More Feelings Than Will Fit Here

In which I wrestle with the too large feelings of my returning 19 year old soul part. A crisis of identity ensues as I follow the trail of self revelations into the jungles of, what a writing colleague once called, Dangerous Writing, i.e. stuff you had no intention of revealing.

I first realized that my emotional terrain had undergone a makeover during our family TV night watching a documentary segment about the bombing of Hiroshima. Granted it did have Oliver Stone's liberal, muckraking spin on it, but none of this information was new to me. I had long come to the conclusion that Hiroshima should never have happened, but I had never felt this way about American imperialism before; had never taken it so personally. And now I just wanted to double over and cry. I felt my sensibilities shifting in alarmingly unstable ways. Where was this going? My normally dispassionate writer's voice was at risk. 

Writing was how I discovered the truth of the world. But what truth would I find if I was awash in emotion? Being dispassionate, when describing whatever environmental or political catastrophe was at hand was the way I kept us all calm in the hopes of nurturing solutions. Being cool was also the mark of my Buddhist upbringing. It was in the Thai language teaching me to keep a "cool heart". Not to mention the self-deprecating wit that was required by my British heritage and my own casual affect to ensure nobody knew for certain what I really cared about. 

In the States, the whole problem, as I saw it, was too much emotion, too much passionate, reactive, knee jerk energy going off half cocked. Being cool, I believed, was how we would get through whatever befell us. It was why meditation had become such a sought after skill for Americans.

Now, not only was my coolness breaking up, my writing goals were being left by the wayside; nutrition books from the library piling up. My returning 19 year old soul part had memories to impart that I had long ago put into deep storage. I had been on a winning streak, distilling scads of information people had actually found useful and now I just wanted to run through the personal jungle of autobiography. What good would that be to my readers?

In this dark night of the soul, late on a Saturday night, I posted my sentiments of doubt to my Facebook page. Immediately I had the support of a colleague and three others I didn't know were reading my work also hit the "like" button. I posed some questions. Old friends came on board to help discuss my dilemma. One, my first lover (such a gift to have this witness from my adolescence), assured me that my autobiographical writing and shamanic pieces were the richest and most interesting work I produced, for she cared not for my posts on composting toilets. 

Taking Risks With Mere Humans

My 19 year old cared about one thing only—the love of women followed by kissing them. She had had an early start, having come out to herself at fourteen, long before most others realized it was a possibility. One might ask why so precocious. In part it was coming from a heritage that saw these choices not as choices, but as fate, karma from another life likely as a man. 

Also a factor was finding a sympathetic heart, the aforementioned first lover. We spent four years of high school mutually shepherding each other through our many crushes and obsessions, modeling ourselves after the life of George Sand per a PBS biopic, for there were no contemporary models at the time, just these literary figures flanked on one side by Oscar Wilde and on the other by Virginia Wolf. 

And in the shelter of our private girls' school, we were protected from the challenges and energy of the presence of boys. They were of so little importance in this school that aimed to make leaders of women. We could clearly see from the little contact we had with them (through the corresponding boys' school), that girls were by far, superior in intelligence. 

And lastly, we were also both writers and fearless in our search for interesting material. She embodied the other gender via fiction and I stuck largely to the searing truth of autobiography. Thus left to create a world through literary works we were not really of our time. It being the '70s this was probably just as well. Only the flickers of an emerging gay liberation movement seeped into our consciousness and bolstered our exploration of a limited physicality marked by kisses. Adolescence was very intense; we could make love to air.

By the time this 19 year old arrived at College V, she had already loved or been in love with at least five different girls and kissed one. By the time she left, she had interested and kissed at least five more women, every one of them straight. At least at the time.

If you think about it, the skill set required to do this was quite remarkable. To intrigue, interest and offer one's peers the opportunity to try something they had never tried before, which was also taboo. And to do it without trampling on anybody's sensibilities. This was a skill filled with the nuances of listening for the slightest hint of interest. And in turn a nuanced use of language reflecting back that interest. A perspective offered of complete appreciation, not as one to be possessed, but as one to be adored and honored. Kissed in the most languid way; bristle free softness as our cheeks brushed together. The only out-lesbian at a party, I was the alternative, the path less chosen.

The College V women were intrigued by me; and seeing my 19 year old self, in my journey visions, I could see why. Butch, but fine boned. Tight jeans and long hair, not the flannel shirts and overalls favored by the lesbians of the day. An exotic biracial beauty that was, as yet, unclaimed by mainstream media so perhaps also forbidden. An English accent recently polished after a holiday in England.

Road Trip: Take Two

On my road trip down I-5, while puzzling over the motivations of my 10 year old soul part, I had also allowed my 19 year old to run with her feelings uncensored; the spacious landscape effortlessly holding it all. I had no intention of describing any of it, but in the meeting following in which my returning 10 year old had been summoned before my three power animals, Leopard had asked her:

"Was there anyone else involved my darling?" 

"Yes the 19 year old. And she's in love with Lenore!" Arrggh. Busted. Yes it was true. I was a goner. Swept away by this crush.

Lenore was in good company. The last woman I was smitten with was Naomi Klein, author of Shock Doctrine and No Logo. I read all her books, saw her speak twice in one week, recapped both her talks and posted the reports to flickr with pictures I had taken of her at Stanford and Bioneers. As a reward for my devotion she fully prepared me for the disappointment of an Obama presidency.

There was also Christiane Amanpour, the CNN international correspondent. I mean how could  one not? That indefinable accent. The safari outfits. The staccato sense of urgency.

The year before it had been Marlee Matlin who spent a season playing not only a lesbian, but an artist, on The L Word. I wrote her fan letters every other week, took a semester of sign language and learned enough to recap the entire season of The L Word in sign language and send her a videotape of it. She sent me an autographed picture unsolicited which I accepted as one would a certificate of achievement.

But this crush on Lenore was not so neatly dispensed with. It was real in a way I hadn't experienced in nearly 30 years. The pure overwhelm of a 19 year old totally out of her depth. 

"I'm so embarrassed," said the 10 year old who had a keen sense of social disaster.

"Now, my lovely," said Leopard soothingly, "we could hardly expect otherwise of a 19 year old for whom the love of women was the only thing she really believed in." 

