02-16-2008, 12:00 AM
On A Path With Heart.
As usual there is no hope for explanations so I'll just tell you the dreams I had that began this week's journey. Friday I was
feeling pretty good, payday and I wasn't too tired, ate supper out and drank some coffee and the waitress remarked on
how that was going to keep me awake all night. When I got home I suddenly felt extremely tired, went to lie down and was
sound asleep in moments. Since my vision quest caffeine has been like that for me, at times it puts me into a restive trance.
A cup of tea and I'm cruising the stars, pretty neat. Things work backwards for Heyoka.
I had two dreams, one of a change that is coming, this is the second time this year I've had that dream. Each time a storm
was approaching, dark thunderclouds and lightning, and each time when I took shelter the storm became a hoop of energy
passing over me and everything around me, changing things. The first time this happened the world changed from late winter
to mid spring in an instant, suddenly there were green leaves on the trees and flowers in bloom, a cool rain settling on the
new growth. This last time I was in the cave where I intended to go last weekend, and when the hoop passed over me it
took me and the world back a few steps, when I came out I was in a different place. A new set of surroundings, new
circumstances. A change is coming. That was a good dream, I thought.
The second dream I had was in a pattern that I associate with one of my teachers. Since I began studying his works he has
sent me advice in dreams that have particular marks, specifically signs. Not flashy ones, just small ones like the green
streetcorner signs you see in suburbs. They pop up in answer to my questions, with appropriate words or riddles for me to
solve. This one popped up in a lot next to the house where I live, it said, "Whirlwind Mountain Base Camp, Coming Soon."
I have mixed feelings about that one, it represents something I will do later this year, sometime soon. It's a tough one, not
primary school like the things I've been doing lately. This is how I'm getting ready for it, flexing my spiritual muscles a bit
and learning to sleep on rocks.
Physically this week's journey began at the same parking lot where I spent the night the weekend before, except that I did a
bit of walking this time like a regular person would do. Well, almost like that. I travel pretty light, took ten Tiger's Milk bars
and a six ounce packet of beef jerky, two Diet Pepsi's and a canteen of water. A pack of cigarettes, I need one of those
for my ceremony, a blanket and a mosquito net/tent, my Shaolin staff, that's about it. Enough for two days in the back
country. No compass, no map, told no one where I would be or when I would be back. Foolish to do that, suppose
something happened? Hmm, suppose something happened? Cool, an adventure to deal with.
It's about five miles to where my friend lives, two miles down some of the roughest mountain trail we have around here, two
miles bushwhacking along the river bottoms, the rest trying to get to the place when you finally have it in sight. Popular with
backpackers but it's already getting too hot for them, we have two days of good weather every year and half of that is gone
now. And of course, it's illegal to camp where I was going, it always is, it seems. No one out there to enforce it, so with
some precautions I get by without trouble.
I like traveling on foot, going light, moving at a slow but steady pace so I can see everything around me, but I haven't done
much of that in recent years. Too busy dealing with what happens to me in my Dreams, what happens to me in the privacy
of my own home, the unknown hasn't been something I've had to seek outside my normal boundaries. Now every little
thing I do seems to be the focus of some odd spiritual attention, every vacation I try to take turns into a battle for spiritual
existence. Safer to stay home, and I've done that for a long time. Now I have reason to hit the trails again, and it is good for
me. But the old days, when I knew the mountains were just rock and earth and the trees were just firewood and the stories
of spirits were just foolishness, those are gone. That line from the Tao te Ching has become part of my life, "In the old days,
the Immortals walked through the world as through a war." It's true, you learn to pay Attention to things.
