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Encounters on
the Shaman's Path
with anthropologist Dr. Hank Wesselman, PhD.
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by Dr.Hank Wesselman, P.h.D. |
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In the King’s Chamber …Once again
Since most of my readership has been following my last several Meta Arts columns (2/09-4/09) about our trip to Egypt in 2008, I am sure that many are wondering what transpired in the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid.
December 11, 2008: On this day, most of our travel group mounted camels in the outskirts of Giza (with some of us adventurers on horses) and we rode out into the desert south of the pyramids. Riding a camel is not a familiar experience for me, a native New Yorker, and as I ratcheted away on top of this thoroughly alien beast, it took considerable focus to keep my seat and stay aloft so to speak.
We all grimaced good-naturedly at each other and tried to look relaxed and in control as we climbed the sand hills toward the plateau crowned with its pyramids and the sphinx. On impulse, I asked the ‘camel guy’ striding along next to us what my camel’s name was. “Moses,” was his reply, and almost immediately upon hearing his name, Moses stumbled. I grabbed the saddle horn to keep from being pitched headlong down onto the sandy substrate.
To regain composure, I studied the rear end of the camel in front of me being ridden by an artist named Barbara who lives in New Orleans and paints mermaids. I asked the camel guy what her camel’s name was. He gave me a wicked grin and said “Calabanus.” As I digested this, Calabanus, as if on cue, lifted his stubby fringed tail and delivered a quick series of rancid farts at point blank range, giving me an enhanced appreciation for why Bedouins wear veils.
In response to this olfactory attack, Moses surged ahead, almost dumping me on the sand again. His head was now right next to Barbara’s elbow eight feet above the ground. Startled, she reached over to stroke him between his divergent, bulging eyes. As I wondered if Moses was going to bite her, Calabanus fired another volley.
The camel guy expertly sidestepped this invisible cloud and grinned at me like a pirate, pointed to himself, and said ‘Hassan’ with the accent on the ‘Hass.’ Then he gestured to another camel in the long train behind me and told me that beast’s name was Michael Douglas.
As I considered what it would be like to be ‘riding Michael Douglas,’ we achieved the crest of a sandy ridge giving us a sweeping view of the pyramids. I took a small digital camera from my vest pocket to preserve the moment and Hassan immediately reached up for it, saying he would take my picture. He then directed an order in Arabic at Moses who stood stock still and struck a pose. This was obviously a well-worked routine between the two of them. Hassan took the shot, then proceeded to divest me of ten American dollars as a tip for the return of my camera. (See the archives of www.sharedwisdom.com for the shot.)
Hassan then did the same routine with Barbara. She didn’t have any cash on her and I had to bail her out. I watched ruefully as another of my tenners disappeared into the folds of Hassan’s galabeya. Then we lurched on again, heading across another mile or so of open desert. When we finally disembarked from these bizarre creatures at the base of the pyramids, I rubbed my now tender nether regions ruefully and resolved to ride a horse next time. Indiana Jones had obviously worked this one out.
The Encounter in 2003
My Feb./08 Meta Arts column was focused upon an encounter that ‘happened’ in January 2003 in the Great Pyramid, so a brief recap is included here:
January 15, 2003: Our Egyptian guides had arranged for us to have the King’s Chamber, that red granite room that is 55% crystal, entirely to ourselves for an hour and a half at high noon at my request. As members of the group began to ‘tone,’ I began to work in the drum… until the toning came to an end and only the drum was sounding.
I continued to drum until 1:00 PM when our guide had arranged to have the lights extinguished and the fans turned off for about 30 minutes. When the chamber went dark, I allowed the drum to subside into silence. The blackness was total, the silence absolute. I lay down on the stone floor in the exact center of the room, heedless of the dust.
My conscious awareness had been powerfully altered by the drum, and I decided to see if I could journey, shamanically, to learn about the builders, as well as the designers, of the Pyramid. With that focused intention, I accessed the high frequency brainwaves I have described in my Spiritwalker Trilogy and opened my inner doorway. In response, my physical body was immediately gripped by a tremendous surge of energy, and I began to shake.
As the power amped up, the vibration increased in response, and suddenly, my conscious awareness was literally sucked outward and upward through the Pyramid’s apex. It was very fast. Before I could even think about it, I was precipitated out into starry universe, then very swiftly, I found myself (or my conscious awareness) settling. The sense of movement was gone and I was ‘there’, looking out at what can only be described as an utterly alien world.
