Walking

I didn’t know many people in the small Southern town where I went to high school, apart from some of my classmates. Yet, I somehow came to know a local artist, who hired me from time to time for odd jobs including alphabetizing all of his books into a library and posing clothed for paintings. He once held a party, at which I met a man who creeped me out as much as he fascinated me.

He was White Eagle, you could tell by his hair. Thin, yet tall and straight, it was difficult to discern his age. He walked with a stick, not to assist him, though. A string of beads and feathers dangled from the top of the stick. A man of little words, he only nodded when I asked him for a cigarette as a bashful teenager, sensing he wouldn’t judge me. He told me I could have as many as I liked.

White Eagle seemed ancient, while seeming light years from death’s door. He was plainly dressed in jeans and a vest with no shirt underneath. I wondered if he was poor.

Over the years I have briefly spotted him in town, and sometimes on social media. He’s not a man of the town or a friend, White Eagle is a shaman.

If he’s native American, I couldn’t pin him to any particular tribe. He hits the nail on the head in his medicine ways, speaking little, thinking and feeling some of the time, but mostly walking in spirit.

When he walks by, there is no sound, only a gente knowing that a spirit has come or gone. Moving quietly down the sidewalk minding his own business, he could easily step out of his skin, leaving the carbon behind in flesh or ashes and move through to the ethereal, blessing each curse and spilling healing out onto the world around him.

Native Americans and other indigenous people grow up immersed in spirituality, in the connections between plants, animals, directions, elements and the cycles of the natural world with the human experience. Coming to the table as an adult in the modern world is like getting thrown in the pool from the second story and trying to learn to swim.

The doors have been blown wide open, and at times I’m drowning in what feels like my soul and spirit being pulled in a million different directions. The energy of others around me pounds me like the waves of a tide coming in. The spirit world holds my attention hostage, with the dead beckoning me to be their messenger. My teacher told me not to make any more excuses; meditation was the only way to slow down the barrage, and I’m learning to not be a doormat for the spirit realm. Now I take appointments, and I make them regularly. I’m learning to look inward to see outward; a phrase that gets tossed around in the New Age community. I didn’t get it until I saw the proof in the pudding.

Meditation, followed by opening myself up to the spirits for answers, messages, visions or anything else they wish for me to know. I write down what I see, even if I think my mind created an image and drew upon it with associations. I write it down and acknowledge it regardless of its origin. I accept all information that comes across on that blank, dark screen in the mind. Then I examine the information, and research symbolic meanings. You’d be amazed what lines up with reality.

I had a vision of trees, birches to be exact. These have a symbolic meaning associated with the week after the Winter Solstice, ushering in the first of the Celtic calendar. This came to me on the Winter Solstice.

I walk in two worlds, a psychic told me. Another said my obstacles are small enough to simply step over.

Walking along a fence is tricky, you try to balance yourself so you don’t fall to one side or the other. You can see both from there, but can never fully be in one and the other at the same time. This is what it means to walk in the spiritual and real world. The spirit walkers are like grandparents, and I feel as though spiritually, I am still a child, learning to swim. I’m doggy-paddling in the deep end while my spirit animal, the Great Blue Heron, wades quietly, nearly motionless through murky. Teach me to move like you through multiple worlds, Heron.

Walking in these worlds means always standing in your truth. To practice this, I act on every spiritual/emotional impulse I feel, mustering up trust that the spirits won’t misguide me, and that the universe always supports me. My higher self is constantly guiding me towards the greatest good, and acting on impulses never leads me astray.

And so I walk forth into the commercial, industrial world as a child shaman in a business suite.