A WALK WITH YOURSELF

YOUR OWN STORY

Each of us has our own unique story and I have found it useful to go back on my own and review it with the truths of the present moment which may be different to those understood when the story occurred.

In doing this blog and the recent talk I gave I discovered:

 Mistakes that I learned in the rediscovery of the events - unrealized before. Often this was because I did not listen to my heart, my gut or my dreams but rather to my intellect.

There were also those mistakes I learned from new found understandings of ancient wisdom from the Ancestors and others. There are often many levels that can be realized from these teachings. Some of these were understood at the time and maybe ignored to my detriment - others only in retrospect. A few were rediscovered at a deeper level.

With regard to the mistakes I've made I have also found Portia Nelson's descriptions of her Five Chapters very useful.

There were also realizations that although I had had certain experiences I had not incorporated them or actualized them into my being. They were "mine" but did not fully belong to me or as the Ancestors teach ...

The crux of this series of blogs has been to help us all with the crucial question, 

what is my destiny??

We are all given a unique gift for which we are karmically accountable. Some of us do not know what our archetype or that gift is. 

There are four basic "indigenous" archetypes (Jung described many more.) In primal societies you were either a healer (shaman or herbalist,) a teacher, a warrior or a visionary (chief or leader.) These four basic ones still apply but each has many more possibilities in today's world which is so complicated. The teacher may make movies; the healer may be someone who wants to save the trees in the Amazon, the warrior may be a C.E.O of a company, the visionary a musician or poet or guru or wise elder. 

We would hope that whichever archetype we have we are doing it with karmic responsibly (simply put; in joy, with love, for its own sake, subordinating ego to the higher Self and without doing harm, so that we can help heal the planet.)

If we choose rather to invoke one of the four Yogas it could also be; 

Karma yoga or service (the Mother Theresa archetype.)

Bhakti yoga or devotion to the Creator and the Creation (the Sufi poets.)

Jnana yoga or the intellectual mastery of the scriptures (the teacher.)

Raja yoga the path of the Buddha. (Control of the mind and self-realization.)

These are all service oriented. The yogi doesn't remain in the cave or in the forest after this realization but comes back into the world to help heal others and the planet.

The Ancestors teach;

The hunt for your destiny is the hunt of your life, stick to the scent, stay on the spoor.

 Our karma depends on it!

We cannot resign ourselves to fate or those cards we are dealt in life, we have to rise above them. However, free will and choice, which is the cosmic law, prevails. We are fully entitled to sabotage ourselves if we want. There are an ever increasing number of temptations that challenge us. However, karma is unforgiving and allows for no excuse.

"I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul." 

W. E. Henley

If we look closely at our life history we may a series of Hero/ine's journeys fulfilling all three stages, if we review the experience.

What made us Separate - go out there and take a risk because of a certain yearning, the first phase of the journey?

What happened in the second Threshold phase when we entered the metaphorical forest to face our physical and psychological fears?

How did we Incorporate the "Aha" experience which may have been the grail we needed at that time?
This is another way to look at our story if it fits.

Spiritual practice is crucial if we are to stay on the path or a Kabir states; "Friend there are very few who find the way."

In reviewing my story I thought that these recommendations may be helpful.

Have you found the optimal spiritual practice or practices to help guide you and open up your Third Eye to the "Field" and the dreams and intuitions of non local information (not localized in space and time) ? 

If it's not working for you maybe add an embodied practice or an Ancestral practice and make an altar to your guides. (Check out the D.V.D. under videos on my web site.)

Look at your life. If you have a dream not yet fulfilled - just do it!

"What you can do or dream you can, begin it, boldness has genius, power and magic in it." 

Goethe

 And if not review and renew your experiences by revisiting your story. Or both.

We tend to invalidate, trivialize or forget some profound spiritual encounters or maybe someone else invalidated or rationalized them or discredited them. Revisiting them can affirm your spirit guide or Field connections and strengthen them.