Another World
In this extraordinary circumstance, the ‘I’ that is Hank Wesselman assumed a passive state in the sense that ‘I’ became fully watchful, yet fully subordinate to whatever experience I had been drawn into. ‘I’ appeared to be standing toward the back of a huge room, at least 4-5 stories tall, constructed of smooth, polished, blood-red stone, one whole end of which opened to the outside.
Beyond, I could see a landscape of low relief dominated by plants (and trees?) and water (lagoons?) of a distinctly peculiar color. The greens and blue-greens of the vegetation and the off-turquoise lagoons were as intense as the red of the huge stone room, producing a startling contrast to each other.
But even more surprising was that there were two suns in the polished bronze of the sky, one closer to the horizon. One was decidedly larger, like a small version of our sun, the other more like a distant star. I ‘knew’ that this was a double star system.
I began to focus on how I was seeing this alien world. It was then that I realized ‘I’ was observing through the eyes of one of its inhabitants. Those who have read my Spiritwalker Trilogy will know that this ability—to look through the eyes of another person or being—is not unfamiliar to me. Nor is this ability unknown in the shaman’s world. We are not talking about fiction here. We’re talking about an experiential phenomenon that was intensely real.
The Bird People
At this moment, I became aware of ‘others’ and my emotional state upgraded to astonishment. They were tall, linear, and rather spindly humanoids with large heads and dark, reddish brown skin. They were bipedal, and their legs and arms were long, as were their fingers. These beings seemed utterly familiar somehow and I concluded that I was picking up on the perspective of my ‘host’.
My first impression was that they looked like bird people. This is not because they had wings but rather because their faces displayed an elongated ‘rostrum’ creating a plane to the face that projected forward and downward utterly unlike a human nose, or a human face for that matter. It wasn’t a ‘beak’ but rather a completely different form of cranial morphology unknown on our world.
In addition, each of the beings I saw was wearing an off-white head covering not unlike a pair of men’s boxer shorts that encircled their backwardly elongated heads above the eyes, hanging down to the shoulders. I was immediately struck by how this interesting cowl resembled the headdresses of the dynastic Egyptians depicted on statuary, yet it was not quite the same.
As one of the bird beings approached, I got a better view of their eyes. They were large and long, dark and tapering, and I couldn’t see any ‘whites’. It was at this point that I looked down and saw the body of my host. The lower torso seemed to be covered by a short ‘kilt’ made of an off white reflective, almost luminescent material that was elegantly folded into pleats. My glance moved to my arm and hand. There was a five-fingered hand with very elongated fingers and an opposable thumb considerably more delicate than our human version, and there didn’t seem to be any nails or claws.
‘My’ reddish-brown skin was smooth and dry and somewhat granular. And then, imagine my shock when I perceived the suggestion of small pointy breasts on my skinny chest, set high and wide, the nipples indistinct, more like pores really, and located very close to the ‘armpits.’ I had apparently merged with a female… and with this realization, I received my first thought pulse from my host, or rather my hostess, a mental probe signifying agreement. ‘She’ was aware of my presence, but to what degree, and how she felt about this, I didn’t know.
It was at this point that I began to consider a radical thought. Could these beings be the ones who had come across the Universe and taken up residence in Egypt many thousands of years ago? I realize that this question throws me into the camp of what many main stream Egyptologists consider to be the lunatic fringe, yet in opposition to the theory of ‘aliens coming to Earth in space ships’ a la Zachariah Sitchen, I wondered if these bird-like beings could have come as seeds of light—as souls—to take up residence in human bodies to become the ruling families and the priestly class of the ancient Egyptians?
And if so, could this be why those ruling families had an obsession with ‘marrying in,’ even to the point of engaging in brother-sister marriages?
As I thought these thoughts, I wondered if this place that I was seeing could be an ancestral source for such a migration? And then a really heretical thought occurred to me. Could the enormous pyramid at Giza actually be a device to facilitate interstellar communication—a real honest-to-God functioning star gate if you knew how to open it and utilize it correctly?
Was this what I had inadvertently done by using the ancient shamanic method, with the Pyramid providing the interstellar longitude and latitude because we just happened to be there at the right time? I had no answers to these questions then, and I sensed that I probably never would.
The bird being then turned and walked gracefully across the hall with long, flowing strides and out onto a wide veranda into the open air. Thoughts and feelings seemed to be flowing rapidly through her mind, giving rise to a supposition that ‘they’ were communicating with a form of telepathy. But I, with my human perspective, had no clue what was being ‘said.’ I simply couldn’t identify with, or decode the mental pulses. They were totally foreign to me… or perhaps ‘alien’ is the correct term.