"That's true," the 10 year old observed, "and she wouldn't have come back if it weren't for Lenore." There had been tears Lenore had said about fetching this soul part and she had held her, comforted her. Yes it was probably an occupational hazard of soul retrievers, I thought, to have clients fall in love with you. So intimate was the psychic territory. So much emotion allowed once a soul part was returned. Physical contact offered. An entire conversation undertaken in the nuances of our hands sandwiched together. And as she held my gaze I could make love to the air between us; I didn't have to climb into her lap and kiss her though I did want to. The memory of it was enough to fill I-5 to the horizons.

"But we will provide some guidelines," said Leopard putting a gentle stop to this indulgence.

At this point the 19 year old appeared at the edge of the jungle behind the 10 year old. She said nothing in her defense. She just stood there cooly. I looked at the tilt of her head, her expression of self assurance and I could see that she didn't care one wit what she was dragging me through. And another thing I could see; she had no patience for stigma, for the political context of homophobia with which I had been taught to frame my sexuality. Times had changed I realized. We had to stop ghettoizing our love stories. 

I was well acquainted with the pitfalls of crushes on teachers. A gilded cage feeding the ego for the adored; indentured servitude for me, with all the highs and lows of a psychotropic drug. All of it going on way too long. Neither of us able to be ourselves in the other's presence. There was only one safe way out and that was to burn through it—embrace the salt sting of rejection over and over again until we both were freed. 

Caretaker Road Ends

"I'm going to have to write about having a crush on my shamanic counselor," I said to Catherine who was equally familiar with the passage of the crush (a dance teacher comes to mind). "You know, like I had on Naomi Klein and Marlee Matlin." Her expression flickered from potential concern, rapidly coming to rest at good humored understanding.

"You mean being with a Cyborg isn't going to do it for you," she said.

"Well, I was thinking of drawing some designs on your scar," I said entertaining the idea of art as transformative healing. 

"You could draw on my head. Just start with this," she said pointing to the colored blot of concern at the crown of her head. I immediately saw the design potential of this offer. 

Whew. It would be okay. I did not want secrets. Secrets, I knew, created undercurrents of destructive energy. And nothing blocks inspiration faster than secrets. I had kept such a secret once in another relationship; couldn't write a thing for a year; couldn't even tell a joke.

My role as caretaker was coming to an end. Catherine was officially released from further treatment and was to have her port removed. The port was the plastic device that had been surgically inserted under her skin, by her shoulder, for the administering of the chemo drugs. I drove her to the appointment at the Women's cancer center one last time.

On the way home she thanked me for all that I had done to take care of her. I was glad I was able to do it, glad to have the skills that made everything go as well as possible and that I had done it all with a devotion and kindness befitting the circumstances. I could be proud of that.

And because I wasn't the sort who engaged in the tragedy of the disease as others were apt to do, that helped too. It made it that much easier for Catherine to discuss her concerns with me about each new challenge. This too she appreciated. 

All I had really had to do was walk the dogs every morning, feed us all, fetch things and make sure Catherine was okay. Rinse and repeat, all summer then all the rest of the year plus a month. It was a long haul and much of it I'd done in hyper vigilance mode, but there was no where else I wanted to be with so much happening. It gave my life purpose.

"I'll have to find a new purpose for my life," I joked.

And now it was nearly over, just in time for me to take this strange, unplanned journey into the interior of my psyche, a project that was beginning to occupy all my waking hours like a book waiting to be written. 

No Idea Where This Is Going

I had wondered what to do about the history of College V. I could burn every picture from that time, I thought, but that would likely just keep the experience frozen in time. And I would forever wonder what happened to those people. Three had already found me on Facebook though they never mentioned our shared past.

I had already uploaded pictures of each of them, to prepare for the returning memories of my 19 year old self. I wasn't sure how these friends remembered those times. The pictures were good black and white prints shot in natural lighting with my father's old Leica. The photographs showed what I saw, their unique beauty and vulnerability. What wasn't to like? They were thrilled. How young we were. How fresh faced and edgy. Smoking even. We were "just kids" to quote Patti Smith's memoir, but we already had character. 

When I uploaded 9 more pictures from my portfolio to Facebook, it attracted quite a reunion evoking even more memories for my returning 19 year old, but now I had a voice with which to defend myself and to deconstruct my experience. I had opportunity to say things that needed to be said. I gave out random comments of appreciation.  "Dear P___, thank-you for sharing all those babes with me." 

In the weeks of living through more feelings than would fit in the space normally allotted to feelings, I felt like I was going to lose it. Everything evoked about 5 times more feelings than I had ever had before. In the midst of these gripping feelings of desire and over blown emotions at the problems of the world, I came to entertain the notion of sending my 19 year old back to the void. I mean what good was she? I'd actually been happier before. I felt calmer for half a day or so, then regretted even thinking such a thought. She might even have gone already. I had to check.

In a new journey with my counsel of power animals on that same rock, Leopard summoned the 19 year old with her mind. When she came out of the jungle she looked like she had been in a knife fight. Clothes disheveled, scrapes, her cheek cut and bleeding. Did I do that? Leopard jumped off the rock, went to her, rubbed her head against her body and licked the wound clean. 

Yes, the 19 year old said, the memories shared by College V friends had been a little intense, but she had appreciated being defended and had delighted in the comment about the babes. (Women made available by riding on the coattails of a man. Pleasure shared in the relative innocence of the '70s; before sex and death took over.)

I wanted to hear more about where she was going with this, but she wanted to admire Leopard's spots. Leopard obliged her by stretching out full length on the ground. She put her arms around Leopard's neck and buried herself in the lose fur and sobbed. That was for the unobtainable Lenore. Then she recovered and with her hand traced the outline of the spots on Leopard's belly. She was so languid and sensuous, so unhurried, I was required to take in this leisureliness. She looked at me, let me know I'd be sorry if I sent her away for she had a sensibility I couldn't even touch. She took risks, this one, and she didn't even care what the outcome might be.

Leopard beckoned to me to come closer. I stood up on the rock and the 19 year old came to me; I was just tall enough to be eye to eye with her. I stroked her cheek where the cut had been. My hand came away as if through water and I felt a sense of oneness and clarity.

