Somewhere Over the Whirling Rainbow

A couple weeks ago, on a seemingly random thought, I googled someone I considered one of my greatest teachers. She has been a teacher to me through my spiritual life since the 80s when I got my first deck of Medicine Cards, the cards that thirty-some years and countless decks later have become the backbone of my own shamanic business as I do readings for clients to connect them to the wisdom of the Animal Spirit Guides. Then I discovered her other deck, the Sacred Path Cards, which touched me even deeper, and it was through that deck, and reading her book Dancing the Dream, that Jamie Sams became a North Star for me. The power that I felt coming through her words and teachings always soothed me back to my center and realigned the bearings of my own compass.

Lately I've found myself again looking to her for guidance and as a voice of authority. With the overdue rise in awareness around Black, Indigenous, and People Of Color rights finally coming to to the forefront of mainstream culture in a needed wave of change in consciousness has also come a subject that I still wrestle with with mixed feelings and self doubts - Cultural Appropriation. I won't go into the ins and outs of that right now because that's not what this post is about, but as a nonindigenous Shaman this has been a tricky subject for me and has fueled much soul searching and prayers. And it has been Jamie Sams who has provided many 'Golden Lasso moments'* for me, particularly through her writings about the Whirling Rainbow Prophecy.

So it was that this seemingly random thought occurred to me. In the past months since the pandemic started I had fulfilled a couple of long-held wishes, being able to finally take classes directly with two others who have been great inspirational teachers to me, Lisa Williams the renowned psychic/medium and Martha Beck the regular Oprah guest, life coach, and author. All of a sudden it hit me, "What if I could take a class with Jamie Sams?!" And so I excitedly googled away, searching for any kind of current calendar of appearances or classes that might allow me to connect with this woman who had so influenced my life. 

News was scarce and redundant, and I was starting to get frustrated when I breached a source of previously unread information. My heart dropped. Jamie Sams had actually just died the previous month in December of 2020. It hit me harder than I would have thought, tears rolling down my cheeks, my breath coming in incontrollable sobs. I had entered full blown grieving for someone I hadn't actually known, but the loss was felt as surely as the death of my father 5 years ago, or the two teary farewells of my beloved feline companions. 

In our nightly, bedtime video call I tried to express my feelings to Valerie, my fiancé, and her first question was, "So, did you connect with her then?" "...Oh yeah! That's right! I'm a shaman! I can do that!!"

Fittingly it was Imbolc night, February 2nd, the first day of Spring on the Celtic calendar, when I did connect. I was in the middle of a pipe ceremony for myself and, feeling perfectly appropriate considering the situation, I humbly asked her to come smoke with me. Instantaneously, to my surprise, she was there, sitting opposite me wrapped in what looked like a blanket of gold out of a Klimt painting and with feathers in her hair, grinning across my little altar at me. With tears in my eyes I started telling her how much I appreciated her and how much she'd influenced me and how I wished I'd gotten to meet her in person and... And she stopped me with a smile and said, "I know who you are my dear brother, and I am grateful for the work you do and the presence you bring to the world."

I think I kind of stuttered then, asking how she could possibly know me - Shades of Charles Schulz appearing to me in a meditation and my questioning the seeming convenience of such an encounter. "That's how the Universe works, on resonant frequencies. The fact that you resonated with my teachings means we have always been connected. Maybe not consciously until I was in spirit, but I do know you now."

I'd been crying pretty much this entire time, and as she fell silent we just sat there for a few moments until the silence weighed on me and I uncomfortably blurted out, "I feel like I should say or do something more to honor you..." Again she stopped my stream of thought with a smile. "Your presence is enough." And feeling my resistance she repeated her words... Twice.  "Your presence is enough... Your... presence... is... enough..." Smile. Always that enchanting smile. 

So we sat in silence for quite a while. when a thought floated into my mind. "Will you give me a blessing? Please?"

"Of course! It is with deepest gratitude that I celebrate and honor your work in the world and the presence of light you bring to it. I am blessed by your journey, continuing forward with the seeds I have planted. I am always with you."

Sometimes it is difficult for me to share such things, at the risk of sounding boastful in a 'look how special I am' kind of way. But that is not the spirit in which I report these things. Long ago I made a commitment to White Buffalo Calf Woman during a vision quest to share my path. As I come to terms with so many aspects, changes, and revelations along the way of my growth and unfolding, experiences such as this serve only to humble me. "Holy crap! That happened to me?!"   

And so I end this small tribute with more tears and widening cracks in my breaking heart, as well as with a video from a weekly Sacred Pipe Ceremony that I do, this particular one including a tribute to Jamie Sams. Deepest gratitude to you my beautiful Rainbow teacher. Aho Mitakuye Oyasin. 

   

* "Golden Lasso moments" refers to a scene in a JLA graphic novel entitled A League of One where Wonder Woman, to assure her integrity and accountability, places her golden lasso of Truth around her own neck.

Bear With Me

Lately I have noticed a certain pattern unfolding in my spiritual life and journeys. It actually started a while back but since then has seemed to have gained momentum as time progresses. One night, maybe a year and a half or so ago, during a Sacred Pipe ceremony I became aware of a great brown bear spirit sitting next to me. 

