I got kicked out of the entire bay area
shamans group. I felt excluded at first.
But they're afraid of me, and my demon
world, and my abilities to manipulate it.
And they don't understand that I also have
"sittlikheit" - the cult of ethical life,
with which hegel ended the philosophy of
right by saying it is the highest possible
cult on earth, the noblest possible way of
life. Beginner shamans don't understand,
and these little shamansim intro classes
do not prepare the students with the
proper initiation, slow and difficult, and
so they're all weak and frightened.
Anyway, i'll be getting to the whole story
of what happened last weekend, it's deep
in there that the central "point" of this
entire email is. At the center of this
email is a "quasar", and I will point it
out when it comes.
Olga kharitidi, md, wrote "spirits of
trauma";it's her second book, I now have
her first and it's in the queue with a
medium to high priority. She is a russian
psychiatrist who went to siberia to study
with a very powerful shaman, and learned
and taught something that i've never heard
from any other shamanic culture, and I
have totally integrated into my
"teaching", my "psychosis", my "culture
two", my "tapirology": she said the
demons, the spirits the shaman uses as
helper spirits, that he has to first
subdue, ar "spirits of trauma", both his
own trauma, but also the trauma of his
ancestors (i think they gave some number
like 10 generations, but that might be
kind of arbitary), but then they said a
powerful shaman can actually collect the
spirits of trauma from other people, the
people he ministers to, and make those
"demons" his own, and train them and
control them. And the tapir is a "demon
eater" who does exactly this, as far as I
can tell it's the same technology, and
this is what I study from him, how to eat,
and digest, huge quantities of demons, not
just the occasional few that the average
community healer does, but to absorb like
a black hole at the center of a galaxy
cluster, the vast majority of all the
demons on the continent, to absorb at the
"eddington limit" as they say in
astrophysics, as lance armstrong our
country's most powerful biker absorbs
10,000 calories a day and burns exactly
the same amount, absorbing demons and
producing a "cooling flow", which in this
complex analogy would be a flow of
perfection and magic out onto the
surrounding community. Not that I claim
to be as good at the job as the tapirs,
but that is what i'm tring to do here.
And I don't remember if it was olga's book
or my own ideas while watching the
discovery channel or something, but the
human genome has been analysed, you know,
and they say that a small piece of our dna
makes up everything they can see - bones,
blood, meat, the entire human being
according to "science". They say the vast
majority of our genome is "junk dna", bits
and peices that are similar to the peices
of the main part, just sitting there "for
no reason". Scientists are as silly as a
snowflake at the center of a cloud who
thinks that he is separate from the cloud,
the cloud is something to ignore, say
doesn't exist, get rid of, and when the
evidence appears that he is actually the
precipitate at the center of this "enemy"
or "unreality", he just says that must be
his "junk dna" that has nothing to do with
anything.
It may very well have been olga's shaman
though that told here that these "spirits
of trauma", these demons, that the shaman
collects, are the objects on the junk dna.
Going on this theory, I am attempting to
add to my genome, by eating other people's
demons. I have noticed an ability to
transmit demons between schizophrenics. I
read the book you own in hardcover called
"into the halflight", and aquired some
demons. Suspending disbelief and going
with this theory, the patients in the
schizophrenia ward who talk to eachother
enthusiastically about their demons in the
demon world are sharing demons, they are
multiplying, more efficiently than if we
each just paired off and had kids. Which
is why I love talking to schizphrenics,
either all over the internet, to transmit
and multiply, to collect whatever I can,
and I can aquire them reading. I once
went to a used bookstore in
haight-ashbury, eventually had a long talk
with the expansively-minded woman who has
run the store for 35 years, and ultimately
told her I was here to "eat demons", to
collect the spirits in the books, and that
what I was looking for was not books on
shamanism, because I am a shaman already
and can do that on my own, and not exactly
books on psychiatry, but the memoirs of
schizophrenics, because in these there is
almost always "tapir-food", or demon
dreams, and that the other way to get what
I am looking for is the mind of the
average two year-old, but they don't write
books;
i wanted to see if there was a shamanic
journeying circle I could go to monthly or
something, because I know I can harness
the dreams of the people around me to make
for a louder, brigher, more powerful
vision. That's why I like to journey on
the greyhound bus at midnight at the
center of the bus on the isle seat while
everyone's sleeping. Anyway, I looked
over the internet and new york is way
better than the san francisco bay area for
organized and powerful shamanism. All
there is is a small group of women who
think they're psychotherapists and only
want to "be whole" (bunch of humanists)
and they offer "depth hypnosis" training
and introductory shamanism - journeying
classes, and occasional drumming circles
on the equinoxes, the last one being the
summer equinox, and I went to that one and
enjoyed it; they have two houses, each
atop a hill with a great view, one in sf
on the west bay near the peak of mt
davidson in the city, (where last summer
equinox I went) and one in oakland, up on
the top of some hill, in the middle of a
quiet little neghborhood just like yours
but super-hilly of course, and that's the
"east" bay house. And they get all these
young students, mostly, who take classes
at the california institute for integral
studies to become psychotherapists, and
they want to incorporate "depth hypnosis"
training into their practice, and laura
chandler makes them take beginner shamanic
journeying first, for two hundred bucks.
Whatever with the two hundred bucks, but I
wish she were more serious about the
magic, and if she were she's also have to
be more serious about slowly initialting
people into the demon world properly, as
don juan did with carlos casteneda over
years, not in a two hundred dollar
weekend.
