief and tell the others to leave me alone. Then finally killing them, one by one, hundreds of them hoping they'd get the message and depart for kinder territory. I'd ask their forgiveness for taking their lives and say a prayer for their spirit, which is pretty much how I spent the first few hours alone on my quest site high up on a ridge hoping for a breeze to bring some relief. Absolutely nothing. Just still, stifling hot air that the mosquito people seemed to take as an invitation to party with my red blood as the ceremonial meal.
I wanted to leave. I wanted to go home. This isn't what I expected and it sure wasn't what I wanted. But like many things in life that come unbidden by our wants and desires, this situation was not leaving just because I didn't want it to be there. This blast of energy from the nagual, from the mystery of second attention, was doing its' own thing and I just happened to be in the middle of it. Terrific! So what did I do? Freak out of course! I yelled and ranted and raved and cursed and at the end of my outburst the mosquito people were there in an even thicker cloud than before. Alas. What was I to do? Freaking out moved my energy and honored my feelings. Nothing was repressed. So I felt better except the source of my frustration was still there buzzing in my face their defiant annoying izz, izz, izz.
Words ran through my head. "Make the blend. Find a way to accept their presence and join with them. Find their medicine. Open to their teachings. Get their message. Surrender. Let go. Trust they are here for your greatest good and get on with learning about the intelligence and perfection of why they are here as helpers for you in some mysterious way that you are not getting as long as you hold on to your attachments about comfort and having it be the way you want it to be." I heard the words clearly enough and deep inside I knew they spoke the truth. I was just having a hard time getting with the program.
Then I heard it. Another sound. Above the song of the mosquito people and that took some doing. It was coming from within me. I closed my eyes and listened carefully. It was a sound like that made by a rain stick, those shafts of wood with small pebbles placed inside so that when the stick is held upright all the pebbles trickle down the shaft making a pleasing sparkle sound as they go. A moment later came a visual image and I recognized it instantly. It was something I had beheld six weeks earlier on a different mountain, this one all covered in a blanket of snow.
I was on a climb of Akoo Yet, or Mt. Shasta as it is more commonly known, finishing up a years work with the sixth cycle of the Shamanic Healing and Empowerment Group. I and three other climbers were struggling up the steep incline of 2,500 foot long Avalanche Gulch. The sun was just breaking over the horizon and rays of light were bouncing off the snow cover in bursting rainbows of brilliant illumination. Our altitude was nearing eleven thousand feet and we were all gasping for breath as we slowly inched our way up the precipice, ducking occasionally to miss the deadly fall of rocks hurtling down from above with the beginning melt of the snow warmed by the light of Father Sun.
It was beautiful but the going was tough. Lungs cried out for relief and straining muscles for rest. But we had a long way to go and we couldn't afford to rest for more than a few minutes. We had to get through the gulch before it turned into a bowling alley. Just as we were traversing a particularly steep section of snow and ice, I heard a very strange sound. It was the trickling sound of a rain rattle.
I looked up at the sky. Pure blue without a cloud in sight. Strange, was I hearing things, an auditory hallucination brought on by altered physiology of the body's response to physical and psychological stress? I shook my head and listened again. No it was real and it was real close. I looked over in the direction I was traversing and there is was, the origin of the trickling sound. It was a Flowing Crystal River , the likes of which I had never seen before on all my climbs of this mountain or any other! A river of frozen ice crystals, four to six inches long and perfectly formed, glistening in radiant sunlight slowing cascading down the entire mountain.
The sound was magically melodic, the sight visually stunning. Again it was an experience of awe--the beautiful creative power of Mother Earth and Great Mystery offering its finest song of encouragement to the weary climbers. We took it in with reverence and joy and I could feel its song trickle down into my bones caressing me in gentle blessings from Mis Misa, the spirit of the holy mountain. It was this sound that I suddenly began hearing on the ridge in Yosemite above the drone of the mosquitoes. Gladly I welcomed it in.
The sound and vision of this gentle medicine helped me open my constricted vision. I saw how the mosquito attacks were reminders of the many little frustrations that set me off in my life back home; slow bank lines, being asked to do something by someone in my family or the phone ringing right in the middle of a yoga posture or prayer, unconscious drivers who cut me off or who "mess up" my tight schedule by going so slow we miss the light that I "needed" to get. Unexpected bills. You get the picture.
The mosquitoes were giving me ample time to notice my habituated response to such irritations--freaking out with harsh violent judgments and temper tantrums of wanting my way when I want it! Responses that didn't serve own inner peace and well being and didn't do much for my relations with others either. So I got to really observe it all from the perspective of the witness. Then I had even more time to work at untying the knots in my mind that created my stress-producing reactions and replace them with thoughts, images and behaviors that helped me access a state of equanimity. I began to bless the mosquito people and sense that the work I was doing here would somehow help me deal with the mosquitoes of my life.
I must have found a significant key because after I began this new approach to dealing with the adversity of constant buzzing and biting, the whole dynamic shifted. I was no longer battling enemies, I was working with allies who were helping me work on myself--opening to larger rhythms of nature, just like on the ocean, and as the whale people had demonstrated so wonderfully, making the blend with the truth of what is. Mining the gold. Using the pressure to transform coal into diamonds. The mosquito people were not a problem for me the rest of the trip though they continued to be around. I noticed that when ever I thought about clouds and rain to provide relief from the heat, or a breeze to clear the air, shortly thereafter it would appear. Gifts of grace.
Whale People, Mosquito People, Flowing Crystal River. Gifts of Grace all. Mystery gifts from Great Spirit bringing through the teachings and testings necessary to ground deeper in to walking a Medicine Path of faith and trust, love and compassion, happiness and beauty. I'm working on it. One step, one wave at a time.