Report on Traditional Healing Ceremony

Not long before my most recent ceremony, I'd done a workshop with Robert Augustus Masters, an integral therapist and spiritual teacher who works in the Vancouver area; I had also done several sessions with him in the preceding several months. I believe it was because of the type and depth of the therapy that I was able to go much deeper in certain respects than in previous ceremonies.

At first I focus on being there for a friend who is participating in her first ceremony. Over time this becomes more and more difficult. I feel my body covered with a dense shell of energy, and my mind begins to do strange things – I begin to feel the whole scene, inside and out, as very alien; my body and that of my friend seem made of iridescent jewels, and my gestalt impression both of her being and of my own starts to break up into confusing fragments. Around this time my friend asks where I am at and I simply tell her that I am being present for her, not going very much into it. She tells me, “Let the medicine heal you” and shortly after that – reflecting that she seemed to be doing alright and that others were helping her periodically (and knowing that it was getting harder and harder to “hold back” I let go, lay back and let the process take me wherever I need to go. Unlike the previous five ceremonies, in which I was stuck in my head with thoughts and emotions dominating, this time I immediately go deeply into my body. My body starts shaking, in a way that feels like some sort of deep therapeutic massage; the locus of shaking moves around, first and for a long time centered in my chest but eventually covering every area. The most peculiar thing, for someone who has always tended to be obsessively cognitive, is that my mind is almost completely blank during this whole time – I know something important is happening, but that it has nothing to do with my mind as I normally perceive it. The process continues like this for a long time, and then subsides to almost nothing. Once again I feel grounded (far more so than before the ceremony began) - I feel relaxed, somewhat blissful, calm, centered. Tuned in to what is happening around me.

“Well,” I reflect, “That was intense, but not too difficult. I guess my work is done for tonight.” I feel a little disappointed that it is over, and I think of intentionally going deeper, starting again; but I decide to just let things be, to relax and enjoy the blissful, grounded aftermath that always follows such work.

That first stage, however, turns out to be mere prologue. Now its as if the medicine says to me: OK, now you're ready to go DEEP.

The same issues that had come up in the previous ceremony now start to unfold for me: deep shadow material involving rage and violence. It feels like being possessed by the “killer ape” within all humans – or at least all male humans – due to our violent evolutionary history. My heart feels closed; I am incapable of love or compassion; I think only of harming people, including those closest to me. It is an excruciatingly awful, horrifying condition. This is not something happening to me – this is me, a side of myself I would like to run away from, but I cannot. Inwardly I cry in agony, “Oh no, not this, please don't let this happen again.” It's something that came up for me in the previous ceremony – and, I realize later, even in the very first ceremony in a different, more complex and confused way. In the fifth ceremony all I could do was contain it, hold it in with all my might, terrified that I would act out and end up hurting or killing someone. I felt convinced that I wasn't going to recover from this upwelling of violent aggression, and that inevitably I'd end up locked up, probably after committing some horribly transgressive act.

(In a therapy session I had mentioned this to Robert, and he responded, “It sounds like you were practicing what Castaneda calls 'controlled abandon'” - out of control in a profound sense, and yet paradoxically able to limit the process in certain respects; e.g. by not acting out, keeping it purely internal.)

Whereas on that occasion, I was afraid to even move, lest I do something awful, this time I instinctively let the process move into my body, and I begin to shake again, much more violently than before, almost convulsing. It feels like a sort of purging, “shaking it out”, discharging. Seemingly for hours I'm in this condition, the shaking increasing in intensity and then lessening, stopping for brief periods. When it stops, I feel a moment of calm, as if it's over...and then the violence rises up inside me again and I'm begging (internally) for help...whereupon the shaking comes back and I surrender to it again. For hours it continues in this manner, and finally it begins to subside. I seem to very clearly, if nonverbally, get the message: “OK, we're done – for now.” and I know that this will come up for me again, that I am now in the midst of a series of lessons.

It is during this most difficult stage that I feel the dark goddess behind the ceremony – perhaps this is metaphor, perhaps not – for the first time as a transpersonal entity, and see that she is communicating with me by manipulating my own body. There is a moment in which my body begins to move in a way I recognize as the energy of laughter, and I understand she is saying to me: on one level this is funny, can't you see how amusing your predicament is?

The final stage of this journey is very beautiful for me; once again my heart feels (relatively) open, and I am able to feel connected and compassionate toward those around me. There is so much love and communion in the room at this stage, as there always is at this point in a ceremony. Whatever work we each had to do this night is over, leaving behind a calm blissful equanimity. Much laughter and joy, people connecting in twos and threes and small groups. Now I feel joyfully connected to my dear friend again, and I think of what a precious human child she is, that we all are, deep inside. For moments I can touch that same part of myself - the beginning of this human life, before any trauma or troubles: a curious, loving, achingly open infant trying to make sense of this strange and beautiful world.

For hours I bask in this very tribal space, with music, talking and laughter, and then gradually we scatter into our disparate paths, the field of sacred healing consciousness merging back into the rest of the world from which we are never truly separate, however it may appear at times.

I feel love and gratitude to pachamama, to this sacred healing ceremony, to the ancient “soul medicine” that is invoked in rituals like this; and also to Robert Augustus Masters; my work with him allowed me to go deeper and complements so well the work I do in ceremony.

For anyone who is interested in knowing more about Robert (or reading some of his fascinating and deeply insightful books), please see his website:

http://www.robertmasters.com

-adastra