Beware of prescriptions and descriptions that do not fit who you truly are. March to the sound of your own drum and tune into the power of your own spirit practice not someone elses' no matter how profound. We are all unique and so are our individual paths. The Creator does not want a copy cat version of who your teachers, parents or friends want or think you should be. 

I have aways enjoyed this story of Singing Stone by H. Storm.

As Dogen says; 

"When you find your place where you are practice begins."

These quotes may also help

Click the links to highlight and play 

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03_Warnings_for_the_..>

WALK WITH A SURGEON-SANGOMA

TSHISIMANE - THE SOURCE

Some time before I began my initiation with P.H. at the turn of the millennium, I found myself doing a 10 day retreat at Leshiba Wilderness in the Soutpansberg mountains in the far north of South Africa quite close to the Zimbabwe border. Leshiba was owned by friend of mine, John Rosmarin, who invited me to come and immerse myself in this unique, pristine and stunning mountain wilderness. He and is family would be at the coast for Xmas and I would be alone with only a skeleton staff to support me, if needed. I had full run of the place, a 4x4 Landcruiser and two bush camps at my disposal which qualified as being minimalistic. The camps fitted perfectly with my Inward Bound philosophy of having as little between one and nature as possible. 

I spent my days walking the bush and enjoying all that an alfa state of consciousness and Wilderness Rapture had to offer. 

Little did I know that some years later I would purchase the properties called Uniodale and Calitzdorp that abutted the southern fence of Lesheba. The place was to become an indigenous healing center with all that I had learned from the sangomas and also all that I had acquired from my Inward Bound adventures.

"In real time and in the dream"

Around the time of my initiation or Thwasa I had a dream I was driving to my favorite uncle's farm. I arrived and was greeted by two Bushmen. (Sam's farm was 40 miles north of Johannesburg in savanna grassland but this dream seemed to be in the Soutpansberg or at least the nearby Waterberg mountains. The dream looked very much like the property I eventually found and purchased. 

The mountain in the dream and in real time had two levels; a lower bush covered one and a higher rocky one. In the dream the rocks were shimmering and vibrating. This was a "Big" dream as described by Jung and for me it was huge. The two Bushmen magnified it significantly.

Only later I recalled that 15 years earlier in a vision in the Amazon jungle I had had a similar dream of a valley somewhere in the bush where there was a house without a roof.  This property had a house without a roof. 

I had subsequent dreams of being on Sam's surreal farm where there was a baobab and a kiepersol or parasol tree -

 and there was the latter right in front of the house. Baobabs were exceptional on this slope of the Soutpansberg but there was a stunning one close to the access dirt road. Baobabs were prolific on the hotter, dryer, northern slope of the mountains. 

I realized I had found what I was looking for and the Ancestors now confirmed I was in the right place. This was vitally important for me when I questioned my sanity and why I would now be building an indigenous healing center in the remote north of South Africa when I had a perfectly good life in California.

There were many challenges to come both with the construction and also the play of light and dark that pervaded the area.

This is some of what became of the final product.

The main reason the Ancestors had brought me there was to learn what I had not yet learned in the initiation; medicinal plants (plants of power) and more about witchcraft. I was to experience the tricks of the trade of witches and sorcerers who lived in the village below and learn how to counter them. Being a white sangoma, especially, I was a reproach to them.

Learning the myriad of trees and plants in this incredibly biodiverse region was daunting. I confined my interests to healing plants of power used by all sangomas in different ways according to how they were instructed by their guides. I developed my own method but also studied what was described in the few books available on the subject.

Divination taking place in the ndumba or healing place.

In addition to medicinal walks, dream councils and diagnostic divinations there was an outside ritual bath where visitors could be  cleansed and released from the shades and intrusions of their past and present conditions. 