Back in ordinary reality, I caught up with my 19 year-old self as she was calculating how much time it would take to become a shamanic practitioner. Which, I realized, would require a whole different marketing approach. "But I'm a really good organizer," I said, "why rob the world of such talent?" People were always going to need help throwing out stuff, along with processing all the emotional baggage stuff came with. This took an enormous amount of persuasive talent.

As if in answer to my query, I got an e-mail from a new organizer, a young, single mom. "I am a total admirer of your work" she said. She told me she was eager to help me promote the conference I was bringing to fruition. "Just tell me how high to jump." Ha. I so saw myself. I asked my new acolyte what body of work she was talking about. "All of it," she said, "you have such a unique style and manner. I love it. You immediately put me at ease. I'm sure your clients feel the same way."

Huh, I thought, putting people at ease was a good quality to have in my work. This revelation snapped me back to my senses, reducing my crush to a kind of dog like devotion that I could live with.  

In the ensuing days as I grew more comfortable in my skin and as I spent time among friends I trusted, I realized that my ability to express myself had become much more efficient. I simply connected so much better with my feelings. I no longer had to strategize the impact of what I might say. I felt I was taking much more risks, but that part of me didn't care. I was a better fighter than I'd ever been, with the twin forces of 10 year-old fierceness and this new frankness. I could also speak from the heart in a way that I did not have to second guess. It was as if I'd just discovered the concept. Speaking from the heart was exactly the quality I would want a leader to have. There was no going back now.

Road Trip

In which I ponder what qualifies a 10 year old soul part from Thailand to jump in on a Norwegian Sami solstice ceremony.

Road Trip

The drive down the dead straight I-5 was so monotonous that it usually took an audio book, a bag of jugee fruits and a nap to manage the three hours spent on it, but this time I just sat with my own thoughts undistracted by my now habitual checking in to Facebook, that had become my entire social life since Catherine became housebound during her chemo treatment. 

I had left her in her brother's care, though she was so tired, this being only a week out from her last treatment, that she near passed out at breakfast two days running. That morning she felt confident that she was only fatigued and not seriously ill so I was able to take my leave after a rush of last minute chores.

I was headed down to LA and then to San Bernardino to clean up our rental property after yet another set of failed renters. This time it had only taken less than a year for the couple in question to fall apart. He turned abusive; she left him and I was left holding the bag for half the rent. I gave him two months for the price of one to get us through the holidays and he had kept his word about leaving. A good space clearing was clearly in order I could see.

On the I-5 my thoughts turned to the confident, take-charge 10 year old soul part who had, it seemed, been the one who replaced me in the solstice ceremony, thus leaving me with no memory of it. A 10 year old who is already trained to appear before royal patronage was perfectly capable of representing the Spirit of the Dark, I surmised. I had, after all, called her the Queen of the Dark in an update to Facebook.

Appearing before Thai royalty was a skill that my Khun Ya (as I called my Thai grandmother) had trained into me from the age of five. I knew how to use the language of honorifics and how to properly bow from the floor to any figure who required this level of respect. She took every opportunity to present me to as many high ranking figures as she had access to and by the time I was ten had taken me to the Prime Minister's house where I amused him by declaring, very politely, that his dark house reminded me of Dracula's. 

At age five it was the children's annual fashion show event that would command an audience with mid-level royalty at the palace across the street from our compound. For that happening, my entire kindergarten class had been recruited. (I was attending a tiny private school that Khun Ya had approved before my mother rescued me from her high society ambitions.) We went in pairs holding hands down the raised catwalk. The next year I was to walk the catwalk by myself like a real grown-up model.

A solo performance was serious stuff for a 6 year old at a royal garden party. In the one rehearsal before the show, I was shown how to pause and make the turn at each of the two corners of the walkway, foot placed at an angle to show off the dress. I was very excited about those turns.

It was a substantial walk on the raised catwalk through a sea of admiring eyes from all the tables set around the garden, their white tablecloths gleaming. The event lit for the evening with numerous footlights. But at the last minute, half an hour before the show was to start my Khun Ya introduced me to a VIP, the daughter of the ambassador to France. 

She had with her, her two daughters in matching outfits. I could see that the trendy European styling, involving vinyl vests with pockets and ruffled shirts underneath, outclassed my more traditional pink, little-girl dress. 

Her eldest would very much like to be in the fashion show, she told me. Would I mind taking her with me? I could see my Khun Ya smiling with pride at the very idea that I would be asked. It became imperative that I say yes though I felt it was totally unfair, seeing as this girl who was maybe four, had not even been to the rehearsal. And she would know nothing about the pause in those marvelous turns. Not to mention that our outfits did not even go together. But take her I did.

So Near Yet So Far

The first question I had, once I had confirmed that I had indeed made it to the Solstice Ceremony and likely participated in it, was if I had fulfilled my obligation to represent the Queen of the Dark and, in turn, my obligations to Lenore. 

"Did it go as planned?" I asked Lenore before I knew that my ten year old missing soul part had hijacked my role in it. I so wanted to ask more, but I couldn't seem to.

"Yes," she said without any further elaboration.

One of the few things I thought I remembered from the solstice ceremony was the lighting in the ceremonial hall, low near our feet. Now that I knew who had done the ceremony, I wondered, affectionately, if there were any turns involved in my ten year old's embodying of the Spirit of the Dark.

There was another more pressing question I had of my ten year old soul part. She had been in my orbit for a long time now and yet had not reintegrated, nor had she wanted to. Usually missing soul parts are scattered to far off parts of the spiritual kingdom. Lenore had told me that the reason that soul parts are found so close to oneself is because of work already done that has brought the soul part closer to home. 

And I had worked hard to reintegrate this 10 year old. It had taken me five years of writing my memoir Diamonds In My Pocket to make this happen. By the end of that first draft I felt as if the book had created me and told me who I was. So much of the emotional life that I had lost when I no longer spoke Thai regularly, had been duly translated and stored in that book. As had my extended family and the support it had offered me.

I was also struck by the words I had used in the dramatic climax of the book as I came to realize, when we moved into our new home in the States, "that houses did not come with people". 