And every time I wanted to sign up for a
drumming circle or an advanced class in
"psychopomp", she said I had to do this
beginner class first, even though I told
her I went to christina pratt's class in
new york years ago, and been practicing
since, and been reading the stuff for
twenty years, but I didn't complain, I
know I just like to journey in a group, so
I signed up for last weekend's class.
The first day was much the same as the one
we went to in new york: journey to the
lower world to meet your teacher in animal
form, and then go back again in a second
journey and ask him a question, everyone
write their experience on paper and then
turn and share it with your neighbor.
Second day, though, she scared alot of
people, by sending them to the upper
world. I started in the lower world and
it was years of journeying with the boar
till one day he decided to go to the upper
world. One day in a journey at elissa's
house, I was going to the lower world to
ask the boar to take me to the "shaman at
the center", because though I couldn't
understand why, I knew that the shaman at
the center of the jungle who is all lit up
with flashing magical colors not seen on
earth had some kind of power i've never
seen even anywhere else in the demon
world. He's like the source of all the
demons. I never understood why the boar,
if he's the "universe in animal form
talking to me", couldn't do the super
powerful things the "shaman at the center"
could do, and one day I was headed there
and we took a turn and started going up,
and I asked why, and he said that the
shaman "lives up here now", up some
mountain road in a castle. I remember
writing a song about the castle and the
stuff. I was healing elissa, or atleast
trying to, at the time.
And now it all makes sense; as the story
of day two progresses, you'll see. We
find out who this guy really is and why
he's more powerful than the boar.
By the way, same guy, I know him from
dreams too. Two dream stand out, both
"dream of the year" dreams from the past,
things that stand out in my memory more
than anything that happens in my waking
life. These dreams are significant
events, and again, it all leads up to this
"day two" of shamanism class so briefly,
the dreams....
And I don't know that i've actually
documented these anywhere, though I have
transmitted these stories before orally.
One was a bad dream, involving you, as a
matter of fact. It's a wide street in
brooklyn, you're my mother, i'm two years
old or ssomething, and I have a need to
cling to you, but everytime I touch you, a
big pointy pinapple comes out of your skin
on whatever part of your body I touch, and
the obvious conflict is I need you, but it
is so painful, so I fall away, but then I
have to go back, but then the green pointy
pinapple again and the stinging, and I
take it for a few seconds and fall away
again, and this goes on over and over
again as we cross the wide street
diagonally across the intersection. The
dream ends, of course, and what got this
thing the "dream of the year" award in my
personal psyche was not the pineapple
conflict, but the fact that the next thing
that happened was that I "woke up" into a
second dream. I was in a room, an adult,
(this dream is about ten or fifteen years
ago), and it's a wooden shack, just a cot,
and I wake up and get up and I don't know
where I am, but I here chanting (and I
wish I could get these chants out but as
good as I am at dream recall, when spirits
use magic chants on me I can never get the
chant back out into this world), but the
chanting at the time is familiar, I
remeber it from the previous dream, and
seem to know intuitively that this
chanting is causing me harm, darkness,
fear, fast hearbeats, adrenaline.
Disturbed by the continuous chanting that
spanned two dreams, I walk across the
floor of the room and open a wooden door.
There is another room, and it becomes
apparent to me that I was in an adjoining
room, a wing, and that I had now walked
into the center room, and there would be
another room after that which was the
other adjoining wing. This center room
was a little bigger, better lit, had a
stone table and dirt floor, no chairs, a
large book open on the table with pictures
and symbols (sometimes I can bring the
pictures and symbols out of my dream into
this world, but I have no recollection of
this overwhlmingly detailed book he had) -
he - was this guy, the guy I had later met
as the "shaman at the center" when years
later I learned journeying. This was my
first meeting ever with this character,
this "dream of the year". It was a short
meeting, and I was mad. He was doing the
chanting, while staring at the book, which
was emitting lights that were changing
colors rapidly, and he wasn't even
stopping, and I intuitively knew that
these chants had been playing the whole
time the first dream had gone on, and I
was angry. I stopped him to ask him: "why
did you put these dreams on me?!?" (as I
was still in pain from the stings of the
pineapples like they were the stings of
nettles, in fact that pain I remember was
real and lasted into the morning in the
real world. When I asked him, he looked
at me and told me it was a test. And
that's all I remember of the whole thing.
When a dream wins "dream of the year",
sometimes you can't tell why from the
write-up. It wins for the dramatic
emotional effect it creates for me, and
this was definitely one of those.
Only other time I remember seeing this
guy, other than a few healing sessions he
gave me in the jungle center when I went
journeying to try to heal ghost bugs, was
in one other dream, though he's been
referred to often as the leader of our
commune in the demon world. He's just
almost always absent; busy guy I guess.
But one day I was dreaming,
falling/flying, a common thing in demon
dreams for me. I was on a mattress and
falling out of a tall apartment building
in the demon world, and i'm not good at
flying but this particular night I had a
bit more than the usual power, and I
managed to bring the thing down gently,
glliding over several blocks with will
power, not able to stay up and not able to
land gracefully, but able to save my life
as the straight fall would have ended in
death, as no matter how many times I die
in the demon world, no matter how
inconsequential I know it is, I don't like
it, and avoid it almost as any human would
in the real world, so I was glad I
survived. I land, get up, make it back to
the commune I live in in the demon world
(it's a brownstone in the city, packed
with my brothers and sisters and
co-warriors, busy buzzing like a nest of
bees with all our war projects), and this
particular time I found this guy there.
