Jaguar in the Body, Butterfly in the Heart: The Real-life Initiation of an Everyday Shaman

I’m falling backwards through time. I see a kaleidoscope of images of our recent human history. I see symbols of our collective wounding. I’m shown how the shamanic lineages that were once so strong have been torn down, cut to shreds and burned at the stake of dogma and superstition. And in this process, paths laid down by generations upon generations have almost entirely disappeared.

I see the damage this carnage has wrought upon the Earth, upon the plant, mineral and animal kingdoms. I see how for generations, as a species, the dominant mechanistic story we have been telling has led us to attack those who understand the delicate balance that we are part of. We have learned to ridicule the shamans, the medicine people, the witches and the midwives for their unscientific ways. We have waged war on the indigenous peoples of the Earth, those who know about the cycles of life, the plants, the importance of honouring the dead. And we still are.

We have created a world where power and wealth are concentrated in the hands of the few and we are taught the art of being distracted and disconnected from what matters most to us. We have created a world where our idea of intelligence is very limited.

And this all creates a deep lack of confidence in the very roots of our being. We suffer from a collective disease called ‘not enough’. I am not enough. You are not enough. However much I have, I don’t have enough.

All of this I see and hear and sense in my own experience. And it doesn’t stop there.

I continue to fall backwards through the tumult and chaos of our human story on Earth. I witness wars, so many wars. I see genocides beyond comprehension and a baffling array of cultures and costumes.

Gabrielle’s face is changing and I stay steady and with her as mask after mask of being appears and dissolves into yet more times and places I’ve never known. And yet each place feels like a memory. I see children playing by the river, women giving birth and warriors fighting and dying on so many blood-soaked battlefields.

Eventually, we reach a beginning of sorts and there we rest for a while. At the edge of the forest, as humankind first looks out over the open plains, I see our people, dancing, drumming, speaking to the spirits through the heart and power of the dance.

Eventually we arrive in the place that Gabrielle calls ‘the silver desert’. In that empty space, everything is present. All possibilities swim before our eyes like the threads of the billions upon billions of stories yet to be told. In this place, we are beyond individual form, and silence hums with the potency of life itself. We are here, home again, at the beginning and at the end, here in this mysterious shining darkness, and here is where we stay. There is a feeling that is beyond bliss, quieter than silence and vaster than the night sky. There are no words, but there are tears of recognition. It’s as if we have been here always, and at the same time there is a recognition that we will never return. I hear the words ‘original essence’ and then, as suddenly as when we left, we are back.

We are speechless. There is nothing to say.

I’m so grateful. I’ve seen something of the roots of shamanism, and for the first time since I was a child falling into the mystery every night, I am whole. I have returned. My backbone feels stronger. For a few moments, certain that I will never forget again, I remember who I am.