And then, as my eyes scanned my surroundings, seeking to record as much as possible, the lights and fans in the King’s Chamber were switched on again and I lost the connection. It was like switching channels on a television. Suddenly, I was back in the Pyramid, my eyes blinking at the sudden glare of the lights, the feelings of power that had held me paralyzed in an invisible fist throughout the encounter departing in surges.
My mind was racing with excitement, generating question after question. Could these bird people really be the beings who had designed and built the pyramids as well as those immense temple complexes here in Egypt? Had they come here from wherever ‘there’ was, bringing their engineering and architectural skills and knowledge of mathematics with them? Had my ability to journey to them been enhanced by the red crystal room in the pyramid? Did the builders select Egypt as their place of residence because of the red crystal granite of the Aswan area was the closest approximate to that of their own world?
No answers appeared in my mind on that day, but the questions remained as I once again found myself with a group of accomplished visionaries in the King’s Chamber in December of 2008.
The Return
I once again stood in the center of the red room as my colleagues distributed themselves around its perimeter, sitting on the stone floor with their backs against the red granite wall. I began to drum with a slow, almost dirge-like cadence, gradually increasing the tempo until we had achieved the 4-6 beat per second vibration of the theta brain wave state. As I used my drum to build up my connection with power, imagery began to move through my mind like fleeting shadows at first, and then the experience began to unfold, like a flower opening, but not in the way I expected.
I was journeying while I was drumming for the group, a well-honed experience in which I have engaged for many years in my workshops. My body drums while my mind visions, and I simply pay attention to what comes up… and I try not to go too deep or drop the drum.
The information that came through on this occasion was at first discordant and choppy, as though it was coming through some sort of static or white noise. Then suddenly, I became aware that I had connected with the consciousness of the bird beings, and it was my impression that they could hear my drum.
The contact was not as dramatic as before, but the fact that I had reestablished this connection at all was mind blowing. Perhaps it was facilitated by my already having established an ‘aka connection’ with their collective field, and now, enhanced by the geometry of the pyramid, that connection had become active.
(As an aside, I had been unable to reactivate this connection since my initial contact with them in 2003, which had often caused me to wonder if the pyramid itself was in some way pivotal.)
What I was after on this day specifically was more information on who had built the pyramids and why? I wanted to know if the pyramids were in fact devices whose function was to facilitate inter-stellar communication. And I wished to know more about the bird people...
Response
In response to these intensely focused intentions, information immediately began to arrive in my conscious awareness. There was no hesitation, no delay. It was like an ongoing download, and so I share it with you as it was received.
Let me say at the onset that I claim nothing… for who in their right mind could under these circumstances without sounding like a candidate for the rubber room? We’re going across the boundary here into the borderlands between what Western main-stream science proclaims as real and what it denigrates as new age nonsense… or non-science… and yet this is what I was shown.
Abruptly yet definitively, I perceived the profoundly different ‘shape’ of the mind (or minds) with which I had achieved connection, for it occurred to me in those moments that ‘they,’ whoever and whatever ‘they’ are, could be at an evolutionary level in which each had access to a ‘group mind’ through which they could communicate. And if so, telepathy was the norm.
(As another aside here, the kahuna Hale Makua had proclaimed often in our discussions that we humans are all headed in that direction as well.)
As often happens in my deep altered states, information tends to arrive all at once and I then have to sort it all out into some sort of format afterwards. This is very much what happened on this day. So allow me to summarize some of what was perceived in those moments of vision. In attempting to understand it and put it together into some sort of coherent framework, my initial suspicions were confirmed. And there was more. The ‘story’ could go something like this:
The Story
Sometime in the mythic past, perhaps between 7000 and 12,000 years ago, or perhaps earlier, a migration of highly evolved souls arrived here on this Earth from a distant star system. They came because there were sentient beings (us) who were ready to receive them. They came as seeds of light—as souls—and they arrived in ‘solar boats or canoes’ also made of light. No machines were involved, nor will we humans need them for interstellar or interdimensional travel once we reach this evolutionary level.
‘They’ appear to have come here and taken up residence in human bodies at the moment of birth, when the newborn takes its first breath and that seed of light—the soul—enters. In these human bodies, they then established a highly advanced state level society only fragments of which remain today because it was subsequently destroyed in a cataclysm at the end of the last Ice Age when the sea level rose 300 feet or more in response to the last rapid climatic shift.
