So I’ve recently returned from the Association of Sexual Energy Professionals (ASEP) conference. And I’ve had some intriguing experiences. This post features the end of my adventure. I will be adding more soon.
I am writing not only my experiences, but my thoughts – as they are now. I’m sure as time moves, I will have a different take on all of this, but for now, this is where I am.
The final night of the ASEP conference, I did a post-conference workshop about establishing Sacred Space and bringing ceremony into a client practice. In other words, how to bring Shamanic and other types of energy work into my personal work with clients.
Part of what the presenter, Karyn, spoke about was the need to prepare for a session with a client, not just setting up the physical space, but also preparing mentally, energetically.
She suggested doing a Dismemberment. It sounds like what it is. We were going to experience a meditation, brought into a trance state with a drum, and journey with one or more of our spirit guides or power animals, in which we would go to the Upper or Lower world (our world is the Middle World) and ask to be Dismembered by the spirits.
I was startled by the idea, and resistant – sounded “horror movie” to me. I couldn’t understand what possible use such an exercise would have. Karyn and others explained that the idea was that Dismemberment gets you to completely let go of Ego, of Self, so that you could be totally open to your client.
Underlying all of this is this notion I find in many new-age spiritualists, the idea that Ego is not a good thing, something we have to work to let go of. On some level, I get where they’re coming from (none of us like a strongly egotistical or arrogant person, and if we’re too wrapped up in ourselves, we can’t be open to others) but on the other hand, I think ego can be a good thing. We need a strong sense of self. We need to feel good about our accomplishments. We need to maintain some semblance of self in order to truly be there for others, without becoming lost in them.
The whole notion of Ego is multilayered, as I feel that ego is, like everything else, something that should be balanced. The yin and yang. Ego, with selflessness. Ego, with humility.
And perhaps I’m resistant to the “no ego” concept, because some of the biggest, most self-centered egos I’ve found have been attached to the very people who espouse the “no ego” theory. Many of these people seem to be the ones who are most unaware of the feelings and needs of those around them, or disparage them if they are aware.
And I have to say, the image of being Dismembered didn’t seem like a great idea anyhow – why on earth would you choose to put yourself through such an experience, which sounded profoundly traumatic at best?
I chose not to ask for Dismemberment, as I took part in the trance/journey experience. Instead, I wanted to see if I could find more meaning for the strange, heavy drugging dreams I’d been having since I arrived at the conference.
So while everyone else asked to be chopped up or pulled apart, I was looking for something else. I figured it was my journey, and I should go where my heart led me.
I should add that I’m always struggling internally at these types of events. On the one hand, I listen to people talk about “power animals” and “spirit guides” and there’s a part of me that is scornful and doubting. And yet even as I feel that distrust in the concept, I also know that part of me believes, at least on some level.
I have an angel who takes care of me, protects me, comforts me. I have an animal that I’ve always thought of as my fierce protector, keeping me from harm, fighting for me if necessary. When I was a teenager, I asked the universe to send me someone to protect me, and I had a vision of a bird, a hunting bird. I didn’t know what kind of bird it even was, I had to look it up in a book. It turned out to be a Peregrine Falcon, but a snowy falcon, white with black spots. His name is Fannon.
Later in my life, my angel Michael came to me. I am not a Christian, but when I needed love and comfort most, he came to me and wrapped his wings around me, held me while I cried.
I’ve always felt the presence of these two, yet the cynical, doubting part of me has always been willing to concede that they may be nothing more than my imagination, creating images to allow me to care for, and protect, myself. They feel real to me, but I’m somehow shy or embarrassed to admit that they even exist in my imagination, let alone in reality. I am embarrassed to even write about them here.
And yet I wonder. I wonder how it is that, as a teenager, I had a need and this animal appeared. I wonder how it is that the more I learn about Shamanic traditions, the more I realize that I’ve been practicing many of them all my life, not knowing the names, not knowing where it came from.
And I remind myself that scorn and distrust are often based in fear.
