It Is All Medicine - av José Stevens

[Yingun]

It Is All Medicine

In the world of Shamanism, medicine is anything that helps us heal. Healing is something that happens over time while a cure happens suddenly. Let’s say you have an operation on your eyes and after the operation you are cured of cataracts. There is still healing to be done. Not only do the eyes need to heal but perhaps the conditions that led to getting cataracts in the first place need to be healed as well. These conditions may include belief systems, stress, poor hygiene and diet and other things that one needs to heal from. For shamans, everything in life can be medicine including events, the elements, weather, plants, animals, music, philosophy, beauty, and so on. On the other hand, nothing can be medicine as well. The difference lies in how you choose to see the event. Getting fired from a job can be a terrible misfortune if you see it that way, or it can be just the medicine you need, if you see it that way. Shamans say that to not see something as medicine is a terrible waste and a lost opportunity. Since life is as we dream it, it is of great value to dream it as a continual healing from whatever has separated us from Spirit. Here is an example of how something that could be seen as series of misfortunes can actually be seen as medicine, as a series of healings. There is no cure for life, but there is healing everywhere.

The day after Christmas I received a call from someone I had not heard from for many years. Instantly I knew what it was about. Don, my high school buddy and college roommate and one of my oldest friends, was dead. Hearing the news was a shock because it came out of the blue, but it was not entirely a surprise. Don had been seriously mentally ill with bipolar disorder since the age of thirty-five. He died at age sixty. The last time I had talked to him on the phone was several years ago and he was so crazy I couldn’t get through to him. He was on a rant and I listened but I couldn’t really tell him anything that he would hear or listen to. I had talked with him many times in this condition but with Don there was no getting through to him because he had a goal of dominance with a serious case of arrogance and he was always right, no matter what. So, I gave up and stopped trying to help him. At that time I knew that he was probably not going to make it and it was just a matter of time before he pulled the plug on himself. That day came just before Christmas, in fact just before the Solstice. He got in one of the fancy cars that he was fond of collecting and ran the motor until he was dead.

Despite the tough times in the world, prior to the call I had determined to have a quiet Christmas and Holidays with my family and it truly was good medicine. Lena and I enjoyed seeing my son Carlos from Portland and daughter Anna and her new husband Aaron. We played with the dogs, went to our land, burned bonfires and in general had a wonderful time. But regardless of my plans to have calm I got the phone call and there was no way I could ignore the impact of what had happened. Memories flooded me and my mind went on a huge journey to integrate this piece of permanent news into my life. And regardless of it being unbidden, it was good medicine.

I recalled how much we had been through together and what a good friend he had been to me before he became ill. I was best man at this wedding, co-taught with him, traveled, camped, double dated, got drunk, and generally raised a good deal of hell with him. He was an extrovert, I an introvert, so he was always introducing me to some kind of adventure or another. On the other hand I was always introducing him to some new way of thinking, an author, a philosopher, or some inner world experience. We complimented each other rather well. I always saw his extreme extroversion, his imitations of Elvis and Della Reese as pure entertainment. What I did not know then was that he was already showing signs of manic behavior.

Even then he could be a difficult character. I remember the time we shared an apartment off campus in the beginning of my junior year at the university and we had had a disagreement. I came home to find all of my belongings piled on the front steps. He had basically moved me out without discussing it with me. I was livid and very hurt but it turned out to be good medicine. For the rest of that year I lived in my car and spent all my time in the various campus libraries. I got a 4.0 that year and got into studying like never before. That year I had many adventures and during the coldest months I slept at various people’s houses and made many new friends. I managed to save enough money to go to Europe and Morocco for three months the following summer. That was in 1969 when you could do that for $1000 including airfare on Icelandic airlines.

