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Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Buffalo Soldier

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I read in the news that a white buffalo calf has been born on a farm in Connecticut, a most promising omen in Native American culture. I remember a dream I had months ago, a dream that has sat in the back of my mind, a dream that I knew I had to sit with and wait for its meaning to be revealed. And so I put it away, knowing I’d come back to it at some point. Now is the time, for the meaning has been revealed.

I tell Chuck about the dream, in which I pull a bone out of my foot, a bone that grows larger and larger as I carry it around, sometimes giving it to him to hold, until it transforms into a white buffalo. The white buffalo is the size of a calf, yet it’s ancient, old and tired. It will not leave my side; everywhere I go the small white buffalo follows along. I confront issues of detachment and ego in the dream while the buffalo gets sicker and sicker. It vomits and keels over, exhausted, barely able to hold up, yet it will not leave me. It constantly gets back up and trods onward, its nose to the ground, its bony hump old and brittle, dutifully keeping pace with me. I worry about it, though I also accept its presence, for I recognize it. I’m aware that it’s been walking beside me forever.

I tell Chuck that as soon as I woke up from the dream I knew it was important, but I couldn’t make any sense of it at the time. With the birth of the white buffalo calf that I read about, I am spurred to figure it out.

What is the significance of my dream? As I begin pondering this question I feel the pull of outside energy, of ego telling me that I am special, though I know I’m not. I slow down and pull inward, knowing I have to investigate this in my inner world, to find out the significance and specialness of this dream omen as I progress on my personal journey. I’m certain this has nothing to do with anyone else, but only to do with some bone of contention that I still carry within. I’m aware that this white buffalo omen is prompting me to take the next step on my journey of growth and transformation.

Chuck and I discuss the dream. We discover that I have been like this buffalo, dutifully bearing up under all circumstances, always getting back on my feet and plodding along, nose to the grindstone.

“That’s it!” Chuck exclaims. “This is what I’ve been searching for, the answer to the question: Where is Jan’s ego? It’s not in inflation, I’ve always known that, but I just couldn’t get a handle on it. This dream is clearly showing that it’s in willfulness. Jan’s ego is a martyr!”

I acknowledge the truth of this. I see that my challenge is to shed the martyr archetype, to let the sick buffalo die, transforming its willfulness into energy that is useful, life giving, and healing. Pulling the bone out of my foot was the first step in this transformational process. Now it’s time to take the next step and shed the buffalo hide. And then Chuck gets up and plays Bob Marley’s Buffalo Soldier and it makes perfect sense to me. Chuck also suggests that I write about the white buffalo in my next blog, but I tell him that I’m not sure I’m ready yet.

We go to sleep. I wake up after an hour or so, this challenge of shedding the martyr-self, the buffalo soldier, running through my mind. I know I must be available to the people who need me, but differently now, not as a martyr dutifully carrying out her duties, but balancing kindness, compassion, and being available while fully standing in my truth. These are things I have worked at consistently for many years, always feeling like I was not quite getting over the final hump within that would free me of the deeply ingrained sense of duty that weighs so heavily upon my shoulders. As I lie awake, I think about shedding the bony carapace of the buffalo, the garment of the martyr that I have worn my entire life, now scruffy and old.

I fall back to sleep and into a dream. Someone is sick and must go to the hospital. I never see who it is, but it’s me of course. A nun meets us at the door of the hospital and takes my cell phone from me. I watch as she puts it into the deep pocket of her long black habit. No cell phones allowed; no outside interference. While we sit in the hospital room of the sick patient, I work on the blog for the next week, the one about the white buffalo, as Chuck suggested I do. It’s partly channeled, partly comprised of the dream I had about the bone in my foot, and partly about the new insight that Chuck and I came to. Every now and then Chuck screams and bolts upright, as if he’s having a heart attack. Clutching his heart he says: “My heart tells me it’s true! My heart tells me it’s right!” I tell him he’s freaking me out, but he keeps doing it.

At one point a woman artist walks into the room. She stays for a while, leaning over the bed of the sick person, and then leaves. Then a yogi comes in. He too goes to the hospital bed, says something, and leaves. The third person to walk in is a wine merchant. He too goes over to the bed of the sick person, speaks softly, and then leaves without saying a word to us. I see these characters as parts of who I have been in the world—the ego, the artist self who worked in the real world; the spirit self who worked in my inner world; and the self of pleasure and desire who fulfilled the needs of the human self—saying goodbye to the old self.