And I knew intuitively he was my father,
and I proudly told him I survived the
fall. He looked at me disappointedly.
And ever since that moment, i've wondered
if my father in the dream world is trying
to kill me.
So on day two at intorduction to shamanism
class in oakland california, first we
twenty students sit and describe any
unuaual dreams we may have had last night,
as a result of our work in non-ordinalry
reality. I had a demon dream, which is
nothing that unusual for me, and at first
I left it out, to see what other people
would say. They went around the room, and
of the twenty there were about five or six
who wanted to describe a dream. Most were
bits and pieces, and a couple were
prefaced by saying they couldn't remember
most of it, but not one was free of
demons, or the image of devils with horns
and hooves. And I wasn't sure if that was
normal or not, until it came to one of the
proprietors, ruth, who owns one of the
houses, though these girls are not real
shamans of significant power, but she
described a dream much like my demon
dreams, prefaced by "i'm struck by the
theme of evil in all these dreams", and
she does these classes all the time so
this was apparently unusual. Then it came
to me, and I spoke for several minutes,
trying not to hog up too much time but
prefacing my simple little demon dream by
the statement that I have probobly
hundreds of hours of experience battling
with demons in dreams, and this is nothing
unusual for me, though it is the first in
maybe a week or two so it's probobly
related to our work, and also prefacing it
by saying that I do remember vivdly
everything because I practice dream yoga,
and have totla recall of all dreams I have
ever had, if and when I want access to it,
though it is quite a difficult thing to
behold. I then told them that the dream
was that I lived in an apartment building
in a city, and I had the top floor, and I
would regularly use the elevator and just
go in to it by myself and be upstairs in
my penthouse apartment by myself, but then
on one trip back to my home I decided to
take the stairs. Oddly, the stairs
weren't really public, as the people who
lived on each floor lived in a squalor
like old attics, and their stuff was all
over the stairs and all over everywhere,
and I had to kind of climb over it all,
and I remember even seeing a woman's
pocketbook open on top of a pile of junk
that was on the stairs, and I looked into
it, but didn't actually touch it or put my
hand in it, just felt like I was
intruding, and then I continued up, where,
a floor or two before I got to my
apartment, I encountered a single demon
rifling through the stuff, and he looked
up and shot me with some kind of rubber -
toy gun - something, but it was the
beginning of an attack, which became a
dull butter knife or something and he's
now chasing me and i'm heading back down,
maybe to catch the elevator, maybe to just
run and escape (this is so typical a dream
for me - for that matter this is I think
what clarisse and glorianne and eddie are
describing) and he keeps on taking stabs
at me, and the chase continues, and then
he's joined by another, and i'm avoiding
being stabbed, i'm taking weapons out of
their hands but they pick up others, as we
are after all running around in the ruins
of attics full of junk, and I reach down
for a pair of scissors that look sharper
than most things they've been using on me
but I think twice because if they get the
scissors out of my hand then this will be
a better weapon than they've had so far,
and this goes on, and I run down, get to
the first floor, press for the elevator to
get back to my apartment as a refuge, but
the elevator doesn't come fast enough and
they're still stabbing at me, and I run
down more stairs, there's a tunnel in the
basement, it seems like the logical next
step in my escape, but I think "oh no, i'm
not falling for this 'trap the tiger in a
corridor' trick they always play on me,
not this time (i think this may be where I
point out I have hundreds or even
thousands of hours of experience at this),
and I run back up to the first floor, I
want to get out onto the street, but the
door and windows are boarded up with dirty
green boards, which I throw my body up
against and see that it's not infinitely
bolted, it bends and I can see light, but
it didn't break and i'm still trapped, and
I bang and smash at this one window or
door single mindedly, insisting on
escaping (a journey on day one ended in a
message from the tapir to "escape through
the eye" and I was remembering the
important message at this point in the
dream), and I keep trying for a minute or
two and I wake up, and that's the end of
the dream, but awake, i'm very
disappointed that I did not get out, and
then I said to the group that I guess what
I should do is journey back into the dream
and finish breaking out, and the leader
said 'no, there are shamans who do lucid
dreaming work like that but I think it's
more important that you ask yourself what
the meaning of these attacks is' and I
phrased a response that rang out in the
room with stacatto precision, and was
followed by a loud hearty laugh from the
entire group, probobly breaking the
tension that had been building, because I
had their breathless silence for the
duration of the story, and I think this is
where they began to become afraid of me) -
I said simeply something like "no, I used
to try to work it out between the demons
and the humans and unite them in peace,
but I have found that this was the hardest
task that i'd ever attempted, i'd kind of
given up for now, and would much rather
just escape through that door" and that's
when I got the big laugh.
Later people came up to me saying "but
you, you can really dream, you must have
been doing this for a while, let's get
together and talk at break";
anyway, before we get to lunch (we've just
showed up for the second day and told our
dreams to the community), I am very
surprised to hear that our next project
will be to go to the upper world to meet
our teacher in human form. I remember
christina pratt saying she'd like to see
me do something like that eventually, but
for now, she said at the time, I was way
too haunted by the vampires of the middle
world and that I needed emergency care
before I can begin any kind of work like
that. And i'd never really directly tried
to go to the upper world, though as I said
I had noticed it had started to happen on
it's own a couple of years ago when I
started asking the boar to take me to the
"shaman".