Nevertheless we weathered that episode and remained friends for many years. Don had so much talent in so many areas that I always felt inadequate around him. In high school he was head cheerleader, in college a great public speaker, organizer, artist, and leader. He had enormous talent with his hands and could mold wood into beautiful furniture and artwork. He began a business on the side restoring classic Rolls Royce dashboards and interiors and even patented his own wood finisher. He was an outstanding dresser and somehow knew high quality in everything even though he came from a modest East Los Angeles background. He was always scheming and somehow he always managed to have a good supply of money. I was good audience and cheerleader for him but I also noticed that post college, after spending time with him I seemed to feel diminished, untalented, and dull. At that time I did not have the tools to understand that his arrogance was a cover for his own insecurity and that his dominance was his essence goal in life, one that served him well most of the time. That was in my early twenties when I myself had no self-confidence and was generally insecure, struggling with self-deprecation. At that time I had the bad habit of judging myself, comparing myself to others, and coming up short most of the time.

This was extremely emotionally painful at the time and caused me no end of suffering, doubt, and confusion. My own goal being growth, caused me to find situations that were tough to deal with so that I would advance one way or the other. I realize now that Don was playing an important role for me in the play of my life. His character was designed to confront me with my self-deprecation and drive me out of it to find my own talents to develop. This happened gradually but successfully for me. Once again, I was fortunate to receive good medicine for my imagined maladies, just the right thing to help me evolve the hard way. I was healing.

Both of us lost our college exemptions at the same time and faced the newly installed Nixon draft for military service in Viet Nam. Both of us were equally clear that we were not willing to go to that needless and devastating carnage. Earlier we had both flown down to San Diego to the VA hospital to see a mutual friend injured only three months after enlisting. He had been pressured by his father to join the marines to become a real man. He buckled under the pressure and this handsome young man disappeared one day from our dorm floor to join the marines. When we entered his hospital room I almost threw up. Jerry had no eyes, no nose, and a small hole for a mouth in the wrong place. His face was a ruined mass of red scar tissue. Amazingly he could still talk and joked that he still had his “pecker, so all was not lost.” He had found some medicine in the experience. Although terrible, it was very good medicine for me. If I had any innocence left in me, it left that day. Any thoughts that war could be justified vanished and I resolved never to participate.

Don applied for conscientious objector status and managed to battle the government and win his claim, something extremely difficult to do at the time. He had to spend two years doing community service while I got out on a medical technicality because I had had eczema as a child, not something they wanted in the jungles of Viet Nam. Instead I went to graduate school and got my degree in social work. More good medicine.

During this time a very important event took place in Don’s life. His mother had left his father when he was very young and disappeared. Don was then raised by his very authoritarian father. Don decided to find his mother and after doing some research he tracked her down and made contact. They resumed a genial relationship for several years until one day the unthinkable happened. She committed suicide. I didn’t know at the time how devastating this was for him. It was the first crack in his successful persona.

Don was prone to bold adventurous moves, and so he married early and resolved to start a new life in Oregon, which he followed through on. I remained in California and worked as a social worker for ten years before returning to school for my doctorate. After Don moved I saw him and his wife Pat infrequently. Our lives went in different directions but we made a point of trying to visit each other a couple of times a year. These were usually fun times, especially when we all had children and we got together as two growing families. My kids liked his twin girls and they all played well together.

It was around the time that the kids became teenagers that things began to go badly. Don was showing signs of becoming imbalanced and began to have terrible depressions. At first they didn’t really let me know but after awhile it was so obvious they revealed the extent of the problem to me. Don began to call me on the verge of killing himself. He always had an exact plan about how he was going to do it, something that is considered very bad news by mental health professionals. I am sure I am not the only person that spent time trying to talk him out of it. His wife and kids bore the brunt of that. While an extremely undesirable experience, it caused me to reevaluate everything. Here was a guy who seemed to have everything at this fingertips talking about killing himself and I was the guy who hadn’t been sure of himself trying to talk him out it. This then was part of my healing. More good medicine in a back door kind of way.