I get up, leaving Chuck to watch over the sick person, while I go for a walk out into the surrounding desert. I stand in the middle of the desert and hear a loud crack and then the sound of bones dropping to the ground. Standing up straight and tall, I easily release the garment of the martyr, the carapace of the white buffalo. At the same time, glancing to my right, I see a large snake slithering out of a clump of grass. It lifts its enormous head and looks at me with a huge smile on its face. I am filled with unbelievable happiness and delight at the sight of it. I walk back to the hospital with the snake slithering alongside me, just as the white buffalo had once walked beside me, but it doesn’t feel like duty now, there is only joy accompanying me.

The nun meets me in the lobby as soon as I enter the hospital. “She’s dead,” she tells me, glancing at the snake beside me. I go back to the room and tell Chuck that now I have to rewrite everything that I’d written earlier.

“Now that she’s dead, my blog won’t be true anymore,” I say, and I tell Chuck to sit quietly, to not disturb me. “I have all these parts out there floating around,” I say, “and I have to bring them together in a cohesive whole. I have to write a new story.”

I will not be distracted. I work intently on the story while Chuck reads quietly beside me, the snake curled at my feet. Eventually, the nun comes back to the hospital room and tells us that we have to leave, that we have to pack up the belongings of the dead person so they can clean the room. We carry a few boxes to the car. I see that the nun has laid my cell phone on top of the car.

“You have two messages waiting for you,” she says. “The phone has been beeping away every half hour, letting you know that someone is trying to reach you. You can listen to them now if you want, before going back to cleaning out the room.”

“No,” I say. “I don’t need to listen. They can wait.” I have a sense that they are calls from people who want something from me, demanding to know where I’ve been and why I haven’t been in touch with them, people calling the old buffalo martyr self who always responded. But she’s dead now and I will not be distracted or pulled away from the work at hand. The only duty I have is to return to the hospital room, pack up the belongings of the person who has died, and continue working on my new story.

I wake up from this dream feeling refreshed, lighter and freer. Reliving the moment of shedding the buffalo carapace again, I realize that I experienced the same transformative energy in this dream as when I stood up and faced the seagulls on Great Duck Island that I wrote about a few weeks ago. I shed the old bones of the martyr self and walked away, leaving them behind without attachment or regret, just as I had shed my fearful self and walked away from the seagulls. Death of the old self occurred in the action of shedding the white buffalo carapace and a new self, the snake of transformation and healing, was instantly born.

As Bob Marley says in Buffalo Soldiers: “If you know your history, then you would know where you coming from.”

And if you know that, I say, then you can change.

From all the worlds of dreams and reality, sending love and transformational energy,
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: On Healing

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I'm angry today!

I spent most of my life in deep depression. I rarely emerged, rarely felt truly joyous, rarely embraced the gifts that life and the universe saw fit to present me with. It was much easier to embrace the negative, self-deprecating person I was used to, the familiar self.

It was not until I began the process of recapitulation that I discovered that the personal issues and ideas I had been so wrapped in were extremely harmful to me. In recapitulation I discovered, as well, a means of release from them. I believe that we have to be ready for the process of recapitulation, that perhaps if we begin it too early we are not prepared for the tests and lessons it will ask us to go through. By my late forties I was ready, but up until then I had to use my normal habits and behaviors—and often sheer force of will—to keep me functioning and stable as I dealt with PTSD.

I found inner calmness in meditation and yoga. I used walking and running to keep me physically present and healthy, while my creative artist self kept me safe and productive. Whether we are doing recapitulation or not, such practices are always available to us, as well as many other methods of calming our minds and bodies, so that we can be functioning adults in a world that we might not feel safe in.

I believe that, at some point, everyone will be confronted with making the choice to heal or not, to recapitulate or not, to face their darkness or not. And it truly is a choice. Personally, I was too fed up with my depressed self to live with her anymore. A drastic approach to her issues was needed and so I was led to recapitulate. My spirit would not rest until I had freed it.

In doing recapitulation, I discovered the incredible power of the mind, body, and spirit to heal. Since then I can truly state that I am rarely depressed. I am mostly full of joy and wonder, my energy light and happy. Lately however, I have felt heavy energy descending upon me, weighing me down. At first, I was confused. I searched within myself. Am I missing something? Is there something I have to recapitulate still from my childhood? After much personal investigation, I detected that I was carrying the energy of others.