My other council from the Ancestors was to spend as much time as I could with the older sangomas - soon to die and sadly carry a lot of primal and vital information with them. This I also did with gusto. Sangoma wisdom is an oral tradition and some of the ancient principles are being lost.

Hlongwani a wonderful old, highly skilled Tsonga sangoma

The bulk of my time, however, still consisted of maintaining my surgical practice as well as honoring the ancestors requests to practice sangoma medicine in a yurt out of my home.

However, non valid land claims had been lodged against the properties and that was soon to partially divert my healing attentions. The claims were skillfully lodged by the head claimant who was also using witchcraft to assist in getting rid of us. They were instituted after the cut-off date and were invalid. Officially the claimants had to prove that their ancestors had been evicted from the land which had not been the case. The property had first been owned by a missionary who had started a school and was admired. He was followed by benevolent farmers who had encouraged the workers to stay rather than moving away to the big cities for better salaries which was customary. Land claims, however, became a free for all where all the criteria for a valid claim were ignored and the claimants hugely favored.

Click on the link to highlight then play

Wilderness%20Rapture.mp3

Those who wish to learn more on the journey can click and play this video (12 minutes.)

VIEW: A Spirit's Path

There is another more detailed one (45 minutes) especially about Tshisimane (also on the web site with other Videos) called 

Wounded Healer done by South African T.V.

If you like, click and play

VIEW: Wounded Healer

WALK WITH A SANGOMA SURGEON

THWASA

(Apologies for changes in font size I could not correct - tricksters?)


P.H. Mntshali or P.H., as he was mostly called, agreed that I could come for a month at a time to Thwasa so that I could return to nurture my practice. The initiation was to occur over a period of about two years instead of the usual intensive 24/7 three months. 
The information below occurred in stages over that time.

There are four main components to the sangomas repertoire; Divination, Possession, Dreams and Plants Medicines
used in ritual. 
There were many other ways to do ritual but plants were the mainstay. Animal sacrifice was only used on special occasions on behalf of the Ancestors.

Sangoma initiation also involved dancing to the sound of the drum. Ngoma is a drum in Zulu and the call of the drum invites the spirit to enter the body while ego stepped aside. In the early hours of the morning when the veil between worlds was the most open I would be awakened. P.H. and or his sangoma wife Miriam would also be present with the drummers while I danced to the sound of the drum. It was the drum that would allow me to step out of my ego and get possessed by one of my ancestral spirits. P.H. traditionally had thought it would be the ancestors on my fathers side who would come through but the bones had indicated that it was my mother's Grans who were operative.
The same drumming and dancing would occur at night but no spirit possession happened. When they would ask who are you I would always reply, Cumes.

The only one of the requirements that worried me was spirit possession. This was the more so because my grandfather on my mother's side came in a dream associated with vibrating Kundalini energy and directed; "you will not get possessed!" Nevertheless P.H. persevered. I was not comfortable with a spirit taking over my body completely and doubted I would be able to allow my ego to step so completely aside that this would happen. This was also definitely not a part of my culture. All the other modalities intrigued me as did the possibility of a gentler form of channeling.

I had read about maggidim or sages coming to students of Kabbalah in dreams and instructing them but full on possession was entirely different. 

A man once dreamed that there was a great treasure under a bridge in Vienna. He traveled to Vienna and stood near the bridge, trying to figure out what to do and not get arrested by digging next to a bridge. An officer passed by and accosted him, “What are you doing, standing here?” The man told the officer about his dream who ridiculed him for coming all the way just because of a dream. The policeman said I also had a silly dream last night, but the treasure I saw was in a small house, under the cellar, accurately described the man’s house. The man rushed home, dug under his cellar, and found the treasure.  Rebbe Nachman’s Parables.

The process of the officer's dream in the story has been called "getting someone else's mail." 