"I wanted to stamp and scream into eternity," I wrote of my response to the utter emptiness of my new life. That was what my ten year old had been reacting to. And so she had. Stamped off into the spirit world. Curious the use of the word "eternity". 

This grief stricken loneliness, I would later learn, was typical of Third Culture Kids. The phenomena of unrecognized grief had spawned a whole new niche of psychological study, as more children were included in a globalized economy of mobile families.

As I imagined trying to tell this story of a ten year old in the throes of high society Thailand at a royal garden party and how it might have anything to do with a shamanic solstice ceremony I felt like I was going to blow a fuse. And that was precisely why I had not been able to close the gap with that soul part.

I looked out at the flat fields of fruit trees, bisected by the four lane highway, for solace. No one was going to judge me yet out here. My destination lay dead straight ahead until I reached the mountains. 

The problem I realized now was that I was a Leftist and so was Lenore. That's why I trusted her. But now I was describing a heritage that included royalty for crying out loud. I felt my identity compromised in this new community with Lenore. There was no place in America for a child dedicated to royal patronage. This was the nation that refused to bow to any foreign dignitaries and by the time I grew up I had so rejected the part that couldn't be assimilated that I could find no new allegiances. I could not trust in any formalized system whether it was academic, spiritual or community based. The only people I could really hang with were entrepreneurs, self-made people, traveling tinkers, the circus, Mad Max and Tina Turner, lawless bounty hunters, rebels with and without a cause and the Force. 

Any organization taking itself too seriously I felt compelled to unmask rather than embrace, leaving me ambiguous about where my loyalties lay. Not belonging anywhere was my comfort zone. Enemies becoming unlikely allies when a new situation developed. Friends becoming enemies at any given moment and back again to friends further down the line. It happened all the time. It was mostly an asset this perspective, but it wasn't a path to leadership.

But I did have my power animals now; I believed in their love and loyalty; that they would never harm me. And now that there were three we were a counsel. We could ask that 10 year old what was up with the hijacking thing. I was curious enough to try.

The Counsel

The first opportunity I would have to journey would not be until I arrived at the Best Western in San Bernardino, a block from the Home Depot which I would frequent daily in my role as landlord. No one would disturb me in my hotel room.

Under the call of the drum, I rode Bear the same route into the jungle as before and in the clearing on that flat rock, my three power animals and I assembled ourselves behind Leopard. We gazed quietly at the edge of the jungle until the 10 year old appeared.

"Hello my sweet," said Leopard gently, "we'd like to ask you a question." Leopard's tone let her know that she had not been called because she was in trouble. "Can you tell us, my lovely, why you took on the solstice ceremony?"

"For fun," she said sassily. "And because she called me by a nobility name" she added feeling more explanation was needed. She was referring to the rehearsal interview with the Spirit of the Dark in which I had been called Alicia. In Thai, honorifics and nicknames called out the relationship and the role one is to play with another. At ten I had many names already, including an honorific. 

"And I was owed it," she said, "because I had to share with the ambassador's granddaughter that one time." And I felt again the indignity of my ten year old self having that child swinging around the turns like we were on the playground. I had barely managed to keep her from flying off the catwalk at the second turn.

Leopard spoke again. "But what about your later appearance in the ballet which was presented to the Queen herself. Wasn't that enough?" 

I'd forgotten about that event. It had been a cross cultural collaboration between a Thai dancing company and a ballet troupe, put together by Khun Ya's alumni association. The dream sequence had flipped from one culture's dance art to the other (and from male gender to female gender). And it was realized, at the last minute, that the ballet corps was missing a flag bearer. Khun Ya had provided that flag bearer.

"That was even worse," said the 10 year old. "All I did was stand there and I didn't even have a real costume." Someone had made, for me, a sequined sash to wear over my black ballet leotard and tights. But the real sore point was that I had seen what a pivotal role the flag bearer played in the corresponding Thai sequence. He was splendid leaping about with a huge flag. The 10 year old seemed to take comfort in telling this story and the counsel gave it a respectful moment.

"Did you know my sweet," said Leopard again, "that you would be leaving Amanda without memory of the solstice ceremony?"

"No," said the 10 year old looking at her feet, showing remorse for the first time.

"Was there someone else involved?" said Leopard.

"Yes," she said, "the 19 year old. She wanted her story told."

So the plot thickens. I wasn't sure whether to believe this 10 year old or this pieced together story that she had conveniently confirmed. We humans would rather have any story than none at all. But it was likely true that the 19 year old wanted her story told; everyone wants their story told. And I had denied it to her many times, even quite recently.

What would be the point I had said. What purpose would it serve?

Eye Of The Artist

In which I make contact with my new spirit animal and meet with the three returning soul parts in this uncommon search for leadership skills by way of a shamanic soul retrieval ceremony.

Return Of A Ten Year Old

Before I had even made contact with my returning soul parts, I knew immediately that I had my ten year old back as soon as I stepped onto the mat at my martial arts studio Monday night after the weekend of my soul retrieval ceremony. She had such energy and excitement for the 90 minute class in stark contrast to the many months I had merely endured the routines, noting an aging body upon which doubt was now being cast. While calculating, in 15 minute increments, how long, until class would be over. 

I now remembered this child in a visceral way, in all her gleeful impudence and confidence. Her days were filled with accomplishments—making things, writing, doing homework, ordering the children who lived with her on the extended family compound to do her bidding, making requests of the staff, and making appearances to the various family members who wanted to see her face daily—the only child of the first son of the first wife. 

Her abiding thought was that everything she touched she would be able to do perfectly. This was not a measurement of actual merit, but a sense that, through the grace of birth and entitlement, if she managed to follow directions to the letter it would be good enough. And she was proud of this fact. 

She was also a little more reckless and clumsier than I was used to being; it was fascinating to watch her, to feel her, in this high energy environment, match the attempts of the rest of the black belts in my class, most of them still children themselves.

Three days later, after I had met this returning soul part in non-ordinary reality, she had calmed down quite a bit, having become more integrated. That was the day, I noticed the panther and wondered why it hadn't occurred to me to remember it before. In the shamanic world we looked for these synchronicities for confirmation that we were working with the divine flow of inspiration. Shape shifting into a panther was how Lenore had managed to calm the energy of this 10 year old entity. 

