Living as an intuitive requires the willingness to surrender to a higher source for actions large and small. And while I've been practicing listening to my intuition and taking divinely guided action for a couple of decades, I still have attachments filtered through my ever present emotionally charged mind. Yep, sometimes I resist. What can I say, I am a work in process.
So when my guides suggested that attending a Sweat Lodge might be a great thing for me to offer my students and to do with them, I repeatedly questioned the guidance. You know the same guides who saved my life, led me to my healing, appeared in full form before my eyes and enhanced my life in every meaningful way...this time though, they could be wrong. Right? I mean, did they know that my body has begun to experience its very own hormonally induced personal version of a sweat lodge daily? I don't exactly pray while in that kind of a sweat...but did I really need more heat?
They must know too, that I do not like to sit in humid, enclosed spaces? With lots of people? That I feared sitting in intense heat knowing that I was hosting the ceremony for shamanic students and friends? I wondered if my spiritual guides remembered that I might actually be phobic about spiders? And don't they like enclosed dark spaces? Not to mention mosquitoes. I wondered if my beloved guides had lost touch with my latent neurosis that only surfaced once I finally committed to engaging in a Lakota Ceremonial Sweat Lodge.
And once I agreed, I breathed into the process only to be informed that women were expected to wear skirts. Seriously? In keeping with Lakota Tradition, this was the request. I know my guides were with me in the sixties when us girls were forced to wear dresses above the knees even in the dead of winter. And surely knew that wearing a skirt had nothing then or now to do with my femininity or reverence for spirit. Naturally my loving spirit guides were aware that when I was promoted into senior management in the corporate world, my first ruling was to award all the women in our company the right to wear pants to work. And that was in 1994!
So to be sure my guides were actually speaking to me, I journeyed into the divine realms, to seek support for going into the sweat lodge and facing these surfacing fears. If this is what was showing up at the moment., I wondered what would arise in the hot dark setting? Once again, the ruminations of my mind were quieted in shamanic journey as my guides revealed the deep healing that I would experience and how truly protected and loved I was in every moment. Whew! My spirit always remembers what my mind easily forgets.
The morning of the sweat I was actually giddy with wonderment. I had attended sweat lodges before but they were always led by a harsh guide that was not nourishing to my thirsty soul. This time, I was in the hands of a competent and compassionate shamanic water pourer who listened to all my concerns with a reverent heart. 18 women and 3 men participated that evening. We sat in the circle of an energetic womb, singing in Lakota, honoring the great ancestors and the spiritual helpers who served our evolution. We prayed, shared deeply, cried and laughed in the lavender and cedar aromas permeating the dark air. As I felt the beauty of my fellow travelers, my heart expanded into a thousand unnamed places and my soul opened into boundless space. Whatever fears had stood fiercely with me prior to entering the door of the sacred haven had floated into the stars of a universe that effortlessly shifted them back into truth. I felt in complete unity with all that was.
I crawled into the sweat in one form and stepped out as another. It seems my guides may know a thing or two about who I am, what I need and how to shift from the darkness of my mind into the vastness of my soul. Go figure.
So when my guides suggested that attending a Sweat Lodge might be a great thing for me to offer my students and to do with them, I repeatedly questioned the guidance. You know the same guides who saved my life, led me to my healing, appeared in full form before my eyes and enhanced my life in every meaningful way...this time though, they could be wrong. Right? I mean, did they know that my body has begun to experience its very own hormonally induced personal version of a sweat lodge daily? I don't exactly pray while in that kind of a sweat...but did I really need more heat?
They must know too, that I do not like to sit in humid, enclosed spaces? With lots of people? That I feared sitting in intense heat knowing that I was hosting the ceremony for shamanic students and friends? I wondered if my spiritual guides remembered that I might actually be phobic about spiders? And don't they like enclosed dark spaces? Not to mention mosquitoes. I wondered if my beloved guides had lost touch with my latent neurosis that only surfaced once I finally committed to engaging in a Lakota Ceremonial Sweat Lodge.
And once I agreed, I breathed into the process only to be informed that women were expected to wear skirts. Seriously? In keeping with Lakota Tradition, this was the request. I know my guides were with me in the sixties when us girls were forced to wear dresses above the knees even in the dead of winter. And surely knew that wearing a skirt had nothing then or now to do with my femininity or reverence for spirit. Naturally my loving spirit guides were aware that when I was promoted into senior management in the corporate world, my first ruling was to award all the women in our company the right to wear pants to work. And that was in 1994!
So to be sure my guides were actually speaking to me, I journeyed into the divine realms, to seek support for going into the sweat lodge and facing these surfacing fears. If this is what was showing up at the moment., I wondered what would arise in the hot dark setting? Once again, the ruminations of my mind were quieted in shamanic journey as my guides revealed the deep healing that I would experience and how truly protected and loved I was in every moment. Whew! My spirit always remembers what my mind easily forgets.
The morning of the sweat I was actually giddy with wonderment. I had attended sweat lodges before but they were always led by a harsh guide that was not nourishing to my thirsty soul. This time, I was in the hands of a competent and compassionate shamanic water pourer who listened to all my concerns with a reverent heart. 18 women and 3 men participated that evening. We sat in the circle of an energetic womb, singing in Lakota, honoring the great ancestors and the spiritual helpers who served our evolution. We prayed, shared deeply, cried and laughed in the lavender and cedar aromas permeating the dark air. As I felt the beauty of my fellow travelers, my heart expanded into a thousand unnamed places and my soul opened into boundless space. Whatever fears had stood fiercely with me prior to entering the door of the sacred haven had floated into the stars of a universe that effortlessly shifted them back into truth. I felt in complete unity with all that was.
I crawled into the sweat in one form and stepped out as another. It seems my guides may know a thing or two about who I am, what I need and how to shift from the darkness of my mind into the vastness of my soul. Go figure.
1 comment:
Thanks for sharing the sweat lodge info. That was really good catharsis after all, Lori... I'm so glad you had a good experience and love that you shared the process of dread leading up to it! We all so slip into it, don't we? It's amazing how trust unfolds with the actual experience -- but is so elusive in gathering ourselves up to the point of actually engaging in it.
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