December 6, 2002:
People say, "Get over it!," and you reply, "OK. How? There's no Mission Control in our brains with a switch labeled 'It: over/not over'."
I now realize this is false. There's a perfectly accessible on/off switch for every emotion associated with an experience. Freud called these "cathexes," and invented the Talking Cure attempting to get at them. The older method is called "ritual." It's what Shamanic healers have practiced as long as humanity has existed.
A healing ritual doesn't have to be understood as magic. You can view it instead as an algorithm for reprogramming the brain. It doesn't matter whether the Shaman's journey to the Spirit World is literally true. What matters is that our brains, which evolved through tens of thousands of years of this practice, respond as if it were.
Simple instructions. Thursday, Friday & Saturday nights, ask "the Spirits," or whatever you believe in, to help prepare you to receive back your missing soul fragments. And, pay attention to your dreams.
Friday morning. I defeated an intruder who attacked me in my bed. After throwing him to the ground I shot him with a pistol. This is unusual: typically weapons fail in my dreams. Very little emotion: no fear, elation, etc.; more surprise that the gun worked. There were also quite a number of smaller dream fragments, which is interesting since we're talking about soul fragments. On waking I failed to remember them.
Saturday morning. Fragments. Someone, not me, allowed my old VW bus to coast into the back of my mother's new VW camper, which was parked with no brake. I ran to rescue it, and bring it home. (My mother's never owned a VW camper.) The neighborhood was Berkeley, not San Diego; the cars were beneath a carport awning. There were other fragments throughout the morning, but that's the one I remember.
Sunday morning. Little sleep. Skipped dinner, stayed up most of the night writing. Note to self: stop that. No remembered dreams.
Sunday afternoon. Anne explains the theory behind the ritual. Striking events occur, often traumatic. A portion of oneself becomes stuck in that moment, left behind in that experience while the rest of life flows on. Oneself is now fragmented: pieces are divorced in this way. The purpose of the ritual is to retrieve these fragments, if they're willing to return, and the spirits are willing to assist.
This is the trauma I've told Anne about:
2:06 a.m., a March night long time passing. I'm pacing in the park. Boomers; salt; pools of streetlight in the darkness. The two of you stood me up for dinner. I've been here since evening. I don't understand why you're doing this. There's dew on the grass, and my footprints. There's a lot of pain, a lot of panic.
Your laugh echoes through the lonely alley. The two of you are walking slowly down steep stairs from the village. Arm-in-arm, your head on his shoulder. You haven't noticed me. I walk toward you. You're laughing. You see me. You jerk to a sudden stop. Your hand recoils from his as though you'd been caught committing a crime. There's a look of fear on your face. For a moment you seem unsure what to do.
Then you laugh. You hold out both arms, and nearly fall. He grabs your hips to hold you steady. I have to help: it takes us both to keep you standing. You smell bad. You both do. You haven't been bathing. Your hair is frazzled. I've never seen you with untidy hair. Even in sleep your hair was always beautiful. You would refuse to leave the house until you looked perfect. You've been drinking green beer all evening, for Saint Patrick's day. Beer and cocaine. My heart goes out to you, despite my hurt and fear. I would protect you if I had that skill. I must look very silly. You kiss me, and I'm shocked. Why is she kissing me? She should be kissing him. You laugh, and laugh, and laugh.
In the room you're hurtful, mocking. "Am I teasing you?", you say, as if that would be the best thing in the world. I put you to bed, and stay up all night.
In the morning I work the front desk. You spend an hour in his room. The two of you emerge holding hands. You both have wet hair. You come to say goodbye, and you flirt with me there in the office. Again I'm shocked. Why is she flirting with me, if she wants to be with him? The two of you drive off to do acid at Disneyland.
That's the last I ever see you. Your sister tells me a few days later that you've decided not to be my friend anymore. I can't believe it.
Kafka wrote, "I am a memory come alive." What am I, then? More like a life invaded by memory.
At Anne and Stuart's house a small upstairs room serves as ritual space. There's a tiny altar, really just a rectangle against the southern wall, in which a candle is lit. Above it on the wall is a sheet of 8.5 x 11 paper with stick-figure drawings of animals: Rabbit, Hawk, Snake. Several small items are arranged around the candle: feathers, rattles, glass bowls containing lavender, tobacco, and other offering-herbs for the spirits. Pillows for the participants. Anne and Stuart each have a ceremonial drum which can be worn on their forearms via leather-looking straps. There's a tape-recorder which will be used as the shamans relate the events of their trances. I take a seat crosslegged with my back near the western wall; my friend Hunter who brought me here sits off to one side where she'll assist with a shaker.
