CHAPTER EIGHT

THE WHITE CONDOR

IN SHAMANIC CULTURES, an initiation is a rite of passage, a test, a stepping-stone, or a threshold that each of us must cross in life. An initiation often comes with challenges that bring us face-to-face with our worst fears. These transformative rites can include life-threatening experiences, and each initiate has to enter into the “dance of no hope” alone. It’s called the dance of no hope because once it starts, it’s no longer in our control and we are forced to surrender everything to a power unknown and bigger than ourselves. Standing at the crossroads with our will to live and our courageous heart is when we awaken the warrior within.

We embark upon this journey only after losing our guideposts, our bearings, when all we hold precious starts to fall away. For many, it comes suddenly, with no warning; our boat simply begins to sink. It can be triggered by relationships ending, financial collapse, a frightening diagnosis, violence, losing our home, acknowledgment of addiction, or a near-death experience. It forces us to question the very foundation of who we are.

We are being profoundly tested, and the further we journey, the less recognizable we are to others and the more recognizable we are to ourselves. Our buried giant is coming alive. If we are fortunate, resistance becomes less and less of an option. The only response is to open to the experience life has brought us, no matter how painful or desperate it appears to be. The darkest hour is the one before dawn. All initiations, no matter how sorrowful and dangerous, have a clear purpose, and that is to wake us up.

Once I decided to do a self-retreat for no other reason than that my life was falling apart and nothing else made sense. It all began when the man I loved flew across the world to tell me that he had fallen in love with another woman. He spent the next hour holding my hands and explaining why he thought it was best to move on with his life. Her name was Tami, a gorgeous yoga teacher who was many years younger than I. This was the man I thought was my soul mate and he was the only man that I have ever wanted to marry. To say I was madly in love was an understatement. At that moment in time he meant everything to me. I’d had plenty of break ups over the years but this was on a whole other level. The grief was primal; it hit me fast and hard. I collapsed on the ground, crying and clutching my heart.

I lay in bed for days sobbing, screaming into my pillow, and shaking uncontrollably. My heart was breaking, and the pain was unbearable. I was shattered. I couldn’t eat or sleep, and thoughts of suicide came in waves. To make matters worse, I got into a car accident and began having debilitating pain in my stomach. A few days later at a doctor appointment, they discovered a growth in the lining of my uterus. It was very serious and I would need a hysterectomy. In a period of just three short weeks, everything around me came crashing down, and I entered into one of the darkest periods of my life.

I needed help. I decided to do a retreat up in the mountains in northern California because my crisis was becoming a matter of life and death. I took very little food for my week-long retreat. Fasting felt important, and I had no appetite anyway. I also took with me my medicine bag, my drum, eagle feathers, and Quan Yin statue. I planned on doing compassion practice and sitting in silence. I felt scared for myself because I was in such a dark place.

As the darkness of the first night approached, a hysterical laughter arose in me and with it screams of “Take me!!! Take me!” Over and over I shouted at God with a seething rage I had never experienced before. I could hear my screams echo all around me, and it just enraged me more. “Take me, motherfucker, take me!!!!” I screamed into the darkness until my voice gave out and my throat turned to sandpaper. Finally, exhausted, I wrapped my blanket around me and fell into a deep sleep.

Waking the next morning, I was sad and angry that I was still alive. God hadn’t listened to me, and I cursed loudly. The sun was coming up and my body was sore, feverish, and weak. Eventually I sat up and noticed for the first time where I was. It was stunningly beautiful. I was in a tiny cottage under a large grove of redwood trees. They were huge old growth redwoods soaring high into the sky. There was a cliff nearby with spectacular views overlooking the wild forest below. There were majestic redwoods in all directions. It was untouched, primeval beauty. The sky was the most incredible shade of blue and there wasn’t a cloud in sight. It was completely quiet except for the sounds of birds chirping in the distance. The beauty around me brought me waves of grief, and I spent most of the day huddled under my blanket weeping uncontrollably.