Then a few years later came that call from him where I just gave up. He was manic at the time, making everyone wrong for his problems, and telling me about his grand plans that were all delusional. By that time he was in debt, couldn’t hold a job, had alienated everyone, and his marriage was in shambles. His relationship with his children had deteriorated; he wouldn’t stay on his medication and was acting really crazy. I had nothing in my bag of tricks for him. All I could do was tell him to go back to his psychiatrist and get back on his medication. I told him he needed help that I could not give him. This was good medicine for me. I had to admit my limits in the situation. No matter how badly I wanted to help him, I knew I could not and I knew the probable consequences. I had already weathered several suicides, one of a good psychiatrist friend off the Golden Gate Bridge, and a client, also off the Golden Gate Bridge, so I was a veteran. These were very painful experiences but they taught me a great deal and were also important parts of my healing. I heard nothing from Don for two years, all the time hoping I would not get that terrible call. Then it came.

After the initial shock I sat down and gathered my thoughts. What was the appropriate response? I let Spirit guide me and received very clear instructions from within. I should practice my shamanic skills and act as his psychopomp, to guide him on his way. I pictured the exact location of his death, a place I had been on a variety of occasions. He was sitting in his car in his driveway so I sat with him as he left his body behind. I accompanied him on his journey surrounding him with light, with love, with compassion and forgiveness. I beamed this to him in a concentrated way for a long time so he would surely get it. I helped him head toward a place where friends were waiting for him, who loved him. I asked for a high being to take over and guide him on his way to his destination. Before he left I explained to him that his life had been only a dream and that he was still dreaming. His essence was pure and there was no blame, no judgment, only learning. I told him I loved him, that I would see him again, and that he needed to love himself no matter what, that he was a child of Spirit. Then I said goodbye to the man but not to his essence who I have known and will always know. Great medicine and a good healing.
I saw that Don is that part of my imagined self who lost his way, who got stuck for awhile, who went to sleep and forgot who he was. By loving him he might wake up a little sooner and in that way we will suffer less. He is my brother and as long as he or anyone else is lost, a part of me is lost. Time for all of us to heal. Wake up. Good medicine.

There is a clear choice. On the one hand we can choose to see everything in our experience as meaningless, and from the perspective of the ego or false personality it is. Or, on the other hand, it is all medicine, all for the purpose of one thing and one thing only, healing the divided mind and restoring our wholeness. If it is all medicine then we are experiencing life from the perspective of essence. Essence views every particle of our lives, every event, every circumstance, every situation as medicine to heal. What kind of medicine? The kind of medicine that helps us recover from our delusions, from victimization, from hopelessness, from meaninglessness, from isolation and separation. In every event there is the possibility of awakening to truth, to love, to vitality, to move beyond fear, loss and separation, to feel connection to Spirit.

Don’s death is a tragic meaningless event or it is a healing. For me, it is clear. It is the opportunity to heal, yes, even for him, on the essence level. Someone is born, it’s a healing. Someone dies, it’s a healing. Everything that happens in between, it’s a healing. Let’s all get well. A good way to get well is to use the Ho’oponopono method, the shamanic approach to healing from the Hawaiian Islands. Here is how it works:

I am sorry Don that you had to suffer so much in my dreaming of life.
I am sorry to myself for dreaming in a way that led to my own suffering.
I forgive myself because I did not realize the consequences of my dreaming.
I forgive you for your choices that led to suffering.
I love you. I love myself.
Thanks Don, for teaching me so much.
Thanks to me for being willing to learn.

Many Blessings, Jose Stevens



http://www.thepowerpath.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=165:it-is-all-medicine&catid=26:consciousness&Itemid=84

[Siv Merete]

Takk, Yingun, dette var spesiellt godt å lese akkurat nå!
Kjenner at det å virkelig gi aksept til at livet utfolder seg som det gjør, gjør at jeg lettere tar imot den medisin livet gir....så er det slik at noe medisin smaker godt, noe smaker vondt...men det er medisin alt, om man bare vil ta imot. Så lærer vi hver dag å bli et helere menneske. Og i prossessen må vi slippe andre, i kjærlighet, slik at de bli hele, slik at vi sammen kan bli et hele.....
Det er vakker og sterk lesning dette, Yingun, trengte dette nå ;-)
klem <3