Every morning P.H. would teach me the "bones." There were not just animal bones but other objects especially shells representing different polarities of the human condition. As the metaphors, symbols and messages on the mat unravelled and revealed  themselves it occurred to me that the bones were showing the cosmology or the dream that was the client's life. 
"There is a dream dreaming me."
Bushman saying
It was like a psycho-spiritual C.T. scan  that could diagnose spiritual conditions unknown to Western medicine but as real as any other pathology. P.H. called them the Big Boss which made me feel I did not need to get possessed if I had this as my diagnostic kit.

 I found to be P.H. correct,  - the bones talk! I also was assured that I was the messenger and I should get out of the way of myself and as he instructed, "just read it!"

With regard to diseases unrecognized by allopathic medicine there were an array of spiritual conditions. Apart from intrusive spirits which may haunt the living there were also earth bound spirits. These, because of a sudden or confused death had not seen the "light" or heard the ancestors calling them home and were sadly stuck between the worlds still needing to cross the veil to the other side to complete their karma. This could be done with the assistance of one's spirit guides. For those intrusive spirits who were hanging around their living loved ones for closure, forgiveness was the remedy.  If granted best with spiritual help, forgiveness would released the ailing spirit from that particular karmic sin where they had been found wanting and they could move on. 

There were also a host of factors that could cause energetic pollution or ritual impurity which could be diagnosed and remedied such as; being in contact with "blood"or death, eating road kill, illness and or hospitalization, an unwholesome journey or venture, certain objects as well as land polluted by evil intention.

 Femba was performed periodically and was a form of psycho-spiritual cleansing or exorcism where another specialized sangoma, Mazia, went into trance and routed intrusive spirits and energies trying to interfere with my process while welcoming the good ones like Mpofu my guide for the bones.

I learned that witchcraft and sorcery were ubiquitous in all cultures (you can now sadly learn all about the techniques on line.) The basis of this was a heart of envy - hence the commandment do not covet... !  
You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. Exodus
The witches and sorcerers were often the "traitors in the gates" thus presenting themselves in a favorable light, making their true nature invisible. In Africa witchcraft is always dark unlike Wicca in the West which can be of the light.

There were ritual baths with sacred medicines added and medicines to drink and burn. There was also regular steam purifications in a mini sweat lodge just big enough for me and a giant iron pot filled with water and magical plants. Red hot rocks would periodically be placed into the pot with a shovel to catalyze the medicated steam. There was no place to escape from the heat, not to mention the 100 degree heat of the Swaziland summers outside.

There were other rituals as well, including sacrifices to call and thank the Ancestors on special occasions. Though unsavory to many Westerners, the way it was done was more sacred than going to buy packaged chicken in a supermarket. 

After P.H. had tested me and was satisfied that I had mastered the bones and performed all the rituals with right intention and been purified, the time came to go to the river to engage with the water spirit.

All the sangomas had confirmed that I would have to go to the river eventually to finish. No-one could explain to me what the water spirit or Unzunzu (Zulu) was. 
I knew Umbilini was intimately involved with Thwasa and was an obscure spiritual force similar to the San Bushmens' Num. It was also very similar to the yoga Shakti, Kundalini, feminine, serpent energy wound around the central channel of the spine at the first chakra. The source of sangomas’ power is called umbilini, said to feel like a hot coiled snake ascending the spine. Sangomas learn to summon this power at will through the beating of a drum. Most South African tribes believe in a feminine force residing low in the belly which is key to spiritual power and fertility in the female (as in the Domba or python dance of female pubertal initiation amongst the Venda people.) 

Nyami Nyami

The Nyami Nyami water spirit of the Zambezi river has been represented as a snake like spirit with its tail in its mouth as in this Shona soapstone carving above. Ouroboros, the snake that eats its own tail is Egyptian lore holds the meaning of infinity or wholeness and is also a symbol of alchemy. Cleopatra  was an alchemist associated with Ouroboros so the symbol again has a feminine connotation.