But I joined in the exersize, of course.
She said that when we go to the upper
world, instead of leaving through a hole
in the ground or body of water, as we of
course do to travel to the lower world,
this time we would leave from a mountain
top, or the top of a tree, or climb a
ladder, again, of course (if you remember
the principles of "core shamanism by
michael harner taught by christina pratt
and repeated on the drum tape sleeve -
which by the way never attempts to send
people to the upper world) the place you
leave from has to be some place in the
real world you've been before.
I'd never heard this part of core
shamanism, but I had the perfect place
within milliseconds of thought. I was
prepared well. I had biked fifteen
minutes from the bart (the long island
railroad of the bay area) station to the
top to this hill, an altitude of probobly
1500 feet above the bart and the rest of
oakland, and getting there on my own power
I locked the bike to a tree just down the
block from the house, greeting the tree,
and inviting it in with me, as I was
taught by the dolphin shaman from south
america who consults for the washington dc
zoo by listening to the will of the
animals and who I paid to have mary go to
asa a gift about a year or two ago, that
whenever I do to some session like this I
should pick a tree, hug it, and invite
it's spirit to accompany me on my
journeys. So I always do that, and I had
the tree with me, so right down the block
was the top of a beloved tree at the top
of a mountain, with my bike chained to it;
perfect choice, so off I go.
It's still harder than descending, but not
too long up a tunnel I see two red glowing
eyes. I bring it into resolution and it's
the darth vader mask. I'm not big on
"star wars" nor even pop culture, but it's
pretty standard in our culture that the
mask is black, the voice is strained and
the breathing heavy, and the line "luke ,
I am your father", means that luke, the
good guy, realizes that the great enemy of
his world is his father who has gone to
the dark side. I don't know how out of
touch with pop culture you are, but you
can say "luke I am your father" to anyone
under 40 and they know exactly what I just
described, it's a foundationally standard
part of our current pop culture. I'm no
expert, I couldn't tell you a single other
thing about star wars. Except this:
edward messemer forced us to see it even
though we weren't interested. It was all
four of us kids, and if was some cheap
place we used to go, somewhere north of
new york city, across the street from a
parking garage, could have been my vernon,
could have been more like armonk new york,
and we went there all the time for the
cheaper movies, on days he'd take all the
kids after your divorce.
I see darth vader. I was surprised I was
seeing anything, going to the upper world
by myself. And I have to ask every thing
I encounter on this particular journey,
'are you my spirit teacher in human
form?', so I ask, and the answer: "i am
your father" is the reply.
Sometimes in a journey, it's a mistake,
but you might drift into rational,
philosophical thinking about what's going
on; (you're supposed to leave that till
after it's over) but I lapsed into a
thought pattern for about 45 seconds:
maybe I never thought about it, but the
message is that my father, the white magic
german conservative jesuit priest, has
gone to the dark side. Never entertained
the possibility, because I never saw the
slightest sign of him to betoken any kind
of powerful magic, nor did I ever see or
hear or discern the slightest black magic
tendency. But then maybe he was good at
hiding it, or it was deep in there on the
genome and came out after death; I also
though, during this few seconds when I
really shouldn't be thinking, that come to
think of it, all the dreams and all the
visions and all the ghost bugs did start
right after he died.
Then I got a hold of my philosophical
reasoning, set it aside, and continued
with the journeying.
Repeat from "darth vader" (just his head
actually): "i am your father". Fear. And
that's unusual for me, you know, thousands
of hours experience and everything. I
know better than to exhibit or even feel
in the slightest way any kind of fear in a
situation like this. But there it is, and
I am just amazed by my own emotion. Only
takes a second or two to set it aside
though. Then, again the voice speaks, as
he watches me subdue my own fear : "i am
near"; fear wells up again, this time
easier and more quickly subdued. Again
i'm surprised, but then I realize, he
didn't actually answer my question. So I
repeat, (repetitive focus being the main
driver for the shamanic journeying): "are
you my teacher in human form?" no answer.
So i'm moving on. "i'm journeying into
the upper world to meet my spirit teacher
in human form"; I encounter the sun, or a
giant curved chunk of it, in front or
above me directly, dripping red onto me.
I insist to this new presence:"i said
human form!"; the sun becomes a cat's eye,
then a cat's head; again:"i said human
form!" (the dreamer controls the dream,
not the dream the dreamer, but the dream
does try!) I see a giant eye, and again I
think about the "escape through the eye"
message from the tapir the day before (a
whole other story and I figure this thing
is getting complex enough, i've been
typing for three hours now and the unitek
staff is saying things like "those sure
are alot of words charlie" and "how many
pages is this email going to be charlie")
here we go..... Cue the super dramatic
music that tells you this is the
climax.....