In my wanderings, on trails and off as the mood strikes me, I have much time to think about how this began, I've been
trying to find the origin point for a long time and it always escapes me. So many things seem like beginnings, so many things
seem important in that way, as fundamentals. But in regards to this place, the country I traveled on this journey, it began a
couple of years before my vision quest when I became disappointed in the things I had learned and practised all my life, the
things others had taught me were the Right Path. They did yield results, but not what I had hoped to achieve. No miracles,
no magic, everything I did still seemed empty of all that. I began to wonder what was missing in what I did, and in searching
for an answer to that I began reading the stories of the Old Masters of different cultures, looking for common threads in
what they did and how they lived. The noble parts of their lives were what I had emulated in my own, the regular
meditations, the simple lifestyle, the moral standards that are so admired. But I also noticed now that they were in essence
foolish people, they did things that made no sense. They shoveled snow into wells. They went into the mountains alone and
sought the guidance of spirits. They stood on mountaintops or huddled in caves without comforts for days and nights,
waiting. They trained for combat, though they were sworn to peace. Those were things I had not done, I had only done the
things that made sense. I decided to take the Fool's Journey, to see what would happen. At the least, it would do no harm,
and what the heck? I wasn't busy. I had the time.
One of the foolish things I did was to visit this valley and seek Power. I took that same trail, but cautiously with gear and
map and compass, and thought What would I look for if I were a shaman in the old days? Where would I look for Power?
As I came out of a woods in the river bottoms a huge old bluff loomed in front of me, a narrow ledge tracing the face of it a
couple of hundred feet above the river, the openings of pocket caves lurking along the ledge like dark eyes. I would look
there, I said to myself. So I went there.
Along that trail I saw many things and many places I had visited often in my Dreaming, without knowing where they were or
that they were even real. I still find those places, found more of them last weekend in my wanderings through the bush,
following my heart and risking my neck. Saturday I found a cave no one had ever told me about, one that shows on no map
I've seen, and going into it I realized I had been there many times in my Dreams, there was the rock rubble that blocked the
entrance, on either side the passages that one could barely fit through, the fallen slab in one of them that to pass by one has
to slide on one's back and exhale a bit. But the world outside the cave didn't fit, in my Dreams it was hot yellow and
featureless, burned out, I was afraid of what was out there. Here, it is green forest, cool and pleasant and sloping steeply to
the river. I took a picture from inside, thinking it might be of help in explaining this to people, and when I looked at it later
on I found that what the picture showed was overexposed, hot and yellow and featureless like my dream. A funny thing, I
was exploring the picture of the cave, not the cave itself.
But in seeking Power, back in those days, I came to this place, the bluff with the shaman's caves. Instead of Power, I found
a friend. It's a complicated story, I can't tell it all here. Can't tell it anywhere probably, I'd put everyone to sleep with the
length of it.
Simply put, I climbed that bluff and walked that ledge like thousands of people before me, and I came to a place where I
felt I should sit and rest. So I did. There is a wide spot in the ledge there, a cave nearby, and a grove of old junipers
survives there just barely. They have been blasted by lightning so many times they have almost no bark, their trunks are
scarred and split and burst by it. They live in rock, with a trace of soil in the cracks that hold their roots. They live through
drought and heat and winter winds that drag them down with ice, bend them double. The one in front of the place where I
stopped has one limb held up with green needles still on its twigs, the rest is dead or nearly dead. It is older than the
Sequoia's; older than the Bristlecone Pines. It may be the oldest living thing on this earth. Someone cut a step in its trunk
with an ax, carved initials in it, to no purpose.
Awkwardly and selfconsciously I did a simple ceremony for this tree. I gave it tobacco and water, I talked to it about
myself and why I had come to that place, I prayed for its spirit and thanked it for its company. Then I sat and waited awhile
in meditation, not knowing what would happen. Several things happened, one of them was that the tree spoke to me.
"It has been more than two hundred years," Juniper said to me, "since anyone came who knows the ceremony."
I was surprised it had been that long.
This past Saturday I came back to spend the night there, to talk with my old friend again, but not to seek Power. I
explained to Juniper that was not my purpose this time, I was hoping to learn something. I talked about myself and what I
hope to do, and I asked for Juniper's advice. I thought about what to give Juniper, a gift is traditional, but I didn't have
much. I was nearly out of water, it had been a hot day and I was trying to save what I had for the trip back and the long
night on the ledge, I thought I should save the water. Then I thought, No, I should do a foolish thing, I should give this tree
what I need most. So I did, I poured a bit of water for it, more than I drank myself, and I smiled as I did that.
