About four months before moving to Oakland, I traded sessions with a colleague. Amanda Foulger is a gifted guide for Shamanic Journeys. She’s on faculty with Foundation for Shamanic Studies founded by Anthropologist Michael Harner.
Arriving at Amanda’s for my first session ahead of schedule this July evening, I sit in her garden, while she prepares the indoor space. Huge Pacific oaks surround her Topanga hillside hidden-away home. Dappled sunlight creates dust moats between the rustling leaves. I take my shoes off and lean back in an old-fashioned bouncy lawn chair. I am content.
A few moments later, she beckons me in, and motions me to sit on the couch. She perches comfortably in a chair just across the small room, and points to a purple plastic tumbler of water for me on the table. She asks me what I want to focus on for this session. I’ve been thinking about it for a few days. I want clarity on four issues:
- Sharing stories and songs I’ve written so they can be of use.
- Coalescing any still fragmented pieces of my soul so I can complete the above.
- Finding the best possible next home for the coming adventure of being hands-on grandparents in the Bay Area.
- Finding ease in downsizing and moving.
Amanda has me lie down on the couch, and explains that she will be moving around, using rattles and other instruments. I might hear a drumming tape. She might touch me, and is that OK. Yes, of course, I tell her.
She puts an eye shade over my eyes, saying that it can be deluxe, as it is when she places it on my eyes - Kleenex first, bandana over that, and a flax-seed bag scented with lavender for the final layer, or pared down to only one or two layers. I ask for the deluxe. The weight and coolness feel soothing, and I sigh deeply, releasing more of the tension from driving the long, steep, and twisty canyons to get here.
She does a simple “breathe into your heart” guided visualization with me. I am relaxing with every breath and see my heart like a circle picture of a cozy campfire. About one quarter of the image is clear. I can see the fire, a couple of chairs, and something cooking. Three quarters of the vision is incomplete. Later the picture begins to come completely round... a satisfying gestalt of trees, hills and campsite. I tell her later it looks like one of the circle paintings on an old box of Celestial Seasonings Roastaroma Tea, circa 1972.
As she begins to whistle, chant, and whisk me with feathers, I smell sage burning. Pretty quickly, I see a huge lion’s face - big nose, mane and mouth, soft eyes. I know this guy. He’s long been a familiar to me - starting in the mid 1980s when I did a lot of shamanic work with Chris Faulconer, my mentor at Healing Light Center. The Lion’s smell is a comfort to me. His face morphs into the face of an old Native American man with a single feather in his long braid.
Pretty soon, gray-green underwater canyons appear. The foliage of spiky gray-green morphs into other faces. Mostly the visions are in color, except for this underwater gray-green scene with occasional black and white faces in the foliage. I smell something sweet... lavender-ish… but not quite.
Parts of the journey took me so deeply in, that I don’t have words to describe what happened. It’s a visceral sense. I do remember a sense of my body being sprinkled with refreshing water from toes to crown. It rouses me.
Although I have not been “sleeping,” it feels as if I’ve been far away for a long time. I stretch and feel HAPPY as I lift the eye shade, roll to my side, and slowly sit up. Blinking in the dim light and reaching for my notebook to jot some ideas and visions.
I gulp down water from the purple cup. Amanda tells me, “This was very clear. It’s good to work with someone who has done so much work already. There were three soul parts. Two came together accompanied by a big lion who’s been their protector for a long time.”
I get goose bumps of recognition. Amanda has never met my “Aslan” ally before.
“As soon as he knew that’s why I was there, he turned over the two-year-old and the six-year-old. It was not difficult. As long as they were together... there was a deep bond with the lion and between the two girls - the older protecting the younger one. You’ve already done the work, Melinda, making the connection with them energetically..."
“In the enforced promise of secrecy, was another soul part - stashed away.” Amanda continues, “I sensed that I met your father. He took me to where the other part was. He knew there were no more secrets. She was nine, ten, or maybe eleven years old.”
Amanda got my older soul part, thanked my father Howard, and brought her back to one of HER (Amanda’s) teachers called “Gran’ma.” Gran’ma works with women. Amanda says she put some healing salve all over me, wrapped me up, rocked me in her arms, then put me in a cave to rest. I rested a long time. When she came to get me, Gran’ma washed me and set me near the fire to warm up. (Maybe it was her sweetness I smelled during the journey.) While I was with Gran’ma, Amanda traveled to another spirit - a male who resides in a temple-like building. Skeletons were dancing around a fire. People took off their skeleton costumes. They were laughing and talking. There was a cleansing pool in front of the temple. In one room a wise elder receives people. He doesn’t usually do healing, per se. He is a teacher. He has me lie down and some kind of visions are being imparted to me by him. Amanda doesn’t know what they are. She tells me that I get up and go to a wall where the visions are ... which is a visual representation of what he’s imparted to me. It’s not a soul part. But if I connect again with my heart space, the visions are there. I have everything I need to know, Amanda reassures me.
Sitting in this ordinary reality on her couch, I laugh until the tears come.
“You will make & tell stories. You will write. You will write more songs and sing them. When you move, you’ll have the time you don’t have now,” she tells me
"I really will have the time and energy to do what I need to do?" I ask Amanda.
Amanda’s teacher says to her... “Tell her don’t worry. There are no blocks, no problems... just go do your work. Songs... book...”
The final piece is this: A deer presents itself to Amanda. "Mama deer and her fawn are your allies," she tells me. "She walks with you in your life. Journey with her. Journal with her."
Another of Amanda’s teachers washes me with water. Perhaps this is what I felt at the end of the session - that refreshing sprinkling.
I lie down again and am still for a few minutes. I feel so happy. Then I am giggling again... especially about the writing part. There are no blockages. There will be time in the new home to write. I won’t have the encumbrances I’ve created for myself here... too many commitments, too many tasks, too much energy expenditure.
Before I depart, Amanda gives me a citrine crystalline rock formation. Calcium white with goldish orange crystals protruding from the top like a little island city floating in a white sea. To me, the crystals form a face. She says it’s a goddess stone. Before I leave for Oakland the next day, I tuck it into a small beaded pouch someone gave me years ago. The goddess seems happy there. I like wearing her close to my expanded heart, which is filled with my newly returned, formerly lost parts. The beaded pouch is gold & black. I wear it as I head north to see my daughter, and grandie, and to meet with our realtor at 4:00 pm to look at houses.
Nearly a week later, I still feel the difference of having my soul parts back. There’s a settled, at-ease feeling, and much less... well... less of a sense of being fragmented and scattered. I feel coalesced... as if an after-image has come into focus with my body. I feel like smiling just because I’m home. No Ruby Slippers required!
For more on the experience of shared reality in Shamanic work, see this conversation between Ram Dass and Michael Harner on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FvjrBvJ9CQ
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