My eye had come to rest on the panther crouched on top of the supply cabinet behind the reception area, just as my instructor reminded us to use a spot for our spinning hook kick. From the back of the room it was just at eye level. The near life size black panther had not been with us long, maybe only since the move to the new location very recently. I didn't remember when I first saw it. Most of the school/s imagery was in dragons so it had seemed an anomaly.

The Gift Of A New Power Animal

At my soul retrieval ceremony session, Lenore had given me an assignment. I was to follow up with my returning soul parts in the non-ordinary reality of the shamanic journey. For this work I would have the gift of my new power animal to help me. 

I wondered if my other two animal guides would be jealous. I had no experience of such introductions, for the first two had arrived together in my original power animal ceremony.

In the early hours of the morning, my iPod on my ten minute drumming segment, I descended to the Lower World, calling for my usual companions. They were as excited as I was at the prospect of meeting a new power animal. I jumped on Bear's back with Mongoose and off we went at a great clip, slowing only to enter the underbrush of the jungle. We made our way in and came to a clearing where the sun shone through and there we saw her, curled up on a large flat rock, sleeping in the sun—a white spotted Leopard. 

The three of us stood respectfully at a distance discussing if we ought to sing her awake, when she opened her eyes, looked at us with much affection and came forward to rub up against each of us. I explained to her that she was given to me to help with the reintegration of my returning soul parts. 

She composed herself and sat facing away from us, gazing into the jungle. From the trees at the edge of the clearing came the 19 year old dressed in white shirt and jeans, her signature red blazer slung over her shoulder. The same outfit as in my iconic Patti Smith a la Maplethorpe portrait, but not the same person. I was struck by her magnetic insouciance. She was such an arresting figure. She looked tall by herself and there was an unfamiliar quality about her. Lenore was right, there was a sweetness to her, a purity of spirit; it made me proud. 

"Hello my darling," said the Leopard in a rich, velvety voice of such love that we all relaxed with the promised care of it. "Tell us what is it we can do to help you stay." 

"Show me beauty," said the 19 year old quietly, "and things that inspire." 

(I had just been wondering if I was going to be able to make it through another season of Boardwalk Empire, which Catherine and her brother Steven and I had been watching as a family. It was so filled with killing scenes and mafia mayhem that I had chosen not to actively listen to the show even as I enjoyed its high production values, beautiful costumes and well drawn characters. I would welcome inspirational fare with the same intelligent script. So rare is such entertainment in our world that I hardly know what it would look like.)

The 19 year old then spoke of how we could start by appreciating her gifts of diplomacy. She would also be uplifted by acts of community service like picking up dog poop in the neighborhood left by dogs other than my own. Well, that wasn't hard; I had just added that to my dog walking routine. 

Then in came the 10 year old looking very fierce indeed, with her spear and shield.

Again Leopard spoke to her with the same affectionate terms of endearments. It softened up the 10 year old soul entity by a notch.

"And tell us my darling, what you would like."

"Feed me," she said imperiously. She had no particularly preferences in the matter as long as it was nourishing.

I was very glad that someone in this crew was interested in eating. That I had lost so much weight, since Catherine's cancer diagnosis in May, had now become the main topic of conversation among our friends, and a really boring one. It wasn't as if I wasn't eating enough and I was beginning to wonder, myself, what auto-immune disease I might have besides my pre-diabetes diagnosis. Without grains in my diet the flesh had been sucked off my body at a steady clip, but I did not want to return to my old sugar high/sugar crash diet. I could though add just enough muesli at breakfast to add calories without tipping the meter over 140 mg/dl.

Having trouble with one's immunes system was on the list of soul loss symptoms (one I had not thought to mention in the preliminary interview). It was not noted in the soul retrieval book, if the return of lost soul parts would cure the condition, but eating would only help for I had lost confidence that increasing calories would do it. Feeding a 10 year old was something I could aim for with more care than I was giving myself. I just wanted to get to the other side of 100 lbs. Chairs were beginning to hurt with so little padding.

The 10 year old also offered that she would help me focus. I bet I thought. And here she demonstrated by bringing her little spear down hard on the ground. She had more leadership skills than all the rest of us put together. She was bossy and slightly impatient and I would find that she was better at follow through than I was. She just needed to be tempered a bit.

Last of all was the appearance of the 3 year old. She was all about being loved and being in the limelight as I'm sure she had been in the presence of my English grandma. The three now assembled, turned to each other with sisterly affection just as the call back of the drum sounded and we all ran back to the tunnel home, the soul parts jumping into me as I ran upward.

Eye of the Artist

The next day I was putting the registration sticker on my car license plate when something caught my eye while I was scraping away the sticky bulk of the old stickers. The year 2012 had emerged in several layers of contrasting colors. I was so struck by this found art to mark this milestone year, that I stopped to get my camera out so I could post the image to flickr. The last time I remember being interested in this type of photography was in college. I hadn't stayed with the concept. It was just an affectation at the time, inspired by another artist. I had become more interested in photojournalism, in the distance of being an observer.

So arresting were my feelings for this image now, I felt compelled to attribute this newly revived eye-of-the-artist to the return of my 19 year old. Art, commercial art, had been the degree with which I had finally graduated from college. I had always retained an artistic sensibility, but I didn't recall this intensity of feeling about it. 

The impact of a soul retrieval ceremony on recipients was so varied and often subtle that anecdotes had been all that was offered as examples of outcome. I had had no real expectations of what might happen, but I was struck by the distinctness of the sensibilities being restored to me, now.

The Sum of Us

In which I seek a shamanic soul retrieval in an attempt to reconcile the severe episode of dissociation I was left with in my previous post. The seeking of this ceremony offering me an unexpected exploration into a long neglected period of my life.

The Interview

"So this is where we first met," said Lenore Norrgard as she invited me into her office which she shared with two therapists of the conventional kind. We took up the usual seating arrangements. She in the armchair and I on the couch. 

She had one of those expressive, quirky faces that looks different from one visit to the next depending on what was going on. Right now it was professional. A bulky turtleneck sweater, warding off the winter chill swallowed most of her up.