When I set up camp nearby in the pocket cave, I heard a drip, saw a patch of damp earth. Not much of a drip even, just
an occasional drip. But I smiled and set a cup under it, said Thank You for the water, and by morning Juniper had given me
enough for a cup of tea.
Something strange happened Saturday, of course. I invited Juniper to visit my Dreams, and I said aloud that good spirits
were welcome there with me, but evil spirits should stay away. I do not use elaborate ritual defenses, make magic circles,
envision crystal shields. A warrior has no shields, I live and Dream by that, and I slept on edge that night knowing what
could happen. Even so, when something came to visit me I greeted it grumpily, told it to go away and leave me alone, I was
tired. It persisted, a steady pressure against my face and shoulders like a pillow being pushed against my face, frightening
but not impairing my breath. I've encountered such things many times and in many ways, it is always terrifying, something
instinctual within me tells me to fight, to run, to scream, at the same time my physical being wants to sleep and be left alone.
But I have learned that this is not an attack, only a visit. An attack is something different, it might come later or in a different
way. This is like shaking hands, and one has to get past the fear to discover who is there. Fear is the barrier.
When I finally recognized my old friend's energy I laughed and allowed that energy to enter. I think I expected a flow of
Power, I know that from my battles with Inorganic Beings, but instead I was given a vision, something I saw in the very
center of my being, as it became part of me. It is a very encouraging piece of Knowledge, I was surprised that at a time
when I seem to be part of the ending of things, my friend taught me something about beginnings.
There is only a little more to this, something that I was tempted to ignore. Several times on my walk to this place I caught a
glimpse of something that was hunter orange, out of the corner of my eye I would see a globe of that orange light, the size
of a man's chest, coming out of a rock or slipping behind a tree. When I looked for it, it vanished, I thought it was a trick of
the light. But, on the way back I saw it again, realized it was not imagination, and that is an energy I do not trust, something
I know is not a friend. Altogether I glimpsed this half a dozen times, it is not something I did not expect, but I would rather
not have it in my life at all. I had a very clear dream about this a few days ago, a clear warning. They are watching me, as I
knew they would.
I've learned a lot, maybe this year I'll learn if that is enough.
-Heyoka
As usual there is no hope for explanations so I'll just tell you the dreams I had that began this week's journey. Friday I was
feeling pretty good, payday and I wasn't too tired, ate supper out and drank some coffee and the waitress remarked on
how that was going to keep me awake all night. When I got home I suddenly felt extremely tired, went to lie down and was
sound asleep in moments. Since my vision quest caffeine has been like that for me, at times it puts me into a restive trance.
A cup of tea and I'm cruising the stars, pretty neat. Things work backwards for Heyoka.
I had two dreams, one of a change that is coming, this is the second time this year I've had that dream. Each time a storm
was approaching, dark thunderclouds and lightning, and each time when I took shelter the storm became a hoop of energy
passing over me and everything around me, changing things. The first time this happened the world changed from late winter
to mid spring in an instant, suddenly there were green leaves on the trees and flowers in bloom, a cool rain settling on the
new growth. This last time I was in the cave where I intended to go last weekend, and when the hoop passed over me it
took me and the world back a few steps, when I came out I was in a different place. A new set of surroundings, new
circumstances. A change is coming. That was a good dream, I thought.
The second dream I had was in a pattern that I associate with one of my teachers. Since I began studying his works he has
sent me advice in dreams that have particular marks, specifically signs. Not flashy ones, just small ones like the green
streetcorner signs you see in suburbs. They pop up in answer to my questions, with appropriate words or riddles for me to
solve. This one popped up in a lot next to the house where I live, it said, "Whirlwind Mountain Base Camp, Coming Soon."
I have mixed feelings about that one, it represents something I will do later this year, sometime soon. It's a tough one, not
primary school like the things I've been doing lately. This is how I'm getting ready for it, flexing my spiritual muscles a bit
and learning to sleep on rocks.
