Arriving back in Cape Town, South Africa after walking through the deserts of my Ancestors. The rain has followed me. I left empty and depleted full of loss, disappointment and desolate like the vast spaces I had left behind me. Four years of feeling assaulted both physically, mentally and spiritually by the very people I had spent my youth defending. Their pain and wounding pouring out in events of open racism, which felt personal and the effects compounded with the loss of my two boys who had no part of it and should not have had to pay the price of years of apartheid instituted by our forefathers. As a walking pilgrim I understood the communal consciousness of my country and the role I played in it as a white privileged, Jewish woman living and raising my sons in Southern Africa. I understand the metaphors that the open spaces of Nature present to me on each of my Pilgrimages. I understand that I am part of this and I am a conduit of all that is happening around me, externally and internally. My response- ability in all of this, but the confusion of how to change how it makes me feel is my own
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I left knowing that I would bring the rain with me and it has come. Like the pouring rain flowing over me like a waterfall and the only way to make sense of this is to challenge myself to go internally into deeper spaces than I had ever explored. I’m trying to find a way that I can be a part of my beloved country and dig deep within my soul to find my place of belonging. How I can contribute as a light-worker if this is indeed my work in this world as an Artiste and Healer. I also know that the only way that I can grow exponentially is to put myself into uncomfortable spaces, and indeed, had I not done this with the places that I have traveled over the past year? I have walked the altitudes of the Himalayas. I have walked the wilderness of the Ciskei and I have crossed four deserts and still…. I feel so lost and alone in transforming my outer world. So, I have journey inward, deeper and into darker spaces than I have ever had the courage to explore before.
I did considerable research speaking to mentors and friends who had done work with Teacher plant medicine and I mustered up the courage to go on a journey with Ayahuasca, known as the mother plant and then San Pedro the father plant. I chose my guide who was a dear friend who had trained in Shamanism in Peru and would hold space for me to explore. A man I respected and loved. I knew that if I was going to do this, I would be changing my DNA and that I would never be the same again. It was like taking a Giant Leap…… and I am now assured that it is one of the most painful, hardest journeys I have yet taken.
Ayahuasca spiraled me deep in the vortex of the Mother Earth to show me everything which I know and had experienced on my Pilgrimages, but deeper than I could ever have imagined. As the river flowed hard and strong next to where I was to lie during my uncovering of the truths she was to reveal to me. She showed me how sound was the essence of all that is. Everything in the Universe is sound, but I heard and felt the primordial sound of everything around me. I felt the sound waves move through me and I understood how sound created solid matter. She allowed me to purge the pain which I carried deep inside me which I had been carrying all this time. As I released this pain, I too was shown that I am not able to carry the pain of the mother earth, but that I was, as a woman, a part of it; that I am not a victim in this, but merely a vessel. San Pedro taught me that I could own my masculine, but that it didn’t have to define me, that I could be soft and held and that there was nothing to fear in being alone in the world, because we all are, that we are all response- able to do what we can consciously. That the mother is powerful enough to rise and defend herself if need be; that I could let go and just be in the world and that I didn’t need to change it on my own.
For days I have felt vulnerable and open and the need to be quiet and alone to process and integrate all that I have experienced. To accept that there is a longing to find an equal other and that it is okay wherever I am, and that the rain has come and continues to come after three years of a debilitating drought, and with it it’s spiritual wisdom. The understanding that only 1% of this planet is pristine clean water which holds the spiritual consciousness of the planet and how valuable it is. I totally understand that after breathing deep into my soul that I am the blood of the earth, the womb of creation, the flow of spirit and I am the Universe. If only we could understand the significance of this and realise how interconnected we all are and with this we are all HeArtists, co-creators of the earth and it is our response-ability to be happy and connected.
As the rain pours down around me in Cape Town and I look to the mountain and wonder where I will be going from here. Where will my journey take me, and will I ever experience Peace on Earth. My only response-ability right now, is to continue to sing my song and hold my vibration as high as I possibly can to contribute to a better world starting with myself.
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