The sense was that of things not working
out here, not that i'm that surprised, the
upper world is not beginner shamansim. I
have always seen that as a human with a
strong will, I have the ability to come
outside of my body and see the demons
around me, but that is the "middle world",
the world of the dead, where the
psychopomp can yell sentences out of the
oxford english dictionary and attract all
sorts of confused, morbid,
demonicly-willed vampire things, and eat
them, gather them within himself, take
them on a train ride through heat and high
pressure, cook them into a nice stew,
bottle them up with preserves, store them
together deep in the gut, and then digest
them gradually with ritualistic
irrationality, as the tapir does daily.Or
become posessed by them as emily rose did,
because she had no shamanism training, and
I don't mean laura chandler's two hundred
dollar weekend, I mean twenty years of
reading and meditating and fourty years of
surviving attacks in dreams);but work in
the lower world, or the upper world,
getting to the shaman "at the center" of
the lower or upperworld, is something that
as a human I can't do, it's why I need a
spirit guide to take me there, a guide who
knows the way and has the power to get me
past customs, so to speak. Now they're
asking me to go on my own to somewhere I
have never really been by myself, and lack
of success on the first try wouldn't be
surprising; happens all the time in the
material world, and I just call the first
trip the investigatory trip. So now that
I have no real expectations, its finally
that moment, the moment when I least
expect it;
"come quickly" a voice says in the
darkness, from behind me. It's the
presence I met earlier with the darth
vader mask (you gotta hand it to the
spirit world's sense of humor and
interconnection) - anyway it's that
presence from a few minutes ago, he's
still just as "near", he still generates
the fear in me, and though he stood firm
on refusing to answer my question, it's as
if he's just been waiting for me to
realize who he is and watching me wallow
in the sun or the eye of the cat or
whatever other non-sense my visions are,
and now he knows there's not going to be
much more time. These beginner journeys
are only about ten minutes, and though I
have no sense of time at the moment, he
obviously knows how much time there is
left and knows I can't afford to waste any
more time wandering around trying to
figure out where I am and where I should
be.
I'm also getting better at setting aside
the huge emotional upwelling that this
presence has been causing, so I respond to
"come quickly" instantly by turning and
giving him my hand, and I know right where
he is as if i've always known he's been
there.
Almost immediately, we're back in the
wooden room with the stone table. The
same room from the dream of ten or fifteen
years ago. The room is dimly lit, the
best lighting we've had for the whole
journey so far, it's finally the part of a
journey where you've arrived where you
were going and you can see everything
around you. I of course look at his face.
He's the father from the demon dreams,
exactly. I know him anywhere, though i've
never seen this person in my life in the
material world. He has a mustache -
brown, very thick and long, a droopy tired
look in his eyes, very ancient mexican
indian looking, and this is why i'm always
thinking your side of the family, but
today we're entertaining multiple theories
for the purpose for generating psychosis
(like this email isn't psychoticly
interconnected enough!)
we have chairs in the room, also made of
stone. We both sat down. We stared into
eachothers eyes. Something was building,
and I have to say that at this point I
will be unable to fully convey what's
going on with me. I'm getting chills
recalling this.
Only a minute or less of sitting there;
he's silent, maybe waiting for me to
speak, but i'm frozen - stunned by
something. Within a minute comes the
change in drumbeats that mean it's time to
end the journey and go back down, to the
tree, and into the house and into my body.
But I also know I don't need the whole
minute or two to get back, i'm a very fast
commuter, and I know my way, and my bike
is locked to the tree and I know that's a
twist on a secret trick I learned from
arctic shamanism - it works like a bungi
cord, and i'll have no problem getting
back immediately because of it; so even
though it's time to leave, and the drum is
now beating fast in stacatto bursts of 5
or 6 beats and then followed by double
time drumming for a minute, I don't run
away, I get up, and, (my own mysterious
fear conquered for the first time), I
reach out, and shake his hand. That's
when something happened. And this is
still mysterious to me, but this is the
quasar moment:
i stood up to shake his hand. I reached
out. He then reached out his hand. Our
repective heights were not equal, so I was
reaching up at an angle of maybe 20 or 30
degrees, and he was reaching downward at
roughly the same angle.
As our hands clasped, a quasar jet of
light exploded from our mutual grasp at an
angle perpendicular to the angle of our
arms - if I could illustrate, i'd be
drawing an "x", where the "/" piece of the
"x" is our two hands meeting in
eachother's grasp, me on the left and his
on the right, crashing inward, notice,
while immediatly upon the crash of our two
hands, the extremely bright beam of light
heads outward, that being the "\" of the
"x".
But the vision of the quasar jet beam
wasn't the thing, that's just the part I
can describe. What happened at that
moment I cannot express, I still don't
really understand. This is all I can say:
I came back into my body in the room, and
as the other twenty people began to stir,
eventually to sit up and write their own
experiences, I wanted to burst out crying.
I don't understand, I even feel it now,
this is one week later. Just as if I have
to cry. So I just breathe deeply, and I
get up. My first thought was to go
outside and just start crying hard. I did
get right up, and I left the group quietly
and walked out of the room and then out
the front door of this house in oakland,
and I took a deep breath again. I looked
over at the tree where I just cam back
from, and my bike sitting next to it, and
the beautiful gardens and the clear blue
sunny sky, and it all seemed so strange -
but comforting - to be in normal reality
again, so small a reality with just a
ground and a sky and trees and normal
stuff, and no grand spirit world around
me.
I cam back in after a minute, wrote my
notes, and then I had to tell my story to
someone, so I prefaced it with "i am in
shock, I went outside because I felt I had
to cry;" the woman I was speaking with
listened to my journey, said she could see
that I was in shock, could see the tears
in my eyes.
She was an older woman, also of some
previous experience. Her mother had been
a schizophrenic, and an alcholic. She was
determined not to take the same path and
had been pursuing journeying for her own
personal development.
