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The Day The Universe Initiated Me As a Shaman
Last week, I found myself sobbing in an empty cargo van in a supermarket parking lot. Somehow, I was hitting rock bottom, and it was hard. I thought I had hit this place a year prior, but it turns out there was further to fall. I had just driven myself from urgent care, where I arrived several hours earlier with panic symptoms. When the doctor asked me if I was experiencing any stress, I broke.
My lip quivered, eyes clamped shut, and the tears flowed.
The doctor put her hand on my arm as I lay on the table—vulnerable, ashamed, and feeling quite stupid for being there.
“Oh, honey…”
~
In a few months time, I’ll be living in this van, once it’s renovated. It’s about the only thing I could reasonably afford after breaking up with my boyfriend and moving out of his house. For the moment, I’m living with family, which is it’s own unique kind of stress. The past year has brought me through a deep inner transformation. It started with a mental breakdown that lead to me quitting my tech job and shutting down my marketing business.
I didn’t realize it when it all started, but it was a necessary transformation that was preparing me to be initiated into the shamanic path.
The process went as follows:
The Universe: “You will leave behind everything you think you need to be in order to be safe and loved.”
Me: “Yeah, but what if I die?”
The Universe: “You will.”
And I did just that. I died many, many small deaths. One after the other. I lost relationships, my job, my business, a lot of income, my home, my savings, and everything I ever identified with as a person.
Even character traits that I thought made me “me.” And there I was, at the very edge of what my nervous system could handle, when my very last remaining client decided to cut 50% of the only (very small) income source I had left. And that’s how I ended up in urgent care. But it’s only part of the story.
When I was a child, I was fascinated by the workings of life.
Why are we here?
What does it mean?
