Time has changed in so many ways since I first began this work. No longer a prison or even a straight line, its become a pool I can slip into when something discordant needs to be made whole. There I might find allies I never knew existed who are working tirelessly to ease our suffering. Time dissolves into something nourishing and glorious.
The five of us were crammed in the back of an old Lincoln heading over a cable bridge just past sunrise. The river was low from the long summer, the morning light made perfect diamonds flicker across its surface. I knew my fellow passengers from childhood, some of us had aged better than others. It must have been sometime in the late 1970’s.
We were time traveling together, integrating soul pieces from long ago. The final treck across a few states was giving us a chance to integrate, to seal in the healing before waking from our shared dream. I was more excited than the others, exhilarated for the waking life that awaited me at the end of the drive. The rising dream-sun warmed my face as I awoke. I was giddy in both worlds.
Time travel is so common in shamanic journeying we often don’t notice its happening. We retrieve a soul piece for someone, returning to the time in which the initial trauma happend, sometimes as long as a half century ago. When preparing for de-possessions or curse removal work, I have journeyed back centuries, even eons to discover the root cause of suffering.
My travelers and I were responding to our own soul’s call for wholeness, beckoned to the place of dreams so we could connect more easily with spirit that had been lost long ago. In my case soul pieces had been returned to me long ago, but I had been unable to fully integrate their power into my life. I was not ready, I was not whole enough. Now, driving home, I’d finally completed the work I’d started so many years ago.
I loved the feeling of that old car seat – carrying me across state lines with no care for gas prices, global warming, my job or any of the other adult responsibilities that live now in ordinary reality. Imagine being able to journey back to pure nostalgia. Despite the intense healing work, it was a welcomed break from this reality.
Lately my own healing has filled my dreams in a way it hasn’t since I received my first shamanic healing twenty years ago. Back then my life was being slowly dismembered, taken apart and cleansed at its most base level. Now I’m being remade, finally weaving together all of the disparate me’s into one bright heart. Dreams are the place the final leg of this healing is happening.
That moment of crossing the bridge lingers in my spirit, I just need to close my eyes and I can feel the quiet of the morning, the sun filling the cab, and see the driver turning to talk to us. I’m smiling, glowing with a feeling of soul warmth. She looks at me with knowing approval, our guide for this journey, she is patient and wise. I hope to ride with her again soon. I’ll see if I can get her name, maybe you could ride with her too.