She asked me what kind of work I was doing
as a shaman. I explained that we are
living in the golden age of astrophysics,
that shamans have always been looking at
the stars, but now we have access to sub
millimeter radio astonomy, infrared
astronomy, and x-ray astronomy. Red shift
space. It's never been available to
shamans in history, until this past twenty
years, really the greatest stuff is just
flooding this past couple of months, few
years, but not many shamans have yet
integrated these great gifts, and that is
what I am working on as a shaman. And my
basic presentation on 'what is the
universe doing' is that it does two
things, all the time: and I hold one had
up and close it as a fist, hold the other
up as a fist and open it, and alternate
them. Binding and loosing. Expanding and
contracting. Binding and loosing.
She said that she can see the connection
between what I am saying the universe is
doing, and my battle with demons in the
dreams (referring to the dream I described
that morning) then said also maybe that
was the quasar/handshake thing too.
Before lunchtime comes, there's a second
journey, back to the upperworld, to
clarify something that you didn't
understand in the first journey, or to ask
a very important question. (again, poor
job of shamanism training, as I was taught
that the most important and difficult work
in journeying is constructing the question
properly, and she threw this stuff out
there and we had about a minute to come up
with something, while people are getting
settled. I'm probobly just complaining
though because they kicked me out.)
without time to construct something, I
used a standard from somewhere in my past
classes, "show me how to better integrate
spirit into my life"; so i'm getting over
my shock and then drinking some more
oolong tea and i'm off into the upperworld
again to ask that spririt guide - that not
only i'm afraid of but apparently most of
the students have a fear of their
upperworld spirit guides...
So I try to go up there, but it's hard.
Maybe not enough tea. Maybe a residue of
fear. After a couple of minutes I ask a
lower world spirit guide to help me get
there, and then, no problem. And I ask
the upperworld spirit guide, "show me how
to better integrate spirit into my life?"
first image is of a vine, like the morning
glory across from my front door,
blossoming all over like some time-lapse
sped-up movie. Then I repeat the
question, and the father figure appears,
and again I have the intense fear. Better
at setting fear aside now, I embrace him.
Then I spontaneously change the question
to "how do I integrate you into my life?",
and he answers, "glad you asked!";
we fall, jumping off a steep cliff, like a
7000 ft altitude yosemite park cliff, and
we fall and slide to the bottom, again i'm
setting aside the initial fear impulse,
just leaning into it and accepting it, and
I disintegrate as I fall, boxes at the
bottom containing demons. Maybe the boxes
are just another attempt to frighten, but
I just keep disintegrating. After a
minute or so, there's only one thing left
of "me" anymore, everything else has
fallen away, and I see a door, at the
center of what used to be "me". Its sort
of oval, I don't know the word for the
shape but pointed at both long ends of the
oval: () is almost it. And I intuitively
know the next step in this "dauntless
expatiation into the boundless deep" is to
go through this door fearlessly. Just
inside this door, which turned out to be a
portal into another world, I see the water
pouring from a pipe that I had seen in the
lower world on the first day in the
journey with the tapir, who by the way had
said around the time I saw the water
flowing out of the pipe "i have a plan"
and maybe this was all a part of the
tapir's plan, so the water is pouring like
the image of new orleans being drained
into the lake, and he - the "father" or
"spirit guide", gives me a glass, and I
fill it and drink it, and immediately all
kinds of animal forms begin to protrude -
or "blossom" out of me, confusing me,
honestly, because I was successfully not
rationally processing any of this and
anyway I don't know what kind of sense
this made, but somehow a squirrel's head
and plants and crows and other animals
blossoming from who I thought I "was"
didn't make any sense. Then he showed me
the surrounding mountains, and in reality
while I was journeying, this house was
exquisitely surrounded by the mountains of
the east and the west bay, and we are at a
little peak at the center, the twenty of
us journeying, but in the vision also now
I was surrounded by mountains with peaks
that were more dramatic than the ones in
the material "ordinary reality" world and
each peak was distinctive, and my vision
spun slowly to see how I was surrounded
gracefully, and it was a sense of a
protective presence, and the "father" said
to me, standing next to me and sort of
driving the vision as I was letting him -
"they are your brothers, don't give them a
hard time".
Later there was one more exersize,
journeying through singing while shaking a
rattle, it's less deep, less imagery
oriented, ,but clearer in terms of
conversation, and I just asked what that
whole quasar thing back there in the first
journey was about.
"we are together, we are powerful
together, you have come through the
doorway to me. Water falls down on us and
breaks as one, we are a doorway
together".
In between the drum/visionary journeying
and the final chanting journey, there was
the lunch break, where a few of the people
had gravitated to me and let me "teach",
and I have so much to say that I had alot
of fun.