I seldom allowed myself to take up residence in a therapist's office. Therapy was my British mother's profession (until she retired and became a watercolor artist). Nor could I be helped by the majority of therapists because they were so rarely equipped to handle the three cultures I was constantly juggling. 

And the study of western psychology itself, by definition, lorded it over any other culture's perspective of the human condition. It took me most of my Buddhist meditation practice just to reclaim the territory so handily dismissed by the phrase "village mentality" that the discipline had given my mother to describe the interconnectedness of community identity in an Asian culture. (That the term was seldom used now did not erase this cultural hegemony.)

When I stepped on the path to follow the practice of shamanism two years ago, I had been enthralled by the connection between the world of spirit and the earthly world of individual choice as we make our way in life. And so I had come to humbly seek help, guidance or further teaching from this shamanic counselor. I had long followed her on Facebook, but only just met her three weeks ago at the solstice ceremony where my mind had somehow been  hijacked and I was left with no memory of nearly the entire evening.

The purpose of this interview was to probe into any incident of trauma in my history to discover if there was indeed reason for soul loss that would justify a soul retrieval. It was also, I could see, a chance for me to earn Lenore's trust. I had, after all, stepped forward from the crowd of seventeen hundred plus followers on her Facebook page and she was hardly expected to know me at all. Shamanism was so off the beaten path it was likely to attract all manner of thrill seeking tourists. 

And here I had come to an event she was running where I knew nobody and had to be put back together for an hour afterwards before she felt it was safe for me to drive home. I pressed for these details of my missing narrative. What did it look like? Per the slim details she gave me, I didn't have any memory of having come to the event. I kept asking over and over again "Did I come with somebody?" and then forgetting that I had asked the question. I didn't know where my car was parked and someone went with me to look for it. Someone else wrote the directions that later became my only proof that I was even at the event.  

To my ears hearing this, I sounded like a royal pain in the ass when everyone was trying to go home, but all of that care had left me filled with complete reassurance and love for the next three days. While everybody involved was likely left wondering who was this person and what caused her such dissociation?

I had been following Lenore since she was living in Germany. This in itself intrigued me since so seldom do Americans live abroad, but it was key to me trusting her. She also, I later learned, had a certificate in Chinese language studies from Peking University in China. This feat knocked my socks off, but there was no further clues of why such a young life was headed to China in the '80s. The purpose of her "about" page was to support a twenty year career as a Shamanic counselor based on the same teachings of Michael Harner as I had been studying. Her postings communicated a highly sophisticated political awareness of social activism. While at the same time she was committed to the arts with a movie project for which she had written the script with a shamanic plot-line of healing. Being able to speak movies, especially independent films, was what held my community together.

It was Catherine (my life partner) who set me on the Shamanic path, having seen that Buddhism, as practiced in the States, wasn't going to do it for me. As far as I was concerned, American Buddhism had stripped my home religion of all the mystical parts that I had enjoyed plus all the animism of the host country of Thailand. These "cultural beliefs" that couldn't be justified by Western psychology had been dropped by the American Buddhist teachers. Practitioners were not required to believe in reincarnation or spirits. This made the very valuable meditation practice much more accessible to Americans, especially in the highly competitive, stressed out culture of Silicon Valley. (My gratitude to all of you for removing so much road rage from our freeways.)

When I read the first principle of shamanic practice stating that spirits were real, I could hardly believe my good luck. This path would actually start where I had been left dangling in isolation with my too exotic background of ghosts, nature spirits, a coffee table that shot across the room in a seance and prophetic readings from psychic spirits summoned by channelers.

People, who come to Shamanism often did so because of some paranormal experience not easily explained by the science-dominant Western culture. My workshop partners told of prophetic dreams or incidents of psychic knowing that startled them. It was briefly stated on Lenore's page that a compassionate spirit had intervened into her life and spontaneously cured her long term clinical depression.

Trauma Spotting

As for traumatic experiences Lenore and I were looking for in our introductory session, I could name one immediately. Leaving Thailand at the age of ten had been the defining trauma of my life. This history had led me to write my book Diamonds in My Pocket in an attempt to reintegrate my childhood experience in that spiritually rich land, with my American and British identity.

Lenore continued to probe the rest of my life for further incidents. No I had not, thankfully, suffered any of the usual trauma of rape, incest or physical abuse. She then asked if I had experienced an incident where I had had to defend myself either physically or verbally. Well there was one I remembered from when I was nineteen and had written about already. I had gone to visit a high school sweetheart on my way back to college at the end of Thanksgiving weekend. 

In our reunion we had gone to the pool house of the apartment building complex to get some privacy from her mother who had meanwhile taken the opportunity to read my journal (left in my back pack in Helen's room) and had then come down to confront me about my lesbianism only minutes after Helen had confessed to me that I was the one true love of her life. (I had already moved on to a new love, but I would happily have scooped her back up too.) Her mother proceeded to accuse me of being a lesbian, then berated me for making this choice against God's law and told me she would shoot me if she ever found me with her daughter in such a compromising situation. I was so proud, at the time, that I held my ground until I realized that she wasn't going to let me return to the apartment to get my things, including my shoes. So I had turned back and done what I knew she wanted of me. I swore to her that I would give up my lesbianism, kneeling on the floor as she bid me repeat after her the statements of my conversion. 

She had also asked me in a rather creepy voyeuristic way what it was that lesbians did. Would we go into a corner and make out? 

"No", I protested, "it's about love". 

"It's not about love," she spat out, denying me the only truth I knew to be so at the time. The retelling of this confrontation still had heat.

This brought us to the end of the interview. Lenore asked if I'd like her to do a short journey to see if her guides could tell her if I did indeed have soul loss. For this five minute trip she drummed herself there and back while I visited with my own power animals to wait. Mongoose drew lines in the sand and we played a game of tic tac toe. 

"You are a two spirit person," Lenore said upon her return, using the Native American word for homosexual. The Native Americans treasured their LGBT people and gave them special tribal roles often as Shamans themselves. I had first learned about them in the book "The Spirit And The Flesh" which I had bought at least 20 years ago. It was my first introduction to an example of shamanism. One I had wanted to step into, but never thought possible.

The two spirit part was also literal. I did have a soul entity split off who was very near me, had been there a long time, but was refusing to reintegrate. It first appeared to her as a fairy by my head. It was this entity that had done the ceremony. Which was why I had no memory of it. I wasn't there.

