PlantShaman's Enlightenment Blog

I have no business blogging right now.  I’m riding on very little sleep, working insane hours to get a product launched (ZuCamp, if you care to spy), and I have a glass of bubbly in me, so I’m saucy. Indeed.  It’s a little insane how much I’ve taking on lately – June is shaping up to be Crazy and Mad As Hell month.  That’s a grand set of circumstances to test my surrender abilities, and all this “it’s not real, remember who you are” revelations. Yummy.  BRING IT.

Next week, after another Earth Medicine Apprentice weekend, I’m headed to LA with Orion.  Our visit has many reasons, but at the heart of it all, we are going to see his brother Zen.  Zen is deeply immersed in round 3 of lymphoma.  He first contracted the disease at age 19.  He thought he beat it, but it came back a few years later, at the prime of his newfound adult freedom, and it really kicked his ass.  He subsequently developed various drug addictions, and hit that dreaded downward spiral.  Somehow he rebounded, found a fantastic wife, beat the cancer yet again, and settled in for the rest of his life.  Then a month or two back, the cancer returned – more vicious than ever.  It almost took him from us in the early onset – white blood cells tanked, body temp skyrocketed – a death recipe if ever there was one.  But Zen is a fighter, clearly, and he came through again.  Thanks in part to all the incredible healers and prayer-minded powerhouses we employed to get him through.

Zen is currently receiving chemo directly into his spine.  He’s in crazy pain, hazed by all the medication and madness, and really dying to *heal*.  He wants to live, he’s willing to look at why he manifested this illness to begin with, and as such, I have stepped in to help in any way I can as well.  I can’t tell you what this means to me.  I haven’t even met Zen yet – we’ll do the honors next week.  But I have connected with him – deeply, profoundly, infinitely.  He’s Orion’s brother, for Divinity’s sake – it doesn’t get more sacred to me.  Zen allowed me to do some shamanic journeying work for him, and it took me just a few minutes of deep meditation to find his spirit animal and his cosmic energies.  I burst into tears at the meeting actually, because I felt him so profoundly, and I just loved the being I discovered.  Zen is a Libra, to the core, and they, along with Aquarians, are my absolutely favorites.  I saw Zen at age 18, before he ever knew that cancer would be his demon.  He was so devilish and sweet, so vibrant and funny and just balls-out nutty.  And as I meditated with Wolf, his power animal, and this image of Zen, I felt those parts of him that had never changed.  The awareness that still oozed mischief and playfulness.  In those moments, I knew that he could beat this, if he wanted to.  And I promised to do everything I could to help him get there.

Up until these moments, I have been shy about any healing abilities I may or may not have.  Hell, I still am.  I lay no claims to super powers.  I only know I’m a vessel, and that I *want* to be of service in this way.  It seems that’s all it really takes – declare to the universe that you’d like to help heal, and you will find a way to make it so, if your sincerity is unbreakable.  Ever since I was a child, I wanted to help.  At first, it was to be as a psychiatrist, then a neurologist.  Eventually, I gave up to “professional” aspirations and just acknowledged that it was enough to be the friend you could call at 3 AM and spill your guts too.  Later on, as I discovered Ayahuasca, I thought she would only help me heal myself.  But Aya and San Pedro / Huachuma have shown me a different path.  This is my way to service.  Humility, although an absolutely Godly treat, need not be the only focus when one is ready to heal.  I have been hiding behind an “I’m not ready” veil.  But tell that to someone whose hourglass is dribbling down to the last grains of sand.  Zen needs help, and he doesn’t have time for my modesty.  And so I’m so honored to just step it up and say – OK, let’s do this.  Let’s heal.  I don’t do the work anyway.  I just open myself up to be the vessel.  The best healers get the hell out of the way from word one.  That’s my only job, really, and I can do this now.  For Zen, for Orion – for the Greater Good.  Nothing like jumping into the fire, eh?

When I visit Zen next week, I have in mind some radical approaches, should he be willing.  I should say, should I be willing.  I’m still a little freaked out by taking ownership of this, as the stakes. . .couldn’t be higher.  But I keep seeing visions of how I can help Zen help himself, and who am I to hide behind my fear of inadequacy, when someone just wants to live?  I will have employed all my healing partners-in-crime by then, with advice and support beyond measure.  Zen himself wrote me today and said he’s ready for a miracle, that he needs all the super powers Orion and I can muster.  It’s like Aya has been preparing me for such things since the very first sip.  Is anyone ever really ready for such do or die moments?  Likely not.  I’ll do what I have to, with tears of gratitude to boot.

In the middle of all this, I’m also moving into a new home – along with Orion and Hijo.  A marvelous home, with a lush plant-filled back yard and pool.  Orion and I are riding out yet another foreclosure home – this one belonging to my angel ex-boss – we’ll live there until the bank kicks us out.  Then there’s the chiropractor – seeing a new doc (Badger, his actual last name) several times a week to try and fix this years-long wretched pain, and really abnormal spinal curvatures.  It seems like every adjustment stirs up more emotional shit too – like there’s an ocean of things that have been laying dormant inside those disks and nerves, and every crack sends more to the surface.  The Apprenticeship will no doubt be intensely interesting, and this work launch is completely annihilating.  But it’s all so, so glorious.  I have regular moments of staggering clarity.  I’m laughing all the time about the cosmic joke of separation.  I’m feeling immense connections to those I love, those I like, those I dislike – everything everything.  These are amazing times.

I would be lying if I said I was unattached to Zen’s survival, though, and that’s something I’m looking at with a very clear mirror.  Do I want him to live because suddenly I’m involved?  Yes, I suspect that’s part of it – I want to feel like I have some purpose in these spaces, some actual abilities.  That it’s not just my head thinking she’s something something.  Ego is always there, and I see her for what she is.  But I also connected so strongly with how much life this man has left to live.  It doesn’t have to be his time – I know this unequivocally.  He can change his story, with hard work, integrity, and openness.  And what an incredible, immense, beautiful gift that I can carry – the chance to shine a little light.  He has to do the work, not me.  And yet, he is me.  I feel him and I feel our mutual essences.  Zen shows me the parts of me that are both decaying and dying, and dying to live.  These are the money shots in life.  The chances to see the real Truth of what is.  Whatever happens, I know I won’t be looking away.  It’s the kind of challenge I’ve built my life upon.  Heart – stay open, alert, alive.  In those feeling spaces.  I’ll need every tear and every truth I can find.

“Is it real this infusion
Can it heal where others before have failed?
If so then somebody
Shake shake shake me sane
’cause I am inching ever closer to the tip of this scorpion’s tail”

- Tori Amos

Tags: Ayahuasca, Cancer, Earth Medicine, Healing, Huachuma, Lympoma, San Pedro, Shamanic Healing, Shamanism