It was shown to me that the survivors of this debacle established refugia—places of refuge in many parts of the world, primarily in the tropics—in Egypt and Mesopotamia, in Mesoamerica and the Andes, the islands off Japan and in India.
I was also shown that the problem with this initial migration of souls from the stars was that it was a one-way trip. Once here, they had no way to get back. Yet their high wisdom tradition provided them with a technology to do so.
This knowledge was held by a fellowship of priests and priestesses, and these were the people who sculpted the Sphinx, created the Valley Temple before it, and the Osirion at Abydos in Upper Egypt. And, it was during this period, I was shown, that they also constructed their temples on platforms that today support the great pyramids. The platforms were established perhaps 10,000 or more years ago, but it wasn’t until more than 7000 years later that the pyramids themselves were actually built upon these platforms.
I was then shown that the great pyramids were constructed not as tombs, but as devices to enable these visitors to return to the stars. Once the pyramids were built, they could return home, or they could explore the starry universe in search of other sentient species on other worlds that were ready to be ‘bumped up’ to a civilization state level society.
In this way, using the pyramids as spaceports or star gates, the visitors who had resided here for so long, creating the fabric of civilization, one that included mathematics, geometry, engineering, writing and philosophy, moved on.
As this information arrived in my mind, I was also assured that this is what ‘they’ do—travel the universes, creating civilizations, and having accomplished that here on this Earth, they were done, and so they finally built the devices that allowed them to depart, one by one, until all of them were gone.
The priesthoods that they had established had continued to thrive for several thousand years, for time moves slowly here, and the pyramids continued to function as star gates, and as ‘god-makers’, sending the souls of the Pharaohs and the high priests to the stars at their life’s end to become gods once again… until eventually the priesthood was corrupted along with the ruling families, for among human beings, there always seems to be an evil worm that infects the ruling classes everywhere.
This corruption of the leadership, plus the continual invasion of Egypt by barbarians, spelled the end, and their knowledge, held for 8000 years in the oral tradition, was abruptly lost.
Conclusions
This is a general outline of what I received while drumming. At the end, feeling overwhelmed, I let the drum fall silent, then sat down with my back against the red stone wall next to Jill and continued to vision in silence with the group.
A last thought, an insight really, appeared in my mind in those moments. All of what I had perceived could be the origin of the legend of Atlantis, and indeed as my mind turned in this direction, the word that came up for the culture of the bird-like people was AKLAN or ADLAN or ABLAN… or ATLAN. If this holds to be true, and it is my hope that others accomplished in the shamanic journeywork method may use the pyramid to confirm this, then these people could have been called Aklantists, or Adlantists, or Ablantists… or Atlantists.
I share this here to shed some mystic light on the problem of Atlantis because there is no evidence that this legendary island culture ever existed here, at least none that we know of now. Accordingly, I’ve often wondered if perhaps this legend comes down to us as a soul memory of a place out there on another life world among the stars, a place that served as the source of an interstellar migration and whose colonists experienced a cataclysm here and whose society was largely lost… but not quite.
And what about the red stone ‘sarcophagus’ in the King’s Chamber? It was revealed to me that this was where the embodied ‘god’–the King or High Priest--released their soul at death to travel back to the stars… Then again, the stone crypt could also have been the place where a living body, a newborn perhaps, could receive an incoming soul from out there… once the connection was active.
These provocative thoughts will most likely remain in the realm of fantasy or science fiction, until repeated interstellar shamanic journeys facilitated by the pyramid provide further evidence to other accomplished visionaries that this is in fact its function. And then there is always the possibility that one of ‘them’ may decide to come back here.
The pyramid was built to last forever, so we have plenty of time.
Restless and unaccustomed to meditative discipline, some of the group began to stir at this point, and when several abruptly decided to get up and leave before our formal closure, it broke the spell, bringing the session to a close.
So my narrative ends here.
Last Thoughts
Pyramids are found all over the world, concentrated in certain locations. They are always precisely built and oriented in such a way that reveals an extraordinarily precise knowledge of astronomy. Lilia, a Mexican woman who was there in the group with her husband Jose, told me afterward that at Teotihucan in Mexico, the great pyramids of the sun and the moon are known as ‘god-makers,’ hence my use of that term above.
If these monumental edifices served as star gates to transport souls in both directions, the question comes up: how had the star people come here before the pyramids were built? Had they connected with the minds and souls of Neolithic or even Paleolithic shamans to accomplish this? Or were they brought here by high guardians, the ‘organizing intelligences’ such as those described in my Meta Arts column of 9/08 (see the archives.)