Still, I don’t share this part of myself with others. Perhaps I’m afraid they’ll think I’m crazy (as if I’m not crazy enough already). Perhaps I’m afraid they’ll laugh at me. Maybe I’m afraid that if it’s all true, I’m not good enough somehow. Maybe I have trouble speaking one language (“power animals”) with one group of people, and speaking differently with others (“fucking hippies”). Maybe I’m afraid I don’t truly fit in in either world. How do I confidently stand my ground, when I’m not sure where I’m standing, which ground I occupy?
But in that moment, with those people, it was okay for me to have my guide, and my power animal. I went with it.
We lay on the floor, and a man started drumming. The constant rhythmic, repetitive, loud pounding of the drum very easily sent me into a kind of trance state. I was always aware of my body on that hard floor, but I also began to feel a distance from it – a dim awareness.
I was flying through the air, into the clouds, following Fannon as he flew effortlessly, dipping and wheeling through the sky. I could feel Michael behind me, covering my back, protecting me.
Moving ever higher, we broke through the clouds and I saw a forest before me, floating on the sky like water. It was a dense, tropical forest, rich and humid and green, with palm trees and thick plants and bushes.
We flew into the forest, flying fast past the foliage, the green a blur on either side of us. When we broke out of the forest, there was a horseshoe shaped beach, with water that glowed blue, the sands a golden white that seemed more like tiny stones than sand. The dense forest surrounded the small beach. I wanted to stop, to linger a bit, but we were already diving back into the forest.
Relatively quickly, we broke out of the forest again, and in this clearing we stopped. Before us was a huge house made of straw. Fannon transformed into something like a man – I’d never seen him do this before. His body was a silvery white, like his animal body, but glowing slightly. His hair was black and shiny, hanging to his shoulders. His face, however, was still like a hawk’s. He was beautiful. I felt proud and safe, looking at him. Michael, as always, stayed behind me – I never get to see his face.
The house had kind of an Asian architecture. We ascended a few steps. Almost all of the front of the house was open to the air, as was the back – we could see through the house to the back, and the forest beyond.
Inside, the house was cool and shadowed. We stepped inside. In the middle of the large room, there was an old woman – again, perhaps Asian – sitting on a cushion. She was surrounded with bowls, similar to the Tibetan bowls used in the opening ceremony at the convention. They might have been brass, maybe bronze, maybe even gold, but it was hard to tell in the light, and they looked old and oxidized. Some of the bowls were on low tables, some were on the floor, there were many, many bowls.
The woman looked at me, then began to look around at all of her bowls. Finally, she selected one from her right side (my left, as I was facing her), and smiled and held the bowl out to me. I took it. It had some liquid in it, I wasn’t sure what, though maybe water. I drank, and it tasted like water. I handed the empty bowl back to her, and she smiled again, then waved her hand, suggesting we continue our journey through the house, and out the open back side.
We descended the steps, walked across some golden, open ground, and re-entered the forest. Fannon resumed his bird form, and we flew fast through the dizzying green foliage.
And then I was back, in my body, on the thin carpet at the ASEP conference, listening to the drum, and wondering when the drum would stop. Within a minute, the cadence changed, the drum stopped, and I opened my eyes. I was aware of people around me, some crying or making noise, moving on the floor.
I got up and returned to my chair, and others did as well. Soon we were sitting in a circle, and people were sharing their Dismemberment experiences – the experience I chose not to have. For some it was very positive, for others, very emotional and intense. I felt a little bad for not trying it, but I was also very happy with the experience in the Upper World that I had.
While I resisted the idea of a Dismemberment experience while at the conference, it seems I was supposed to experience it anyhow. I had a dream the night I returned to Denver, a dream so clear, so vivid, so linear in it’s construction that it took on the quality of a vision or journey. And the more I’ve thought about it, throughout the day, the more layers and facets of meaning have come to me.