I wept for all the losses I had experienced throughout my life. I wept for the loss of my great love affair, the loss of my uterus, the loss of the children I would never have. I wept for the loss of my childhood. I spent the whole second day of my retreat weeping for everything I had ever lost. I just didn’t understand how life could be so cruel. I tried so hard to be a good person and yet everything I wanted so badly was gone. As night approached, I tried again to scream, but my voice was gone so I whispered over and over again, “Take me God; please be merciful and just take me; I don’t want to be here anymore.”

That night I had a dream, the first of a series of powerful dreams and visions. There was a white light that was so bright it was hard to look at. Within this light, I could see gigantic wings flapping very slowly. As I awoke the following morning, I was able to sit up for the first time in twenty-four hours. I felt lighter, and everything around me looked pristine and sharp.

During the night, my senses had magically become heightened. I could hear the sounds of the animals around me and feel the aliveness of everything. The land, the trees, the rocks, and even the sky all seemed alive. The air was so fresh that I kept taking deep breaths throughout the day. My body felt deprived of oxygen, and I gasped over and over to take in more and more air. A deep silence overtook me for most of the day, and my mind fell into a clear space with very few thoughts. It was a state similar to what I had experienced during a Vipassana meditation retreat I had done many years before.

Before I knew it, the sun began to set and again I curled up into my blanket and fell asleep. That night the dream appeared just as before. I could see this bright light and within it was the most beautiful bird I had ever seen. I recognized it as a condor from pictures I had seen in books. I’d only seen condors that were black, and this one was pure white. It was a female condor with a wingspan so wide it covered the entire sky. The beauty of this majestic creature overcame me as she began to reveal herself slowly, with more and more clarity. She smiled at me while hovering in the sky above, slowly flapping her enormous wings. The next morning when I awoke, the dream was fresh in my mind, and I felt the strong presence of this bird spirit throughout the day. I spent most of the day sitting on the deck staring off into the vast, blue sky. I felt neither hunger nor thirst, just a radical presence as my mind once again entered into a deep silence.

That night, as I wrapped myself in my blanket, I didn’t pray for God to take me, just that I might meet the magical condor again. As I fell into a deep sleep, she appeared and this time with such vivid clarity that I knew she was real. She flew down and entered directly into my heart. The places in me that were shattered were penetrated by white light, and I realized she was healing my heart. I awoke the next morning with a smile and, for the first time in months, a sense of being happy to be alive.

After a few hours I took my seat in meditation, and she appeared again in the sky. I didn’t know whether I was awake or dreaming, and at that point it didn’t matter. She flew down into my heart again, and I shape-shifted into her. My head became hers, and I felt my face contort into a beak, my hands curled and became talons, and I felt my wings extend outward from my back. I didn’t have time to be scared, because in one great leap I flew off the cliff and became this beautiful spirit soaring through the sky. I had heard of medicine men shape-shifting into jaguars and other animals, but I never thought I would experience something as sacred as this.

I spent the entire day soaring in the sky. I began to understand things I’d never known. How vast and profound this human life is. How vast the universe is. I understood that she was me, that this condor was my own spirit, and that I had to undergo all the challenges in order to set myself free. My heart had been shattered so that it could open, so that it could be put back together in a new way. The experiences that I had gone through were not meant to destroy me but to awaken me. I cried at the poignancy of this new understanding. I was shown many things that day about my future, what I had come here to do, and why everything happened the way it did. As the tears rolled down my cheeks, I knew for certain that everything would be okay.

Deep inside, we know that challenges can bring us closer to the truth that we are much stronger than we realize. It’s only through being tested that we discover the unshakeable ground we stand on. We stand in the shoes of all the great beings who have come before, and now is our time to learn to stand tall and meet life with our own heart of courage. The Latin root of the word courage is cor, heart.

When we hit rock bottom, our heart opens. This is not a time to act spiritual; it’s an opportunity to become fully honest and to compassionately review how you’ve lived your life. It can be painful, but it’s an essential part of healing, of becoming whole, of including all of ourselves—all our experiences, all our traits, those we like and those we don’t. Hitting bottom brings forth humility and surrender. We get down on our knees and with an open heart, we pray for help. This is life’s mysterious way of pointing us in a new direction. We’re on a sinking ship, afraid; but when we stop and genuinely ask for help, a rescue boat always appears. It’s a painful but also a beautiful time when we openly surrender and ask for help. In that moment, we’re choosing life.