Encounters on the Shaman’s Path
with anthropologist Dr. Hank Wesselman PhD.
An Encounter In Egypt with Isis
In last month’s column (February 2009) we began to explore the issue of what it is like to make connection with the archetypal forces that are often referred to as ‘the spirits.’
In approaching this subject, I am well aware that the whole issue of contact with transpersonal beings is a problematic one for us Westerners because we do not grow up in a culture in which connection with spirits is part of our ongoing experience. In fact many of our fundamentalist religious sects (with great righteousness) warn against having any contact with spirits because they are ‘evil.’
This monumental misconception has generated widespread fear in the populace at large that, in turn, has created separation between us and those transpersonal allies who are poised to help us in various ways.
The atheists even deny their existence altogether… (again with great righteousness.)
Despite these many and varied misguided proclamations and pontifications, allow me to observe that the traditional shamans of the indigenous peoples, as well as those of us ‘moderns’ who walk on the path of direct revelation, assert with their/our considerable authority as accomplished visionaries that the spirits, as well as the realities they inhabit, are real.
Our authority comes not from beliefs (in spirits, angels, spirit guides etc) nor does it come from faith (in the existences of spirits, and etc.) We know their existence to be a fact from our direct experiences of them.
There is simply nothing like the direct experience of ‘the spirits’ to awaken us from the consensus slumber of culture at large and bring us into the irreversible vortex of personal transformation (also called enlightenment). For this may provide us with a vastly expanded understanding of who we really are as well as where we are headed.
Six years ago, I visited Egypt for the first time, excited beyond belief at this opportunity to connect with the transpersonal beings embodied within the temples and shrines as I described in last month’s column (February, 2009). At that time, there was one deity in particular for whom I felt great attraction—the goddess Isis.
Isis’ Myth
I was aware of who and what Isis is in a mythic sense—a goddess who was (and is) the wife of the deity Osiris, the Lord of the Lower Worlds. Isis also played a major role in Osiris’ resurrection after his betrayal and murder by his evil brother Set. Isis was the one who retrieved Osiris’ dismembered parts and reconstituted him. As such, she serves as a symbolic archetype of healing and reconciliation…. as well as soul retrieval.
Isis was also the mother of their son Horus who would ascend to become the sky god of the Pharaohs, whose embodiment was and is the falcon. As such Isis represents the Great Mother, who with her son Horus served as the source of the Mary and Jesus myth adopted by the early Christians.
For those of you who are shaken by this revelation, allow me to observe that Isis’ other Egyptian name was ‘Meri’ or ‘Mery’’ meaning ‘beloved,’ and Horus’ other name was Iusa, the source of the name Jesus, making him and him alone the pagan Christos. We may explore this mythic account in a future column perhaps.
It is enough to say now that during my visit to Egypt in January 2003, I was only mildly interested in the myth. What I was really going for was connection with the transpersonal force that was and is Isis/Mery.
The Temple at Dendara
On the decidedly warm afternoon of January 8, 2003, our travel group approached the huge temple of the goddess Hathor at Dendara, west of the Nile River in Upper Egypt. On final approach, we could see that the temple’s massive stone columns in the vast central hall are capped by the four faces of Hathor, each facing in one of the four directions.
Now in a mythic sense, Hathor, the cow-eared goddess of love, was the historically earlier embodiment of this transpersonal feminine force. Isis came later. In this perspective, Hathor and Isis are actually different attributes of the same transpersonal being. This is why it is often difficult when looking at the temple images to distinguish which goddess is Isis and which is Hathor. The only way of knowing which is which is to read the associated hieroglyph, Isis being represented by the symbol of a three-leveled throne in profile and Hathor by a box (house) with a falcon inside, reflecting her mythic marriage to Horus, the son of Isis.
Interesting family…
From the Hawaiian kahuna perspective, Hathor-Isis would be the Egyptian representative of the feminine force of creation whose common name in Hawaii was Wahine and whose sacred name was Uli Uli (Uri Uri in Tahitian).
I mention this because I have come to understand that these archetypal forces have been perceived in much the same way in all the world’s mystical traditions. For example the Polynesian healer Lono (once a real man who became a god) became Quetzalcoatl among the Aztecs, Kukulcan among the Mayans, Aesclapios among the Greeks and Imhotep among the Egyptians. Same archetypal force… different names.