I was dumbstruck. 

Well that explains it I thought. I still had no idea what had triggered such a black out, but I did feel that this spirit entity had chosen to step in, had perhaps taken advantage of the whole situation in the most dramatic way possible, setting me up to be rescued.

Lenore told me that since this entity was so close, I could do this retrieval myself as part of my Shamanic work. 

Whoa doggies, this was not a DIY project I wanted to take on. There was good reason this soul entity wasn't coming back. There wasn't enough self love on my side of the fence. So many layers of rejection had been absorbed over the years. Nor did the gay community have enough love in it to help me. No, it would take a cross cultural agent to provide reason for such entities to come back.

The Dark Within

We scheduled the ceremony for the following Saturday. Meanwhile I was to hold myself open to receiving. And I could bring items for the altar which would help to attract the soul entity to me. Also an item of comfort for myself such as a stuffed animal plus photos of my younger self. All of this optional. The only thing required was something from the plant world that I would then take home and put on my own altar.

That there was a soul entity to retrieve gave me so much to think about. The story of Helen's mother brought back so many memories of that time, that I felt like I was bungee jumping back into time. The emotions plummeting into me. This was not the story I had wanted to tell, but it now appeared that it had to be told in order to save my own life as Alice Walker put it. "If it doesn't save your own life first, it won't save anyone else's", she had said. There was a whole decade of my life I had been loathed to write about.

I was first angry at feeling so abandoned by the homophobic society of the '70s. Even the feminist lesbian culture, (very white at the time), rejected me because I refused to tow the political agenda of the day, kept my hair long and hung out with guys. It wasn't that they were unwelcoming; it was just that they didn't feel comfortable with me.

Then there were the guys I hung out with at the art, theatre and dance college of UC Santa Cruz known as College V. The ring leader of this group had been so snide, cynical and caustic, he was basically creating psychic warfare on all unsuspecting persons who wandered down our hall. He was also conducting a low grade of sexual abuse and domination over any attractive woman who was lured in by his handsome face and romantic French name. I thought it was funny at first, because I was an actor and I was game for public acts of depravity that aimed to shock onlookers, so I didn't stop him from grabbing me, but he came to expect to continue. 

He had a side kick who was much more benign, even endearing, but he was also quite capable of criticism that was so to-the-point that there was no escaping the stinging truth of it. He took one look at my childhood teddy bear the week I arrived and declared that I was sentimental, a term that haunted me as a writer for many decades afterwards. These two attracted to them other writers who were witty and erudite and encouraged scathing put downs for every occasion. To protect myself from further abuse I chose to join them and participate in their commentary, but it only marginally protected me from being the direct target. I also initiated pranks of my own to manipulate people's feelings. I reviewed these acts. They didn't seem so bad in the light of day, but nevertheless the destructive intention of them disturbed my sensibilities.

My friend Dave, who also went to UC Santa Cruz, a little after me, told me that what was going on there had been described as an unacknowledged form of hazing; the unacknowledged part just making it that much more dangerous and destructive. He had given College V a wide berth.

With these memories coming at me, I was now bungee jumping with a cobra that was trying to bite me as I had everyone who crossed my path. It went on for so long that I just had to resolve to ride it out like a 24 hour bug of self-hatred. My equilibrium was eroding at such a pace that I snapped at Catherine when she was trying to do something nice for me. This stunned me. I came to long enough to remember that I now had the ability to talk about my feelings so I sat down and told her what was going on. She understood the importance of this psychic work and gave me the space to do it. This arrested my deterioration and I turned to creative solutions. I was sewing a new shirt with bright turquoise sleeves matched to a pink and yellow grid pattern. I would wear it for the ceremony. Sewing allowed my thoughts to flow without attacking me. It was my walking meditation practice.

I had spent so much energy protecting my bear from the characters at College V that I knew I had to bring him to the soul retrieval. I retrieved him from his hiding place in the cabinet by my bed. Just looking at him melted my heart. I showed him to Catherine who had never met this very important member of my psyche (in 17 years of living together). Her heart also melted. Then I decided to make him a new outfit to match mine. When I told this to Catherine she burst into delighted laughter and I could see that she was beginning to understand this creative metaphorical theatre of the shamanic path. And if she could understand it so could others and I knew then, that it was going to work. Was already working just in the getting there.

The Sum of Us

I spent the rest of the week gathering pictures of my younger self and thinking of things I would add to the altar, telling myself the stories that went with them. (And as I was able to lay my hands on each of these sacred items I realized that this was the true test of being organized. This was what my organizing clients wanted to be able to do, but had lost the ability to do in the chaos of their lives. I felt my professional life validated by this realization.)

I also gathered my community. I happened to be going to see Life of Pi with Dave and he asked about the outcome of my meeting with Lenore. He was following my hints on Facebook and had read my last post. So I asked him if he would come to the soul retrieval. A support person was recommended to help receive and welcome the soul parts back home. Not to mention driving me home afterwards, given my last episode with Shamanic ceremony. I also asked a colleague as back up. (One of the advantages of sharing so much of my life with others in these essays was that I was quickly able to find the people who could respond to whatever was going on in my life. There were indeed people in my network who had experience with shamanism.)

I also went to lunch with a very old friend who followed my writing and I told her what I was about to attempt. She got the logic of soul retrieval and accepted where I was going with it. She was a children's librarian and had a grasp of metaphor and story telling that could embrace my journey with a whole literary culture. In my twenties, she had put Dante's The Divine Comedy in my hands at a time when I was in need of a metaphysical fix not long after dropping out of UC Santa Cruz. Reading it had taken nine months and by the end of it, made me high with the symbolic poetry of it.

Other people I told did not have quite the ability to grasp all of what a soul retrieval might be, but they wished me well. And on the appointed day I had my tiniest rollerboard suitcase packed with my memorabilia including Rupert Bear in his brand new outfit.

Lenore welcomed us into her office. She looked different again and was wearing a tunic with a scoop neck that had a ceremonial air to its design. Her face was welcoming and warm. She admired my shirt and told me she too sewed. I was surprised by this additional thing we had in common. Not too many people sew these days. 