Physically this week's journey began at the same parking lot where I spent the night the weekend before, except that I did a
bit of walking this time like a regular person would do. Well, almost like that. I travel pretty light, took ten Tiger's Milk bars
and a six ounce packet of beef jerky, two Diet Pepsi's and a canteen of water. A pack of cigarettes, I need one of those
for my ceremony, a blanket and a mosquito net/tent, my Shaolin staff, that's about it. Enough for two days in the back
country. No compass, no map, told no one where I would be or when I would be back. Foolish to do that, suppose
something happened? Hmm, suppose something happened? Cool, an adventure to deal with.
It's about five miles to where my friend lives, two miles down some of the roughest mountain trail we have around here, two
miles bushwhacking along the river bottoms, the rest trying to get to the place when you finally have it in sight. Popular with
backpackers but it's already getting too hot for them, we have two days of good weather every year and half of that is gone
now. And of course, it's illegal to camp where I was going, it always is, it seems. No one out there to enforce it, so with
some precautions I get by without trouble.
I like traveling on foot, going light, moving at a slow but steady pace so I can see everything around me, but I haven't done
much of that in recent years. Too busy dealing with what happens to me in my Dreams, what happens to me in the privacy
of my own home, the unknown hasn't been something I've had to seek outside my normal boundaries. Now every little
thing I do seems to be the focus of some odd spiritual attention, every vacation I try to take turns into a battle for spiritual
existence. Safer to stay home, and I've done that for a long time. Now I have reason to hit the trails again, and it is good for
me. But the old days, when I knew the mountains were just rock and earth and the trees were just firewood and the stories
of spirits were just foolishness, those are gone. That line from the Tao te Ching has become part of my life, "In the old days,
the Immortals walked through the world as through a war." It's true, you learn to pay Attention to things.
In my wanderings, on trails and off as the mood strikes me, I have much time to think about how this began, I've been
trying to find the origin point for a long time and it always escapes me. So many things seem like beginnings, so many things
seem important in that way, as fundamentals. But in regards to this place, the country I traveled on this journey, it began a
couple of years before my vision quest when I became disappointed in the things I had learned and practised all my life, the
things others had taught me were the Right Path. They did yield results, but not what I had hoped to achieve. No miracles,
no magic, everything I did still seemed empty of all that. I began to wonder what was missing in what I did, and in searching
for an answer to that I began reading the stories of the Old Masters of different cultures, looking for common threads in
what they did and how they lived. The noble parts of their lives were what I had emulated in my own, the regular
meditations, the simple lifestyle, the moral standards that are so admired. But I also noticed now that they were in essence
foolish people, they did things that made no sense. They shoveled snow into wells. They went into the mountains alone and
sought the guidance of spirits. They stood on mountaintops or huddled in caves without comforts for days and nights,
waiting. They trained for combat, though they were sworn to peace. Those were things I had not done, I had only done the
things that made sense. I decided to take the Fool's Journey, to see what would happen. At the least, it would do no harm,
and what the heck? I wasn't busy. I had the time.
One of the foolish things I did was to visit this valley and seek Power. I took that same trail, but cautiously with gear and
map and compass, and thought What would I look for if I were a shaman in the old days? Where would I look for Power?
As I came out of a woods in the river bottoms a huge old bluff loomed in front of me, a narrow ledge tracing the face of it a
couple of hundred feet above the river, the openings of pocket caves lurking along the ledge like dark eyes. I would look
there, I said to myself. So I went there.
Along that trail I saw many things and many places I had visited often in my Dreaming, without knowing where they were or
that they were even real. I still find those places, found more of them last weekend in my wanderings through the bush,
following my heart and risking my neck. Saturday I found a cave no one had ever told me about, one that shows on no map
I've seen, and going into it I realized I had been there many times in my Dreams, there was the rock rubble that blocked the
entrance, on either side the passages that one could barely fit through, the fallen slab in one of them that to pass by one has
to slide on one's back and exhale a bit. But the world outside the cave didn't fit, in my Dreams it was hot yellow and
featureless, burned out, I was afraid of what was out there. Here, it is green forest, cool and pleasant and sloping steeply to
the river. I took a picture from inside, thinking it might be of help in explaining this to people, and when I looked at it later
on I found that what the picture showed was overexposed, hot and yellow and featureless like my dream. A funny thing, I
was exploring the picture of the cave, not the cave itself.