Knowing this, I was curious as to what might be experienced in a great Egyptian temple that embodied the Hathor-Isis transpersonal force.
It happened, but not in the way I expected.
Isis’ Shrine
After our tour of the big Hathor temple on that warm afternoon in 2003, I walked around and behind the huge walls of the building where I spied a smaller, ruined structure fashioned of large stone blocks, glowing yellow in the late afternoon light. On asking our guide about it, I was told it was the remains of a shrine dedicated to Isis.
The building appeared deserted, even neglected compared to its monumental companion, yet I felt compelled to approach it. I climbed the steps along one side and stepped onto the shadowed stone platform from which two empty doorways entered into the dark interior of the shrine itself. Both doorways were guarded by the iron bars of two locked gates that excluded intruders.
As I peered through the bars, I could see that the rooms were empty except for the reliefs carved into the walls. There was a niche at the back of the larger room that was empty too, its statuary and treasured power objects long gone to raiders and tomb robbers.
I was by myself, and yet I could feel an unmistakable sense of someone or something there. It was elusive at first, coming and going, just there at the edge of my awareness. I glanced carefully around. I was alone on the ruined portico, nor was there anyone else in proximity to the shrine.
I sat down in the shade, my back against the wall of the shrine, and I closed my eyes. I entered into what I think of as the meditative state. It improves with practice. For long moments, I just sat still, my eyes closed, calming my mind, erasing my thoughts, allowing the inner mystical state to slowly expand within me. It was then that I felt it again… a definite presence.
On impulse, my hands felt for the zipper on my small waist pack, and my fingers extracted a glass crow bead, a blue one, my signature offering. I held it to my lips, eyes still closed, then breathed my prayer to the lady Isis through the hole in the bead, using it as the doorway into the transpersonal realm, offering to her my love along with an account of who I was and my intentions for being there in her shrine.
I waited, holding the bead between my fingers, savoring the moment, then I cracked an eye and tossed the bead through the iron bars into the darkness of her shrine. I smiled, my ritual complete. Then I braced myself against the ancient stone wall behind my back and accessed the high frequency brain-wave states I have described in some detail in my Spiritwalker trilogy.
The Vision
Allow me to say that I don’t really know what it is that I do in these moments. I just intend it and the rest then happens. In response, the blood began to hiss in my ears as the exquisite pressure arrived accompanied by the uncontrollable vibrations of the expanding visionary state.
I felt the familiar soaring feeling increase… increase, growing incrementally as my body commenced to shake as I built up my connection with the mind-blowing energy field that Obi Wan Kenobi called The Force and that the Polynesians call Mauri Ora.
All authentic mystics have experienced it. It is the power of the life force itself.
The transcendent state suddenly expanded within me and possessed me, and while my body continued to vibrate, gripped in the invisible fist of power, it was as though a window in my mind opened and a feeling of utter tranquility enveloped me.
Abruptly and unexpectedly, I descended into darkness… into the velvety blackness of the great void. For long moments my conscious awareness was just there, in that place of utter stillness and awesome silence… a state in which all that ever was and all that will ever be is unified in the now… in a state of waiting, of is-ness, of being-ness…
This place is the state of where the greatest creative work of the universes is manifested. I did not know this when I wrote about my first experience of this place in Spiritwalker.
And then… in response to my intention, I suddenly perceived her… the goddess Isis… yet not as some symbolic woman-form or humanized feminine personification.
A brilliance appeared in the darkness of the void... a radiance that expanded into a moving, flowing mass of effervescent cobalt light that was alive and shimmering. It had depth, like staring into crystal clear blue water, yet it had no boundaries and in a flash, I was in this blue-ness. It was all around me. It merged with me, or I had merged with it so that in those moments, I was the blue-ness. And I was immediately aware that it possessed a vast intelligence far beyond my own.
Simultaneously, her awareness and mine became one…
This is the mystic experience at its absolute best, and it is available to all who choose to achieve it.
During this extraordinary experience, the soaring sensations that gripped my physical body amped up to an entirely new level in response to her connection with me. And there was more.
I have said that this was a very warm afternoon (read ‘hot’), yet in those moments, I suddenly experienced a sudden coolness, like when you open a refrigerator and the cold internal air flows down and outwards over your bare feet…
This is what enveloped me in those moments of vision. I was literally enfolded by a coolness, like a river of blue cold air flowing over me in a wave, engulfing me in a field in which I knew what she knows, I felt what she feels, I thought what she thinks… and in that state, the goddess and I were one.