She asked how Dave and I how we knew each other. We also spoke of Stacy whom I had invited, but hadn't been able to come. Stacy was the third member of our old Seale House family when we lived together. We also spent an hour debriefing my week of bungee jumping. I told her about the scene at College V.

Then she prepared us for the ceremony, describing how she would journey into my psychic terrain with the help of her guides in search of soul parts. She would return any she found and make additional trips to bring back any others that were needed and a power animal to help me with the integration. She would blow these entities into my chest and head with each trip as prescribed by shamanic protocol. This was the technique by which I had received my original power animals and brought back for others their power animals.

She asked me all the names and nicknames and terms of endearments by which I had been called in my life. I included my Thai nickname. This would assist her in talking to my soul parts. She asked me, too, what I wanted from this soul retrieval. I had mentioned leadership skills at my last interview. 

"I want to be nicer," I said thinking of the biting cobra that had come out of my College V years. Then I turned to Dave and said, "I can't believe I'm asking to be nicer." He agreed. In the retelling of this event, Stacy said she would have giggled had she been there. That would just not be me in all my impudence and natural sense of absurdist humor. It would suck the life out of me. Then I remembered what I had prepared.

"I want to feel legitimate so that every time I go to do my creative work, which often includes breaking rules (of convention), I don't feel like I'm committing a criminal act." Lenore understood what I meant and reframed my request as a desire to be less defensive, softer and more positive when presenting something new and different.

Then I unpacked my suitcase laying out all my pictures and memorabilia on either side of her altar. I had the book The Spirit And The Flesh at one end with the photographs and a 35 mm film splicer from my days as a projectionist. At the other end, my journal and fountain pen, my red childhood lock and key diary, my high school yearbook open to my senior picture, a portfolio album from College V opened to my self portrait posing as Patti Smith. My black belt to divide the two. My book Diamonds In My Pocket. And my passports from my three countries. Got to have traveling papers. I placed Rupert  Bear closest to her tiny circle of precious figurines and ceremonial instruments. 

"Matching outfits!" Lenore exclaimed when she saw him.

"Isn't he cute?," I agreed.

My object from the plant world was a petrified lemon that I had hung onto since College V because my friend Tim gave it to me already in a dried up state. He had lived on my hall, but because he was a year older and had a strong sense of what was right, he had managed to stay out of the fray created by my adopted gang. We had stayed friends, but he now lived in New York.

"Why on earth did you hang onto a dried up old lemon?" Stacy asked me later.

"I don't know. How an earth do you throw away a dried up old lemon like that?" I said. It had so much history in of itself. I told her how Tim had found it on a nail on his door. He figured it was a message from someone telling him what a sour puss he was and he was giving it to me for the same reason. I had once thought to e-bay it with some sort of story, but I never got around to it.

Lenore smiled at it when I offered it, took it gently and placed it in the middle of her altar.

The Soul Retrieval

For the ceremony I lay down on my back in the middle of the floor. And for a good forty minutes or so Lenore danced around me, rattling, sometimes singing her songs. She was listening on her iPod so we did not hear the drumming that was assisting in the journeying. Dave sat in a chair assisting with his own interior landscape. I stayed present as instructed, trying to turn off my interior narrative and become a sponge of reception. I visualized a tide pool of creatures feeding on incoming plankton, then a mossy piece of earth sucking up rain. 

Lenore blew into my chest a total of four times with much journeying in between. I was struck by the endurance required of this work. (I still kept my journeying to a mere ten minutes.) I absorbed each delivery as best I could and finally when she rattled around me I felt the many layers burnish into my body and fuse together like a lacquer finish. Only then did the interior narrative stop. I opened my eyes to her waiting face and said "thank-you" so softly she had to be reading my lips to hear it. "Welcome home," she said and she held my gaze.

"Would you like contact?" she asked me. I nodded and she gave me her hand which I took in both of mine. And in the half light of the dim room, I took in her gentle face, her bobbed hair slipping over one eye and all I could think of was "Do you KNOW how beautiful you are?" And I saw this thought reflected back at me in that gentle reverberation of mirroring and oneness that can appear when you truly get to look at someone.

She asked if I wanted Dave to come closer. I said yes and sat up. He left his chair to join us on the floor and I took his big hand in my other one. Then she told me about the soul parts she had brought back.

The one nearest to me was a ten year old of such erratic movement that Lenore had to shape shift into a panther in order to get her to stop and persuade her to come back to me. The ten year old hadn't wanted to come back and was very resistant, but Lenore caught her up with my life as it was now and then she was persuaded to reintegrate with me. She was also given a spear and a shield with which to defend herself. I had been very angry at ten years old at being in this new country without the rest of my family. And likely depressed too. Private school had helped nurture me back.

Lenore went out again to check for more soul parts and this time found my nineteen year old self who was buckled over as if she had been punched in the gut. She had left because the lifestyle at College V had offended her integrity so she had shot off to live in the spirit world. She too, was resistant to returning. Lenore talked to her about how hard I had worked to build my integrity back up. She described the kind of life I now led and how much I needed her talents to continue with my life. She too was persuaded to return. 

Hearing about her was a profound confirmation of my original goodness. I had felt her loss the greatest in the following years, exhibiting many symptoms of soul loss in my twenties, including alienation, despondency and the sense that there was no point in planning for the future because there wouldn't be one. Only the obligation to finish a degree pulled me forward.

Finally there was a very young soul part of two or three years of age who was hiding behind one of Lenore's guides. She was playful and was making herself visible as if to say what about me? Lenore easily scooped her up and blew her into my body where she saw a joyful reunion between the three soul parts as the nineteen year old one picked up the little one and held her as they danced around in a circle. It was at age three that I had left England and my beloved grandma.

There was also the gift of the power animal of which I will only say that she was female and so perfectly suited to me that I couldn't wait to make her acquaintance. Lenore's work was done. It was now my turn to nurture these newly returned soul parts so that they would stay.

For a definitive guide to the general practice of soul retrieval you may want to check out the book Soul Retrieval: Mending The Fragmented Self by Lenore's teacher Sandra Ingerman.

For a general description of Shamanic practice as it was introduced to modern Americans see Michael Harner's The Way of the Shaman.