I am good at reading energy, open to it, aware that it’s a necessary process as I evolve. This is an ability that I’ve trained and honed, a skill that has become a bigger part of my life as I have grown over the past decade. I use it to channel, for instance, but it has become increasingly clear that I must gain better control over this energy, become better at redirecting it away from me. It’s okay to read energy, to feel and perceive it flowing in the universe, but I must not allow it to rest upon me for even a second. I know that if I carry it for others then they don’t have to deal with it themselves and they will never heal.

I’d been dealing with the heaviness of this energy from outside myself for a while before I understood what it was. I’d look at myself in the mirror and not recognize myself. I’d put on my clothes and find they didn’t fit right. I’d walk stooped and drooped, the heavy weight of negative energy and worry lying heavily upon my shoulders. My energy was low. I had lost my usual lightness and joy.

Finally, I rejected what did not feel like me, what felt so alien and uncomfortable. I shook off the negative energy, the heaviness. I shook it off several times throughout the day, and each time I did I confirmed that, indeed, it did not belong to me. Now, when I look in the mirror, I look like me again. My clothes feel good on me. I walk in my body.

I practice Tonglen breathing around the negative energy, to protect myself but also to channel it for others in a positive way. I breathe in negative energy and exhale positive energy. I breathe in fear and breathe out fearlessness. I breathe in sadness and breathe out happiness. I breathe in the heavy weight of depression and breathe out the joy of release. I breathe in worry and breathe out calmness and contentment. In all of these ways I energetically cleanse and heal my energy and I also aid others in cleansing and healing their own.

I'm happy today!

In allowing ourselves to accept that we are all healers, that we all have the power within to heal ourselves and others, we can begin to practice and hone our healing skills immediately, whether we are engaging in the process of recapitulation or not. In letting go of negative feelings and thoughts about ourselves, by letting in only good and positive thoughts, we begin to free ourselves of so many problems and ideas, and we begin to change.

We can effect change by setting our intent to do so and then practicing Tonglen or other healing methods. By imagining our bodies being swept clean of disease, discomfort, pain, worry, etc., and by imagining all of that negative energy flushing out of our systems, including our minds, hearts, and spirits, we set ourselves on a healing path. Setting an intent to heal and then acting on it is all we really need, but it is experiencing our intent manifested that brings the biggest reward. It’s easy to keep on our healing path once we experience a moment of joy, a glimpse of light at the end of the long dark tunnel. When I change the phrase “I’m depressed today” into “I’m quiet and calm today” and gather up all that depression and brush it off me, literally brush and flick it off, I feel myself change.

I have often utilized the skills of an energy healer. She is extremely good at what she does and has healed many people from the most horrific of diseases and maladies. She gathers up the bad energy, flicks it away, and replaces it with good energy. It’s not that hard to do, but what is hard is trusting that this is how energy works. My healer learned this in an environment that knew this, that had no doubt. Although we can’t see energy, it is nonetheless present inside us, being bad for us and doing bad things to us, as well as being good for us and doing good things for us. We all sense this on a daily basis. When we are happy we feel good inside. When we are sad we feel bad inside. Although our Western culture may work against us, it’s not impossible to replace our ingrained disbelief with a more open mind, by allowing for actual experience.

Everyone has the power to heal themselves, to shift their thoughts and change how they feel about themselves and their lives. There are jewels and treasures to be found in even the most dire and depressing of lives lived, as I found out. I discovered that underneath all that old depression was the me I am today. The biggest thing I have learned over the years is that I have the power to change myself, within myself, all the time. Yes, I’ve had a lot of help, but it’s always been up to me to choose to do the work.

We all have the power to heal. This is what I have learned. This is what Jeanne taught me and has been teaching all of us through her messages over the past decade. This is what the Shamans and Buddhist practices that I have studied teach us. This is what the metaphysical healers teach us. This is what the powers of the mind, body, and spirit teach us when we open up to their full capabilities, to their full truths.

The power to heal spiritually, physically, mentally, and emotionally lies within. Try it and see what happens. And when recapitulation comes knocking, you’ll have some pretty good techniques already in place to use when the going gets tough. And always keep a hint of the positive in mind no matter what you have to encounter, remembering that eventually the going will be easier, much easier, joyously easier.

Here’s to healing,

Jan