To say that this was an amazing experience would be an understatement of vast proportions.
I was perceiving her on the one hand as her ‘light beyond the form,’ and I was experiencing her directly as ‘the formless beyond the light.’ And there was no doubt in those moments that she—the Isis/mother goddess energy—is real.
Then the vision faded as I heard the footsteps of others approaching the shrine and my focus shifted from ‘there’ back to ‘here.’ Yet the resonance of her grace persisted for several days until I was fully drawn back into my world.
Fast Forward
Now here I was, at her shrine behind the temple at Dendara once again almost six years later, on December 9, 2008. As I ascended the stone steps behind the Hathor temple once again, I was expectant, to say the least.
And this time, much to my surprise, there was an Egyptian guard, in turban and galabeya, complete with moustache, who smiled and looked directly into my soul… then unlocked the gates for me on both entrances to the shrine. I smiled and tipped him and he graciously withdrew, leaving me alone.
Wary, I entered her shrine for the first time, allowing my mind to slowly settle. This time my wife Jill was here as well, waiting outside with some of the others of our group, granting me the space to just be with her… with the goddess.
Then as before, I fished in my waist pack—for three blue beads this time—one for me and one for Jill, and one for a shamanic colleague in New Mexico who had asked me to convey her love to the goddess. I breathed my prayer through the beads then still standing, I placed my hands on the wall, on both sides of the niche in which her statue once stood and closed my eyes.
I offered my prayer (once more) for me and for my wife, and for my friend as well. I felt my fingers discover a deep crack in the stone wall, so I tucked the blue beads there… and then I accessed the high frequency visionary state.
The Second Vision
Once again, I felt her presence expand within my fully aroused consciousness. There was no doubt, no question… It felt familiar this time as something dimly remembered, and I became aware that this was an old transpersonal connection spanning many lifetimes.
In response to this insight, glimpses of the past began to flow through my mind. They were memories of course, but they were not the memories of Hank Wesselman.
‘Then whose memories are they?’ I thought to myself as I watched them… and then the answer came. They were being downloaded from my immortal oversoul field—my personal spiritual aspect that resides in the same transpersonal realm in which the Isis field exists. They were originating from my self aspect in which all of my former selves are archived.
I watched enthralled as image after image emerged within my mind, like slides projected upon a screen that flowed with mystical vitality, power and life force. As before, the radiance of her light was a brilliant blue hue and her awareness conveyed a sense of utter acceptance… and a distinctly feminine amusement.
The goddess was amused at my astonished state and my response to what was flowing through my mind… and through hers. Then the imagery suddenly shifted as an issue abruptly emerged from within the memories stored within my own Hank Wesselman mind. It was a recent memory of an event—one of the great betrayals of my life—one that had happened only just the year before.
For many months I had suffered great anguish and grief over this event. I relived it even as I stood there in her shrine, my hands braced against the wall, my body shaking with the force of her presence… then as before, the temperature abruptly shifted as her cool field once again swept down and engulfed me. I was bathed in the cold radiance of her grace… and in response, I felt my grief over this terrible betrayal ebbing away… slowly dissolving in her blue light… going… going… and then gone.
I understood in those moments that when we are dealing with grief, or with issues of violation and betrayal, Isis is the one to whom we must journey… that Isis is the transpersonal ally who graces us with the qualities of forgiveness and reconciliation.
I also understood in those moments that my lady Isis and the Himalayan bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, the Chinese goddess Kwan Yin and the Japanese spirit Kwannon are one and the same.
With this insight, I felt rather than saw, her smile.
Then once again, I heard the voices of some of my companions approaching the shrine and my awareness shifted… and the feelings of force that had held me in their grip simply faded away. I was also aware that I had had a major healing from Isis and the edge of anger that I had carried for over a year around that great betrayal was gone.
My gratitude is beyond description.
Until next month, allow me to invoke the spirit of Hale Makua, my great Hawaiian friend… and with his blessing (and his words), I extend to each of you the Light and the Love of the Ancestors, The Source of Life, rejoicing in the Power and the Peace, braided with the cords of Patience, revealing the tapestry of the strongest force in the Universe… your Aloha.
With warm thoughts—Dr Hank
These are truly heretical ideas for a scientist such as myself to have, and yet perhaps this year, insha’allah, I will have the chance to once again enter the pyramid and investigate these questions. We do have another trip to Egypt planned for December in 2009. Details are linked to the main page of our site at www.sharedwisdom.com if you are interested in joining us.
