Timothy also explained that, to do this work, you must be full of power, and one of the ways to get that power is to dance and sing. His words helped me understand shamanic work more deeply.
“There is very little dogma involved,” Timothy explained, “and you must test the truth and validity of everything that I say for yourself. This work is between you and your helping spirits. You alone must experience these things; they cannot be taken on faith.”
As the drum beat and people began to dance, I sat on the ground not moving, and I got a nauseous feeling that I suspected was power trying to move through my body as I resisted it. As the first day wore on and people shared their own stories and journeys, I realized that many of the others in the room had been journeying on their own as well. Despite my resistance, I found that more of my questions were answered (and dozens more popped up), and I had a chance to practice using this work to help others who were seeking helpful information or healing. I discovered how joyful it was to journey on behalf of others.
I felt useful in a way I'd never experienced before.
We learned how to perform divination, the art of using stones to seek hidden helpful information to answer questions. I asked a very poignant question: “How can I heal my relationship with my mother?” Things had been strained between us since I went on sabbatical. After asking the stone and studying its many faces, I received this reply: “Through magic and divination.” Although this answer may sound vague and completely unhelpful to you, it was so perfect and sweet for me. That day, I let go of trying to “figure out how” to repair what was broken and began to trust that other forces would help us to mend our relationship. Searching for patterns and figures in the stone's intricate face felt strangely easy for me because of the pattern-hunting I had done for two decades with my microscope. It required the same sort of “soft” focus and consideration that helps you discern a pathologic diagnosis.
It was in this setting that I took my first journey to the Upper World to meet a teacher in human form. It wasn't as easy for me as the Lower World journeys had become. It was a more ephemeral and fleeting experience, but I did get a sneak peek at my first spirit teacher, a slender and graceful Hindu deity I immediately recognized as Lakshmi. I could perceive the elegant silhouette of her body. Several months before, I'd been drawn to an Indian painting of a woman sitting on a lotus with two elephants in the background. I impulsively ordered it, even though the style felt totally foreign to me. The oil-on-canvas piece arrived in a tube from India, and I had it framed and hung it in our living room. I later learned that it was a classical depiction of Lakshmi, goddess of spiritual and material prosperity.
When I returned from Minneapolis, I continued to journey nearly daily at home. I holed up in my walk-in closet, the only place in my house where I could journey undisturbed. Each journey and each experience seemed to take me deeper and deeper into ultimately recognizing a new truth: The spirits are real—as real as the ones that came and danced in the sangomas’ bodies in South Africa. These other realities I was exploring were as real as this earthly one.
Over time, my maps of the spirit worlds and my various spirit helpers became more fleshed out. There were places in each reality where I could return to visit with particular spirits who had certain ways to help me. I learned that the spirit world could be navigated using a multidimensional map that I could memorize with my senses. Down and to the left under the huge tree there is a fire. Swim across the water out to the island and head into the jungly area where there's a waterfall. Leap across a river to a spit of land. I began to travel with certain “places” in mind, because I knew a particular spirit would be there to help me with my question or request for healing. This world became very real to me—sort of like my own personal Hundred Acre Wood.
I ordered a drum with a synthetic head and carefully découpaged its curves with colorful images of wild animals that I reproduced from a turn-of-the-century French children's bingo game I'd been drawn to buy years before. I chose the synthetic drum head because it was more stable than skin drums in humid weather, and I hoped to be able to travel with it. It certainly wasn't like any native drum—or really any drum—I'd ever seen before, and I wondered if I was going about this in the wrong way. But something in me whispered: Keep going.
I loved this drum; it felt sacred to me. I taught myself to drum by listening over and over to the recordings I'd collected. I simply replicated the beat and then I practiced the call-back sequences, which signaled to the person on the journey that it was time to return home. Finally, I tried to record myself doing a full fifteen-minute journey and discovered that I could do it.
The more I journeyed, the more healed and whole I felt. I wrote in my journal: “It feels as if my brain is being rewired.” The most encouraging thing was that the spirits wanted nothing more than to help me with my ideas and questions. I had somewhere to go with all of my day-to-day confusions. And each time I returned, I felt more at peace.
CHAPTER 14
Doin’ the Mamba
You enter the forest at the darkest point, where there is no path. Where there is a way or path, it is someone else's path. You are not on your own path. If you follow someone else's way, you are not going to realize your potential.
Joseph Campbell, The Hero's Journey
Ever since I'd gotten back from Africa, where I had my first dream of the black mamba, I had become more frustrated with my design work at the office where Suzi and I had been collaborating a few days a week on residential and commercial projects. I've had a love of design ever since my dad built me my first dollhouse, and I often wondered whether it was perhaps a calling. I loved coming up with design concepts and finding unusual and beautiful things to express a client's unique personal aesthetic, but I wasn't as well suited for all the measuring, strategizing, and ordering required to make my concepts a reality.
