I have noticed lately that feeling of death nearby. Tracking my scent like a psychopomp pup. I feel this presence as an old friend, as it accompanied me into this world when as a babe my mother attempted suicide. She was given twilight drugs during labor and afterwards stalked by post pardon depression. She told me once she felt they had stolen her birth experience from her, remembering nothing when she became conscious again. So I was born into this liminal space of memory and forgetting, despair and love, Birth and Death, the threshold between worlds.
A few years later at age two, that threshold visited again while I sat happily on the yellow laminate floor in the play room with my four year old brother, who suddenly suffered a brain aneurism and went into a coma. They took him away to the hospital and I recall siting on that yellow floor all alone, not knowing what happened, but afraid I had lost my closest friend. He was in a coma for quite some time, and when he surfaced again, he had to learn to talk all over again. We learned together. I recalled traveling in dreams to visit him in the hospital, while he was in a coma, because I wondered where he had gone. There in dreaming, we could talk to each other all we wanted.
I noticed as a young child, that otherworldly place felt like home. I could communicate easily with animals, and see spirits and energies around me and others. One day, I was sitting in the cornfield next to our house crying. It was one of my hiding places when things got violent in our home. As I sat in the dirt crying, I noticed two of my friends had joined me. Two Natives spirits on the land where we lived in West Texas. One of them approached and pointed to the ground, and told me to dig. I began digging in the place where he had shown me, and to my surprise discovered a silver treasure, of a perfume vase with an Aztec calendar embossed on the front, and a lid with a garnet stone. This gift showed me that spirits are real, and not imaginary. I learned quickly that the gifts we hold can be taken away from those who are envious, when I ran toward my house to show someone my gift, I ran into my older sister who snatched it from my hand and claimed it was hers. She still has it to this day, along with her envy, refusing to give it back.
As a young woman on my own, I dreamt of seeing my own death, and was able to take action to avoid tragedy, based on guidance within the dream. My niece passed last Fall after a lengthy illness, but prior to her last visit to the hospital, I dreamt she would enter the hospital and die there. A week later the call came letting me know she was in the hospital. Dread filled me, hoping this time my dream would not be a harbinger of coming events. Later after her passing, she visited in a dream looking for guidance in the afterlife, asking me, what now? I summoned my dear departed friend and teacher Baba Ifayomi to join me in the dream and assist my niece in crossing over. He showed up immediately and said, I got you baby girl, and swiftly guided her to the other side. My niece is now a beloved ally on the Otherside, who dreams with me often.
When Baba Ifayomi was Earthside, he reached out to me to become part of a healing community of teachers he was envisioning, I felt honored to be included to sit in circle with a gathering of healers from many traditions from Yoruba, Mayan, Korean, the Philippino, and from my own Celtic Northern European roots. We did ceremony together to set in motion growing a diverse community of healers. Baba was excited for the potential of what could emerge from this collaborative cross cultural approach. One day, while at home, I heard Babas voice come through my altar, and he said to turn on the TV. When I did I saw a news report where an armed man was at a home I recognized as Babas’. There were reports that the shooter had already shot someone in the home. It turned out the Godson of Baba was staying with him, and he was a war Veteran with PTSD and having an episode, and was the shooter. My beloved Baba passed on, and had reached out to me to let me know. After the home going ceremony to send him off, I had a dream in which he visited that same night. I greeted him in the dream, and he took from me a contract I had in my hands, that read, Civil Rights, and he said, you don’t have to do this anymore. He then gave me a contract that read healer.
After I sold my house after raising my two children there as a single mother, I dreamt of driving to my old house. When I entered, I found another version of myself who was thriving and still lived in the house. We looked out the windows of the sunporch together and saw an eerie creature come up from the creek into the back yard and greet us where we stood. He introduced himself as the death king. He had ice cold blue eyes and reptilian skin, and a deep timeless presence that was foreboding. As I stood there together with a parallel version of myself, I was told by the death king I didn’t have long to live. The parallel self offered to exchange some of her life energy for me, if I would offer her some of the mystic wisdom I had attained by following my dreams. The exchange was made and a timeline reset, I emerged with more vital energy returned, and a lengthened timeline through an energy exchange with a parallel self. It was a good trade, and I was grateful.
I once dreamt of hovering over the tomb of Osiris, and heard the words repeated, die before you die. This profound wisdom felt familiar, like a place I knew well. The gift of being reborn after traversing the underworld.
Not long after this dream, I had a severe car accident and had a TBI where I could not talk the next day. It felt like a death, where I had to remake myself all over again. I struggled for years to regain memory, social engagement, comprehension, speaking and reading abilities. I did this by devoting myself fully to the path of the healer, as a guide and dream teacher with drumming and healing work.
This happened nine years ago during eclipse season in August. Here we are again on the cusp of eclipse season in August, and I feel death breathing down my neck again.
The guides who have accompanied me in my underworld journeys include Persephone who entered my dream and said, If you never plant the seed, the tree will never grow. She broke open the Pomegranate and planted a seed in the underworld, and a tree grew tall and strong like Magic. In the darkest times, in the darkest places, the seed of our destiny finds a way to thrive and grow. Because in making the journey, we know the way to guide others when it is their time to make the long journey, or even return Earth side, if they can negotiate a way to lengthen their lifespan. The spiral circles round and lessons return, and death comes near as an impeccable teacher and guide. When death arrives, Remember to Die, before you Die, so that you may live with more heart and courage towards the path of destiny. A path unknown perhaps, and once followed life becomes like entering a dream, where opening to the mystery is a path to destiny.
Awaken the Sacred Dream 