At some point I decided to introduce the
concept of red magic. I was a little
further down the mountain in the backyard,
a three story backyard from the house on
the peak, sitting with two women, one
probobly graduate student age preparing to
be psychotherapist I think, the other
woman maybe in her mid to late twenties, a
mother of a kid who talks to a hawk in her
backyard and seems to be communicating
with it, and she is kind of new to this,
they both are, so they just seem to be
taking in all the advanced psychotic stuff
i'm explaining, and I said: "what's going
on upstairs is white magic; i'm red
magic"; they barely understood what white
magic was, much less red, and I gave them
my standard crash course sound bites, and
got to how I used to, for a short time a
few years ago, practice devout
catholicism, and I like to preface any
discussion of red or black magic with
that, and these are just typical women who
think 'oh, that nonsensical, patrarchical
stuff that's all corruption and has
nothing to offer" (that isn't their
comment but I think that sums up the
attitude of new-age-ish women to
christianity), as when I had a description
where I said the pope is magical, extreme
shaman, and the young one said 'oh I don't
think the pope is magical", and I said,
'oh, I know, my mom says he couldn't
possibly have written those intricate
encyclicals, the "religion for
schizophrenics by schizophrenics" as I
like to refer to catholicism, because he's
just too busy running a mafia and killing
people all day, and the girl said "yeah,
that's pretty much what I think", and the
mother of the hawk-boy said "i just figure
he's an intellectual", and I went on to
say that the problem with me practicing
white magic too much is that my barometer
is set to the middle, red magic, and if
you pull it to one side too long, it's
gonna snap back, first to black magic,
before it re-balances in the middle. So
the younger girl asked "would you tell u s
what kind of black magic, or what about
black magic, and she seemed extremely
interested, but followed that immediately
with "but I know that's personal, you
don't have to answer", but I said, no, no
problem, I can answer that, and I just
needed a moment to compose an answer
because I didn't walk in there preparing
to present this. I said, well, yes, the
intense opus-dei-like catholicism was
fine, liked it, but they are hiding what
they know about their ememy and making war
on spirits. So after living that life for
several months, but being of a true
red-magic nature, one day I was walking an
hour each way in the hot sun to buy a new
bicycle tire, and to my side was a large
forest, so I had an impulse to come out of
my body while walking down the boring
road, and talk to demons in the forest.
And I met a very large demon, inside a big
tree, and he offered me a sentence that he
said would be able to destroy everyone
around me. And when he realized I was
willing to go back home and use it on my
sister and brother in law, he told me to
kill the brother in law and the sister,
and both of their children, to then cut
out and eat the hearts of each one by one,
and regurgitate them in the demon world.
And I said ok, that shouldn't be hard, I
live with them and I could kill them all
in their sleep, and I could do the job.
He said, 'no, not in their house - you
must get out of their house, leave that
place, and lure them into the woods, and
do it there.'
then I explained to the horrified girls
that I would never do this, that I love my
sister, and that I had come up with a
clever loophole - I have a one-hundred
year to-do list of things the demons want
me to do, this is the only homicide i've
been ordered to perform, and i'm gonna put
it at the bottom of the list so
thatthere's no way I could possibly get to
it, though on the other hand i've never
seen my sister again because it would be
inappropriate to interact with her, since
i'm supposed to be killing her.
And the mother said "that's good that
you're so strong to resist that order",
and I said it's not strength, it
lawyer-like cleverness, I found a
loophole, but they didn't seem to accept
or understand.
Then the woman said, "don't you think it's
horrible that the beings you consort with
would ask you to do something so
atrocious?" and I answered "yes, I know,
but so is it horrible the things that my
sister and brother-in-law asked me to do
to demons - abort them, exorsize them,
exclude them from being ministered to, and
send them to be destroyed" as the catholic
religion explicitly teaches. They left it
there, people came out and said the drum
was beating and it was time to go back
inside.
I did think from the look on their faces
and the way they went silent that I had
disturbed the poor girls, lost their
interest anyway, but the younger one ended
actually with : "well thank you for being
so hoenest and open about that with us",
and I said "well, I figure here the people
will be open minded, and you realize i'm
not dangerous," or something to that
effect, and they just said oh yeah, it's
ok, so I thought nothing really was
wrong.
And I went to work on monday at unitek to
teach citrix with maybe more energy and
dynamism than ever before in my stellar
10-year teaching carreer. But I also have
been losing weight dangerously as over the
last several weeks, since a few days
before hurricane katrina hit, and
definitely during the whole two weeks of
civil unrest and city destruction in new
orleans. I'm a demon eater, and there's
been a big buffet going lately, and i've
been gorging. And i've figured out that
demons eaten but undigested burn calories.
I now can't go one hour without food. I
eat $20 dollars of groceries a day plus
two restaurant meals. And I am starving
and shaky hungry all the time, and losing
a few pounds a week. It's my metabolism.
Partly because of my big 12-hour runs
through the canyons to the mountain peaks
on the weekends, partly because I commute
ten-minutes here, ten-minutes there, every
day by bike, probobly 5 to 10 miles a day
7 day s a week, and partly because I
discovered the pleasure of sitting in a
sauna for thirty minutes a day before my
shower, and partly because of the
high-peak mountain tea, but mostly because
when I read I swear I burn calories with
my mind, because if I sit quietly after a
meal i'm ok for an hour or two, but if I
pick up the paper and read, I come up with
all these interconnected ideas and in
minutes i'm starving. My metabolism is
higher than anything i've ever
experienced, and I feel more powerful than
i've ever been, but it is also almost
dangerous as i'm in starvation throughout
the night when I sleep, and i'm afraid i'm
going to pass out from thought flow. Died
from racing thinking. Or turn into a
walking set of neurons, with no flesh or
bone left.
So I went out with some of the medical
students and teachers for their class
party at the end of a module, and at the
bar I came up with the idea that if I get
desperate, I could take an antipsychotic
drug, (any psychiatrist in america would
be thrilled to give me one) and just use
it occasionally, and I know that would
slow me down. I had read an article that
pointed out that people on those things
complain that they gain two pounds a week.
That makes sense. The thinking slows,
the metabolism slows.