First they teach us the rhythm of shamanic drumming. 240 beats per minute, four per second, steady, usually without accent. Stuart says, this is the same rhythm used by shamans in disparate cultures found all over the world. I choose a small shaker with a high pitch; I like it because it's easy to manage. Hunter's is larger. We're both musicians, and we understand the simple rhythm immediately.
Anne lights a thick bundle of sage. With a feather she brushes sage smoke over Stuart, head to toe, front and back, with a final flourish at the throat. Trading places, Stuart does the same for Anne. Then Anne paints me, and Stuart paints Hunter.
Anne addresses the four cardinal directions. East, South, West, North: each has its specific character, East as the direction of sunrise, South the direction of warmth, West the direction of sunset, North the direction of night. She asks the directions for their blessing and assistance. Stuart completes the benediction, addressing Up, the direction of heaven, and Down, the direction of earth. We're ready to begin.
I lie on my back with a pillow under my head. Feet facing east, head to west. Strong sage smell permeates the atmosphere, along with a little tobacco. Note to self: that weak herb we used to pay $10 for in junior high and which barely left a buzz was probably sage. I can feel my mind drifting in a gentle way, probably the sage combined with lack of sleep and the fact that all I've eaten in the last 36 hours is a piece of lemon cake. Note to self: stop that.
Anne begins chanting. She and Stuart beat their drums. Hunter assists with her shaker. It's quite loud in this small space. Must have been an amazing experience when the whole village turned out to make noise like this. Anne is working herself into the trance state through which she visits the spirit world. Her chanting becomes now louder, now quieter. The drum beat is steady, but the pitch varies, partly the result of striking the drum in different locations, partly the doppler effect of phase changes as Anne dances around me. She passes the drum over my face, quite close, and suddenly I'm aware of very definite, very strong physiological reactions. Concussion from the drum hits causes my eyes to involuntarily blink, as the massive booms of fireworks sometimes do. The drum hits are so fast and so steady that it's like induced R.E.M, the rapid eye movement of dream sleep.
I'm breathing from my heart, allowing the spirits access. I'm praying to the spirits that are meaningful to me: Life, in my somewhat abstracted personal religion. For some reason I find myself thinking of my stuffed animal, Woof, a strong and dignified wolf cub who is one of my dream guardians at home; and also of different pet cats who've been members of my family at various times in life. Anne's trance is complete: she lies next to me, touching me at shoulder, hip, and ankle. She's no longer chanting: the sound is of Stuart's drum, and Hunter's shaker.
I'm now vividly aware of sounds within Stuart's drumbeat which I know are not real sounds physically present within the space of the room, yet which I vividly perceive. This is not like hearing in imagination, which I can easily do: name a song, I can hear it. It's somehow something else. There's something I'll call "war whoops," for lack of a better term: some chorus of male voices, maybe a dozen, singing a high-pitched exhalation, sortof like when you're really excited by something and you yelp, "Woo!" It reminds me of the striking backing loop running behind John Lennon's psychedelic epic "Tomorrow Never Knows." Also of Hollywood injuns dancing around bonfires. At the same time there are other voices, speaking, maybe half a dozen, talking quietly in measured tones which could be a chant, but sound to my ear more like conversation in monotone. I'm trying to make out words but, can't. Either the conversations are overlapping in a way which distorts syllables, or they're in a language I don't know.
There's very little research on the effects of rhythm and frequency on human physiology. But, these effects are real. Pre-industrial peoples have known this for millennia.
It's never easy for me to hold still, and I'm conscious of my body tensing, then relaxing as I focus on it. There's something else, too. I can sometimes feel air blowing on the cuff of my left pant leg. It's like the cuff is being lightly tugged by upward pulses rising from the ground toward the ceiling. Just the left one, not the right. It's not coming from under the door: I'd feel that on the sole of my shoeless foot. I'm thinking it must be the swoosh of Stuart's mallet as he beats his drum close by, so I look to see. It's not him: his drum is high in the air overhead, too far to be causing a breeze I could feel. Also I'd feel the movement of his mallet in both directions, and this movement is upward only.
