Exhaling

Have I mentioned how intense a winter it's been for me? :) I know I've been saying it a lot, and have probably mentioned it in my blog a few (dozen) times, but, like I recently wrote across my bathroom mirror with a dry-erase marker, "Things are getting better!" That actually always makes me chuckle because one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite movies, The Postman, is when Kevin Costner's character, posing as a postman for a fictitious, rebuilding, post-apocalyptic America, tells a town that the new president (who he tells them has made the Hubert H, Humphrey Metro dome in Minneapolis his new headquarters!) has a motto: "Stuff's getting better!" ...Okay. Maybe it's just me. Anyway, stuff is getting better.

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A few months ago, give or take, I had a reading from one of my psychic friends, and she told me that the next few months were going to be intense. Some of what she saw was a Native American spirit guide who kept showing her the image of a spinning Medicine Wheel, and he was aiming an arrow right at the heart of it. Basically what we took from that was there were a lot of lessons coming for me, in a very accelerated manner, but that if I keep my aim true, and not get distracted by all the things spinning around me, I would come through it alright. Sounds reminiscent of what Artemis has been telling me about being the eye of the storm.

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Another thing she saw was this spirit guide walking around me, drawing a white circle around me. My friend, not having a lot of experience with Native American symbology, was at a loss for what this meant, but my first thought was that it sounded like a Vision Quest.

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It hadn't occurred to me until I just wrote that, but this coincided pretty closely with the beginning of the shamanism class I'd been taking, which in retrospect was sort of a vision quest, or maybe even a sweat lodge in a way. It was basically setting a sacred space, or container, so that within those bounds things could be more intense, like boiling water in a tea kettle. And, boy howdy, did it feel like that sometimes.

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So the basic gist of it all was that the following few months would be intense, with a lot of new learnings. Believe me it has been.

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Then, two or three weeks ago, feeling particularly exhausted and anxious, I really had been looking forward to spending a Sunday morning, and perhaps a good chunk of the day, in bed. At the same time I felt a very strong pull to attend this weekly Native American pipe ceremony that happens at a local metaphysical store. Okay, I could always take a nap later in the day.

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Pipe ceremony was very small that Sunday, which was nice, so we prayed and sang and smoked, and when my turn was over, I passed the chunupa to the next person, and almost involuntarily my eyes closed. There before me was the face of Sitting Bull. It had been almost two years since he first appeared to me at my Vision Quest where he told me that, though he was not an ancestor of blood, he was my ancestor of spirit (a concept I hadn't actually heard of before, until we learned of it in the aforementioned shaman class).

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I was again deeply honored by his visitation, and what he told me was, "Your ancestors are very pleased. You have done well. It is time for you now to rest."

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Instantly I felt myself relax, and suddenly discovered I could breathe easier than I had for quite some time. At the time I didn't know what had changed, or ended, or what rite of passage I had completed. Despite the fact that my Vision Quest had happened over a single weekend almost two years ago, perhaps it had actually continued through to this point, so that Sitting Bull book ended that experience. Or maybe it was just the end of these previous months of intensity. Or maybe the answer was both/and.

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I knew something significant had happened, but whatever it was that found completion, I didn't really care. It just felt good to exhale.