Here's the imagery i'm working with.
Yosemite half dome is a valley surrounded
by 7000 ft peaks. Clarisee and justin and
I camped on one of the peaks and looked
down. To the south is hetch-hetchy, a
similar valley that was flooded in the
last century by damning it up, and that's
the water supply for sf and la, and the
environmentalists are talking about
"draining" hetch hetchy, to restore the
natural valley.
The mind is the valley. The demons take
up residence in shacks all over the sides
of the valley, mostly on the bottom, but
as the community grows, the community of
demon homes crawls up the sides of the
valley. They build telecommunications
equipment, and contact the mother ship,
more come down, there's a huge festival
going on - this is "racing thougt"; the
human with this mind goes in to the
psychiatrist and they give them
antipsychotics to flood hetch hetchy, or
the client uses drugs or alchohol to flood
it themselves.
But if you flood it and then drain it, the
demons are still there, in fact while
scuba diving they've been digging and
building at an even more rapid rate
because now the ground is soggy and easier
to work. So if you drain it suddenly, or
even gradually, it is far less stable than
it was in the first place. Exorcism is
another way to get them out, but I went
though an exorcism and it was like nuking
the city of demons - the houses were still
there but the demons gone, it was quiet.
Thing is the mother ship still knows about
a famous location, and they can
repopulate, just like bush says he'll
repopulate new orleans with no respect for
katrina's will.
So I thought maybe, if these demons can't
be managed, if they get out of hand, i'd
rain on them with a little of the
antipsychotic, but a little rain just
helps them, that's not really a good
answer; i'm already unstable, I can't
afford to be too much more unstable.
So I came up with another idea - eat
roots. Only roots. Uncooked roots. I
got the idea from when mary was studying
polarity. They said roots are earth food,
all the other stuff is air food or water
food or fire food, and if I think about it
I eat all air and fire food, no earth
food, and every shamanic practitioner in
the world says i'm ungrounded. Earth
foods are supposed to ground you. Somehow
I thought maybe that would work, but I was
still just throwing meatball sandwhiches
at myself to try to slow the metabolism,
but it wasn't doing anything.
I asked the head of the nursing program
here, who knows me well, about a natural
alternative to antipsychotics. I
explained that my emotional level is that
of a two year old, and so I get excited
about attention, and my business is doing
so well I get all kinds of attention -
people all aroundthe country saying they
want me to come out and show them stuff,
teach computer networking. Business is
booming and I get so excited I can't slow
down my metabolism.
She said raw potatoes. And her coworker
came up with tea made from hops. I bought
the hops but two days and so far that just
makes me hungrier. I've been doing the
hops tea at night and the pollen from the
flowers gives me ghost bugs for hours, so
less sleep, and then i'm even less stable,
but the potatoe is a miracle cure. I
bought a little golden potatoe, skinned
it, chopped it, and ate it raw, not so
bad, just wash it down with a little
water, and it's the first thing in weeks
that my body calmed down with. At first
I thought it could be placebo, but it's
been several potatoes now and I think it's
real.
Flood hetch hetchy valley with potatoes,
and it doesn't soak the soil like the
water that represents drugs or alchohol,
so no side effect of being less stable
after the demons dig their way back out.
But the potatoe is anti demon technology
for sure. And i'm not out to destroy the
demon community. Two hours of calm in the
potatoe valley and I miss my magic powers
already. I just need to have a method of
managing the valley when it gets out of
hand, and a way of putting a limit on my
own magic so I can maintain a human body
and not burn up in a final flash of fiery
metabolism. I could see it in the irish,
they get too into it. They learn the
magic of potatoes, then throw in a
million, and hurt their own demons, and
then in the irish potatoe famine, I always
thought "why don't they just eat something
else", but now I understand, it's like a
bunch of people addicted to antipsychotics
and stopped taking their medication. They
jumped off their island and swam to the
nearest continent to get more potatoes.
Potatoes raw are like seroquel.
So now i'm fine.
But on the second day of citrix class, I
got an email from laura chandler, whose
class I had taken.
From : laura chandler
<laura@anamcarafoundation.Org>
sent : tuesday, september 20, 2005 3:01
am
to : "charlie messemer"
<cmessemer@hotmail.Com>
subject : re: shamanic journey workshop
info and address
| | | inbox
charlie,
i am writing you because we had several
complaints this weekend in class about you
stating that "demons are trying to get you
to kill your family". This is a
disturbing statement and it was upsetting
to the people you said it to.
Because of the seriousness of this
behavior, you are no longer invited to
participate in any of our programs,
classes, or events. If you show up, I
will be forced to call the police.
I urge you to seek professional help
immediately. This is a serious matter,
and I sincerely hope that you will get the
help that you need. It is out there and
available.
Please do not respond to this email unless
it is to give me your home address so that
I can have the police do a safety check on
you for your own welfare.
Laura
--
laura chandler
general manager
anam cara foundation
www.Anamcarafoundation.Org
415-584-8853
creating pathways to wholeness
so I responded: sorry, didn't mean to
scare anybody, here's my home
address.....(and gave my home address),
but i'm not there now, i'm at work, unitek
college, (and gave the work address).
Then I printed the email and told the boss
the police are coming for me, but I didn't
commit any crimes, and I have an
opportunity to have some fun and go 5150
but for you, boss, I said, I won't
interrupt commerce, i'll just act sane and
keep teaching class.
