Shaman

So you want to be a shaman? A certified Machu Picchu Shaman? But my dear, you were born a shaman.

You don't have to go to the Amazonian rain forest, beat a drum, rattle a tortoise shell, or take hallucinogenic herbs to be a shaman. Nor must you go to Tibet to learn the secrets of Tantra. You don't need a studio full of lithe blond yoginis to practice asanas either.

You danced as a shaman, tumbling, whirling through twelve constellations in the amniotic intergalactic womb. You were baptized in the sweat lodge of the birth canal, your microbiome bubbling with talismans.

Each morning in your crib you performed the total phylogenic sequence of yoga asanas: a grasshopper, frog, peacock, serpent, warrior. Your embryo embodied eons, wrists and fingers playing Buddhic mudras, your throat the bone rattle, your belly the hide drum, your lips gurgling incantations to invoke your animal familiars, a spaniel, a tabby cat, a parakeet named Sanchez. Your burbles and farts were tantric bija mantras filled with the power of the Logos, Hum! Phwat! Hri! Gah! creating the cosmos through baby talk.

Your epithelium was the robe of the Deer Priest, your smile a veil of mysteries, wingéd jaguars in the rain forest of your cerebellum. Hidden under the branches of your medulla was a secret sepulcher containing your medicine bundle, the amygdala. In the ancient well of your pineal gland, a turquoise ayahuaska toad spat jets of crystal wisdom toward your forehead, star-juice soma, dripping down your vertebrae. Comets fell through the soft spot in your skull like rebel angels.
 
Far beyond your edgeless skin flared fiery polypeptide tendrils from your solar plexus. Neurons rooted through your naked toes, entwining with mycelia, your diaphragm a lyre of gut strings resonant with hummingbird thunder. In your pudgy toddler body of dust, you made offerings of fire, water and wind to the jungle god, Viracocha, through the burning sage of amazement. In your awakened flesh, fingertips, nostrils, eyes, ears, tongue did not receive the world, but suffused it with Glory, co-creating what they perceived.

Shaman: "one who sees in the dark." Stars are only beautiful because the night around them is so deep. Still, even now, you can gaze into the light that glows from the darkness of Un-knowing. Your birthright is innocence, never lost. Take, no, receive, this breath.

Even now, you are the child of beauty, beholding the full moon as it rises in the opal sky between your eyebrows, feeling the solstice sunrise in your crown. Even now, you could re-member your body, and perambulate the terrible holy flowers in your sacrum, navel, throat and crown, spiraling upward out of the loam. You could follow, even now, the winding labyrinth of your vagus nerve home to your heart, and walk with the pilgrim goddess through Eden again, in the cool of the evening, even now, fitting her lost rib gently back into your side, where it blossoms. 


Photo: six month old baby shaman