Anne's muscles twitch and spasm, like those of a dreamer. I focus on being still, and the voices in the drum.
Anne's ready to return to me the soul fragments she's found. Stuart drums very lightly; Hunter ceases. I'm conscious of how quiet the relative quiet is. Anne bends over me with her hands near her mouth. She puts her hands on my chest over my heart, shaped as if she were holding a tube, and through them blows the soul pieces back into my body. I can feel her warm breath passing through my shirt. I sit up, and she blows them a second time into the back of my head. The drumming ceases; all is quiet. Anne sits in front of me, explaining in an exhausted near-whisper what she found.
First, a young adult, grieving and confused over the loss of a beloved friend who disappeared from his life. Not a surprise: I'd told her this was my reason for wanting the ritual. This soul fragment thought there was something about him that created that leaving, that it was something wrong with him. Anne says, "The essence he brings back to you is the knowledge that everything is perfect the way it is; and it was not about you. And he brings a sense of the ebb and flow of life, that things come and go; but that you, you who you are, are whole, complete, and you have within you the ability to continue, to go on, to keep living, and to let things come in and let things go out of your life. Let them come and go. You're the ocean, they are just the waves. He brings back that awareness to you."
Second, a small child, perhaps two or three, playing in a sandbox. Something happens, the people are all gone away, he feels abandoned and panic-stricken. A considerable surprise: I remember, very faintly, some significant episode in a sandbox. I can blink my eyes and see a flash of it, although I can't remember precisely where or when or what. But there is a real memory of something upsetting me in a sandbox. Anne says, "The essence he brings back with him is courage, and the belief that he was loved. That was the first fear that came to him when everyone disappeared: not being loved, not being taken care of. He brings back the knowledge that you're always loved and taken care of, no matter what."
Third, a teenager, seventeen, who's met a powerful figure who influences him enormously. He gave a part of his soul away to this person. Anne says, "I had to find her. She didn't even know she was carrying a part of his, of your soul. She didn't mean to. And she was happy to give it back." Another surprise, this could also be real. The age is slightly off, but, there is someone like that in my life. Anne continues, "He brings with him the knowledge that the one you have to love first is yourself, and that opens your heart to many other loves. You don't have to give yourself away to love. You get to have yourself and keep yourself."
"And I went looking for an animal. There were all these animals all over the place [laughing]. Lots of animals were interested. We have a rule that an animal has to appear four times before it's really the true soul part that has to come back. And I was just having to ask the Spirits, 'Make this clear to me' [laughing], 'cause there were a lot of animals there. I think that's a good sign. But the one that appeared four times was a cheetah. Was very lithe, and, uh, very good shape, very fast. A female cheetah, I think. That's who I brought back for you."
With my permission she assigns me two homework exercises. First, spend time, today, talking with a tree about how to best root these recovered fragments within myself. This is very traditional, often done after soul recovery. Trees are experts on putting down roots. Second, sometime this week, write three vignettes from the points of view of each of these fragments outlining the lessons learned through their experiences.
I feel enormous elation. For me this moment is, I believe, the culmination of my long, slow healing after losing myself and my beloved friend more than a decade before. My recent writing has given the key experiences independent existence outside of memory. It's also helped articulate clearly that I no longer agree to be dominated by the ghosts of these events. For me the healing purpose of the ritual is to inform my "critter brain," as Hunter calls it, of these events. And, I hope, to cement their inner permanence.
There's a ceremony for Hunter, in which I assist. Then a party for her dear friend's birthday. Then an informal Thanksgiving dinner, celebrating the blessing of our healing, which we hold at Graziano's in Petaluma, with wine and deep exhaustion. I drop Hunter off and reach home around 10pm, which feels like dead of night.
I fulfill my tree-talking homework at the Pacifica golf course, although perfunctorily: during the drive home I've already done it in imagination, which counts, I'm certain. In imagination the tree replied by dropping an acorn on my head. I know what that means: participate again in the cycle of life. You're ready now to love someone new. Find her. Put down human roots. Your soul will root with you.
Asleep by 1am. Vivid dreams which elude me in waking. Elated all the next day.
Listen to the audio.