Who am I taking to?

I started working with spirits many years ago as a spirit medium. I didn’t really question the work, it just emerged from the other intuitive work I was doing with clients. At the end of a tarot reading, I would “see” a grandmother, or an aunt, or sister who would give a few messages about the information in the reading. It always a very healing and connected moment, so I welcomed these ancestors into my work. They were so powerful and efficient with their messages. Clients were deeply touched.

As I let myself step into that role, I began to recognize that instead of some vague energy I was connecting to when I did tarot readings or energy healing, it was distinct spirits and divine helpers who were giving me information, in ALL of my work. This was a little unsettling to me, I still had some fear of the unseen world. Okay, I can talk to Grandma, or your Aunt, or your Mother in spirit, but talking to spirits who walk with me would really be an act of surrender. I would be acknowledging that I am not DOing, rather I am being guided. So then the question is by whom? Do I really want to know? No. It felt safe to be in the magical world of, oooh isn’t it cool I can talk to spirits. Scary to know who and why. I might have to have a relationship with these beings. I might have to show up in a different way. Like I do with my people friends. How complex.

I went about avoiding this intimacy for years, till finally a fellow medium said to me as I was channeling, “So who are you talking to right now?” I embarassedly said, “Well, I don’t know.” He laughed and said, “So ask damn it!” And so I did. I started describing to him the spirit. It was easier speaking it to him, than thinking I was making it up in my own head. How many times have I said to students, when you are feeling like you are making it up, that’s when you are really connecting? Shaking head now.

So this spirit was powerful. A Native American, a Lakota or Northern Plains Indian. He was a leader, who was a warrior and carried this stick with a curve on the end of it. He would touch enemies with it and “count coup.” I had no idea what that was. He told me his name was Red Cloud and he had seen me on the plains in Nebraska as a young girl at one his camp sites many years ago. That’s when he started walking with me. I was a bit stunned, but my friends jaw dropped. “Do you know who he is?” he asked me. I didn’t at all. He started telling me about this fierce warrior Red Cloud who was a leader of the Lakota people. He was fast and competive and in his later years wise and understanding of how to create peace and protect the remainder of his people in a world that wasn’t theirs anymore.

Red Cloud told me that he had a mission for me, to spiritually count coup on the land to bring it into spiritual harmony and reclaim it for the land spirits. He told me that the only way to survive the changing environmental transition was to do this work. To wake up the land spirits so that they can help us remain in harmony with the changes that are upon us. He didn’t speak about being at fault, nor doom or gloom. Rather he spoke with simplicity about change that is needed and restoring the rightful place of spirit to the land as the right thing to do. That it was for ME to do. And show others how to do this.

No wonder I was avoinding this! What? How would one do that? I at the time didn’t know much about restoring the inherent diginty back to the land that we have tended to run over and deplete in our culture. We tend to regard Earth as a thing to be harvested, not a living breathing organism with a spirit of it’s own. That it is home to spirits who have homes in the same place we call home. That just want to be recognized and apologized to, for us forgetting that. Just as we would apologize to a friend whose bed we might be sleeping in thinking it was ours alone.

These land spirits have vast power to restore the earth. They have power to restore us to rightful living and harmony in our selves and our relationships. They can resolve conditions we thought were hopeless. And they can heal in ways that we didn’t know needed healing. The spirits always know what needs to be done, they can see further than we can. All they need is love and prayer and recognition of their existence. They are willing to work with us if we ask. We need to ask though.

So thus began the tutorial in reclaiming the land that is my true undercover mission. It has been showing up in everything I do for the past year now. And as a result, I am given to writing about it here. And letting it show me more of what to do. By me bringing presence to it. Instead of waiting for it, they have asked me to show up and write, so it can step out. They are showing me it is a work of love and surrender. And writing every day. More to come folks!