I was on a video conference call this afternoon with a powerful group of shamans, and we were investigating the source of anxiety we all had been feeling this past few weeks. I had been pointing out the irony of my "Going Home to Kansas" project and how I still felt estranged from my home, despite physically being a few hundred yards from where I came into this incarnation. Suddenly, a huge gust of wind battered at my front door, loud enough to be heard by the others on the call, and immediately one of the group declared, "The wind recognizes you!" The wind suddenly died down as if to say, "Yes! I do recognize you."
A sort of inner bell sounded deep in my psyche, and I immediately recognized how the land, the weather, the air had been greeting me since I arrived in my new house. This was a breakthrough for me, because I have tended to live my life as if someone else was living it--separated from my true origins, a sort of fugitive on the run from a life I've never known. The wind reminded me of this, as though it had been tracking me the entire 66 years I'd been away from this land.
My intent for moving my body from the warm and sunny climes of Southern California to the pronounced seasonal climate of Southern Kansas was completely metaphorical. Something or someone was nudging me in a deep and poignant way to return to my roots--return to a place where I truly felt "homeness". What I mean by "homeness" is that deep, core feeling that everything is good, all needs are cared for, and where I am loved and cherished, and am in full touch with my universal power and infiniteness of being.
We began to discuss what a false dichotomy it is to separate the self as spirit, or consciousness, from physical experience and the body. The non-dualistic truth is that there is no separation between spiritual and physical. In fact, this false separation could be considered one of the oldest divide-and-conquer tricks perpetrated by the Controllers in the master-slave power games.
By observing Self as consciousness throughout matter, it puts us in a powerful creative position. There is no uncertainty about what is going to be reflected back to us--we are just BEING, and the swirling of physical matter we call the perception of life is merely responding to that being. When there is a false sense of separation, we develop anxieties about what "The Other" is going to "do" to us. We get all caught up in the victimization drama of being separated from our own creations. The Universe then begins to respond to our victimization, and down the rabbit hole we go, hands wringing, and sweat pouring.
By simply being fully assured of being, we find ourselves out ahead of life. We see our experience as truly and simply following our lead. There is no confusion about this as there was before. I've written about how Don Genaro taught Carlos Castaneda that the shaman (or Nagual in Toltec parlance) remains "in front of" life--able to see its approach clearly and completely. He can do this because he is completely at home in his being, undistracted by unpredictable uncertainties. He is undistracted because he perceives from a place of clear-eyed truth about who he is, and what he is being.
Appropriate to the Land of Oz here in Kansas, as the good witch Glenda advised Dorothy, "You've had the way to get home all along. Just click those heels of your ruby slippers together three times, and say, 'There's no place like home... There's no place like home... There's no place like home.'" We say that because Home is the ultimate and powerful state of being that has always been available to us, no matter what rabbit holes we wander down, or what victimized dramas we make so serious. Home is always within us. Hey, I can see Emerald City from here!
