Spirit Allies
In my novel “A Second Chance Life,” Sam, an Indian healer, has a dream involving his spirit ally (or guardian spirit): “That night, Cougar, Sam’s guardian spirit for the last several years, padded into his dreams, into the cabin. Sam lay on his side in the bunk, arms folded under his head, and watched the cat, belly brushing the floor, slink silently to the cot where Jude lay sprawled, a leg dangling over the side. The beast whuffed a bare toe, then glided to snuffle at Jude’s face, her whiskers twitching forward, the big cat’s way of breathing in the essence of a man. Cougar stepped onto the cot, bracing her muscled body on front legs. She nosed Jude’s shirt and with claws sheathed, pawed off the tangled blankets. She studied the sleeping man-form, then...
Read MoreThe Feel of Real
In the late 1970’s, I was a psychology trainee on a psychiatric unit of a hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. And I was scared. Patients talked nonsense, tried suicide, and shuffled aimlessly through the corridors looking downright miserable. They were medicated into submission and sometimes locked into restraints. I had no clue as to how to help them. But I was lucky to have Myron, one of the Aides, who took me under his wing. Myron was not afraid. He explained the therapies, the staff politics, and the stories of some of the patients. More importantly, he had a depth of empathy and understanding that comforted the patients as well as myself. We became friends. Over the years, Myron turned to shamanic practices as a means to heal people in emotional turmoil...
Read MoreJourneys to the spirit world
In my short story “An Occurrence on Interstate Five,” Grandma ferries her dogs beyond ordinary reality through an ancient, amorphous space. Her journey has inexplicable consequences witnessed by several people. My tale is a variation on the classic ghost story theme, in which spirit beings create physical effects in the real world. But there’s a flip side to ghost stories: A person from the ordinary world enters the spirit realm. Visionaries, prophets, psychics and shamans are examples of people who claim to experience non-ordinary reality. Shamans, in particular, can supposedly then influence reality from the vantage point of the spirit world. My first exposure to shamanism was “The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge” by Carlos Castaneda (Ballantine...
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