Whatever it was, the Unzunzu appeared to be a formidable force for change. Miriam took me to the Prophet who was to facilitate the ritual. He lived two hours drive away. A time and day were arranged and the necessary offerings to the water spirit were gathered. Two weeks later we were taken to a sacred, large pool fed by a river cascading down the mountain. Only sangomas and their initiates were allowed there. The various offerings were made to the Ancestors and two white chickens prepared for sacrifice while I stripped down to my shorts.  Meanwhile another sangoma dressed only in an antelope skin draped around his waste and the Prophet (from the Zionist Christian church who was more sangoma than Christian prophet) told me what to do. I was to strip down to my shorts, enter the pool and hold onto a rope tied to a dead tree on the bank. They commanded; 
"do not let go or you will be taken by the water spirit!"

 They entered the pool with me and began to call out to the Old and New testament patriarchs. They then proceeded with a primal form of Baptism. They would push my head under the water repeatedly and hold it there for a reasonable time but when they let go I would come up, only to be slapped vigorously around the head, neck and shoulders by both of them. I lost all sense of time and everything else. When I finally emerged and stumbled onto a rock I felt the "Kundalini-Umbilini-Num" energy suffusing my body and vibrating me from head to toe. Simultaneously there was an ecstatic experience of oneness with everything around me turning numinous and luminous. I washed in the medicated water mixed with some chicken blood and then rinsed off in the pool. We hiked back down the mountain to the car and to the sangomas Ndumba or healing hut where Miriam was given new medicine for the steaming and the other rituals.

I will never know what happened but after that everything changed. When the drumming began I felt the same Umbilini energy moving up my spine and would leap up to dance with the feeling that I was being danced and was the dance. When P.H. asked me who I was, I still said Cumes but on successive occasions channeled three guides, the most seminal one being Mpofu the African woman who had been a sangoma in a past life and was now helping me with the divinations. Mpofu instructed; "His method will be bones. They will think him crazy if he gets possessed in California and there will be no-one there to drum for him."                     Being a sangoma clearly needed a "village."

P.H. accepted now that I was an nyanga (a diviner) rather than a sangoma (someone possessed by the spirit when called to serve by the power of the drum.) He agreed I was "possessed" in the bones and dreams and when I had garnered medicinal plants I would be possessed there too. I felt complete and we parted company until some time later. 
On route to Johannesburg I visited Shado Dudlu who was also a mentor and powerful sangoma. He had helped advise and encourage me from the outset. He threw the bones and confirmed I was complete but now had to learn plant medicines. A bit later after testing me a Tsonga sangoma in Limpopo province (which location had become my new source of inspiration,) tested my skills, formally initiated me and gave me the necessary sangoma apparel and accoutrements. He also provided me with the medicines I would need until such time that I could make my own.

My path had just begun. I was now like I had been once before, an M.D. about to do his internship with a prolonged residency or postgraduate training ahead.

Click on the links to highlight and then play

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WALK WITH A SURGEON SANGOMA

SANGOMA INITIATION

In the many trips to different groups of San Bushmen I was  first introduced to divination in 1987.

It was clear that apart from their amazing intuition and ability to go beyond the five senses and trance the San also demonstrated skill at divination with "bones." These were a collections of small animal bones that expressed the essence of the animal. The specific bone for each animal was a symbol for the message the spirit world wanted to convey. For instance the baboon bone was the trickster and the message conveyed would be to be cautious of a trickster showing up in one's life. Each bone seemed to know where to go with the help of the spirit guide presiding over an energy field that "threw" the bones (telekinesis.)

San Bushmen reading the bones in 1987 by consensus

The San much later also showed me what they said was their original quick "check in"; six wooden palates, three female, three male - each with its own light (positive) or dark side (negative.) These may have told them where to hunt that day or where to go and find a lost child. They also confirmed that being the "First People" they had introduced this technology to their Bantu neighbors who later migrated into South Africa from the north.
Their Out of Body Spirit Trance dance took their inner knowledge to a different level in harmonizing the group and diagnosing maladies as well as healing them by transferring Num energy to the ailing one with their hands (see video on line on my web site.) The San were renowned for their healing abilities and if the sangomas of their Tswana neighbors - failed their clients many were known to then seek out a San healer.

