Synchronicity

The past couple of weeks have been very intense for me and have had me very busy. There were two main events which I participated in and both were incredibly powerful. The first one was a Native American planetary-healing ceremony called “The Living Waters Dance”. The shamanic drumming community which I am a part of enacted this ceremony in my work studio over Labor Day weekend. This ceremony was one which we last performed four years ago. At that time I had just left my job as a chiropractic assistant and was trying to figure out what I wanted to do next with my life. This ceremony was held at a friend’s property, deep in some remote woods just outside of Seattle. A friend of mine, Alex Jade, who does Sacred Intimate work was there. As we were setting up the grounds for the ceremony, she and I had a chance to talk and I asked her to tell me a bit about her work. The more we talked about it the more interested I became and more aware I was that perhaps this was work that I could do.

As we enacted the ceremony, it became clear that I was to receive a Spiritual initiation as part of the ceremony. In essence this act was an invitation from Spirit to begin to move deeper into my spirituality on the Shamanic path. I accepted the initiation knowing that whatever this led to was part of a higher calling in life and definitely the direction that I wanted my life to move. That ceremony was four years over the Labor Day weekend while Hurricane Katrina was closing in on Louisiana.

Most shamanic ceremonies or rituals run in four year cycles. The event may last only a few days but the energy of the ceremony works for four years afterwards. This particular ceremony came just as I was beginning the first year of another ceremony I was a part of, my Vision Quest. A Vision Quest is a Shamanic rite of passage or initiation ceremony. Being part of two initiatory ceremonies certainly wasn’t something that I consciously set out to do but it also wasn’t something that I really had control over either. When I left my computer programming career in 1999 I did so with the intention of following a deeper spiritual path. To me, these two ceremonies were simply Spirit responding to me and opening that path before me.

Within two months of the completion of the Living Waters ceremony is when I “accidentally” began my new career as I described in my April 4th post “No More Secrets”. The rest is now Sacred Intimate history for me. The wonderful thing is that this time we were having the ceremony in a space which was only in my life because I surrendered into the call from Spirit. Had I not gone with the flow of energy, built a practice, met the people that I did and moved into the studio when I did, we might not have been able to have the ceremony again due to a lack of a ceremonial site. It was truly synchronicity in action. It was a very powerful event for me and our community.

We finished that on Sunday and then on Tuesday I left for Mesa, Arizona for my first professional conference (the second of my two events). The conference was for ASEP, the Association for Sexual Energy Professionals. This year’s theme was “Sexuality and Shamanism”. It could not have been more appropriate for me at that time and was clearly a part of the synchronicity that was flowing for me. It was so liberating to be a part of a group of professionals who worked in a variety of professions or Spiritual paths connected to sexuality. We had everything from therapists who dealt with sexual issues in traditional talk therapy to energy workers and sex workers and everything in between. We considered ourselves “outlaws” because our work does a tightrope dance with the law, unfortunately.

During the main event of the conference on Saturday night, we participated in a couple of Shamanic trance journeys. This is something I’m very familiar with because of experiences with my Shamanic drumming community. As part of the first trance journey I was taken to what I believe to be some everglades and essentially eaten by a Jaguar. When we returned from that I found out that it was what was known as a “Shamanic dismemberment.” It sounds like a bad thing but it is actually a very good thing because I was clearly not killed physically but rather a part of my ego was destroyed.

Our ego is that human part of us that holds our sense of separation from Spirit and ultimately all that is. It is that part of us that seeks attention for its uniqueness and leads us to feel cut off from life through its own actions. For many it can be the hidden source of depression because it leads one to feel so alone and isolated because “no one can understand me”. Most spiritual traditions speak of it as the part of us which much die so that we can be reborn. Most misunderstand that and believe it means a physical death and the fear of death is a powerful motivator for all of us so we run from anything associated with it.

Even in just the short time that I’ve been back, I’m seeing and feeling changes in my life, my work and myself. Native American tradition teaches that Jaguar is the medicine of Integrity. At some level I have always felt insecure about myself, my abilities, my knowledge, my body, my appearance. This belief that I am not good enough has held me back in so many areas of my life and I feel that part if not all of that belief was removed because my sense of self-confidence is rising and I can feel it shifting my work already and have seen that this week.

I share all of this with you for two reasons at the moment. First, my commitment to you via this blog was to share what is happening in my life with the hope that you will see a connection to your life and hopefully that can help you in some way. Both of these events were significant events in my life and will ultimately shape me in ways that I can only imagine at this point.
The second reason that I share it is because these two events individually would be significant occurrences but because they landed so close to each other they appear to be more synchronistic. The deeper level of that is that they both occurred in my life only because of the first Living Waters ceremony and that one casual chat with Alex. Synchronicity is when there seems to be a relation between otherwise unrelated events. These events tell us that we are on the right path and that the energy is flowing. At an energetic level they occur when we are “in the flow” with life. If “coincidents” are our spirits trying to get us to notice something then synchronistic events are our spirits saying “this way!”

When we are in harmony with life, things flow smoothly for us to propel us forward easily. When we are in disharmony, life seems challenging, things repeatedly go wrong, fights and wars break out and life seems to be one big struggle. I invite you to examine your life carefully and notice the places where it flows smoothly and the areas where you meet constant resistance. Our spirits will always guide us in the direction of our highest good and our greatest evolutionary growth for it is in their best interest and therefore ours. That path will be open and inviting and flow smoothly.

Will you follow the path that flows before you or will you resist and swim upstream? The choice is yours in every moment.