So until next month, allow me to invoke the spirit of Hale Makua, my great Hawaiian friend… and with his blessing (and his words), I extend to each of you the Light and the Love of the Ancestors, The Source of Life, rejoicing in the Power and the Peace, braided with the cords of Patience, revealing the tapestry of the strongest force in the Universe… your Aloha.
With warm thoughts—Dr Hank
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Dr. Hank Wesselman, P.h.D
Anthropologist, Shamanic Teacher, Healer, & Author
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Dr Hank Wesselman PhD., holds advanced degrees in anthropology and zoology from the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Since 1971, he's conducted research with an international group of scientists, exploring eastern Africa's Great Rift Valley in search of answers to the mystery of human origins--fieldwork that has allowed him to spend much of his life living and working with traditional peoples, rarely, if ever, visited by outsiders.
During this time, he has worked with many notables including Prof F. Clark Howell, Dr Don Johanson, "Lucy's" discoverer, as well as members of the famous Leakey family.
He is currently engaged in fieldwork in northern Ethiopia with the Middle Awash Research Project headed by Prof Tim White, where he is reconstructing the paleoenvironments of sites dated between four and six million years old that have yielded the fossilized remains of humanity's earliest ancestors.
Dr Wesselman has taught anthropology for the University of California at San Diego; the University of Hawai'i at Hilo's West Hawai'i campus at Kealakekua; California State University at Sacramento; American River College and Sierra College in northern California; and Kiriji Memorial College and Adeola Odutola College in Western Nigeria, where he first became interested in indigenous spiritual traditions while living among people of the Yoruba Tribe as a US Peace Corps Volunteer during the 1960s.
Dr Hank (as his students call him) is also a shaman in training, now in the 23rd year of his apprenticeship. His autobiographical trilogy Spiritwalker, Medicinemaker, and Visionseeker describes an ongoing continuum of visionary experiences that began spontaneously out in the bush of southern Ethiopia in the 1970s, resumed in Hawai'i in the 1980s, and continue to the present day.
Combining the sober objectivity of a trained scientist with a mystic's passionate search for deeper understanding, Hank's books and teachings contain revelations about the nature of reality, the self, as well as the shaman's spiritual worlds.
Since 1994, he has offered seminars and training workshops at many internationally-recognized centers such as the Esalen Institute in California, the Omega Institute near New York, and the New Millennium Institute in Hawai'i.
Hank's newest books include the Journey to the Sacred Garden: A Guide to Traveling in the Spiritual Realms, and Spirit Medicine: Healing in the Sacred Realms (co-authored with transpersonal medical practitioner and soul retrieval specialist Jill Kuykendall).
He currently serves on the advisory board of the Society for Shamanic Practitioners, is a member of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, the American Anthropological Association, the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness, and is featured in Traveling Between the Worlds: Conversations with Contemporary Shamans by Hillary S Webb.
In addition to his scientific publications, he is at work on a book about his expeditionary field experiences in Africa.
He has also written a small book for children: Little Ruth Reddingford and the Wolf.
Contact info and workshop schedule:
www.sharedwisdom.
com
email:
hw@sharedwisdom.com
Notes & Updates
from Dr.Hank
Descriptions of the workshops and presentations offered by Hank Wesselman and his wife Jill Kuykendall, as well as the website links to the centers where they will be held in 2007, are now taking form on their web site:
www.sharedwisdom.
com
Soul Catchers
I discovered, quite by accident almost 15 years ago, that I am married to a great soul catcher. My wife Jill Kuykendall was trained in the Western medical paradigm and has worked as a physiotherapist in acute care rehabilitation in hospital as well as home health settings for more than 25 years.
Today, Jill works primarily in transpersonal medicine and has a private practice devoted to soul retrieval. Clients come to her from all over the country, as well as from abroad and she is usually booked up months in advance.
Interestingly, the transpersonal nature of this work means that it is “nonlocal’ and is just as effective when done long-distance, revealing that Jill can still do the work on behalf of those who cannot travel to meet with her in her office.
Jill is the co-author with me of Spirit Medicine and wrote the chapters on soul loss, soul retrieval and more. As you may be aware, we have a website <www.sharedwisdom.
com> where Jill has a page describing the nature of her work in soul retrieval.
For those interested, there are also two hour-long interviews with me posted on the Broadband Learning Channel <www.bblc.tv>, one of which is focused upon health, illness and healing the soul in the indigenous perspective.
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