My friendship with Suzi became strained under the pressure of all the projects we had pending, and I came home exhausted on the days when we worked together. Suzi described my state perfectly: “You're like a sweaty racehorse trapped in the gate. It's as if you just need to run.” A part of me wanted to cut to the chase and simply know what I was supposed to become. Whenever I tried to get logical or make sense of it all, I experienced tremendous frustration, as if I were supposed to keep exploring while simultaneously accepting that I couldn't know what it all meant.
Suzi and I had been on parallel journeys of self-discovery ever since we had known each other. And we had shared a lot along the way. As my own clash between work, mothering, and trying to find a purpose deepened, Suzi was experiencing her own life crisis, ultimately turning to twelve-step programs in an attempt to sort out her own stuff. We had constantly traded confidences, spiritual insights, mantras, and frustrations in our joint pursuit of motherhood, marriage, and personal dreams. So it was very difficult for me to consider breaking from her in any way.
I painfully confessed to Suzi that, even after all the work we had done together and all the time she had invested in me during the past year setting up shop, anticipating a long-term collaboration as entrepreneurs, I needed time alone to think and to pursue my new path. I told her that, instead of spending all our time together working, I wanted to get back to focusing on our friendship. Although I tried to soften the blow, I could tell from her voice that my news was surprising and hurtful. Even so, like the true friend she is, she immediately said: “I understand.”
During this liminal period, fear periodically crept up on me. If someone asked what I was doing with my time now that I wasn't at the hospital anymore or working with Suzi, I went into a tailspin. And, of course, I worried about money. I'd historically been our financial planner and money manager. Sometimes, I felt as if I was the only one who knew what was going on with our finances. When I got our post-Africa credit-card bill (roughly two months’ income), I showed it to Mark, feeling guilty about the money I'd spent. But how could I not have gone? And if I was partly responsible for getti
ng us into this financial pickle, wasn't it my responsibility to figure a way out of it?
Mark just shrugged and said we'd just have to look more carefully at what we were doing. I admitted that going back to work at the hospital two days a week would solve a lot of problems, but just thinking about doing that made me feel as if I were shrinking inside. Mark interrupted my grim musing.
“But you seem so happy. Why would you go back now? Why don't you just keep going on this path?”
His comment was so kind. The moment he said it, I felt so supported. I could sense that, at least for the time being, he wasn't worried about our finances. More important, he had faith in me. I was ready for a little of that.
With Mark's blessing, I called my section chair at the hospital to say that I wanted to extend my radical sabbatical for three more months—to a whopping total of six months. Three months had sounded like a lifetime when it began, but now it felt like the blink of an eye. I told him I needed a bit more time. To my surprise, he cheerfully agreed and said that extending the sabbatical wouldn't be a big problem.
Eventually, at the end of my six-month sabbatical, I struck a deal with my fellow partners. Instead of returning to work regularly, I was retained as a partner and given “casual status,” meaning that, if I was desperately needed, they could call me in to cover for a day now and then. And I kept my hospital privileges.
As my journeying continued, I felt stronger. I decided it was time to face the black mamba that had appeared in my dreams in South Africa. I had learned from my reading that Beasties that scare you often carry a particularly important message. I watched a lot of BBC footage of black mambas. I took note of their elegance—especially as they swam through water or lifted their head and body into the air—their beauty, and their deadly venom. Sometimes, studying the things that scare the bejesus out of me helps me relax.
I used a technique of shamanic journeying I had learned from the book Conscious Dreaming by Robert Moss to re-enter my dream with the mamba. I set an intention to re-enter the dream to see how it finished. As I walked down my gravelly tunnel and stepped out into the Lower World, Mother Bear walked me right back into the dream and stayed by my side. Mamba appeared immediately, just as I'd requested, only now she was no longer lifeless on a carved wooden sign, but slithering through the grass. Mother Bear and I followed her, and I asked her: “How are you here to help me?”
Mamba gave me no reply but slithered quickly forward. I followed her, and, as I did, I became a snake as well. Suddenly she stopped, reared up, and began to dance, swaying her head back and forth in the air. It seemed as if she wanted me to mirror her moves, to dance with her. I tried to urge her forward, but her image blurred, and she seemed to become more aggressive, truly frightening. I refused to dance with her and indicated silently that I'd rather keep moving. “Can't we go wherever we were headed before?” I pleaded.
Mamba threatened to bite me if I refused to dance with her. It's to help you get healing, she made me understand. She was confident, elegant, and unpredictable—and she wasn't going to back down.
I stood my ground, refusing. Then she struck fast and bit me in my right shoulder near the neck. I was momentarily terrified. I knew it was a journey, but it felt so real. I reached out for Mother Bear, who seemed completely unconcerned, as if to say: “Go on and take your whoopin’ so we can go home.”
When I returned from the Lower World, I was lying in the dark on the floor of my walk-in closet. Suddenly, I thought I heard something rustling in the corner and actually feared for a second that it was a black mamba. Then I realized there was nothing there. I was safe. I was home. I also knew I wasn't done with Mamba yet.
