The Shaman Sang with the Living Force

Summer 2022

There’s a world of productive spirits that’s a little overwhelming, hard to leave behind, one that rewards courage with care. I didn’t realize how hard it was to surrender to the universe, to trust it, when you’ve had to fear the places you call Love. It’s a bizarre world, but as real as anything my heart has had the honor of seeing. I went to Nomad with Reemo, the river home hanging on the clouds, where the skies took flame and danced with the Shaman. It was a wonderful sight, the Shaman from the outskirts of Brazil sang Icaros yesterday night. He poured his soul into every strum, every syllable, he and his instrument were both expressions of the same spirit. You really felt that his words were resonating with so much weight, to the point where I spent most of the night crying, drawn out of my shell, bringing me out of my hiding place and into this wonderful world. I’ve been holding onto alot, knowing my path, myself, but not believing it, keeping myself from the experience in an unsafe defensive strategy of intellectualizing what can never be explained or understood, only felt. Pessimistically holding off from what I know to be true, holding myself away from the uncertainty of worlds way bigger than I could ever be, hiding from the shadow of my ’s gun. Hiding behind the promise of illusory and fantastical love.

The Shaman moved out of his body, deep into the moment He and the world of spirit around him were communing in. The flames danced with his voice, with the outpoor of will, feeling, ernest and natural expression. It’s one thing to know of the world of spirit, to see the colors flowing around the singing Man, to see his aura expand and contract, to see when there is no longer a distinction between the spirit of man and the bright spirits of the nature he cloaks himself in, it’s another thing entirely to live it. I wonder if you could cloak yourself with the spirit of the stars. Ahh this stoic man I knew nothing of, the man with the many blurring faces, the man with the child in his heart. It’s as though he carried with him a history of a people, stories that decorate and give meaning to the halls of his heart. A home, for the Man lost in the desert. This surrender to his immaterial spirit to the flow of his life force through his craft, his communion with the energy of the life warming fire, the wind and the tales they string together, the moon and the times they speak of, the all-colorful Sun, breathing all of us in. It didn’t feel like surrender at all, it felt like his most true and practiced nature. The reality he’s named home.

This place is filled with butterflies, it gives me lots of comfort. The rocks here, the fire pits, the walls, the water, even the pets that live here, they share a story, a sense of equilibrius self-sustenance. The trees take care of one another, the lamps remember the kind candles that give it life, it’s like time twisted in on itself here, the love that strings it together collapsed in on itself and now fills the space with all sorts of moments from the past, the still present and the future, or maybe  I’m just intellectualizing what can’t be put into words. The Shaman wore this 8 eyed and two feathered helmet, it was so cool I thought he could look into my soul. I wonder if it’s a two way door, you can only meet a soul as deeply as you stand in yours. In a way we all saw each other, felt each other, and most wonderfully, allowed each other to be. There is this propounding sense that the space feels itself as sacred, everything I touch I want to put back to place, everything I take I give in return, whatever I clumsily bump into I apologise to, the cats rest in Love here, so much so that they’ve become ambassadors of compassion and gentleness.

It’s not enough to have knowledge or awareness of the living force, not merely enough if you don’t let yourself experience it, surrender to its transitive unity. God is living, but God is Greater, God is dead and God is ever Greater. Reemo also taught me about spiritual maturity, accepting the loneliness of spiritual solitude, but learning to keep yourself company, you and your kind and gentle heart. Learning about ourselves, returning to the childlike wonder of an unfolding day, of a day that we never want to see end, that’s an incredible thing. Not only making space for ourselves and everything we could possible want ourselves to have the freedom to explore, but also accepting ourselves irrespective of how we show up in the world, validating the things we do for the reasons we do it. You wanna stay home? Bet! You wanna cry? Do it. You’re gonna puke? Go for it!! You wanna be an unabridged, fully extending, self-assured, self-directed, wonder-filled, goofy, unapologetically loving, fearless and self un-absorbed you?? Then for the Love of God, do it!!!