But in seeking Power, back in those days, I came to this place, the bluff with the shaman's caves. Instead of Power, I found
a friend. It's a complicated story, I can't tell it all here. Can't tell it anywhere probably, I'd put everyone to sleep with the
length of it.
Simply put, I climbed that bluff and walked that ledge like thousands of people before me, and I came to a place where I
felt I should sit and rest. So I did. There is a wide spot in the ledge there, a cave nearby, and a grove of old junipers
survives there just barely. They have been blasted by lightning so many times they have almost no bark, their trunks are
scarred and split and burst by it. They live in rock, with a trace of soil in the cracks that hold their roots. They live through
drought and heat and winter winds that drag them down with ice, bend them double. The one in front of the place where I
stopped has one limb held up with green needles still on its twigs, the rest is dead or nearly dead. It is older than the
Sequoia's; older than the Bristlecone Pines. It may be the oldest living thing on this earth. Someone cut a step in its trunk
with an ax, carved initials in it, to no purpose.
Awkwardly and selfconsciously I did a simple ceremony for this tree. I gave it tobacco and water, I talked to it about
myself and why I had come to that place, I prayed for its spirit and thanked it for its company. Then I sat and waited awhile
in meditation, not knowing what would happen. Several things happened, one of them was that the tree spoke to me.
"It has been more than two hundred years," Juniper said to me, "since anyone came who knows the ceremony."
I was surprised it had been that long.
This past Saturday I came back to spend the night there, to talk with my old friend again, but not to seek Power. I
explained to Juniper that was not my purpose this time, I was hoping to learn something. I talked about myself and what I
hope to do, and I asked for Juniper's advice. I thought about what to give Juniper, a gift is traditional, but I didn't have
much. I was nearly out of water, it had been a hot day and I was trying to save what I had for the trip back and the long
night on the ledge, I thought I should save the water. Then I thought, No, I should do a foolish thing, I should give this tree
what I need most. So I did, I poured a bit of water for it, more than I drank myself, and I smiled as I did that.
When I set up camp nearby in the pocket cave, I heard a drip, saw a patch of damp earth. Not much of a drip even, just
an occasional drip. But I smiled and set a cup under it, said Thank You for the water, and by morning Juniper had given me
enough for a cup of tea.
Something strange happened Saturday, of course. I invited Juniper to visit my Dreams, and I said aloud that good spirits
were welcome there with me, but evil spirits should stay away. I do not use elaborate ritual defenses, make magic circles,
envision crystal shields. A warrior has no shields, I live and Dream by that, and I slept on edge that night knowing what
could happen. Even so, when something came to visit me I greeted it grumpily, told it to go away and leave me alone, I was
tired. It persisted, a steady pressure against my face and shoulders like a pillow being pushed against my face, frightening
but not impairing my breath. I've encountered such things many times and in many ways, it is always terrifying, something
instinctual within me tells me to fight, to run, to scream, at the same time my physical being wants to sleep and be left alone.
But I have learned that this is not an attack, only a visit. An attack is something different, it might come later or in a different
way. This is like shaking hands, and one has to get past the fear to discover who is there. Fear is the barrier.
When I finally recognized my old friend's energy I laughed and allowed that energy to enter. I think I expected a flow of
Power, I know that from my battles with Inorganic Beings, but instead I was given a vision, something I saw in the very
center of my being, as it became part of me. It is a very encouraging piece of Knowledge, I was surprised that at a time
when I seem to be part of the ending of things, my friend taught me something about beginnings.
There is only a little more to this, something that I was tempted to ignore. Several times on my walk to this place I caught a
glimpse of something that was hunter orange, out of the corner of my eye I would see a globe of that orange light, the size
of a man's chest, coming out of a rock or slipping behind a tree. When I looked for it, it vanished, I thought it was a trick of
the light. But, on the way back I saw it again, realized it was not imagination, and that is an energy I do not trust, something
I know is not a friend. Altogether I glimpsed this half a dozen times, it is not something I did not expect, but I would rather
not have it in my life at all. I had a very clear dream about this a few days ago, a clear warning. They are watching me, as I
knew they would.
I've learned a lot, maybe this year I'll learn if that is enough.
-Heyoka