Now my connection with Bear goes way back, having been raised on television shows such as Gentle Ben and Grizzly Adams, and having actually seen a black bear come out of the Minnesota woods while camping with my family as a kid... 

"Hey Dad! Look at that big dog!"

"...That's ...not a dog."

And so here I was about a year and a half ago, performing a sacred pipe ceremony when I became aware of this large, brown bear sitting next to me in spirit. I hadn't been aware of any specific Bear spirit guides or totems, usually chalking up any appearance of bears in my experiences to the presence of Artemis, my Matron Goddess, whose personal totem is Bear, and whose actual name, at least the "Art" part, means "Bear." This time seemed different, though, so I had to ask who she was and why she had appeared. "I am a totem - not personally yours but inherited from your ancestors." I hadn't really ever thought about hereditary totems before, totems being passed down through the generations, but that made sense. Not only are our ancestors literally present in our very blood, but also the accompanying totem animals that guided the clans and tribes of our grandmothers and grandfathers. For as long as I have been on this spiritual path, I still get as giddy as a school boy when I get to learn new things!

Then about nine months ago, after pretty much forgetting about her, during another pipe ceremony, I suddenly saw the huge top view of a bear head filling my inner vision. Again I asked who she was and why she had come. "You called me. I am your Grand Mother -- The grandmother of your grandmothers." It took me a minute to remember that I had actually called to her in the previous months, wanting to know my ancestor's ancestors and my grandmothers' grandmother, then instantly feeling embarrassed thinking about how vast the roots of my family tree were and wondering how there could be only one grandmother. "Duh!" Bear was THE Grand Mother. She was the first Great Mother Goddess worshipped by humanity, as evidenced by her skull and bones buried along with the humans in the oldest known burial graves. My conversation with her is still ongoing, which, translated, means I keep asking for more information and she keeps telling me to rest. I drew a comic about our initial meeting that you can read on my Drawing Breath Comic blog. 

In a previous post in this blog (Bearing It Well) I spoke about my experiences with the great Ponca chief, Standing Bear, how he replaced Siting Bull as one of my guides and how he has worked with me, so I won't recount that here. Suffice it to say he has helped me to regain my bearings (teehee!).

This past August I was doing pipe ceremony on the river with my fiance, Valerie, when another Native American chief appeared to me. I wasn't sure if he were a local Ancestor of the Land or from somewhere else, but his first words to me were, "You do us proud." I asked who he was and I got the name "Skinny Bear" with the sense that "skinny" was meant as in starving. As I drove home Valerie googled him and couldn't find anything about a Skinny Bear, but interestingly there was a "Lean Bear" who was also sometimes known as "Starving Bear." This Lean Bear was a Cheyenne Peace Chief in the 1860s and a member of the Council of  Forty-four, which was a tribal council devoted to maintaining peace with the encroaching white settlers. 

I returned to the river that evening to smoke with Lean Bear, to reconnect with him and basically find out if he were showing up as a guide for me or just stopping by. He replied that he had come to work with me because of the resonance between us as peaceful warriors, and to help me as a negotiator of Peace between seemingly opposing peoples. I saw in this too, along with his first words to me, a hint of my path in the near future - a path that had recently come to light through the guidance of a dear shaman friend, but which I will await another time and post to elaborate on. He did, however, further validate that path at our next meeting.

At the little beach on the river where I'd been doing my pipe ceremonies, I kept getting a vision of a stone Medicine Wheel there. Finally I just went ahead, collected all the necessary river stones, and laid out a small medicine wheel in the sand. Once I completed it and smoked at it, Lean Bear came through and thanked me for following through on the vision I'd been given, saying that these traditions are meant for all people. Those that hold to the specific traditions are not wrong, but neither are they totally right. Traditions are meant to change, evolve, and expand. They are to be shared. When clung to exclusively, for the sake of the tradition, the value of the individual person suffers. The traditions and objects, such as the Medicine Wheel, are filters or lenses through which to connect to the Divine with the human heart. The power is in each individual, not the tradition or object. The point is to move into the awareness of being one people, one tribe. The ways should be shared and taught to bring people together rather than another excuse for separation and division. Then he thanked me for being part of that healing force by respecting and honoring the old ways at the same time I adapt them to fit today's people.  

Through all of this my focus has been on being the bridge of peace and unity between people and things in the outside world. So in the last couple weeks Lean Bear came to me to help me focus on settling my inner battles and becoming a united front within myself. This is still an ongoing process but I have been making great strides which have reflected in my inner and outer worlds significantly. 

It just fascinates me, the patterns that unfold and the threads that flow and intertwine through my life, particularly when it involves an animal, and I am able to at least partially decode some of the underlying currents of influence that run beneath the surface, breaching into the light of day in form or name, and then submerging deep until the next appropriate moment to resurface. Bear is one of those influencers on my unfolding path, and I am so grateful to finally be able to recognize and appreciate her for all she does for me - My dear Grand Mother!