A Journey of Re-Discovery – Part V
“A New Tack”
Any good sailor knows that when the wind is following, you need to tack across it to make any forward progress.
I was now living in the basement of my parent’s house. My mother was somewhat reluctant to have me there; my father was glad. I, myself, was of two minds.
First, get a job. I worked for a temp agency for some months before landing a permanent job in a hospital.
Second, get healthy. That took longer. The physical abuse that my body had taken during the two or so years living on the Ranch and its macrobiotic diet (the last year) would take a while. I have nothing against the macrobiotic diet, except it is heavy in soy products, grains and dead (cooked) vegetables. Many people lose weight on the diet. I lost weight all right… down from 130 pounds to 113, not a good weight for an adult female, no matter what the mass media says about female figures.
I tried several things… acupuncture, which just hurt, holistic medicine… etc. I detoxed, etc. For a couple of years I could not tolerate anything with sugar in it, not even fruit. I mostly ate cooked rice, vegetables and light proteins. Luckily I found a store nearby that sold a variety of whole foods, well before it was fashionable. I could no longer tolerate milk or cheese, so found soy milk and soy cheeses as substitutes.
Next, I started into more metaphysical explorations. I couldn’t help myself; I was responding to an inner urge or push. My next tack: shamanism.
Indigenous peoples sometimes claim, with veracity, that people are making money off their ancient cultures and practices. Keep in mind, however, that spiritual teachings “belong” to no one people. Since we do have “past” lives in which we have been an indigenous person, a member of a particular tribe, it is understandable that shamanism would resonate for some at a deep level.
So it was for me, for a short while. I never got a drum, but still have a little leather rattle. I attended a few weekend events sponsored by Michael Harner’s group and found that I didn’t resonate with the level where some people were coming from. Again, there was an element of spiritual pride or arrogance that got in the way of a real experience of connection with the inner Being. I quickly grew disenchanted with the new age version of shamanism, not in itself, but how it was being used as a money-making device by some and as an ego-enhancing practice by others.
Besides that, it was amusing to be gathering quite a herd of spirit animals. While my first teacher was “Wolf”, my favorite shamanic companion was and still is, red bear, a huge Brown Bear that walked beside me on some of my journeys. And then a white winged horse started showing up, who took me to the upper world, to a castle where I sat with one of my teachers and then with my Twin Flame. The journeys were short and quite varied. There were other animals: deer, koala, red hawk, and so on. I decided that shamanism would not be the path to follow, in this lifetime.
Small spiritual groups always thrive in urban settings. Not sure why, but probably because they can “hide” better out in the open than they can in a rural setting where everyone knows everyone’s business. So, I connected up with yet another group, The Rose Pearl, founded originally by a man who had extensively studied Buddhism and spiritual healing.
I started with the beginning group, but when I had a private talk with the leader, he told me that he recognized me as a Light Being… and a male Soul. While I have been a male in many lifetimes, I think Lady Tazjima would object to being described as a “male” anything, as would her Mate.
Oh, well. I soon found myself in the more advanced group, doing more meditation, with the leader setting the energies. And I took private healing sessions with the leader. He and his wife wanted me to be an instructor for the group after receiving some more instruction. What that consisted of, I never found out.
It was summer and we were all supposed to attend a gathering near the Tetons in Wyoming. I planned to take some vacation time to do so. At the last minute, the plans collapsed. I still had vacation, so I went on a car camping trip with one of the other group members. When I came back, I was in the throes of the beginning stages of entity-induced psychosis.
I’m not going to describe the entire adventure, but anyone who has experienced a psychic break knows of what I speak. That is bad enough when you are being threatened and cajoled by “voices” for hours, losing sleep and not eating well. In the process, I lost my job at the hospital and once more had to begin a long healing process to regain my physical stamina.
While experiencing an illness of any sort is looked upon as a great “evil” in our current version of “culture”, some indigenous peoples maintain that illness is an indication that spirts are fighting for control of the body. Fortunately for me, the leader of Rose Pearl, was able to clear my auric field of the entities and I began a long road to healing.
Again, without a job, I decided to go back to business school to refresh my skills. Technology was changing, personal computers were more available and so on. And it was a way to prepare to get another job.
Within months of my setback with the psychotic episode, I was studying and thriving in a business school. I did so well, that I assisted the instructors with some of the other students who were experiencing difficulties especially with their writing skills. I started writing stories and began to enjoy life, again.
Before I finished the classes, I got a job in downtown Seattle. My instructors were sorry to see me go, but I was off to yet another new beginning.