In my dream, my little family – those I’m truly close to, my housemate, my daughter – along with close friends who are part of my circle, the Fey friends, the amazing and unique people I allow truly close to me – we were all living in a cemetery. We were vampires, zombies, all the scary things that go bump in the night. But we were really just us, just people, living in an unusual and unique way compared with the rest of the world, not just living the way we chose to, but the way we had to. We could no more help being zombies and vampires and witches and such anymore than a flower can help blooming.
Every night we’d gather and laugh and talk, drink a little blood, enjoy cool grey mist of the graveyard, the stars above. My housemate was there, and my daughter, and many more who I can’t name now, but know that I love each and every one. I do remember getting into a friendly debate over science fiction books with Octavia Love, who espoused that Piers Anthony was a good storyteller, while I laughed and disagreed and passionately stated my case. A normal evening, like those normal people have, just enjoying one another, sharing our thoughts, laughing.
It felt good-natured and close and warm, our graveyard home comfortable, the grass and land and headstones stretching around us, all loved and familiar.
I’d wandered off and found myself in a forest near, and outside of, our graveyard. Under the trees, someone had placed neat rows of folding chairs, and there was to be a speaker, someone presenting something. I sat down in one of the rows near the back, curious. Others filtered in and sat down, first a trickle, then more and more. They were normal people, regular flesh and blood humans. I was a little uncomfortable, knowing I looked like them, but that I wasn’t one of them – and that anyone who looked closely and saw me for what I really was would be frightened, or angry.
Then the speaker, a man, stood on a small wooden platform beneath the trees and began to shout, waving his arms, his face red, his speech impassioned. He was railing against people like me and my little family, the zombies and vampires and witches, the undead, the scary people that they truly did not understand, or want to. His followers were growing angry and agitated, and I sat quietly, hoping not to be noticed.
But then he cried out that the Fey and vampires were here, in this forest, at this meeting, amongst them. He told them we’d be easy to spot if only they looked. He pointed his finger wildly, his gaze coming to rest on me. The crowd followed his eyes, and I was surrounded.
Inwardly, I wasn’t truly afraid, more a feeling of resignation. An acceptance that I was going to have to endure whatever would follow, until my little family could come for me in the morning.
Chaos ensued, chairs overturned, people shouting and angry, the fear – theirs, not mine – palpable in the air. While not afraid, per se, I awaited their action with some trepidation.
They dismembered me. They ripped my arms and legs off, they cut off my head, all the while shouting and angry and yet filled with a kind of vicious, furious glee. They burned me. They buried me. They dug me up and dismembered me again. The buried me alive. They burned me at the stake. They beat me and ripped me apart, again and again.
And I waited. I endured it, without even feeling pain, just waiting for morning, when my little family would come and take me home to the cemetery. I even had the sense of a kind of wry amusement, a resigned humor that these people didn’t know what they were doing, not really – but that were going to do it anyhow, and in a way that was almost comical.
Finally, as cool pre-dawn light began to filter through the trees, I found myself lying bloody and burned on the forest floor, dead leaves sticking to my body, the earth cool and fragrant against my cheek. The crowd was gone, the neat rows of chairs mostly overturned and lying forgotten on the ground. The breeze was soft, and the trees felt calm and strong and old.
My family came. They lifted me up, and I was whole again, physically untouched. They smiled, happy to see me, perhaps a touch of regret that they couldn’t come to get me earlier, but that was as it had to be. They put their arms around me, and arms around each other’s waists and shoulders, laughing, we walked back to the graveyard together.
And I woke up.
I had been so tired and drained the night before, feeling incapable of dealing with anyone outside of my protected family circle, needing to recharge my batteries before being capable of connection with others, even friends.
But I awoke from my dream energized, even excited, and filled with a deep happiness, humor, and feeling centered and whole again.
My Dismemberment experience didn’t serve to strip me of Ego; rather, it validated the vital need for Ego, while emphasizing the need for humility, the value of letting go, of “dying to it,” as my housemate puts it. Acceptance of one’s situation, but holding on to one’s sense of self. Honoring who I was, in the face of those who did not.