Why didn't I step up to dance? Maybe next time I would have to be clearer about my intention so that weird stuff wouldn't happen. I'd hoped Mamba would just tell me something juicy. I was embarrassed to dance with her and didn't understand the purpose of it. Why did I have to do anything? Was it all a metaphor? How many times in my life had I been asked to step up but refused or been so terrified that I tried to avoid it in any way that I could? I refused to ride horses but ended up loving it. I refused to emcee one of my a capella group's concerts because I feared I wouldn't be able to duplicate a previous triumph. I refused to go into direct patient care, choosing pathology instead, so I wouldn't have to face emotional entanglements with dying patients. There were so many times when I had rebelled, balked, or stood on the sidelines rather than stepping up. Now I was sick and tired of not standing up to my fears. So, a few weeks later, I gathered all my courage and lay back down on my closet floor to visit the black mamba yet again.
This time, it was different. I was scared, mind you, but I surrendered. I took Mother Bear along, of course. We re-entered the dream, and I told Mamba I was ready to dance. She nodded and gestured to us to follow her out into an open field—breathtakingly beautiful, wild, and open, like the plains of Mongolia. Once there, she indicated that it was time to dance. Bear and I danced back and forth, trying to imitate Mamba's movements. At first, it was awkward trying to dance like a snake. It's not easy to mamba. As we danced, my logical mind was full of questions. What was the point of all this? And then, I had a wordless experience. I became filled with a peaceful, powerful energy that caused me to grow and grow and grow in size, until I towered over Mamba and Mother Bear, like a Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade balloon.
I wasn't sure what had just happened, but when I returned to my closet floor, I knew I'd experienced honest-to-goodness power. It turns out that power feels like a peaceful knowing—like being utterly supported and loved by the Universe. It felt totally fantastic. It seemed that, although the process of owning my power was terrifying, power itself was not. I just needed to be willing to dance. Like a fearless motherfucker.
Becoming a life coach with ADD sounded so sexy on paper. I'd thought that establishing and running my coaching practice would feel like being Richard Branson, the founder and leader of Virgin airlines (who was also diagnosed with ADD). I thought I'd simply take his advice to “Screw it. Let's do it” and take off flying. In reality, it was hard.
It was a dream come true to “be the boss of me,” to be free to be creative all the time in any way I desired. Yet I was longing for the structure the hospital practice had given me. Instead of having my schedule dictated, I now had to create my own. I also needed to go out in the world to invite others to try my services. Worst of all, I'd been told I needed to create some “business systems.”
With only a Facebook page and a YouTube channel as my platform, I had my work cut out for me. I was working from home and had four kids who needed snacks packed for school, help with math, and shuttling to a full slate of activities. I frequently thought to myself: What have I done?
At the suggestion of my psychologist and physician, I'd been on a trial of a long-acting stimulant for my ADD ever since my summer sabbatical. I'd heard how much stimulant medication could help with the feeling of being overwhelmed that is associated with ADD. Thanks to the drug, I could now focus on accounting for hours without thinking once about peonies, elephants, or Tina Fey. In fact, it allowed me to be so hyper-focused for so many hours on end that I worked myself into deep exhaustion. It worried me and it didn't escape Mark either. I played around with short- versus long-acting versions of the drug. Some nights, it was hard to get the deep rest I needed. Taking a nap was out of the question; my mind wouldn't shut down. I felt productive, but also as if I had a six-hour executive-function hard-on. It was a little too much of a good thing.
One evening, George did one of the strangest things I'd ever seen him do. After dinner, without our knowing, he slipped away into my closet and donned every single piece of my favorite clothing—giant party-sized sunglasses, multiple scarves and necklaces, Ugg boots, a floppy summer beach hat, and, to top it all off, a coyote-fur vest bought long before I knew about the sacredness of Beasties. Then he half stumbled and half walked, as if in a trance, into the living room.
We all sat in stun
ned silence, dying to know what would happen next. He moved like a zombie with vertigo toward the couch and said, in a loud high-pitched monotone: “I am Sarah Seidelmann, and I am sooo tired.” Then, in a final act of dramatic glory, he did a face-plant with a thud onto the couch. His performance complete, we all collapsed into laughter.
No wonder he was worried about me! Trying so hard to get where I'm going had me completely shattered.
Years later, I returned from grocery shopping one day to find George in the living room, sitting on the floor surrounded by seven or eight burning votive candles. I was temporarily stunned. I stared, trying not to look shocked.
“What's up?” I ventured gently.
“I'm just trying to figure things out right now,” George said. He was sitting in a relaxed lotus position (holy smokes!), a posture in which I had never witnessed him before. That morning he'd learned that he hadn't made the hockey team. It was heartbreaking to see him so disappointed. But it was quietly thrilling to observe him going through his own process of resolution. It wasn't that he was overtly accepting my search for answers in practices like shamanism and healing. He was just showing me that he, also, had a spiritual side.
Several months later, with guidance from my spirits, I quit taking stimulants. My softness returned, and I found a natural rhythm of deep rest and work. Visiting Mother Bear frequently helped a lot. For me, going pharmaceutical-free was the best decision. It was still much harder to do things like pay bills and work on some aspects of my writing without medication, but it no longer felt as if I were living on borrowed time by working so intensely.
Swimming with Elephants: My Unexpected Pilgrimage from Physician to Healer Page 8