Initiations are archetypal processes, and they appear in myths, fairytales, and stories throughout the world. But they are barely known of in the West today. Modern doctors and mental health practitioners often don’t recognize them as life passages, cycles of growth and healing, but instead see them as symptoms of depression, mental breakdown, or midlife crisis. Instead of allowing this natural and necessary process to complete itself, they diagnose it, medicate it, shut it down, and stop or prolong what is already a painful experience.

When we are unable to see this initiation process all the way through, we can get energetically stuck. This dark night of the soul can take many forms—a life-threatening illness, an addiction, or an accident; it can be brought about by the death of a loved one, a break up, the loss of a home or a job, or by being in an abusive relationship. We hit rock bottom, everything comes crashing down, and we feel as though we’re at the brink of life and death. This is a natural process, which benefits from the help of a spiritual intervention so we can let go of what needs to go and new parts of ourselves can be born. When we feel it’s coming, if we choose to ignore it, we can become tortured, our mind might be in chaos, our emotions out of control, and we can get really angry. “Why is life doing this to me?” It feels like everything is against us, and we may want to give up.

During the process of an initiation, we might have visions of dying, suicidal thoughts, dreams of being killed, or in rare cases an actual near-death experience. We might display symptoms of depression, wanting to isolate ourselves, sleeping many hours a day, lying very still as though wrapped in a cocoon. Grief and despair can arise along with oceans of tears. We might be attracted to dead, unhealthy foods and temporarily lose energy and vitality. Life feels like it’s spiraling downward, and no matter how hard we try to hold on, everything just keeps dissolving. It’s important to understand that this is a temporary cycle and to have compassion, patience, and presence.

—

After making the painful decision to leave his royal palace, Prince Siddhartha stood on the riverbank, cut off his hair, and threw his royal clothing on the ground. He had reached a critical moment in his life’s journey and it was time for him to let go of everything he had known until then—power, privilege, wealth, marriage, fatherhood, and his identity as the successor to his father’s throne. Taking this step required enormous faith and courage, and it changed the course of history.

After Siddhartha let go of his life as a prince, he spent six long years in the forest practicing diligently and never wavering from his goal. His achievement under the Bodhi tree was astonishing. It is the ultimate death and rebirth story. Siddhartha vowed not to move until his heart was freed and he understood the true nature of reality. With the weapons of wisdom and compassion, Siddhartha battled the ferocious demon Mara into the night. Back and forth they went, Siddhartha was able to overcome all fear, lust, greed, hatred, and doubt, and as the sun began to rise in the east, a fully awakened being arose from under the Bodhi tree. The earth quaked in the four directions as another Buddha was born that day.

—

As with all things, the painful times could not last forever. This dark period in my life gave birth to Lotus Vine Journeys, my Peru-based organization, in which I take students with me to explore the plant medicine world and wisdom of the Amazon region. In the midst of some of the worst moments in my life, this incredible vision of creating life-changing retreats focused on Buddhist wisdom and plant spirit medicine began to manifest. It was a dream I shared with the man I once loved so much but when he left it became my personal dream. Like the phoenix rising from the ashes, my dark night of the soul spawned one of the most creative periods in my life.

“Unconditional” by Jennifer Welwood

Willing to experience aloneness,

I discover connection everywhere;

Turning to face my fear,

I meet the warrior who lives within;

Opening to my loss,

I gain the embrace of the universe;

Surrendering into emptiness,

I find fullness without end.

Each condition I flee from pursues me,

Each condition I welcome transforms me

And becomes itself transformed

Into its radiant jewel-like essence.

I bow to the one who has made it so,

Who has crafted this Master Game;

To play it is purest delight;

To honor its form—true devotion.¹

If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. If you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, let us work together.

—ABORIGINAL ACTIVIST GROUP, QUEENSLAND, 1975