Only later on on my journey in the late 90's did I encounter sangomas and their sophisticated expansion of this amazing technology. 

In my first reading in Zimbabwe I was told by a sangoma that although I was a doctor where I came from - one day I would be doing his work - bones, dreams, medicinal plants. I was skeptical then, to say the least, believing I had no significant intuitive abilities. However, I was fascinated by the technology and couldn't think of anything better that I would like to do. Now was my chance.

It was clear that if I was to initiate or do Thwasa, the process of transcending from a new moon into a full moon

 I was going to have to let go and commit to the Ancestors. This was a big step and meant coming back to South Africa and leaving my practice which concerned me. Maybe part of my reluctance to initiate was complacency with my life as it was and fear of what might result to my medical practice. My reticence was not endorsed by the Ancestors but understood as the challenge of free will which is the cosmic law. 

They had told me what to do. The rest was up to me.

The Ancestors

On the other hand I knew that if "I gave up myself bones and all" I might be able to access the healing and diagnostic powers I was lacking. I had witnessed that both the curanderos and the sangomas possessed abilities and power seriously lacking in my skill set.

The Ancestors

There was no question that having access to non local information went far beyond what our amazing Western technology had to offer. Africa had wisdom I would not find in medical texts.

I synchronistically came across Susan Schuster Campbell's book "Called to Heal" where she described her various experiences with the many sangomas that prompted the book. I manage to locate her not far from where I lived in California. I  explained my predicament on the phone and asked her, which of all the healers she interviewed would she recommend for initiation. 

She mentioned two names. The first was a woman who lived in Soweto and was also a nurse at Baragwanath hospital where I had spent many hours as a medical student. 

I met her, really liked her and could see why Susan recommended her - she was incredibly powerful and pretty much laid out in the bones how the next few years of my process would evolve. However, Soweto was as far from nature and wilderness as I could imagine and I wanted to be, if at all possible, nature bound. 

I headed northeast in Limpopo province with Rupert Harris who had been present when the woman sangoma went into trance (prior blog) and insisted that I must initiate. He had located several sangomas in Limpopo where he lived. In my typical intellectual medical paradigm pattern I "interviewed" them to see if they could help me. Many did not speak English or Afrikaans so I ran a blank and headed to Swaziland to meet P.H. Mntshali the second sangoma Susan had recommended. She had assured me that he was an astounding diviner. Moreover, he lived in a rural area close to a small town called Siteki close to the Mozambique border.

P.H. Mntshali in traditional dress

On arriving I was greeted by a charming elderly Zulu who wore an impressive head band to signify status and power. His homestead was in rustic surroundings and his neighbors were scattered comfortable distances apart. He threw the bones and confirmed from my ancestors that he should initiate me and that they said he was to make me as good a diviner as he was.

What also appealed to me about P.H. is what he said at the time; 

"This is the original medicine and it will never change."

He criticized the missionaries and the way they had undermined  ancient Zulu wisdom and tried to get his people to renounce their heritage. It was quite clear that he felt he represented his medicine authentically without succumbing to any compromise or pollution by the West.

He also said;

"The trouble with you white people is that you have lost the way. Many of you do not even know who your ancestors are. You are unsupported in life, like papers blowing in the wind.

Your job will be to take our knowledge back with you to America and help them in the West."

P.H. graciously agreed that I could come for a month at a time and then go back to nurture my practice instead of committing to an extended period away (usually about three months but 24/7. ) Moreover, he spoke excellent English and had a fascinating and poetic way of explaining difficult, distinctly African spiritual concepts. I needed this vital intellectual component to satisfy my cognitive brain.

My initiation began on the cusp of the millennium. I was to go back and forth for a month at a time for about two years to complete.