While living at the folk’s house, I became their gardener and general manager. I did the shopping and took my mother to the doctor. Eventually, at my mother’s behest, I took over the accounting for the household as my father was getting “dotty”. I accompanied them to gatherings of some of our relatives but it was difficult for me to relate to these people anymore; I had changed too much and they were also shy of me. Rumors of what I have been doing had come down to some, apparently, I was actually viewed with some suspicion by my cousins and my sisters. I couldn’t care less. My parents loved me and I took care of them. I was growing accustomed to feeling the rejection of others. It hurt, but I survived.
Next, I embarked upon a short study of Rosicrucian teachings, but after about six months came up short. I didn’t resonate to the manner in which these teachings were held away from the general public. While I realized that many in the public wouldn’t understand them, I felt that people needed to be able to make a choice about what they wanted to learn. It was just a feeling with me. And I felt frustrated with myself, as well, like I had somehow fallen short, yet again.
About this time, I took up my hiking, again. I started hiking with the Mountaineers and after a year or so, I began to lead hikes once more. Yet, I had changed and so had the Mountaineers. In attempting to expand the Club and replace its aging membership, the general character of the Club had changed, growing both stodgier and more permissive at the same time. It was kind of a weird mix, actually.
As a leader, I found that people expected me to do all the work for them, basically acting as a non-paid tour guide. Before, Mountaineer groups were well-prepared and most of us knew each other, more like an extended family or people sharing a passion for the mountains. Not so any more. Certainly there are still people like that, but they were also turned away from the growing list of rules and the social activities of the Club. Still, it was my only social outlet for quite a while.
I knew the mountains. I may not have been the strongest hiker or climber, but I remembered every hike that I had ever gone on. I could be driving down a road that I hadn’t driven on for ten years and tell my companions the names of the mountains, where the trailheads were and so on. I didn’t need a map very often as the map was in my head.
Regarding my spiritual journey, for the time being it became more internalized. I read a lot of books. There were a couple of excellent metaphysical bookstores nearby, so I could browse to my heart’s content and allow my intuition to pick out books. It was about then that I first encountered the books by Barbara Marciniak about the Pleiadians. And I read other books filled with channeled teachings from the Sirians; books by Ken Carey, especially The Return of the Bird Tribes, many of the books containing other channeled material, as well as a ton of fiction. The local library was a place that I visited frequently.
Years passed. Funny thing, I can’t really remember too much of what was going on inside as I was encountering so much outside. While my folks initially gave me a place in which to stay for a short time, I ended up spending nine years there.
My parents were in decline. That much was quite apparent, so I entered that dreaded phase in life when the child becomes the parent of their parents. Taking care of their needs, the household and holding down a full-time job demanded most of my attention. Still, I was able to get away on some weekend activities, including backpacking, day hikes, and cross-country skiing in the winter months, and staying at Mountaineer cabins, summer or winter.
My mother experienced a very slow decline. She passed in 1999. Two weeks later, my father went into full dementia. I managed to care for him at home for about nine months, but soon he was sun-downing and wandering around the house at night. He was still a big man and getting a little scary, so I made the difficult decision to have him placed in an Alzheimer’s ward.
One day after my mother passed away, I was laid-off at my job in downtown Seattle. The parent company was “restructuring” and divesting itself of unneeded subsidiaries, which included the company with which I worked. Again, I decided to go back to college for some more job skill upgrades.
It was at this time, that I met a man and fell hard in “love”. Of course it wasn’t love, but try explaining that to someone who is in the midst of the throes of “romantic” love or to be more precise, “lust”. True love was not something with which I have had much experience in this lifetime.
I ended up selling the parent’s house to finance my father’s care, and moving to the southern end of Puget Sound. I got a job with another company and I was living with my boyfriend.
Being an intuitive person of some depth, I became quickly aware that the situation in which I had abruptly placed myself was not the best thing for me. My boyfriend came from an alcoholic family and was a social drinker himself. While an intelligent man, he was more interested in his work than he was in a relationship or his two children who visited every other weekend.
The relationship was doomed from the start and I ended it in a very over the top emotional fashion by the next July. Soon after, my father passed away from complications stemming from his neurological dysfunctions. Again, I was plunged into a deep well of despair. Besides losing both of my parents within 18 months of each other, within a three-year period, I also lost an uncle and several cousins of my parent’s age. Suddenly, I was standing in the wind without family to shelter me. I was now a part of the elder generation. The family was gone or I had long departed from its shelter and continued on with my solitary journey.
My co-workers assisted me in moving to an apartment and I began the long years of living alone, without a mate or my parents… or the rest of the family who had long turned their collective backs on me. Within months of my father’s death, I abruptly quit my job and decided to go to school… again, but this time as a massage therapist. My life was about to take another tack… this time in a more positive fashion.
The story continues in: Part VI: Healing Hands
©All Rights Reserved, Elizabeth Ayres Escher, http://www.bluedragonjournal.com