Hi everyone! Rather than coming up with a specific question for this post, I thought I’d try something different and said to myself, “I’ll just go in and see what my guides want to tell me.”
Kinda like throwing spiritual spaghetti on the wall and seeing what sticks.
The results? Uhhh… I’ll let you judge for yourself, but the title will make sense at the end. And today’s journey picks up on several themes that emerged from one of my previous blog posts – Reconnecting with Joy. So that’s worth a look if you haven’t read it already.
Anyway, here’s what happened…
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The instant I closed my eyes, I saw my spirit guide Green Dragon standing in front of me in his usual cartoony child-like form.
“You’re too serious,” he declared, and struck a heroic looking pose, arm outstretched.
Okay. I’m being generous. It looked more like that John Travolta pose from Saturday Night Fever. But I’m sure he was going for heroic.
And then the floor dropped out from underneath us. And we fell. One of these days I’m going to do a journey about why I fall through so. Many. Trap. Doors!
To his credit, Green Dragon held his silly pose the whole way down. While grinning. No doubt because I was spinning wildly out of control the whole time. Slamming repeatedly into the walls of the massive tunnel. Dignity? Overrated. Apparently.
So I was grateful when I did a belly-flop into the ground at terminal velocity.
But it’s a shamanic journey, so that’s about as dangerous as it ever was to Wile E. Coyote. I stood up, brushing off my red coat as Green Dragon came in for a perfect landing, Travolta style.
Then it got weird.
The bottom of the tunnel opened into a big room carved out of dark stone. With big blocky windows carved into the walls, looking out onto a bright blue sky. But that wasn’t the weird part. Remember the Disney pink elephants? Apparently from Dumbo, according to The Great Google.
Well, over a dozen of those pink elephants started marching through the chamber, banging on huge shamanic drums as they passed us. Then there was the heavy-set Valkyrie, singing opera. Trying to hit the highest notes you have ever heard! And then a rabbit flew lazily through the air.
Note to self – this is what happens when you start a journey without a clear question.
Green Dragon grabbed my elbow (he’s only half my height) and dragged me as fast as he could to a set of stairs along one of the walls. We scrambled up and onto a causeway overlooking the chaos.
“What the heck is all that about?!” I exclaimed.
“That?” he said, looking down, then back up at me. “That’s what your brain looks like on an average day. It’s insane!”
He did add that most people’s brains look like that. Full of non-stop, frantic activity. Most of it not that useful from the look of things…
I peered over the other side of the causeway and was surprised to see a totally different scene. Me, lying on a floating air mattress in the water, wearing the loudest Hawaiian shorts you’ve ever seen. With the shadows of a bunch of sharks swimming below me.
“Jump in the water!” Green Dragon yelled at me, as he leapt off the causeway.
Uhhh, sharks? Whatever. I jumped off the causeway, splashing into the water and sinking a few feet below the surface.
Which the sharks noticed. I’ve very rarely been scared in a journey, especially one led by a compassionate spirit guide. But let me tell you, seeing a bunch of 10-foot Bull Sharks surrounding you, snapping their jaws just inches from your face. That is scary!
With a blast of force from my hands, I propelled myself out of the water onto the (now empty) air mattress. Green Dragon was just a second behind me, landing on the foot of the mattress.
“And that??!” I asked, catching my breath.
“Those were your self-critical thoughts,” he replied, as if were obvious. And I suppose it was in retrospect.
“Okay,” I said, “but other than the human mind being a crazy place, what’s the point of this journey???”
Keeping in mind (pun intended) I had only myself to blame for getting into this mess.
Green Dragon waved his hands around, and I saw our environment had changed again. We were still on the water, but now we were in the middle of the ocean. No room, no causeway, and thankfully no sharks. We were just floating in the middle of the wide-open ocean on a calm, sunny day.
And we weren’t on an air mattress. We were in a small wooden boat with a rudimentary sail.
“Check the name,” Green Dragon said to me with a friendly wink.
So I leaned over the back of the boat and checked the name plate.
Lookfar
Oh. My. God.
If you’re not familiar with Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea books, that name won’t mean anything. But if you are… it’s the boat the wizard Ged uses to traverse the world across multiple books. For me, Ged is the ultimate role model of what a wise wizard / magician should be (even more than characters like Gandalf). He learns his lessons the hard way at first. But he becomes a compassionate teacher who knows when to lead, and when to follow so he can enable others to reach their full potential.
So being on a spiritual version of his boat was quite an honour.
“You need to let the cosmic ocean take you where it will,” Green Dragon said softly. “You humans keep trying to force yourselves down whatever path you think is right. But you’ll never be happy that way. Let the current take you. It knows where you need to go. Better than you do.”
Green Dragon explained to me that the human brain, and its ability to solve problems, was only intended for occasional use. But we use it almost constantly in our society.
“It’s like if you were walking down a hallway. You can just walk. It’s a hallway. You don’t need to overthink it.” Green Dragon said, pointing at his head. “But if you came to a locked door? Then you could use your brain to figure out how to open it. And then keep walking.”
I thought back to the start of my previous journey about Reconnecting with Joy, and how it started with the spirit guide Ms. Fuck It Bucket 🦄 pouring a bucket of cold water over my head because my brain was overheating.
Green Dragon explained that the more we become calm and grounded, and observe our thoughts rather than react to them, the more we’ll be able to discern the doors from the hallways in our life. The best argument for mindfulness meditation I’ve heard yet.
“Right now you people see everything as a door,” he said, somewhat disapprovingly. I couldn’t argue with him. But that also means there’s an exciting opportunity for all of us to see more hallways, and rest into walking down them. Experiencing them as we go.
And so, I settled down beside Green Dragon in Lookfar, and we let the current of the cosmic ocean carry us wherever we needed to go.
It was quite peaceful.
Until Green Dragon started singing. Loudly.
All part of the hallway. 😉
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Yeah, so, that happened. If you stuck through it with me, I hope you found some useful nuggets there. And a laugh or two. I know I did.
Until next time,
Eric, your shamanic guide… into the unknown.