Click to highlight the link - play (and ? dance)

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WALK WITH A SANGOMA-SURGEON

DESTINY

Our fate is the card we are dealt in life, our parents, our education - lower and higher, the friends we keep, other adult role models besides our teachers and the choices we make around these - skillful or unskillful. Some are dealt unfavorable cards but find a way to make wise choices and rise above their fate into their destiny. Others may be born with a silver spoon in their mouths and their choices are so enticing that they fall pray to the temptations of samsara and a sensory existence. 

Free will is the cosmic law and cannot be abrogated. The spirit world cannot and does not usually tell us what to do. They can hint at the direction usually in dreams. However, if one does not have a receptivity and a spiritual connection or practice it is unlikely to happen. Hence few of us know or even follow their destiny in spite of honestly wishing they knew what it was, because of distractions and confusion.

Kierkegard also added; 

"A possibility is a message from God, one must follow it."

We all have our own destiny "CUP" to fill. Some are granted many gifts and have a bigger cup but 

to those whom much is given much is expected  

and their path may be more challenging and difficult. Too many choices. The Creator doesn't play favorites so that as long as we fill our cup our karma is secure.

At the end of the day it is about what we can bring to others and the planet - the Still Beings, Growing Beings, Wild Beings or Talking Beings. Each of us will have a proclivity for one or the other according to our signature/core strength (Seligman) or archetype.

By then I pretty much left Peru and what it had to offer behind me in terms of curanderismo and started to arrange Inward Bound journeys more and more to Southern Africa, especially the Kalahari. I would also check in with sangomas about my life and the upcoming trip and what to expect from the group. They always answered my questions but invariably added; 

"your ancestors are calling you to do our work - divination, dreams, rituals especially with plants." 

Some added that it was the "grans" on my mother's side who were calling me and an uncle who loved me. I knew this to be my favorite uncle Sam. Another added that there was a black woman spirit who had been a sangoma in her previous life who wanted to help me with divination. I was enchanted, curious and flattered by the messages which came from at least six sangomas in different parts of the north who did not know me at all or each other. I ignored the information because I did not feel I had any intuitive or psychic abilities other than my dreams which did sometimes tell me what was going to happen.

The Ancestors

I was lucky - I was told what to do but I discounted it for some time until a woman sangoma (I was having a divination with her husband) spontaneously went into trance, got possessed by a spirit and read me the riot act. 

"You have been told what to do and are ignoring instructions. Now you have a bad pain in your back and until you listen your bad headaches also will not go away!" 

She pointed to the exact spot in my lumbar-sacral area that had been plaguing me on the trip. She was dead right and diagnosed that I was suffering from the Ancestor Sickness. 

I had been getting severe migraines for some time, almost weekly which lasted about six hours, were dibilitating and nothing I could do or take prevented or relieved them. Luckily they came on at night and were gone by morning after which I could function and go to work.

I decided I had to relent and follow advice regardless of the consequences and my concerns that I was inadequate which could also have arisen from fear, laziness or complacency.

Some time later I had a dream that said Safe Harbors! I thought it should be the title of the book I was to write about my initiation but maybe it wasn't. I had to resign myself to this path which meant committing to the Ancestors and the work and putting them first. I had to leave my Safe Harbor.

Unlike my medical training where I could rely on intellect and cognitive knowledge, this was to be a totally different learning experience. In a dream in Peru I had this teaching; 

It is better to experience the learning than learn the experience. 

Kabir confirms this more eloquently.

"The Sacred Books of the East are nothing but words. I looked through their covers one day sideways. What Kabir talks of, is only what he has lived through. If you have not lived through something, it is not true."

That was what initiation was to be about. There were no scriptures, no manual, no books to be read. Though different it was also to be just as challenging as getting an M.D. degree. Now, however, my M.D. was to mean Master of my Destiny or at least the next part of it.

The Ancestors

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